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Hilarie’s Helpful Hints Privacy Policy
This policy was last updated on August 31, 2009.

At Hilarie’s Helpful Hints your privacy is important to us.

This Privacy Policy applies to all of the products, services, and websites offered by Hilarie’s Helpful Hints and its subsidiaries or affiliated companies.

To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our privacy practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used by Hilarie’s Helpful Hints.

An overview of the information that Hilarie’s Helpful Hints may collect

You are able to take advantage of many Hilarie’s Helpful Hints products, services, and websites without providing any information that personally identifies you. We only collect personally-identifying information when you voluntarily submit it to us.

Sometimes, we need personally-identifying information in order to provide you with the products and services that you request. Depending upon the product or service, we may ask you for a variety of personally-identifying information. This might include, for example, your name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, gender, and birth date. We consider certain identifying information "sensitive” or any other information that would normally be considered confidential.

You may choose not to provide us with any personally-identifying information. In that case, you can still access and use many portions of our websites; however, you will not be able to access and use those portions of any Hilarie’s Helpful Hints website that require your personal information or sign up for updates via the newsletter.

Many Hilarie’s Helpful Hints websites include community features, such as online forums and message boards. Information that is posted in these areas becomes public information and the use that any third party makes of this information is beyond our ability to control. You should exercise caution before disclosing any personally-identifying information in these public venues. If you elect to submit content that includes information that can be used to identify you, you must assume that the content can and will be displayed on any website on the Internet.

The types of personally-identifying information that we collect about other people at pages like these may include the person's name, address, e-mail address, or telephone number. We will only ask you for the information about your friend that we need in order to do what you request if you share them.

In some circumstances, we also collect non-personally-identifying information. When you visit a Hilarie’s Helpful Hints website, we may collect information such as the type of browser you use, your operating system, your IP address, and the domain name of your Internet Service Provider. This information, by itself, does not permit individual identification, meaning that you will remain anonymous. However, if you elect to provide us with personally-identifying information during your visit, that information may be linked to your IP address.

When you visit our website, we may send one or more cookies -- small, removable data files -- to your computer. We use cookies to uniquely identify your browser, which allows us to enhance and personalize your online experience at Hilarie’s Helpful Hints websites. For example, cookies allow us to recognize you when you return to a website and present relevant content to you when you visit. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can configure your browser to warn you when cookies are sent, or to refuse all cookies. Some of the features and services of Hilarie’s Helpful Hints websites may not operate properly if your cookies are disabled. Cookies, by themselves, do not provide us with any personally-identifying information.

On our websites, we may also use tiny graphic images called pixel tags, web beacons, or clear gifs. These tiny images help us to analyze our users' online behavior and collect other data, such as page views or advertising responses. Pixel tags also allow us to send you e-mail in a format that you can read, and let us know when you have opened an e-mail message from us. Pixel tags may also be used to deliver cookies. Some of our websites also use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit. These companies may use non-personally-identifying information about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

We work with reputable third parties that provide data tracking and collection technologies in order to:

Present or serve the advertisements you may see at Hilarie’s Helpful Hints websites;

Deliver and track e-mail communications; and

Share information throughout the website, photo gallery and message board.

These companies may collect information about you on our behalf. These parties agree to process any such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

Hilarie’s Helpful Hints website, may in the future, sometimes may offer contests, sweepstakes, or promotions that are sponsored by or co-sponsored with identified third parties. By virtue of their sponsorship, these third parties may obtain personally-identifying information that visitors voluntarily submit to them in order to participate in the contest, sweepstakes, or promotion. Hilarie’s Helpful Hints has no control over the third-party sponsors' use of this information. If a third-party sponsor beyond our control will obtain information that you supply us, we will notify you at the time we collect the information from you. For certain promotions, only those who provide us with the requested personally-identifying information will be able to order products, programs, and services, or otherwise participate in the promotion's activities and offerings.

Some of our websites contain links to other sites. By clicking on these links, you will leave the website operated by Hilarie’s Helpful Hints and this Privacy Policy will no longer apply. These other sites' information practices may be different than ours. You should consult the other sites' privacy notices, as we have no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.

How we use the information we collect

We use the personally-identifying information that you provide us to maintain, consolidate and share information for our website, programs, and services, to respond to your inquiries about offerings, and to offer you other information, products, programs, or services that we believe may be of interest to you. We sometimes use this information to communicate with you, such as to notify you about an update to the website, or when we make changes to subscriber agreements, to fulfill a request by you about the online newsletter, or to contact you about your subscription with us.

We may syndicate the publicly available content of our community areas to unaffiliated third-party websites, using RSS or other technologies.

Transfers of personally-identifying information may also be made where necessary for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims.

Hilarie’s Helpful Hints will not share your sensitive personal information with outside companies or individuals unless it falls into any of the following limited circumstances:

When we use trusted businesses or persons to process personal information on our behalf. Before sharing any personal information with outside parties, we require that these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

When we have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation, or disclosure is necessary to (a) comply with applicable law, regulation, or legal process; (b) enforce the applicable Terms of Service or other agreements and policies on the Company's Websites; (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues; or (d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property, or safety or Hilarie’s Helpful Hints, its users, or the public as required or permitted by law.

When you consent. Before we share your sensitive personal information outside of the previously listed circumstances, we will ask you for permission first. Please note that this only applies to sensitive information, as defined above.
We may also use, transfer, sell, and share aggregated, anonymous data about our users for any legal purpose, such as analyzing usage trends and seeking compatible advertisers and partners. In no event will this aggregated data contain any information that could be used to identify individual users of our information, products or services.

Your privacy options

Enforcement and Compliance with this Privacy Policy

We take our Privacy Policy seriously and we regularly review our own compliance with this Policy. If you have any questions or concerns about this Policy, or if you think that we have used your personal information in a manner inconsistent with this Policy, please contact us on the “contact us” section of the website.