Terms of Use

Terms of Use for LowcountryBirder.com

We hate spam as much as you do!

Your name, e-mail address and any other information you provide are kept strictly confidential. Under no circumstances will we ever share them with any other individual or company unless you approve us doing so.

Security

This website takes careful measures to protect member information and prevent the loss and misuse of such information. When you register with LowcountryBirder.com, your information is encrypted and stored on a server behind a firewall. The servers that store your information are located in a secure locked facility. While we make every effort to ensure the integrity and security of our network and systems, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will prevent third-party “hackers” from illegally obtaining this information.

What Information Is Collected And How Is It Used?

Information is collected from users of LowcountryBirder.com in the following areas of this site:

Registration

Information is collected from visitors when they register as members or authors, which can happen either through our homepage or when a visitor posts a comment or uploads images or videos to our site. In order to create a membership account with us, members are required to provide their first and last name, their email address, and may also be asked their country, postal code and phone number. This information is used to:

  • verify the legitimacy of the registration (for more information, see “Communications From This Site”); and
  • identify the member when they log into LowcountryBirder.com, and to customize their experience based on their membership; and
  • contact the member should an issue arise with their posting or their LowcountryBirder.com account;
  • if approval is given by the member, to inform them of new and/or related service offerings in which they may be interested (see “Sharing”); and
  • geographical information, when collected, is done so for our own research purposes and is not connected to member’s Personally Identifiable Information following its collection.

Upon registration, members also have the option to subscribe to receive newsletters and communications from LowcountryBirder.com.

Inside LowcountryBirder.com

After logging into LowcountryBirder.com, members may submit personal, and personally identifiable, information using the tools and software available inside LowcountryBirder.com. The information submitted via comments or online forms or uploads is voluntary.

Communications from This Site

Once the registration form is completed, the new member may be sent a welcoming email which confirms their membership login details, and supplies a link to login to the website. For every requested communication sent to members, we include an explanation of how the member came to be on that the mailing list and present an unsubscribe option.

How to Unsubscribe

Every newsletter or message sent to members contains “unsubscribe” instructions so members who no longer wish to receive communications may opt-out of receiving such communications.  Members may also unsubscribe by sending an email with “Unsubscribe” in the Subject line to lcb@lowcountrybirder.com.   Unsubscribe requests will be processed with two business days.

Our Commitment to Children’s Privacy

Protecting children’s privacy is especially important to us. It is our policy to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and all other applicable laws. This website is intended for use by those 18 years or older.

YOU MUST BE EIGHTEEN (18) YEARS OR OLDER TO POST ANY INFORMATION, IMAGES OR MATERIALS ON THIS WEB SITE. IF YOU ARE UNDER EIGHTEEN YEARS OF AGE, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO POST INFORMATION TO THIS WEB SITE FOR ANY REASON. DUE TO THE AGE RESTRICTIONS FOR USE OF THIS WEB SITE, NO INFORMATION OBTAINED BY THIS WEB SITE FALLS WITHIN THE CHILDREN’S ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION ACT (COPPA) AND IS NOT MONITORED AS DOING SO.

The LowcountryBirder.com Online Community

The LowcountryBirder.com website includes the opportunity for members to leave comments, join in online discussions and post information and files to the site (upon approval by the site owner).  This opportunity is voluntary and members should be aware that any personally identifiable information voluntarily submitted to the site can be read, collected, or used by others, and could be used to send unsolicited messages. LowcountryBirder.com is not responsible for any personally identifiable information volunteered to this site.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it may be necessary to send out a service-related announcement. For instance, if the website is temporarily unavailable or undergoing maintenance, we might send members an email. Members may not opt-out of receiving these specific kinds of communications, but they are not promotional in nature.

Sharing

Legal Disclaimer: LowcountryBirder.com will only share your information with outside parties when required to by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on this web site.

You own all of the content and information that you post on LowcountryBirder.com. However the following terms apply to such content:

  1. For content that is covered by Intellectual Property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with LowcountryBirder.com (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or request us to do so, unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
  2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
  3. When you publish content or information on LowcountryBirder.com, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people without LowcountryBirder.com member or author accounts, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., comments or pictures that you have posted).
  4. We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about LowcountryBirder.com, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).

Safety

We try our best to keep LowcountryBirder.com safe for everyone, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to do that, which includes the following commitments:

  1. You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on LowcountryBirder.com.
  2. You will not collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access LowcountryBirder.com using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.
  3. You will not engage in solicitation for unlawful multi-level marketing, such as a pyramid scheme, on LowcountryBirder.com.
  4. You will not upload viruses or other malicious code.
  5. You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else.
  6. You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
  7. You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
  8. You will not offer any contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes (“promotion”) on LowcountryBirder.com without our prior written consent. If we consent, you take full responsibility for the promotion, and will follow all applicable laws.
  9. You will not use LowcountryBirder.com to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
  10. You will not do anything that could disable, overburden, or impair the proper working of LowcountryBirder.com, such as a denial of service attack.
  11. You will not facilitate or encourage any violations of these Terms of Service.

Links

This web site contains some links to other web sites.  Please be aware that LowcountryBirder.com is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites, and encourages members to be aware when they leave LowcountryBirder.com and to read the privacy statements of each and every site web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to the information collected by LowcountryBirder.com.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user’s computer for record-keeping purposes. It allows information entered in one webpage to be “remembered” when you enter a new webpage.

Our site uses both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. A session ID cookie expires when you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time.  We use session cookies to remember login information entered inside LowcountryBirder.com as you click through our web pages. The session cookie will expire once you logout. If you voluntarily select for our system to “remember” you next time you login, we will set a persistent cookie on your machine in place of the usual session cookie, and this cookie will store your login information and recall it next time you login. This persistent cookie simply recalls your login information (i.e. your username and password) and is not linked to your personally identifiable information.

For more information about cookies, please see:

http://www.cookiecentral.com/cm002.htm

http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html

Some of our business partners (e.g. advertisers or service providers) use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies.