Privacy Policy

The Shelby County Reporter (SCNI) is sensitive to issues of individual privacy on the Internet. To that end, we provide the following policy on the use of information gathered on shelbycountyreporter.com:

Categories of information collected

shelbycountyreporter.com gathers identifying information about individuals only when individuals provide that information on a voluntary basis such as on our reader reaction forums, for our SMS and email alerts, and in our secure ecommerce store.

SCNI does not collect any information about any child under the age of 18.

SCNI may utilize “cookie” technology in connection with polls on the Sites.

SCNI may perform statistical analyses of its Sites to measure consumer acceptance and to gauge relative interest in various parts of the Sites and to inform advertisers as to how many consumers have seen or “clicked” their advertising banners. In performance of these analyses, we will disclose user behavior information to third parties in aggregate form. We will in no way give your personal information to any third-party without your expressed consent. SCNI reserves the right to change these policies at any time. Any changes to the privacy policy will be posted at the Sites.

CHILDREN’S PRIVACY STATEMENT

No information should be submitted to or posted at our sites by persons under 13 years of age. SCNI does not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 and does not sell such information. If we discover that we have received any information from a child under 13 in violation of this policy, we will delete that information immediately. If you believe SCNI has any information from or about anyone under the age of 13, please contact us immediately at the address listed below.

Children should always get permission from their parents before sending any information about themselves (such as their names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers) over the Internet, to us or to anyone else. We won’t knowingly allow anyone under 13 to register with us or to provide any other personal information. If you’re under 13, please do not provide us with any personal information about yourself (such as your name, your e-mail address or your phone number).

Third parties

It is not the policy of The Shelby County Reporter to sell or make available such information to unrelated third parties; occasionally such information may be shared with other divisions of The Shelby County Reporter. We may inform advertisers of the results of such analyses. And under any circumstance, shelbycountyreporter.com will refer only to general, aggregate usage data from these analyses – never specific identifying information.

shelbycountyreporter.com performs statistical analyses of its server logs to study the use and popularity of various areas of our site. We also look at IP addresses to analyze where we are getting our audience.

Users should keep in mind that, when posting their user name or e-mail address on bulletin boards or in other user-posted content areas, that information, along with any information in their postings, can be read by any third parties and may result in unsolicited messages from other posters or third parties. shelbycountyreporter.com has no control over that.

shelbycountyreporter.com may make use of or refer to user-posted content for the purposes of promotion of shelbycountyreporter.com. This will mainly involve taking screen shots of a particular area of the site and using that screen shot as a graphic in an advertisement. shelbycountyreporter.com makes no claim of ownership to such user-posted content.

shelbycountyreporter.com employs ‘cookies’ in circumstances that require session data or require user verification.

We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn or more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising for some companies, you can visit http://www.networkadvertising.org and http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

Process to remove your personal information

Most of our services include information on how to remove your information and cancel the service. You may alternatively send us an email at webmaster@shelbycountyreporter.com requesting the services and information you would like removed.

Changes to this policy & effective dates

shelbycountyreporter.com reserves the right to change this policy at any time. The effective date of this policy shall be reflected by the updated date at the top of this page.

Terms of use

By using this Web site’s user-contribution features, including comments, photo galleries, or any other feature, you agree to abide by the terms of this agreement.

Please read this agreement in its entirety because it contains useful information that will help you better understand the rules and general “good manners” that are expected when contributing content to this Web site.

We want to encourage an open exchange of information and ideas. But if you use inappropriate language (even when typographically obfuscated), or make potentially slanderous or libelous comments when using this site and its features, or engage in ad hominem attacks on fellow commenters, people mentioned in stories or any employee of The Shelby County Reporter, we reserve the right (but assume no obligation) to remove any and/or all of your contributions. If you become a problem for us or our site’s other users we may ban you from using our services and Web sites. (If your account has been banned, and you have a reasonable case to make regarding reinstating your account, contact the site staff on our problems with comments and banned accounts page.)

We believe it is absolutely possible for people from a variety of points of view to discuss issues in a civil manner and will remove comments that foster incivility.

It is important to know that we DO NOT review every contribution made on this Web site. More than likely, you will see user contributions before anyone on staff here does. This may include information and opinions from a variety of individuals and organizations other than official content from this Web site and its staff.

We do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any user contribution, regardless of whether it comes from a user, celebrity, “expert,” or other source.

Responsibility for what is posted or contributed to this site is the sole responsibility of each user. By contributing to this Web site, you agree not to post any defamatory, abusive, harassing, obscene, sexual, threatening or illegal material, or any other material that infringes on the ability of others to enjoy this site, or that infringes on the rights of others.

You agree to NOT use this Web site to violate any copyrights, trademarks or other intellectual property. By contributing to this Web site, you are representing that you are the owner of the material, or are making your submission with the explicit consent of the owner. Submitting material that is the property of another without the specific consent of its owner is not only a violation of this agreement, but may also subject you to legal liability for infringement of copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights.

Any user who feels that a contribution to this Web site is objectionable is encouraged to click the “flag” link related to the specific post or posts. We have the ability to remove objectionable messages and we will make every effort to do so — within a reasonable time frame — if we determine that removal is necessary.

We reserve the right to remove postings from usernames which themselves might be considered objectionable. We also reserve the right to ban accounts with usernames which are in themselves objectionable.

shelbycountyreporter.com may ban any user, delete any post or take any action with regard to its Web sites related to user submitted content.

By contributing to this Web site, you:

• Agree not to solicit others. You agree not to contribute for the purposes of advertising or to solicit anyone to buy or sell products or services, or to make donations of any kind, or to promote other web sites, without our express written approval, or where expressly permitted.
• Agree not to have multiple personalities on our site. Each user may have only one username. If you would like to change your username, please e-mail us. Use or possession of multiple usernames may result in our banning your user account or accounts.
• Agree not to create usernames which are objectionable, even those which utilize typographical obfuscations.
• Agree not to upload, post, distribute, e-mail or otherwise publish or make available on this Web site any libelous, defamatory, obscene, harmful, vulgar, threatening, tortuous, harassing, abusive, invasive of another user’s privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically objectionable or otherwise illegal material;
• Agree not to upload, post, distribute, e-mail or otherwise publish or make available on this Web site any content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under non-disclosure agreements);
• Agree not to upload, post, distribute, e-mail or otherwise publish or make available on this Web site any content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights (“Rights”) of any party;
• Agree not to upload, post, distribute, e-mail or otherwise publish or make available on this Web site any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes” or any other form of solicitation; and
• Agree not to upload, post, distribute, e-mail or otherwise publish or make available on this Web site any material that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware, telecommunications or other equipment.
• Agree to not impersonate anyone on this Web site;
• Agree not to knowingly give out any private information about other users. Users who engage in the behavior of continually trying to guess other user’s private information may be banned and their account and contributions removed.

As noted earlier, if this type of action is thought to be happening on this Web site, we reserve the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information we may know about you, including your IP address(es)) in the event of a complaint or legal action arising from this type of action.

Your posting of content and your thoughts on shelbycountyreporter.com automatically gives shelbycountyreporter.com a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, disseminate, perform, transmit and display such content (in whole or part) and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in such content. If you are not the owner of such content, you shall be deemed to have warranted that the owner of the content has expressly granted to you a similar license.

We retain the right to revoke access privileges of anyone who we believe has violated any of the terms outlined here or if such user is deemed a problem to either the site or its other users. We also reserve the right to ban any user and his or her comments from showing up on this Web site, without notice.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to e-mail us.