We welcome you to our site. We ask that you review these Terms and
Conditions, which are intended to constitute a binding license agreement
that conditions your use of this site ("Agreement"). We have tried to
avoid unnecessary legal verbiage and hope that you understand that we
are simply trying to protect our rights in order to provide you with access
to the free content available at this site. If you do not wish to be bound
by this Agreement after you have read it, please leave the site. If you
remain at this site, or return thereafter, you agree to be bound by this
Agreement.
1. Responsible conduct. You agree to act responsibly at this site and to
treat other visitors with respect.
2. Limited License/ Copyright and Intellectual Property Law Restrictions.
Except for public domain material, the content on this site is protected
by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. You are hereby
granted a non-exclusive license to use the material at this site ("Content")
while connected to this site (including, where available, to email individual
stories to friends directly from this site). You are also granted a limited
license to print copies of any Content posted at the site, but only for
your personal use. Except as expressly provided above, all rights are reserved.
Among other things, except to the extent required for the limited purpose
of reviewing material on our site, electronic reproduction, adaptation,
distribution, performance or display is prohibited. Changes to or deletion
of author attribution or copyright notices are prohibited. Commercial use
of any of the Content is strictly prohibited. Use of any of our trademarks
as metatags on other web sites also is strictly prohibited. You may not
display this website in frames (or any of the Content via in-line links)
without our express written permission, which may be requested by contacting
us through our feedback
form. You may, however, establish ordinary links to our site without
our written permission.
3. Links. We may provide links from our site as a convenience to our visitors.
We have no control over linked sites and make no representations about any
content or material available at these locations. Links are not intended
to imply sponsorship, affiliation or endorsement. If you believe that we
have provided a link to a site that contains infringing or illegal content
or which makes available cracker tools or other circumvention devices, we
ask that you notify us so that we may evaluate whether (in our sole discretion)
to disable it.
4. Discussion Boards. Although we do not have any obligation to monitor
this board, we reserve the right at all times to check this board and to
remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive,
libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or
otherwise objectionable to us in our sole discretion and to disclose any
information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request.
We also reserve the right to permanently block any user who violates these
terms and conditions.
5. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES. YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT USE OF THIS WEB SITE
IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. THERE IS NO WARRANTY THAT YOUR ACCESS TO OR USE OF
THIS SITE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE; OR THAT ANY PARTICULAR RESULTS
MAY BE OBTAINED BY USE OF THIS SITE. THIS SITE IS MADE AVAILABLE ON AN "AS
IS" BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF TITLE OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT OR OTHERWISE, OTHER THAN
THOSE WHICH ARE IMPLIED BY AND INCAPABLE OF EXCLUSION, RESTRICTION, OR MODIFICATION
UNDER THE LAWS APPLICABLE TO THIS AGREEMENT. NEITHER WE NOR ANY OTHER PERSON
OR ENTITY PROVIDING CONTENT VIA THIS SITE SHALL BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY
DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.
6. Modifications/ Termination. Our employees are not authorized to vary
the terms of this Agreement. You agree that we may modify the terms of this
Agreement (or discontinue this site) in our sole discretion, without advance
notice, and that your right to access this site is conditioned on an ongoing
basis with your compliance with the then-current version of these Terms
and Conditions. You should therefore visit this page frequently.
7. Jurisdiction. This Web site is hosted on servers located in Virginia
and is intended to be viewed by residents of the United States. In the event
of any dispute arising out of or relating to this site, you agree that the
exclusive venue for litigating disputes shall be in state or federal court
in San Jose, California.
Real Cities Network Privacy Statement
The Real Cities Network (or "RCN") is a national network of Internet site
and services serving geographic and common interest communities across the
United States. The privacy policies described below are applicable to each
site in the Real Cities Network. You can view the sites included in the
Real Cities Network at http://www.realcities.com.
When does the RCN collect my personally identifiable information?
When you register at one of the RCN sites or services, we collect personally
identifying information from you. The more information you provide, the
better we are able to customize our services and your experience to suit
your needs and preferences. For example, if you utilize the "Passport" registration
feature offered at many of the RCN sites, we will ask you for a username,
password, e-mail address and zip code. Other sites and specific services
(e.g. free e-mail) will have different registration processes, and may require
you to provide additional personally identifying information such as your
address, phone number and gender. In addition to registration, we may collect
personally identifiable information from you when you enter contests, and
sweepstakes, participate in promotions and special programs, register for
premium or customized services, make a purchase at one of our merchants
or partners, subscribe to one our print papers or magazines, or download
a software product or plug-in. If you are making a purchase or enrolling
in a premium service for which there is a fee, we will collect your credit
card, billing address, and other verifying information. In addition, we
may collect personally identifiable information from you when you provide
content to us for display or use on one or more of the sites in the RCN,
including but limited to, when you participate in user surveys, post messages
to bulletin boards or chat areas, submit personals or other classified listings,
build a home page, report a problem with one of our sites or services, or
submit a letter to the editor.
How is my personally identifiable information used?
Our main goal is to provide you with a customized and targeted user experience
within the Real Cities Network. For instance, your personally identifiable
information enables us to greet you when you return to a Real Cities site
or service, and provide you with news and services we think will be of interest
to you. We review our users' preferences, demographics, traffic patterns,
and other information in the aggregate so that we can better understand
who our audience is and what it is you want. Tracking user preferences also
helps us serve you targeted advertising. Targeted advertisements are probably
more interesting for you, and are definitely more productive for our advertisers.
If a local grocery market wants to advertise an upcoming sale, we can target
the ad to registered users who live near that grocery market. Please note
that we do not share your personally identifying information with the advertiser.
We or third party ad servers acting on our behalf act as the middleman between
you and the advertisers that want to reach you.(Third party ad servers are
not entitled to collect or use your personally identifying information).
We use the information we collect in non-intrusive common sense ways, like
using your credit card number to provide you with products and/or services
that you request. All credit card information is transmitted in an encrypted
form, using SSL (secure socket layer) encryption, the industry-standard.
Although, we will use all reasonable efforts to safeguard the privacy of
your personal information, transmissions made by means of the Internet cannot
be made absolutely secure. The RCN assumes no liability for disclosure of
data due to errors in transmission or unauthorized third parties.
Finally, if you register for one or more of our sites or services, from
time to time, we will send information to you via e-mail about our products
and services, or third party products and services we believe may be of
interest to you. If you do not wish to receive these mailings, you can simply
check off the appropriate box when you register, or update your profile
at any time after registration so you no longer receive such offers and
mailings. Please check the registration screens applicable to the service,
promotion, or product offering for which you are signing-up for specific
instructions on how to update your user profile and/or opt out of receiving
offers and mailings. Also, please remember that third party vendors also
sell products and services on the Real Cities network, and their policies
may differ from ours.
What other information does RCN collect and how is it used?
Cookies. The RCN uses cookies to store and track your preferences
to provide you with a more personalized user experience. A cookie is a message
that is sent to your browser from a Web server and stored on your computer's
hard drive. Most Internet sites use cookies. You can set your browser preferences
to reject all cookies (see below) but then you will not be able to participate
in most customized services, and you may be required to repeatedly type
in your personally identifying information in order to participate in various
services, promotions, or product offerings. Cookies make your experience
easier by saving your preferences, purchases, and passwords. For example
if you choose "Automatic Login" during registration, the RCN will store
a scrambled version of your username in a permanent "cookie" file on your
hard drive so that we can track your personalized services and preferences
from one visit to the next. We also use cookies that contain no personal
information at all. These cookies, help us estimate our audience size, determine
which areas of the RCN are the most popular, and serve targeted advertising.
IP Address. The RCN may also collect IP addresses for the purposes
of systems administration or to report information in aggregate form to
our advertisers (e.g. how many visitors logged in to a RCN site). An IP
address is a number that is assigned to your computer automatically when
you use the Internet. When you visit a particular web page in the Real Cities
Network, our servers log your IP address. Your IP address is not linked
to anything personally identifiable.
Who does RCN share information with?
User information is shared by the RCN sites in order to provide you with
a more integrated and customized user experience within the Real Cities
Network. In general, we will not disclose your personally identifiable information
to third parties except to the extent necessary to provide you with a requested
product or service, or under circumstances required by law. However, many
of the services available through the Real Cities Network are offered in
conjunction with third parties (e.g. personalized stock quotes or online
e-mail). We may disclose some or your personal information (such as an email
address) to these third parties, but we will notify you of such disclosure
prior to transferring the data. If you make a purchase from a Real Cities
Network merchant, the information you provide in connection with that purchase
is provided to that merchant in order to facilitate that transaction. Any
personally identifiable information you provide online as part of an advertiser
promotion (e.g. online coupons) may be provided directly to advertisers.
In general we will only disclose your personally identifiable information
to the extent necessary to complete the transaction, administer the promotion,
or fulfill the request. However, specific uses of personal information that
vary from this Privacy Statement may be found the in the Terms of Service
or privacy policies applicable to that particular service or offering. In
addition, third party sponsors may administer sweepstakes, contests, promotions,
and other programs. To the extent you are notified of uses of your personal
information which are different from those described in this Policy Statement
during your enrollment in any particular service, sweepstakes, contest or
promotion, the uses of which you are specifically notified will govern that
service, sweepstakes, contest or promotion. Please be on the look-out for
terms of service and privacy statements applicable to the services for which
you sign-up or participate in. In general, third parties that receive information
about you from the Real Cities Network will be obligated to notify you and
provide you with an opt-out method before sending you direct communications.
Please note, however, that we do not control the privacy policies of our
advertisers and other third party sites to which we provide banner ads and
links. We assume no responsibility or liability for these third party policies
or the actions of non-affiliated third parties.
We will disclose your personal information when we believe in good faith
that any applicable law, regulation, or legal process requires it, or where
we believe disclosure is necessary to protect or enforce our rights or the
rights of another user.
We disclose aggregated user statistics (for example, the percentage of our
users who access our Service from work) in order to describe our services
and reach to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties.
However aggregate data is not traceable to you specifically.
What are my options to control the use of my personal information?
Most browsers can be configured to reject cookies or alert you when cookies
or being sent. Keep in mind that if you refuse cookies, it is possible that
some portions of the Real Cities Network, such as contests, shopping, or
personalized stock quotes may not work properly.
You may cancel your registration to any Real Cities Network service (e.g.
Passport") and/or request the removal of your personal information from
our user records by contacting us through our feedback
form. We will send an email to confirm your request. After you respond,
we will remove your information from our database. Residual information
may remain in our archives and records, but this information will not be
used for a commercial purpose (however we may notify you of major changes
to our service from time to time). We reserve the right to maintain information
on registered users who have violated our Terms of Service or who have had
their access to the Real Cities Network blocked in order to detect repeat
offenders.
What else should I know about my privacy?
You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose personal information
online in a public area, that information may be collected and used by others.
We do not control the actions of our visitors and registered users. If you
disclose personal information in a chat room, forum, on your home page,
or any other publicly accessible place in the RCN, you do so at your own
risk and you understand that your submitted information may be collected
and used by others to send you unsolicited messages, advertisements, or
for other purposes.
Please remember that protection of your privacy begins with you. You are
solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any password you use to
register, and you should always be careful and responsible whenever disclosing
information online.
What about kids' personally identifiable information?
We feel strongly about protecting the privacy of children. We encourage
kids to involve their parents in any interactive activity they participate
in online. Except where otherwise disclosed, we will not collect or use
any personal information from children we know to be under the age of thirteen
without obtaining express parental consent. All general information collected
from users under the age of thirteen is used only for aggregate statistical
analysis. Where users under the age of 13 are permitted to participate in
contests, they may be required to provide the e-mail address of their parent
or guardian so that we can send notification and prices to the parent or
guardian.
Acceptance of Privacy Policy. By using the Real Cities Network sites
and services, you signify your acceptance of this Privacy Statement. If
you do not agree or are not comfortable with any policy described in this
Privacy statement, your only remedy is to discontinue use of the Real Cities
Network. We reserve the right, to modify this Privacy Statement at any time.
Your continued use of any portion of the Real Cities Network following notification
or posting of such changes, will constitute your accept of those changes.
If you have questions or concerns about our specific policies, please contact
us through our feedback
form.
Knight Ridder Digital is a member of the Engage LocalNet and 24/7 Media
Network. For information on the privacy policies of our ad network partners
please follow the links below:
Want more information? Check out these helpful links...
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