Privacy Policy

As of May 24, 2008

The following describes the policies and practices of IzzitGreen with regard to the collection and use of personal information from users of its site IzzitGreen.com. By using IzzitGreen.com, you agree to the collection and use of your personal information as described in this policy. Additionally, by using IzzitGreen, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use. If we make any significant changes to this policy, we will notify you by posting the changes on our site.

We care deeply about protecting your privacy and keeping you as a member of our community. Please send us any questions and/or comments: support@izzitgreen.com you may have.

Our Philosophy

When it comes to collection and use of personal information, our guiding principles are:

• Ask “What would Dick Cheney do?”, and then do the opposite.
• Handle our user’s personal information as if it were our own.
• Where possible, empower community members to control the way their information is shared.
• Only collect information that helps us to better serve the IzzitGreen community.
• Ensure we have permission to use the information prior to its use.
• Only use information required in order to fulfill the expectations of the community member.

Our Commitment to You

Here is what we can promise you:

• We will not SPAM you.
• We will not sell your information.
• We will never disclose your personal information without your permission (unless required to by law).
• You can cancel your account at any time.
• You can control the information you provide to us.
• We will access your information only when you ask us.
• We will protect your information from other users.
• We may sell, rent or share information about user habits in aggregate only, and never do so in a manner that could even remotely identify an individual.

Information We Collect About You

Registration

In order to contribute to the site--reviews, articles, media (photos, videos), blog posts, comments, lists, compliments, enter contests, etc--you need to register with our site. During registration, you must supply us with your email address (which is your user name), name, screen name (for you to be identified in the system), password, and a zip code (for us to direct you to the businesses and content most relevant to you). Optionally you may provide your gender, age, pictures of yourself, interests, confusion, expertise, and more.

User Community Content

We view community member content in three ways:

• “Conversational” Content: All content that a community member contributes for the betterment of the community consisting of comments, poll responses, discussions, compliments, ranking, flagging. This content will be stored and remain part of the community until this content is no longer deemed relevant to the conversation. If a community member cancels their account, their personally identifiable association with this content will be removed but the content may stay.
• “Shared” Content: All content that a community member contributes to enhance the knowledge of the community considered to be adding/editing businesses information, adding media (pictures/videos) of a business, reviews of a business, guide contributions, column submissions, or buzz articles. This content will be retained and considered part of the community knowledge. If a community member cancels their account, their personally identifiable association with this content will be removed but the content may stay.
• “Personal” Content: All content that user contributes that is personally identifiable to them consisting of profile pictures (or video), profile information, private messages sent/received, friends/fan relationships, or personal blog entries. This content will be considered part of the community while a community member is part of the community. If a community member cancels their account, this content will be removed.

Others’ Information

Anytime you send an article, blog post, discussion item, or information to a friend we use your friend’s email address for the specific action(s) that you request. We will not contact them for any other reason.

If you receive an email newsletter or announcement, which you can control via your account preferences, and forward this email to a friend of yours, that information is kept and stored by a third party email service provider Bronto.

However, when you invite your friends to become members of IzzitGreen, we store their address to send the invite and give you credit once your friend signs up. We don’t email those people outside of the invite process.

Children

IzzitGreen does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for IzzitGreen.com or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to or on IzzitGreen.com. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at support@izzitgreen.com, and include the words “Child under 13” in the subject line.

Usage Information

When you visit our website or open an email, we do collect information about your session (session length, pages visited, files downloaded, content contributed, and ads seen). Our site uses cookies to facilitate tracking as well as auto-login, geography selected, search location, and ad-serving. This information is stored in files on our web site, as well as tracked using the third party services of Google Analytics for web information and email provider Bronto for email tracking.

How We Use It:

Aggregate information

Our goal is to enable you, the community member, to improve your community. Therefore, the majority of information we collect, from website to survey responses, has to do with what your interests are and how you use (or would like to use) our community. We analyze this data in aggregate and in segments and use it in order to provide better information, features, functionality, and delivery of our work to you.

Email addresses

If you are a registered user, your email address is your unique identifier. Being a registered user, you are able to contribute and participate in the community. If you are subscribed to any of our email content, we will use information you have provided to deliver and tailor such email content for you. We may also send by email occasional invitations to surveys, contests, special events, and administrative or other notices regarding the website, its contents, and your registration.

When you submit questions or comments to IzzitGreen.com by email (either externally or through the site), we may use your e-mail address to respond directly to you. These emails are also stored in a third party email management solution provided by FogBugz.

If you submit questions, suggestions for enhancement, on our site, these messages are stored on a third party service called GetSatisfaction. Except as explained in this policy, IzzitGreen does not send unsolicited e-mail.

Other individual information

When you are logged into the site, your "display name" will appear on the top right of every page. Your "display name" is the handle you chose during registration. You may change your display name by going to Settings. When you participate in any discussion (comments, forums, reviews, compliments, etc.), the information you submit will be made publicly available and attributed to you. For example, when you provide a public comment on a Column or any other page, both your comment and the name you supply will be shown on the page for other website visitors to see.

Additionally, all profile information that you provide during registration such as screen name, location, expertise, confusion, interests, etc. are displayed to all who view your profile. This information is publicly accessible on the internet and will be indexed by search engines or may be copied or shared by other people, and IzzitGreen has no control over who obtains the information or what they do with it. Date of birth and gender are not displayed publicly.

If your participation in a contest, survey, or special offer entitles you to a prize or other gift, we will use the information you provided us to fulfill your prize. Some survey information may be maintained with your profile so we can tailor the presentation of our work to you. Prizes exceeding certain amounts may require complete name and address and a Social Security number. In such cases we will report information to governmental agencies and maintain records as required by law.

Who Do We Share Information With?

We may share aggregate information about our audience (e.g. demographics, interests, website usage) with donors, partners, website users or other interested parties. Please note that this is not personal information, only general summaries of the activities and interests of our audience.

Third party service providers

We will not share individually-identifying personal information about you with third parties without your permission, with the exception of service providers or other organizations we contract with to fulfill services on our behalf (e.g. delivering email or mail, prizes, etc.), or under the circumstances described in Compliance with Legal Requirements below.

Compliance with Legal Requirements

We may disclose personal information if we are required to by law, or we believe that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law or with legal process, (b) protect and defend our rights and property, (c) protect against misuse or unauthorized use of IzzitGreen’s work, or (d) protect the personal safety or property of our users or the public. As such, if you attempt to pose as someone else, we may disclose information about you or your actions as part of an investigation into any harm done by your actions.

Security

To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the appropriate use of information, we have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to protect the information we collect online.

How you can manage the use of your information

On the Profile page, you can update or correct inaccuracies in your registration information, subscribe or unsubscribe from newsletters, and change your password.

If you feel that this site is not following its stated privacy policy, you may contact us at the addresses or phone number below:

Miscellaneous

IzzitGreen is not responsible for the content or the privacy policies of websites to which it links.

From time to time, we may use website visitor information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our privacy notice. If our information practices change at some time in the future we will post the policy changes to our website and email our community members.