Privacy Statement
Effective June 30, 2010
This is a Web site of the Media Research Center.
Our postal address is:
325 S. Patrick St.
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
We can be reached by telephone at (800) MRC-1423.
Your investment in the MRC comes with our 100% money-back guarantee: You must be totally delighted with how your donation to the MRC is used, or you can receive a complete refund of your entire donation, no questions asked. In addition, the Media Research Center will provide refunds for donations whose gifts were made in error, provided they contact us within 30 days of making the online gift.
What information We Collect
For each visitor to our Web site, our Web server automatically recognizes no information regarding the domain or email address.
When you subscribe to our products or services, we collect personally identifiable information (PII) and related information from you. We also may collect PII and Related Information from you when you contact us about your subscriptions or participate in activities like: forums; message boards; chats; creating a community profile; rating, tagging and commenting on articles; or surveys, sweepstakes, contests, or games. When you visit our web sites, we automatically collect non PII such as IP addresses and web site usage information from you.
We do not, however, knowingly collect PII from children under the age of thirteen.
When you provide PII to us, we will make sure you are informed about the types of uses we will make of the information to the extent it is being used in a manner that differs from what is allowed pursuant to this Privacy Policy.
How we Use Information
We collect email addresses of those who communicate with us via email and aggregate information concerning the pages consumers access or visit, together with information volunteered by the consumer, such as survey information and/or site registrations.
The information we collect is used to improve the content of our Web site and to notify consumers about updates to our Web site, but is not shared with other organizations for commercial or other purposes without the expressed permission of the user.
If you do not want to receive email from us in the future, please let us know by calling us at the above telephone number, or writing to us at the above street address.
We do not share email addresses with other parties without the permission of the individual email account holder.
If you supply us with your postal address on-line you may receive periodic mailings from us with information on new products and services or upcoming events. If you do not wish to receive such mailings, please let us know by calling us at the number provided above or writing to us at the above street address. Please provide us with your exact name and address. We will be sure your name is removed from the list we share with other organizations.
Persons who supply us with their telephone numbers on-line may receive telephone contact from us with information regarding new products and services or upcoming events. If you do not wish to receive such telephone calls, please let us know by calling us at the above telephone number or writing to us at the above street address. Please provide us with your name and phone number. We will be sure your name is removed from the list we share with other organizations.
Cookies & Adservers
With respect to Ad Servers: We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites or pages in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.
Cookies are small bits of information that our web sites place on the hard drive of your computer. We use cookies to, among other things, facilitate our login processes; allow you to personalize and store your settings; collect usage information; determine our total audience size and traffic; and help us improve our sites by measuring which areas are of greatest interest to users.
You can set the browser on your computer to warn you each time a cookie is being sent, block third party cookies or block all cookies. However, by blocking all cookies you may not have access to certain features on our web sites.
We also use web beacons (invisible images often referred to as pixel tags or clear GIFs) on our sites in order to recognize users and assess traffic patterns, and we include web beacons and cookies in our e-mail messages, including newsletters, in order to count how many e-mail messages have been opened.
When you view an ad for our publications on other sites, our third-party advertising company may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. We and our advertising company may also use web beacons (invisible images often referred to as pixel tags or clear GIFs) to note which pages you visit after viewing our ads. The information that is collected through the use of these images is not personally identifiable and is used only to track response to our advertising efforts.
We may use cookies and similar tools to relate your use of our web sites to PII obtained from you or a reputable third party. For example, if you've asked us to send you information about our upcoming products or promotions, cookie and/or click stream data about your activities on our web sites may allow us to limit the materials we send you to items we think you will find interesting, based on your prior online activities and preferences. However, if we wish to combine your personal and cookie or click stream information in this manner, we will obtain your express affirmative consent.
General Policies
From time to time, we may use customer 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 Web site to notify you of these changes and provide you with the ability to opt out of these new uses. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check back at our Web site periodically.
Customers may prevent their information from being used for purposes other than those for which it was originally collected by calling us at the number provided above or writing us at the above street address.
Upon request we provide site visitors with access to all information that we maintain about them.
Consumers can access this information by writing to us at the above street address.
Consumers can have this information corrected by writing to us at the above street address.
With respect to security: When we transfer and receive certain types of sensitive information such as financial or health information, we redirect visitors to a secure server. We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we have collected from you at our site.
This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information.
If you feel that this site is not following its stated information policy, you may contact us at the above addresses or phone number, The DMA's Committee on Ethical Business Practices at mgoldberger@the-dma.org, state or local chapters of the Better Business Bureau, state or local consumer protection office or The Federal Trade Commission by phone at 202-FTC-HELP (202-382-4357).