The purpose of our policy is to inform you about the types of information we gather about you when you visit our site(s), how we may use that information, whether we disclose it to anyone, and the choices you have regarding our use of, and your ability to correct, the information.

Our site(s) may contain links to other Web sites, including Web sites directed to children. We have no control over the privacy practices or the content of any of our business partners, advertisers, sponsors or other sites to which we provide links from our sites. You should check the applicable privacy policy of the Web site sponsor when linking to other Web sites.

LowCarbDiets collects information in several ways from different parts of our network of web sites.

Some personal information is gathered when you register. During registration, LowCarbDiets asks for your name, email address, birth date, gender, zip code, occupation, industry and personal interests. The more information you volunteer (and the more accurate it is), the better we are able to customize your experience. Once you register you are no longer anonymous to LowCarbDiets - you are given a LowCarbDiets ID and are able to take full advantage of LowCarbDiets's many offerings.

In addition to registration we may ask you for personal information at other times, including (but not limited to) when you enter a sweepstakes, contest or promotion sponsored by LowCarbDiets and/or our many partners; when you make a purchase using LowCarbDiets Shopping; when you submit a listing for a web site; and when you report a problem with one of our sites or services. If you contact LowCarbDiets we may keep a record of that correspondence. LowCarbDiets also occasionally asks users to complete surveys that we use for research purposes.

2. COOKIES

As part of offering and providing customizable and personalized services, LowCarbDiets uses cookies to market and sometimes track information about you. A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer's hard drive.

Generally, we use cookies to:

(1) Remind us of who you are and to access your account information (stored on our computers) in order to deliver to you a better and more personalized service. This cookie is set when you register or "Sign In" and is modified when you "Sign Out" of our services. LowCarbDiets also uses cookies to store your zip code for other services, such as Yellow Pages.

(2) Estimate our audience size. Each browser accessing LowCarbDiets is given a unique cookie which is then used to determine the extent of repeat usage, usage by a registered user versus by an unregistered user, and to help target advertisements based on user interests and behavior.

(3) Assist merchants in LowCarbDiets Markets to track visits to and business at their markets, and to process the items in your shopping basket. This information collected by cookies is sometimes called "clickstream" or "click trail" and may also describe which pages you have seen in each merchant's market.

(4) Track your progress and number of entries in some of our promotions, sweepstakes and contests. When a LowCarbDiets-hosted promotion uses cookies, the information written to the cookie indicates the player's progress through the promotion, and may be used to track entries, submissions, and status in prize drawings.

(5) Measure certain traffic patterns, which areas of LowCarbDiets's network of web sites you have visited, and your visiting patterns in the aggregate. We use this research to understand how our users' habits are similar or different from one another so that we can make each new experience on LowCarbDiets a better one. We may use this information to better personalize the content, banners, and promotions that you and other users will see on our sites.

Advertising networks that serve ads onto LowCarbDiets may also use their own cookies.

3. USE OF INFORMATION

LowCarbDiets's primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide you, the user, with a customized experience on our network of sites. This includes personalization services, interactive communications, online shopping and many other types of services, most of which are completely free to you. In order to provide services free of charge, we display advertisements. By knowing a little about you, LowCarbDiets is able to deliver more relevant advertisements and content, and hence better service, to you.

LowCarbDiets does research on our users' demographics, interests, and behavior based on the information provided to us upon registration, during a promotion, from our server log files or from surveys. We do this to better understand and serve our users. This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregated basis. LowCarbDiets may share this aggregated data with advertisers or business partners.

4. COLLECTION AGENTS

When you are on a LowCarbDiets site and are asked for personal information, you are sharing that information with LowCarbDiets alone, unless it is specifically stated otherwise. For example, some LowCarbDiets services, are offered in conjunction with a partner company. In order to provide this co-branded service to you, it is necessary for us to share your personal information with our partner company. If data is being collected and/or maintained by any company other than LowCarbDiets, you will be notified prior to the time of the data collection or transfer. If you do not want your data to be shared, you can choose not to allow the transfer by not using that particular service.

Promotions that run on LowCarbDiets may be sponsored by companies other than LowCarbDiets or may be cosponsored by LowCarbDiets and another company. Some or all data collected during a promotion may be shared with the sponsor. If data will be shared, you will be notified prior to the time of data collection or transfer. You can decide not to participate in the promotion if you don't want your data to be shared.

Please be aware that LowCarbDiets advertisers or web sites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. The information practices of those web sites linked to LowCarbDiets are not covered by this privacy statement.

5. INFORMATION SHARING

As a general rule, LowCarbDiets will not disclose any of your personally identifiable information except when we have your permission or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it or under the circumstances described below. Please see the Terms of Service for more detailed information about how your personal information may be shared. The following describes some of the ways that your information may be disclosed.

Business Partners & Sponsors: LowCarbDiets may disclose your personal information to business partners or sponsors, but this is specifically described to you prior to data collection or prior to transferring the data. Some or all data collected during a LowCarbDiets promotion may be shared with a sponsor. If personally identifying data about you will be shared, we will tell you before we collect or transfer the data.

Many promotions offer opportunities to request additional information from sponsors. By requesting more information, you give LowCarbDiets permission to transfer your personal information to the sponsor so they can fulfill your request. In many instances, only your email address will be shared. If more information will be shared with the sponsor, you will be notified prior to the transfer.

LowCarbDiets Markets & Shopping: If you make a purchase from a market hosted by LowCarbDiets Market, or a merchant in LowCarbDiets Shopping, the information obtained during your visit to those markets, and the information you give such as your credit card number and contact information, is provided to the merchants. This is to enable transactions to take place.

Merchants listed in LowCarbDiets Shopping or site or in LowCarbDiets Markets have separate privacy and data collection practices. LowCarbDiets has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. For more information regarding the merchant, their market, and their privacy policies, return to that market's home page and click on their Information link.

Third Party Data & Data in the Aggregate: Under confidentiality agreements, LowCarbDiets may match user information with third party data. Also, LowCarbDiets discloses aggregated user statistics (for example, 45% of our users are female) in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes.

Other: LowCarbDiets may also disclose account information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating LowCarbDiets's Terms of Service or may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) LowCarbDiets's rights or property, other LowCarbDiets users, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities. LowCarbDiets may disclose or access account information when we believe in good faith that the law requires it and for administrative and other purposes that we deem necessary to maintain, service, and improve our products and services.

6. USER CHOICES

LowCarbDiets may, from time to time, send you email regarding our products and services. In addition, if you indicated upon registration that you are interested in receiving offers or information from LowCarbDiets and our partners, we may occasionally send you direct mail about products and services that we feel may be of interest to you. Only LowCarbDiets (or agents working on behalf of LowCarbDiets and under confidentiality agreements) will send you these direct mailings and only if you indicated that you do not object to these offers. If you do not want to receive such mailings, simply tell us when you give us your personal information.

On some types of LowCarbDiets promotions, we will ask for your email address in order to update you on your score, entries, and status in prize drawings. When you participate in these types of promotions, you automatically receive promotion-related email, unless you choose the no-email option that some promotions offer. Occasionally these promotion-related email messages may include targeted advertisements.

You also have choices with respect to cookies. By modifying your browser preferences, you have the choice to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set, or to reject all cookies. If you choose to reject all cookies you will be unable to use those LowCarbDiets services that require registration in order to participate. These services include (but are not limited to): Chat and Message Boards. You can still use many other LowCarbDiets sites even if you do not accept cookies.

We will notify you at the time of data collection or transfer if your data will be shared with a third party and you will always have the option of not permitting the transfer. If you do not wish to allow your data to be shared, you can choose not to use a particular service or not to participate in certain promotions or contests.

You may edit your LowCarbDiets Account Information and your public LowCarbDiets Profile at any time by using your LowCarbDiets ID and password.

Your LowCarbDiets account can be deleted or deactivated, but doing so will result in not being able to access any members-only area of the LowCarbDiets network, including your LowCarbDiets Mail account (if you have one). If you saved the confirmation email you received when you first created your LowCarbDiets account, you can use the URL provided in that message to delete your account at any time. Please contact [insert email] for further instructions about deleting or deactivating your LowCarbDiets account. Residual information will remain within our archive records.

If you are participating in a LowCarbDiets promotion and you wish to update your email address on the promotions mailing list or to quit a promotion and cease receiving promotion-related email, please contact [insert email]

8. SECURITY PRECAUTIONS

Please note that there are several places on the LowCarbDiets network of Web sites where you can transmit credit card information in order to complete a purchase transaction or for verification purposes. Any time we ask for a credit card number we transmit that credit card number in an encrypted format. We use industry-standard, SSL (secure socket layer) encryption.

Your LowCarbDiets Account Information and LowCarbDiets Profile are password-protected so that you and only you have access to this personal information. You may edit your LowCarbDiets Account Information and LowCarb Diets Profile by using your LowCarbDiets ID and password.

We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. LowCarbDiets will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or in an unsolicited email. Also remember to sign out of your LowCarbDiets account and close your browser window when you have finished your work. This is to ensure that others cannot access your personal information and correspondence if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place like a library or Internet cafe.

LowCarbDiets has international sites and users all over the world. When you give LowCarbDiets personal information, that information may be sent electronically to servers outside of the country where you originally entered the information, such as to the United States or other countries. In addition, that information may be used, stored and processed outside of the country where you entered that information. Whenever LowCarbDiets handles personal information as described above, regardless of where this occurs, LowCarbDiets takes steps to ensure that your information is treated securely.

Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, LowCarbDiets cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online - for example on message boards, through email, or in chat areas - that information can be collected and used by others. In short, if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return. Further, any information submitted to us, including but not limited to, emails, recipes, statistics, and nutritional information becomes the sole property of LowCarbDiets.com and may be used for any purpose which we, in our sole discretion, deem fit.

Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and/or any account information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you're online.