Your Privacy is of the utmost importance to us.

We at Guelph.com will NOT sell, rent, share, trade or in any other way make your name, email address, or other information available to any other party. The information you provide us will always be held in the strictest confidence.

1. Information Guelph.com gathers and tracks

Guelph.com gathers two types of information about users: very basic data that users provide through optional, voluntary newsletter or contest registration on our site; and aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our site. Such information enables us to better tailor our content to readers' needs and, sometimes to help our advertisers better understand the demographics of our audience. However, Guelph.com does not share information about individual users with any third party.

Guelph.com gathers user information in the following processes:

Electronic newsletter

The Guelph.com site offers a free electronic newsletter to users. Guelph.com gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by following the instructions contained in every newsletter.

Optional registration

The Guelph.com site may in the future, offer a free, voluntary registration to users: By registering, users may gain access to special areas of the site and/or take advantage of personalization (the ability to select content according to a user-supplied profile).

During the registration process the user will be asked to supply a username, password, and email address, and may choose to answer some general survey questions.

Polling

The Guelph.com site may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what the Guelph.com audience thinks about important health related issues. Guelph.com uses a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.

Surveys

Occasionally Guelph.com conducts user surveys to better target our content and products to our audience. We may sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our advertisers and partners. We never share any information about specific individuals with any third party.

Contests and sweepstakes

Guelph.com may occasionally offer contests and giveaways in which we request certain information. These contests and giveaways are conducted in full accordance with applicable provincial and federal laws. The full rules and all information about such contests are clearly posted during the event. Any information gathered is used only to verify user identity and to contact winners and/or prize recipients. Again, we will not share information about specific individuals with any third party.

Usage tracking

Guelph.com tracks user traffic patterns in our site. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. Guelph.com does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser).

Guelph.com sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our site search engine, but this tracking is never associated with individual users and only allows us to improve our content.

Cookies

A cookie is a small data file that many Web sites write to your hard drive when you visit them. A cookie file can contain information such as a user ID that the site uses to track the pages you've visited. But the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself (such as your shipping address). A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Guelph.com uses cookies as part of our shopping cart system, to track user traffic patterns (as described above), if you register for an Guelph.com contest, and when you click an ad: Cookies also enable you to shop the Guelph.com site without re-entering all your shipping information each time. We encrypt the user ID for added security.

Ads: Guelph.com's advertising system delivers a one-time cookie to better track ad impressions and click rates.

A final note: there are several things that a cookie can't tell anyone. A cookie can't learn your name, your age, or even what country you're from. Cookies can't even tell whether more than one person uses the same computer to view a site, or whether one person uses more than one computer to surf a site.

If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie.

You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use the Guelph.com site but you will in order to use the shopping side functionality.

2. Use of the information

Guelph.com uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our site, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the site or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.

• As stated above, Guelph.com uses information that users voluntarily provide in order to send out an electronic newsletter and to enable users to participate in contests, and polls. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regular schedule and occasionally send out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in something we are doing. Guelph.com never shares newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers or partners.
• When we use tracking information to determine which areas of our site users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas, Guelph.com does not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you.
• We track search terms entered in the search engine as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a particular user enters.
• Guelph.com creates aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for advertisers and partners. This allows our advertisers to advertise more effectively, and allows our users to receive advertisements that are pertinent to their needs. Guelph.com never shares individual personal information with anyone, so an advertiser will never know that a specific user clicked his ad.

3. Sharing of the information

Guelph.com uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help our advertisers better understand our audience's demographics. This is essential to keeping our site fresh with relevant content and products. We do not share information about individual users with any third party. However, Guelph.com does not control the practices of any of our advertisers. If you have questions about how one of our advertisers uses information about you when you click their ad and go to their content, please contact them directly.

4. Opt-out policy

Guelph.com gives users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include: