Privacy Policy

We recognize the importance of your privacy. This page explains how we handle information about you when you visit and use our site. Ruth Wester provides this blog as a public service — you do not have to provide any personal information in order to enter and browse. The extent and type of information we receive depend on what you do while you are visiting our website.

Cookies

If you are simply perusing our blog, we do not require you to provide any personally identifiable information. We do, however, utilize cookies on our website. “Cookies” are small data files stored on your own computer’s hard drive. They are generated by websites to provide users with a personalized and enhanced online experience. By assigning and storing a random user name cookie on your hard drive, we are able to offer you personalized collection, filtering, and delivery of information. This includes not only our blogs’ original content, but also advertisements specially targeted to you in accordance with your content preferences and traffic patterns, as revealed by the cookie. Overall, aggregated usage information helps us improve our offerings by showing us how different areas of the blog are being used.

For each page that you visit, we collect and store the following technical information in what is called a web server log file:

1. Date and time of access

2. URL address of the Ruth Wester webpage visited

3. Internet domain and IP address from which our blog was accessed

4. Type of browser and operating system used to access our site (if provided by the browser)

5. URL address of the referring page (if provided by the browser)

6. Completion or success status of the request for a webpage or other online item

7. File size of the webpage visited

Your acceptance of our cookie will not compromise your anonymity while using our blog. If you choose to reject the cookie, you may still use our blog although certain functions and applications may be disallowed as a result, and you will not benefit from the personalized and enhanced services discussed throughout this policy.

Additionally, composite tracking information generated by cookies for traffic accounting and content analysis may be shared with third parties for the purpose of documenting site activity and other trends. We emphasize that the foregoing statistical information is not linked to any personal information and cannot identify any individual user of our website.

Information That You Voluntarily Provide

If you voluntarily provide us with personal information, for example by sending an e-mail or by filling out a form and submitting it through one of our pages, you are indicating voluntary consent for us to use the information you are submitting to respond to your message and to help us provide you with the information and services that you have requested. We make every effort to disclose clearly how information is used at the point where it is collected so that our users can determine for themselves whether they wish to provide the information.

Ruth Wester may disclose personally identifiable information you provide to third parties if required to do so by law or in the good-faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) complete the sales transaction, such as providing your shipping information to our carrier; (b) comply with legal process; (c) enforce the Terms; (d) respond to claims that any information you provide violates the rights of third parties; (e) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Ruth Wester, its users and/or the public; or (f) in the event that all or substantially all of Ruth Wester assets are acquired by a third party.

Security of Personal Information

Although “guaranteed security” does not exist either on or off the Internet, we make commercially reasonable efforts to make our collection and protection of such personal information consistent with all applicable laws and regulations. We use commercial encryption techniques to protect the transmission and storage of the information you submit to us when you use one of our secure online forms. E-mail that you send to us is not necessarily secure against third-party interception or misdirection. For your own protection, you may wish to communicate sensitive information using a method other than e-mail.

For blog security purposes, computer systems that support the blogs use commercially reasonable methods and software to monitor and audit network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. Anyone visiting our blogs expressly consents to such monitoring and auditing.

Policy Changes

The Privacy Policy in effect at the time of each visit to our blogs applies to that visit. We may change or terminate this Privacy Policy at any time without prior notice by posting an amended version of the policy on our blog and changing the effective date of the policy. Changes will only be effective as of the effective date. Please check the Privacy Policy each time you visit our blogs or more frequently if you are concerned about how your personal information will be used.

Additional Rights

Applicable laws may give you additional rights that are not described in this privacy policy.

Blogging Policy

This blog is subject to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, but here are additional rules. We can change this policy at any time, so check back here often.

1. The golden rule of this blog is the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Good manners are a must!

2. We welcome relevant, respectful comments, but we are not responsible for, and do not endorse comments posted on this blog.

3. You accept all risks associated with the use of any messages, information or content associated with this blog, including any reliance on their accuracy, completeness, or usefulness.

4. We are not liable for any errors or omissions in this blog, or for any losses or damages incurred as a result of this blog.

5. We reserve the right, but do not have any obligation, to review and moderate comments, and we may delete, move, or edit messages that we in our sole discretion deem abusive, defamatory, profane, obscene, in violation of copyright or trademark laws, in violation of any law or this policy or our Terms of Use, or are otherwise unacceptable.

6. If you decide to provide us with relevant, respectful comments, you give us the right to edit your comments and to republish them without compensation to you or any other person. By providing comments, you warrant that you have the right to provide the information and that all moral rights in the uploaded materials have been waived. Of course, since you intend for your comments to be public, you understand that you have no expectation of privacy in those comments.

7. If you decide to provide a comment, there can be a time lag and your comment might not be posted at all, especially if it violates this policy or our Terms of Use, or if it is repetitive of other comments received. Also, we retain blog comments for twelve (12) months.

8. If you have a question about this blog, please e-mail us at the Contact Me page. If you believe that someone is abusing this blog or violating this policy, please contact us at the Contact Me page. If you believe that someone has infringed your intellectual property, please contact us at the same page.
9. Our blog is hosted on servers located in the United States. By using this blog, you are agreeing to the transfer to and storage of information in the United States.

10.We reserve all rights in the event of any violation of these rules or of the Terms of Use,  including cooperation with national and state law enforcement officials.