Thank you for visiting TasteofHome.com, a community-oriented food web site that focuses on providing everyday and holiday cooking resources for home cooks. The policies below are applicable to TasteofHome.com and other web sites on the World Wide Web, originating in the United States, and owned and operated by Reiman Media, Inc. ("we" or "us") unless otherwise indicated. Your privacy is important to us. With that value in mind, we've developed this privacy policy (this "Policy") explaining the ways in which we collect personal information on TasteofHome.com (the "Web Site"), and how we protect it, and what choices you have about how information is used.

Changes to this Policy

We may revise or update this Policy at any time. If we make material changes, we will post the revised Policy on the Web Site and update its "last updated" date. We encourage you to check this Policy whenever you visit the Web Site to see if it has been updated since your last visit.

Scope of this Policy

This Policy distinguishes between personally identifiable information, which we refer to as "personal information," and "aggregate information" and other forms of non-personally identifiable information.

  • Personal information as used herein means information that personally identifies you, such as your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card or other account number, and other information that is linked to personal information about you.
  • Aggregate information is aggregated information from which we have removed individual identities or other personal information, or information that we collect about the Web Site or about a group or category of products, services or customers that does not identify you personally. Aggregate data helps us understand trends and our users' needs so that we can better consider new features or otherwise tailor our Web Site.

This Policy applies to personal information collected by us on the Web Site. This policy in no way restricts or limits our collection and use of aggregate information.

How We Collect Personal Information

  • Information you provide to us. We may collect certain information that you voluntarily provide to us when you use the Web Site. You may provide personal information to us at various locations on the Web Site. For example, we may collect your name, billing and shipping address, email address, telephone number, and credit card account number when you register and set up an account, subscribe to a newsletter or other publication, or purchase products or services on the Web Site. Personal information may also be collected if you provide such information in connection with participating in discussion forums, blogs, social networking services, or other interactive services on the Web Site. In addition, we may collect personal information you provide in connection with sending us emails or other communication through the Web Site or your participation in or response to surveys, sweepstakes, contests, games, promotional offers, and other activities on the Web Site.
  • Cookies. We may automatically collect certain information through the use of "cookies." "Cookies" are small data files that web sites send to your computer's browser files. We use cookies on our Web site to recognize you if you return to our Web site using the same computer and browser. For example, if you log in to your user account, we send a "session cookie" to your computer. These cookies allow us to recognize you if you visit multiple pages in our Web site during the same session, so that you don't need to re-enter your user name or password multiple times. If you log out or close your browser, these session cookies expire and no longer have any effect. Additionally, when you log in to your user account and select the "remember me on this computer" option, we send a "persistent cookie" to your browser files. We use persistent cookies to keep you logged in to the Web site and to prevent you from having to log in each time you visit.

    • We may associate other information with the information collected by cookies, including personally identifiable information. When we associate information collected by cookies with personally identifiable information about you, we treat such information generally as "personal information" under this Privacy Policy. For information about the use of cookies on our Web site by third party advertisers, please see Third-Party Advertising on the Web Site below. If you wish to block, erase, or be warned of cookies, please refer to your browser instructions or help screen to learn about these functions. However, if a browser is set not to accept cookies or if a user rejects a cookie, some portions of the Web Site and the Service may not function properly. For example, you may not be able to sign in and may not be able to access certain Web Site features or services.

  • Web Beacons. We may use, and may permit third parties to use, "Web beacons" (also known as pixel tags, clear GIFs and web bugs) on the Web Site and in email communications we send. We use Web beacons to monitor the effectiveness of advertising, to track aggregate Web Site usage, and for other lawful purposes. These web beacons do not collect personal information about you on the Web Site.
  • Automatically collected information. We collect into our log files certain standard information from your web browser—such as your IP address, browser type and language, screen size and the time of your visit—when you visit the Web Site. This information is used by us to analyze trends, administer the Web Site, and gather broad information for aggregate use. We may aggregate some or all of the information we collect from our log files to information stored on a cookie in your computer.

Disclosure of Personal Information

Except as set forth in this Policy, we do not disclose, sell, rent, loan, trade or lease personal information we collect on the Web Site to any third party. We will disclose personal information in the following circumstances:

  • Service Providers. We may share personal information with vendors, consultants and other service providers ("Service Providers") who are engaged by or working with us in connection with the operation of the Web Site or the Services and who need access to such information to carry out their work for us. For example, we may share your personal information with companies who are fulfilling orders, contest prizes or subscriptions, processing payment information or administering surveys on our behalf. In some cases, the Service Provider may be directly collecting the information from you on our behalf.
  • Affiliates. We may share personal information about you with our affiliates for our internal statistical, design, marketing or operational purposes, or those of our affiliated Web sites within the Reader's Digest organization, such as to estimate our audience size, measure aggregate traffic patterns, and understand demographic, user interest, purchasing and other trends among our users. You may opt out of this information sharing with affiliates as described in our Choices/Opt Out section below.
  • Affiliates and Marketing Partners. Our online Membership Registration form and other online submission forms may from time to time contain clearly identified checkboxes indicating that by submitting the form you will receive email and/or other correspondence from our affiliates and third-party marketing partners containing various offers and information that may be of interest to you unless you opt out of receiving such email and/or other correspondence by unchecking each box (or if the boxes are not prechecked, if you opt in by checking the box). If you do not opt out of receiving such third party email and/or other correspondence (or if you specifically opt-in to receiving such correspondence) as described above, you have consented to our sharing your name, mailing address and email address with, and may receive email and/or other correspondence from, such affiliates and marketing partners. If you do not wish to receive such correspondence or to have this information shared with such third parties, you should uncheck the box to opt out of such sharing (or if the boxes are not prechecked, you should not check any boxes opting in). If you have already submitted an online Membership Registration form and wish to change your preferences, see the section below on Choice/Opt Out.
  • Co-Registration. In addition, from time to time, such as during or immediately following account signup or when you submit other online forms, you may be given the option to view and select offers from various third party companies that may be of interest to you. In some cases you will select an offer by checking the box next to such offer, and in other cases, the box will be prechecked, and you will select the offer if you click on the submit button without unchecking the box. These offers may be presented along with a form that is automatically filled in with certain information, such as your name, postal address and email address, for your convenience if you decide to select an offer, or you may be required to fill out a form with certain information for submission to these third parties. If you select any of the displayed offers, you are consenting to our sharing with such third parties such information as is provided in such form, if any, or as we otherwise deem necessary (typically your email address and/or mailing address). Any information that is provided to these third parties you select is subject to those companies' privacy practices, and their use of such information is not governed by this Policy. If you do not wish to have your information shared with such third parties, you should uncheck the box to opt out of such sharing (or if the boxes are not prechecked, you should not check any boxes opting in). If you have already authorized us to share information with third parties and wish to change your preferences, see the section below on Choice/Opt Out.
  • With your consent. In addition to the foregoing, we may share your personal information with third parties whenever you give us your consent to do so by any means or method.
  • Interactive Areas of Web Site. The Web Site may include personal profiles, discussion forums, blogs, social networking services or other interactive areas ("Interactive Areas") in which you or third parties may create, post or store content, messages, comments, materials or other items on the Web Site. If you use these Interactive Areas, you should be aware that any personal information you post on the Web Site or provide to others through the Web Site may be read, collected and used by others and may be posted on publicly available portions of the Web Site. Such information may be retained indefinitely, and may be saved by caching services on the Internet. You may elect to restrict user access to certain information you post to those you have accepted as "friends" by using the available privacy settings. Please be aware, however, that although we endeavor to use commercially reasonable efforts to implement these restrictions and honor these designations, no system or security measure is perfect or impenetrable, and therefore, we cannot guarantee that this information will not be available to others. We recommend you be cautious in giving out personal information to others in public or private online forums. We are not responsible for personal information you chose to post in Interactive Areas of the Web Site or the use by third parties of such personal information.
  • Protection of Tasteofhome.com and others. We may disclose personal information when we believe we are authorized or required to do so or that doing so is reasonably necessary or appropriate to comply with the law or with legal process or authorities (e.g., a lawful subpoena, warrant or court order); to enforce or apply this Policy, or our other policies or agreements; to initiate, render, bill and collect for amounts owed to us; to respond to claims, to protect our users' our employees' or the public's rights, property or safety; to protect us or our users from fraudulent, abusive, inappropriate or unlawful use of the Web Site or any services; or if we reasonably believe that an emergency situation requires or justifies disclosure of communications or personal information without delay.
  • Business Transfers. Information about our users, including personal information, may be disclosed or transferred as part of any merger, acquisition, or sale of company assets, as well as in the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy or receivership or other situation in which personal information is transferred to third parties as one of our business assets. Any personal information transferred will be treated in accordance with terms of this Privacy Policy unless you are otherwise notified.

We are not responsible for the actions of Service Providers or other third parties, nor are we responsible for any additional information you provide directly to Service Providers or other third parties and we encourage you to become familiar with their practices before disclosing information directly to them.

How We Use the Personal Information We Collect

In general, we use personal information we collect to process your requests or transactions, to provide you with information or services you request, to inform you about other information on events, promotions, products or services we think will be of interest to you, to facilitate your use of, and our administration and operation of, the Web Site, and for the purpose for which the information was provided. For example, we may use the information we collect:

  • to send you a welcoming email, to contact you about your use of the Web Site and to provide important Web Site updates;
  • to provide the services, products or information you request and to process payments and complete any transactions in connection therewith;
  • to respond to your emails, submissions, comments, requests or complaints;
  • to request feedback and to enable us to develop, customize and improve the Web Site and our publications, products and services;
  • to send you surveys or questionnaires;
  • to send you newsletters, including any online newsletter(s) you have requested or, for print subscribers, those online newsletters that are editorial companion pieces (e.g. Taste of Home Plus) to our print publications,
  • to contact you about our or a third party's services, products, activities, special events or offers and for other marketing, informational, product development and promotional purposes;
  • for editorial purposes, such as to contact you about content you have submitted to the Web Site or to give attribution to content you submit;
  • to send a one-time email on your behalf which contains a display or link to a recipe, article, advice or other content you have selected to share with a friend through our Email-a-Friend service (however, we do not use the name and email address you provide us through this feature for other purposes); and
  • to notify contest winners.

We provide you the opportunity to opt out of certain of these uses as described in the Choices/Opt Out section below. Personal information provided online may be linked together or merged with other personal information so that we may better understand your needs and inform you about our products or services and those of our partners. In addition, if we receive information from third parties with whom we have business relationships, we may combine this information with the other personal information we maintain about you. In either case, this Policy governs this information.

Choice/Opt-out

You may opt-out of receiving marketing messages and/or subscription based online newsletters or emails from us on the Manage My Preferences page of Reiman Web sites or on the Private Information Tab of the My Profile page on the Taste of Home Web Site, or by following the opt-out instructions contained in our marketing messages and subscription based newsletters and emails. If you opt-out in this manner, you may still receive account-related and non-marketing messages from us as a Taste of Home member. Alternatively, you may opt-out of receiving all email from us, other than certain important account-related emails, by placing your email address on our "DO NOT EMAIL" list. To request placement on this list, click here. We will process your request within ten business days. You may continue to receive email from us while your request is being processed. Note that if your email address is added to the "DO NOT EMAIL" list, you will not receive any subscriptions or other emails which you specifically opted-in to receive, such as newsletters. However, if you maintain an account with us, you may from time to time receive certain non-marketing, account-related emails. In addition, please note that your email address being placed on the "DO NOT EMAIL" list does not prevent you from receiving "send-to-a-friend" e-mail messages or from receiving email messages from third parties from which you requested information, products, or services from during or immediately after registration or with whom you otherwise consented for us to share your email address. To request that you do not receive any further messages from such third parties, you must contact them directly.

If you wish to opt out of our sharing personal information with our affiliates for internal statistical, design or operational or marketing purposes, as described above in the Disclosure of Personal Information section, please click here. Please note that this opt-out will not affect our sharing of information with affiliates for other purposes, such as when you opt-in to receive an offer from one of our affiliates (which you may separately opt out of as described below).

As described above in the Disclosure of Personal Information section, we may from time to time share certain personal information with third-parties if you either opt-in to such sharing (by checking the applicable box) or fail to opt out of such sharing (by unchecking a prechecked box) at the time of submission, depending upon the particular offer. If you do not wish to have your personal information shared with such third parties, do not opt-in to any such sharing and make sure to uncheck any prechecked boxes to opt out of any such sharing at the time such information is submitted. After the initial submission, if you do not wish to have us share your personal information with third parties in the future, you may opt out of future third-party sharing by clicking here. However, this will not prevent you from receiving emails from third parties with whom we have already shared such information prior to your request, nor will it delete such information from the records of such third party. Once information is shared with a third party, it is subject to such third party's privacy practices, and you must contact them directly regarding their use of such information. In addition, this opt-out will not affect our sharing of information with our affiliates for internal statistical, design or operational purposes, which you may separately opt-out of as described above.

Please note that your latest instructions to us on your privacy preferences will govern, so if you opt out of our sharing information with third parties or affiliates through a link in this section, and then later submit a form to us that authorizes us to share such information, the later form shall control. If you wish to correct information you previously provided to TasteofHome.com, please go to Privacy@TasteofHome.com.

Children

We do not intend, and the Web Site is not designed, to collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If you are under 13 years old, you should not register for our services or otherwise provide information on the Web Site. We encourage parents to take an active interest in their child's online activities.

Third-Party Advertising on the Web Site

We may allow third-party companies to serve advertisements on the Web Site. Some of these companies may use cookies, Web beacons or other technologies in order to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement and to collect certain information about your use of the Web Site. In this way, they may compile information about where you, or others who use your computer, saw their advertisements and determine which ads are clicked on. In addition, information about your visits to this Web Site, such as number of times you have viewed an ad may be used by these third parties to serve ads to you. This allows them to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of interest to you.

We are not responsible for and do not control cookies placed in third party ads or any actions or policies of any third party advertising technology service providers or of any third party members of any related advertising networks. You are always free to decline cookies, but by doing so you may not be able to use certain features on the Web Sites or take full advantage of all the web site offerings and targeted advertising. Alternatively, you may click here to opt out of targeted advertising from members of the Network Advertising Initiative ("NAI"). You should note that opting out of targeted advertising does not mean you will no longer see online advertising on the Web Sites. It does mean that the network from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your Web preferences and usage patterns. Be advised that if you change computers or browsers, or use multiple computers or browsers, you will need to repeat this process for each computer and each browser. We reserve the right to add or change the advertising technology vendors we use at any time without notice.

Links to Third-Party Web Sites

The Web Site may contain links to third-party Web sites. Any links that we provide are for your convenience only, and do not constitute our sponsorship of, or affiliation with, the linked third-party Web Site or any content on that Web Site. Your use of any third-party Web Site is governed by that third party's policies and procedures, which may differ from our own. In particular, we do not control, and cannot be responsible for, the privacy or data security practices of any third-party Web Site. Please carefully review applicable policies of any third-party Web Site that you visit, including policies and terms and conditions describing the third party's information practices, before providing them with any information.

Security

We use reasonable security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure while under our control. When you send personal information to us during the registration or payment process or access your account information, we use the Secure Socket Layer ("SSL") protocol that makes unauthorized access more difficult. In addition, your personal information is accessible online only through the use of a password. Please be aware, however, that despite our efforts, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. To protect the confidentiality of personal information, you must keep your password confidential and not disclose it to any other person. You are responsible for all uses of our web site by any person using your password. Please advise us immediately if you believe your password has been misused.

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, the privacy practices of this Web Site, or your dealings with TasteofHome.com, please contact us at Privacy@TasteofHome.com or use the following address or phone number:

Taste of Home
5400 South 60th Street
Greendale, WI 53129
USA
Phone: (414) 423-0100

Policy last updated December 2007