privacy policy

Last updated: 25 March 2006

This privacy policy governs how shutterchance will use the information collected from the users of our site. Although as boring as the Terms and Conditions of Use, for your own sake we recommend that you read through this document in its entirety before signing up as a member of our service.

The sections of the Privacy Policy are listed below. To go directly to a particular section, please click on the relevant section header:

1. Introduction
2. Membership information & how it is used
3. Cookies
4. Surveys
5. Reviewing & updating your membership information / preferences
6. Security
7. Links to third party sites
8. Children
9. Changes to Privacy Policy
10. Questions or concerns

1. Introduction
shutterchance.com is committed to maintaining the privacy of information provided by you as a member of our site. Our privacy policy tells you what information we collect and how this information is used, it also details what we do to keep this information secure and how you as a member can access and update this information. "We" or "us" in this document refers to shutterchance.com, and "you" refers to the member or user of these services.

2. Membership information & how it is used
To become a member of this website you are required to complete a registration form giving personal details which form part of your account information. This information is necessary to enable us to provide you with the full range of our services, such as processing transactions, facilitating your use of the website and customizing it to your particular preferences.

shutterchance.com will not share, sell or rent information about individual members with any third party at any time unless:

• The member specifically authorizes or requests us to do so
• We are required to comply with the law or a legal process
• To protect the rights, property, or safety of shutterchance.com, our users or other parties

We may use your e-mail to contact you on issues regarding your account, such as upcoming storage space subscription expiration or lost passwords. In addition, should you wish so, you may receive notifications on special offers or services by shutterchance.com or any of our affiliated partners. Your E-mail address is never shared, sold or rented to any third parties nor is it displayed publicly in any section of our website. During registration you are asked to create a unique username to gain access to the members-only features of our website. Your username is not treated as personally identifiable information and may be shown on the website in connection with your galleries. In addition, you are allowed to specify a separate display name associated with your photos. By default this will be your username. It is your responsibility to choose your display name such that you protect your identity, should you wish to do so.

It is optional for the user to provide us with demographic data but encouraged as this allows us to improve the service to our members. We may share demographic data with third parties, such as researchers, to help us understand market tendencies but only in aggregated form.

Users are able to edit their details and personal preferences at any time after registration by logging into your personal account page.

3. Cookies
Cookies are small text files used to store information. They are placed on your computer, and are commonly used by many reputable internet websites. shutterchance.com uses cookies to tailor our site to your needs and interests. Some of the information we store include:

• if you have logged in
• if you have already viewed a certain photo on the day

Your browser must be set to accept cookies in order to enjoy the advanced features and services of the shutterchance website. In the interests of safety, we never store information regarding your password, bank or credit card details in cookies. In addition, we have configured all our cookies so that only shutterchance.com can view them.

4. Surveys
shutterchance.com conducts regular online surveys as part of our ongoing process to improve our customer service. Participation in these surveys is optional and the results will only be presented as aggregate statistical data. No personally identifiable information is collected during these polls.

5. Reviewing & updating your membership information / preferences
The information you provide shutterchance.com when registering as a member, or otherwise during use, will not be shared with any third parties, without your permission, apart from the exceptions stated above in the section, Membership information & how it is used. You can access this information by going into your profile page once you have logged into your shutterchance account. Here you also have the option to update your personal details, should the information we have on record be incorrect or outdated. Under your preference page you can also adjust your settings to control how you want shutterchance.com to communicate with you, such as if you want to receive our newsletter and how often you would like to receive other information regarding your shutterchance account.

6. Security
shutterchance.com is well aware of consumer concern regarding internet security and we take the issue of protecting your personal information very seriously.

Each member account is protected by password and you are responsible for not sharing your password and take safety precautions to limit the risk of someone else obtaining it, such as signing off after using a shared computer and not saving username and password on login for shutterchance.com.

To protect your credit card information, the payment transaction processing has been deferred to a third party which stores any sensitive information on a heavily encrypted database that is protected by multiple government approved firewalls. The information transfer is protected through industry standard SSL 128-bit encryption to prevent other users from ‘listening in’ on the data transfer. In addition it employs several forms of physical security measures for additional protection in the event of a security breach. shutterchance does not store any credit card information on our servers.

While we have a number of security procedures in place, in the unlikely and unforeseeable event that our servers are illegally compromised, shutterchance.com will not be held responsible for any such disclosure of personal information.

7. Links to third party sites
This privacy policy applies solely to the information collected by shutterchance.com. As a value added service, shutterchance.com may contain links to external websites and news sources. We assume no responsibility or liability for the accuracy of information and data published on these sites. As the policies and practices of these sites are not within our control, we also recommend that you review their policies prior to disclosing personal information to them.

8. Children
Children may not use our site for commercial purposes, become members or supply us with any personal information. Should a child, to your knowledge, have supplied us with personally identifiable information, or broken any of the other statements above, please contact shutterchance.com using our contact us page.

9. Changes to Privacy Policy
shutterchance.com reserves the right to update this Privacy Policy without prior notice. You will be notified of any such changes by way of the "last updated" date at the top of this Privacy statement.

10. Questions or concerns
If at any time you believe that shutterchance.com has not complied with the above policy, or you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us using the contact us page.