Privacy Statement
Capital Structure Today, LLC (”Capital Structure Today” or “we” or “us”) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Privacy Statement sets out our privacy policy and explains what we do with the personal information that we collect from you. Please read the following to understand our practices regarding personal information and how they affect you as you use our features and services. This statement discloses our current privacy practices; if we make material changes to these practices, we will announce them. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should contact Capital Structure Today’s site coordinator at PrivacyPolicy@CapitalStructureToday.com.
This Privacy Statement answers the following questions:
• What information does Capital Structure Today gather about you?
• How does Capital Structure Today use your personal information?
• How do we use “IP addresses” and “cookies”?
• Will Capital Structure Today disclose any of your personal information?
• What kind of security measures do we take to protect your information from accidental loss or disclosure?
• How can you deactivate your account or correct or revise information that we have about you?
• How do we respect children’s privacy?
• What else should you know about your privacy?
• How will you know whether Capital Structure Today’s privacy policy has changed?
What Information Does Capital Structure Today Gather About You?
Capital Structure Today collects information about our readers so that we can provide a more interesting and useful service, as well as more appropriate advertising. We ask for email address only when you Sign up for our newsletter. We also may ask for this information at other times, such as when you enter contests or other promotions sponsored by Capital Structure Today and/or our partners. We sometimes conduct surveys as well, although you do not have to respond to them.
If you use our recommendation service to email one of our articles to a friend, you will need to provide us with your friend’s email address and your email address as a return address. We will automatically send this person a one-time email, with the recommended article attached, We will not use these email addresses for any other purpose.
We collect IP addresses for site security and to help us understand how people use our sites so that we can improve our sites and our users’ respective experiences. For similar quality reasons, we use a feature known as a “cookie.” Cookies contain bits of information that websites transfer to your computer’s hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies can make the Web more convenient by storing information about your preferences on a site. Although we may assign your browser a cookie, the cookie does not tell us who you are. Only you can tell us that. We discuss cookies later in this Privacy Statement.
Besides cookies, we may also use tiny electronic images (called “single-pixel GIFs” or “Web beacons”), which allow us to count users who have visited specific pages or access certain cookies. We may use single-pixel GIFs in the following ways:
• To count and recognize users.
• To conduct research on behalf of some partners on their websites, and for auditing purposes.
• To determine aggregate information about users, including demographic and usage information.
• To determine which email messages were opened and/or acted upon when we send HTML-formatted email messages (messages resembling Web pages that include graphics).
Advertising networks that serve ads on our site may also use single-pixel GIFs in their advertisements. In general, any electronic image viewed as part of a Web page, including an ad banner, can act as a Web beacon.
How Does Capital Structure Today Use Your Personal Information?
Capital Structure Today collects personal information to provide you, the user, with the best and most personalized experience possible, and to provide our advertisers with an efficient way to reach the right audience. In short, by knowing a little about you, Capital Structure Today can deliver more relevant content and advertisements to you.
We conduct research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behavior based upon the articles you spend the most time visiting, or participate in contests or other promotions on our site, or based upon the information on our server log files. This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregated basis. We may also notify you of services, or areas of our site that we think may interest you based on the information we’ve received. If you would prefer us not to contact you for these purposes, simply go to our opt-out page and let us know.
How Do We Use “IP Addresses” and “Cookies”?
IP Addresses
Your Web browser or email application automatically provides your Internet Protocol address (”IP address”) to other computers with which you communicate over the Internet, so that they know where to send you information.
We receive an IP address each time you view one of our Web pages, because the browser automatically reports it to us. We also may store the IP address when you register with Capital Structure Today or post a message on our blog. We may use IP addresses for various purposes, including:
• Diagnosing service or technology problems.
• Assessing and maintaining system security.
• Displaying the most appropriate advertising or content.
• Studying how people use our site and how we can improve it.
• Reporting to advertisers about aggregate, but not individual, information derived from IP addresses.
• Block you from commenting again due to derogatory language.
Cookies
Cookies are used on our sites in the following ways:
• We use cookies to access your stored account information automatically when you log on to our site, in order to deliver a better and more personalized service.
• We use cookies to estimate our audience size and usage patterns. The unique cookie that is given to each browser accessing Capital Structure Today is then used to determine usage patterns and help us target content and ads based upon user interests.
• We use cookies to allow you to access your account information automatically, as well as make changes to your personal information.
• Our search engines may use cookies to expedite your search for content or products.
Most browsers are set up to accept cookies, but you can configure yours to refuse cookies or notify you when you’ve received one. Browsers differ, so check your “Help” menu to learn how to change your cookie preferences. When you accept our cookies, we cannot use them to find out who you really are, unless you tell us.
For more information about cookies, read the unofficial Cookie FAQ from CookieCentral.com.
Will Capital Structure Today Disclose Any of Your Personal Information?
Capital Structure Today will not disclose any personally identifiable information about individual users, except as described in this Privacy Statement. With the few exceptions that we explain here, we do not give, rent, lend, or sell individual information to our advertisers, although we do provide aggregate information. For example, we might tell an advertiser that there are 120,000 subscribers to our website, but we will not identify our users by name or provide email addresses. We may also use information to help our advertisers reach the kind of audience they want by utilizing our information to target our marketing efforts.
As for individually identifiable information, we may disclose it only under the following circumstances:
• We may disclose information to others when we have your consent.
• If you sign up for a special offer from an advertiser (for example, “Free eBook”, “Special Offers”, or something similar thereto), we will provide your individual contact information (for example, name, mailing address, email address, and/or telephone number), so that the advertiser or its agent can fulfill the special offer. Once the advertiser receives the information, it will handle the information under its own privacy policies. If you do not want a particular advertiser to have your personal information, then you should not sign up for that advertiser’s offer.
• If you sign up for a service that relies upon third parties for important elements, we will provide your personal information to the third parties so that they can provide you with their services, and those companies will treat the data under their own policies. We will tell you about these service providers at the time you sign up for the service.
• If you use our recommendation service to email one of our articles to a friend, Capital Structure Today will automatically send this person a one-time email, with the recommended article attached. The email address you give us will appear on the “From” line of the email, thereby disclosing this information to whoever opens and reads the email. Similarly, if you send email from our site, by using “Email this Post,” your address may appear as the return address of that email.
• We may disclose your personal information as required by applicable law, or in response to legal process, to protect the rights or property of Capital Structure Today, or to protect the safety of Capital Structure Today, our users, or others.
• We may sometimes conduct mailings to other people’s lists. To make it easier for us to comply with the Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, we may share our email list of people who have requested not to receive promotional communications from us with the list providers (or contractors) solely so that we can avoid sending emails to people who have asked not to receive them (or, conversely, so that our advertisers can avoid sending emails to people who have requested not to hear from them). We provide these lists only to list providers or contractors that we consider to be reputable, and only under strict nondisclosure/nonuse agreements.
• We may disclose personal information in some other limited circumstances, but we will specifically describe them to you when we collect the information, such as in the rules of a contest or a new service. For example, if we are going to give personal information to a contest’s sponsor, we will disclose it when you sign up for the contest, so that you can decide whether to enter.
• We may employ contractors or other third parties to help with our operations. We may give them access to databases of user information, so that they can perform their services for us, including performing system maintenance, displaying personalized content (such as portfolios), performing list analysis or management, or sending mailings for us from our advertisers. These parties are all subject to confidentiality agreements that restrict their use and disclosure of information they obtain through their relationship with Capital Structure Today.
What Kind of Security Measures Do We Take to Protect Your Information From Accidental Loss or Disclosure?
Capital Structure Today is committed to protecting your personal information. We store information you provide us on our secure servers.
How Can You Deactivate or Reactivate Your Account or Edit the Information We Have About You?
To cancel any of your free email subscriptions, do so HERE
How Do We Respect Children’s Privacy?
Our sites are not directed at children under the age of 13. We operate our sites in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and will not knowingly collect or use personally identifiable information from anyone under 13.
What Else Should You Know About Your Privacy?
While we do our best to protect your personal information, Capital Structure Today cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. What does all of this mean? Just as in the investing world, you must protect yourself. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any password and/or account information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you are online, especially when using a computer that other people can use also.
If you follow links from our site to others, you should be aware that you are doing business with those other sites, which have their own privacy and data collection practices. Capital Structure Today has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies (and we may not even know what they are). For more information regarding a site and its privacy policies, check that site.
How Will You Know Whether Capital Structure Today’s Privacy Policy Has Changed?
We may change this Privacy Statement at any time, but we will give notice of any material change (or any notices that we are required to give you) on our websites and/or in email messages.
Last Updated: October 13, 2009