Privacy Policy

financialjoe.com shares your concern about the protection of your personal information online. This is our policy regarding the privacy of information we collect on our web site. This Privacy Policy includes examples of the types of personal information we collect and the kinds of companies with whom we share such information. These examples are illustrative and should not be considered a complete inventory of our information collection, use and sharing practices. We will comply with applicable state laws that may restrict the types of information we may disclose about you or require us to provide you with additional notices.

Information Gathered and Tracked by financialjoe.com

financialjoe.com gathers two types of data about users: (a) personal information, which individual users provide (i) when registering as a member of financialjoe.com our free service, (ii) when registering as a subscriber to one of our premium subscription services, and (iii) voluntarily at certain other points, such as contests or surveys; and (b) tracking information, which is automatically collected about all visitors to our sites.

Personal Information

financialjoe.com collects personal information in several places on our web sites, which are set forth generally below. We will always provide a secure area of our sites for you to enter your information, but if you prefer, you may talk offline to a customer service representative and provide the required information over the telephone or via email.

Membership

Currently, we do require users to become members of financialjoe.com in order to have access to the review system and free commentary and news available on our site, www.financialjoe.com However, you may receive one or more of our RSS feeds, but to gain access select commentary articles from financialjoe.com and daily archives of financialjoe.com archive articles, or post any ranking content from or on financialjoe.com we require you to register here to become a member. In order to register, you'll have to supply us with your email and, choose a unique User Name and password, and provide us with some additional information about you (the reason for your visit to financialjoe.com, and basic demographics, etc.). Additionally, you will be required to verify your email address by clicking on the activation link in the Welcome Letter that will be sent to you upon your submission of a completed registration form.

Forums

We provide chat events for discussion of various topics and we allow members to submit questions for general audience. No additional personal information is required to submit questions, but participants are asked in the interests of accountability, honesty and informed dialogue to follow all applicable terms and conditions agreed upon registration with financialjoe.com. Please note that information you submit to the Forum, or during a chat will be available for any user of that service to read, and is no longer private. Please take precaution when sharing personal information with other users. Refer to Terms of Use.

Surveys/Polls

At certain times, you may be asked to participate in surveys, which are generally aimed at obtaining general information, for example, your investment experience, or your reactions to a particular article. Because information obtained in these surveys is connected with individual subscribers and is used internally to better market our services, participation is voluntary. In addition, some columnists will on occasion take polls of their readers. Such polls are solely for the editorial use of the individual columnists, and participation is voluntary.

Contests and Sweepstakes

We sometimes offer contests or sweepstakes in which certain personal information is required for registration, for purposes of verifying the entrants' identities and notifying the winners. If the contest or sweepstakes is being administered by a third party, this information will be disclosed to that third party. However, entrants may select contest names distinct from their User Names, and the information is not connected with their User Names.

Tracking Information

Tracking data consists of both individual and aggregated tracking information and is automatically gathered using "cookies".

What is a "cookie"?

A cookie is a small data file containing information, such as a user's login name, that is written to the user's hard drive by a web server and used to track the pages visited. Cookies used by financialjoe.com are encoded and contain a unique digital signature to prevent tampering. They do not contain user passwords. The individual information gathered in this manner is used for internal purposes only, such as accessing a member's account information. We also use the information on an aggregate basis, to track the readership of stories and usage of our products, to analyze traffic patterns on our sites, and to provide anonymous reporting of usage for internal and external clients.

You can control your browser's settings regarding cookies by selecting "Internet Options" or "Preferences" in the menu bar of your browser. This will allow you to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, have your browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or disable cookies altogether. However, because cookies allow you to easily navigate our web sites without having to constantly log in using your User Name and password, we recommend that you leave them turned on.

Tracking by our Advertisers

financialjoe.com advertiser include financial services companies (such as brokerage firms, banks offering brokerage services) as well as non-brokerage services companies (such as computer manufacturers, software companies, automobile makers and retail stores). financialjoe.com advertisers and advertising vendors display targeted advertisements. Although financialjoe.com does not provide any personal information to the advertiser or advertising vendor, by interacting with or clicking on an ad you consent to the possibility that the advertiser will assume you meet the targeting criteria used.

In addition to cookies placed by financialjoe.com, described above, advertisers and advertising vendors that serve ads onto our web sites may use their own cookies or other tracking technologies. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies or practices of any such advertisers and vendors.

If you would like to know more about the privacy practices of our primary third-party ad server, please click here to view the financialjoe.com Privacy Policy. financialjoe.com collects certain non-personally identifiable information in order to better target advertising to you. If you would like to opt-out, click here, and financialjoe.com will change your cookie to one that does not contain a unique user ID number, which will prevent financialjoe.com from collecting any information from your use of the Internet.

financialjoe.com Privacy Policy, an interactive advertising agency which also serves its clients' advertisements to our sites, can be found here. In addition to its own cookies, financialjoe.com employs technology that is commonly referred to as "action tags" (also known as "web beacons" or "one pixel .gif files") to measure the effectiveness of its ads on behalf of its clients. financialjoe.com uses an action tag to set or read its cookie. Any information that financialjoe.com collects using these cookies and action tags is completely anonymous. financialjoe.com may use information about your visits to this and other web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. Unless otherwise notified, financialjoe.com does not use names, addresses, e-mail addresses or telephone numbers, and does not link online actions to an identifiable person. If you would like to opt-out, click here, and financialjoe.com will change your cookie to one that does not contain a unique user ID number, which will prevent financialjoe.com from collecting any information from your use of the Internet.

Use of the Information

financialjoe.com uses personal information obtained from its users as stated in this Privacy Policy, and to enhance users' experiences on our sites.

Disclosures Permitted by Law

financialjoe.com does not sell or disclose personal information about you described above to with other people or nonaffiliated companies, except to provide you with products or services, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:

We provide the information on a confidential basis to nonaffiliated companies we engage as contractors or agents to perform services for us, such as maintaining software, sending direct mail or administering a sweepstakes or contest. Information will be shared with such contractors only to the extent reasonably necessary for them to perform services on our behalf, and pursuant to confidentiality obligations;

In response to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, from law enforcement agencies or state and federal regulators;

If we sell or otherwise transfer substantially all of our assets related to any web site that we own or operate and any product or service that we offer. In that event, we will require such third party to honor our current Privacy Policy, until the third party provides you with notice of changes to our Privacy Policy and permits you to exercise any rights you may have under applicable law to limit disclosures of information about you.

Disclosures for Joint Marketing and Servicing

financialjoe.com may disclose all the information we collect as described above to other companies such as direct marketers to perform marketing services on our behalf, or to non-financial services companies (such as computer manufacturers, software companies, automobile makers and retail stores)., with whom we have joint marketing agreements.

Other Uses

Special Offers and Advertisements

We may from time to time send you special offers and advertisements for products or services offered by third parties. We will not disclose any of your personal information to such third parties when we do this. If you do not wish to receive third party offers and advertisements, please change your settings on our Communication Preferences page, or contact our customer service department by email at support@financialjoe.com.

Correcting and Updating the Information

financialjoe.com offers to its members the ability to correct or update online the information we collected during registration by visiting the Account Information page. You may also contact our customer service department by email at support@financial.com.

Security

financialjoe.com limits access to personal information about you to those employees whom we determine need access to that information to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard your personal information. However, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our servers, nor can we guarantee that information that users supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet.

Former Customers

financialjoe.com discloses personal information about former customers only in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Your Independent Relationships with Other Companies

Please note that this Privacy Policy will not apply to your independent relationships with other companies that from time to time may offer you products and services on financialjoe.com Those companies' privacy policies will govern how they collect, use and disclose personal information that you provide to them.

Questions or comments regarding this policy should be directed to support@financialjoe.com. financialjoe.com reserves the right to modify this policy.