Privacy Policy

Please read this document carefully as it applies to your use of this Website.

This website (Website) is owned and operated by Scanning Ocean Sectors (ABN 45 621 789 804) of 9 Long Street, Hervey Bay, QLD, 4655 Australia (Scanning Ocean Sectors, Marine Mammal Magazine, we, us or our).

Your access to this Website is conditional upon your acceptance and compliance with the general and special terms set out below, our then current Privacy Policy and any other terms, conditions, notices and disclaimers posted elsewhere on this Website (collectively, Terms of Use).

By accessing and using this Website, you:

• acknowledge that you have read and fully understand these Terms of Use, accept them as legally binding between us and you and waive any rights to contest their validity or enforceability, including on the grounds of lack of notice of them; and
• waive your rights to make any claim against us inconsistent with them.

 

At Scanning Ocean Sectors  (“Marine Mammal Magazine”) we appreciate your readership and support and place a high value on your personal privacy. We respect the personal nature of the information you provide us on our web site and staunchly recognize the importance of protecting this information. In adopting this privacy policy (this “Privacy Policy”), our intent is to balance our legitimate business interests in collecting and using your personal information with your reasonable expectations of privacy.

 

We may amend or revise these Terms of Use from time to time (including the Privacy Policy amendments will take effect on the posting of updated versions of those documents on this Website. If you do not agree with these Terms of Use (including any amendments to them) you must immediately cease using this Website.

 

 

When does Marine Mammal Magazine collect my personal information?

You may provide personal information to Marine Mammal Magazine everal ways including: (1) by sharing your e-mail address when subscribing to our newsletter, (2) by sharing personal information when you submit news tips to our editorial team or by submitting a report via our Contact Form, (3) by sharing personal information when you post comments on our posts or stories, (4) by sharing contact information (Twitter username and Facebook account name) through our contests, or (5) by participating in a survey where an email address is requested. We may also ask for other information at other times but at no time will you be required to share any personal information to gain complete access to our site. Marine Mammal Magazine is an open community but email addresses are requested to participate in some of our member-only features.

In addition to basic contact information, our analytics trackers may also collect other information. This may include the operating system you are working on, the Internet browser you are using, and the screen resolution of your computer.

How does Marine Mammal Magazine use my personal information?

Depending on the portion of our site that you have subscribed to or interacted with, we may use your information in a number of ways.

• The email address you provided through our newsletter subscription form enables us to send you a monthly digest of Marine Mammal Magazine news stories. This subscription is entirely opt-in by the user. (We cannot subscribe you to the newsletter as you personally must have access to the email account in order to verify the subscription.) Subscribers can opt-out of our newsletter at any time by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link that is present on every email at the very bottom of the newsletter.
• The email address that you use when contacting us with an editorial tip or via our Contact Form will not be used for any reason but for the purposes of responding to your inquiry.
• The email address associated with your account when you comment on our stories may be used in conjunction with contests and promotions hosted on Marine Mammal Magazine’s website to notify you if you have won. Email addresses provided in comments are not usually used for any other reason except that they may be used as a customer service and policy violation contact mechanism
• If you choose to comment on Marine Mammal Magazine stories through Twitter and/or Facebook Connect, we do not get access to your email address nor do we have any access to your personal data or private information.
• We may at times request your participation in a survey. We will not provide your email addresses to any third party but may contact you via them to distribute prizes in associated giveaways.

To maintain a site that is free of charge, we display advertisements on our website. We also use information you give us through surveys to help our advertisers target the audience they want to reach and to provide you with potentially interesting advertisements. Unless you give consent, at no time does any party other than Marine Mammal Magazine have access to your personally identifiable information (with the exception of Google who maintains our RSS subscription-by-email service and our survey providers), and unless we have your consent, you will never be contacted by any party other than Marine Mammal Magazine. The only exceptions to the foregoing are that we may disclose personally identifiable information (i) in response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order or subpoena, (ii) in response to a law enforcement agency’s request, or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take actions regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of another person, violations of our terms of use, or as otherwise required by law, or (iii) in the event we are acquired by or merged with another company.

When you sign up for our updates or receive e-mail messages from Marine Mammal Magazine, you will always be given the chance to opt-out of our communications. You may change your preferences at any time and will only be contacted in manners consistent with your stated preferences.

Non-personally identifiable information (such as stated above) may be shared in aggregate form with our advertisers, business, or marketing partners but your personally identifiable information will never be disclosed to them.

Who else has access to my personal information?

The ads appearing on Marine Mammal Magazine’s website are delivered to you by Google AdWords, DoubleClick, or Amazon, our Web advertising serving partners. Information about your visit to this site, such as number of times you have viewed an ad (but not your name, address, or other personal information), is used to serve ads to you on this site. And, in the course of serving advertisements to this site, third party advertisers may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.

We have also contracted with a number of advertising network partners to monitor certain pages of our website and RSS feeds for the purpose of reporting website and RSS traffic, statistics, advertisement “click-throughs,” and/or other activities on our website. Where authorized by us, these advertising network partners may use cookies, web beacons, and/or other monitoring technologies to compile anonymous statistics about our website visitors. No personally identifiable information is collected by or transferred to these network partners. For more information about how the information is collected and used, please see the following:

• Feedburner’s privacy policy at http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/privacy
• Google’s privacy policy at http://www.google.com/privacy.html

Third parties and web sites that have links on our site may also collect or use information about you. The information practices of other companies or people that Marine Mammal Magazine does not employ or manage are not covered by this Privacy Policy.

Accounts associated with Marine Mammal Magazine are all ‘public.’ By ‘public,’ we mean that certain information will be viewable by all users. What you see on other user profiles is the same information that other users can see about you.

Is there anything else I should know about my privacy and Marine Mammal Magazine?

Any information you disclose voluntarily on our comments page or in any properties hosted by Marine Mammal Magazine becomes public information. Marine Mammal Magazine.com is a public forum. We cannot control the action of our site users and advise you to use your discretion in sharing information about yourself on the Internet. All information sharing is optional and done so at your own risk. Privacy is a very personal matter and we encourage you to be careful and responsible when disclosing personal information online.

Marine Mammal Magazine Comment Policy

We never censor comments based on political or ideological point of view or of a critical nature. We reserve the right to delete those comments that are off-topic, “spammy” in nature, abusive, use excessive foul language, or include ad hominem attacks.

Once a comment is made public on the Marine Mammal Magazine website, we will not remove it by request. As a user, you are responsible for your own communications and are responsible for the consequences of their posting.

Comments will only be considered for removal (i) in response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order, or (ii) in response to a law enforcement agency’s request, or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take actions regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of another person, violations of our terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.

All comments and other content contributed to Marine Mammal Magazine shall adhere to the following policy, and may be edited or removed at Marine Mammal Magazine’s discretion if it is deemed to be in violation of this policy.

1. Personal Attacks: Please don’t engage in personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling or mindless abuse. The Marine Mammal Magazine community should focus on intelligently discussing topics by furthering the conversation and informing the participants with resourceful and constructive ideas.
2. Hate speech: Racism, sexism and homophobia will not be tolerated.
3. Language and Threats: Please watch your language and respect other people’s views, beliefs and emotions. We reserve the right to remove any content that might be found extremely offensive or threatening.
4. No Spam: Spam and advertising content will be removed.
5. Smear Tactics: Although we acknowledge criticism of our articles and our writers, we will not allow misrepresentation. We will distinguish between constructive arguments and smear tactics.
6. Relevancy: Please keep conversations relevant. Off-topic comments are subject to removal in order to keep the thread on track.
7. Quality: We encourage you to take responsibility for the quality of the conversations in which you’re participating. Maintain intelligent discussions in the Marine Mammal Magazine community by being respectful and considerate.
8. Help us: Maintain an inviting interaction space by self-policing threads and flagging spam. Although we have a hands-on approach to community engagement, we do sometimes miss problem commenters or trolls. We appreciate your efforts to keep the Marine Mammal Magazine community environment inviting, insightful and constructive. Let the conversations be quality ones.

 

Liability and indemnity

To the maximum extent permitted by law:

• we exclude all liability to you for all claims arising under or in connection with these Terms of Use, this Website, or any Content or material accessible at any time through it or their subject matter, whether in contract, tort (including without limitation negligence), in equity, under statute, for any other common law or statutory cause of action, under an indemnity or on any other basis;
• we will not be liable for any direct, incidental, consequential or indirect damages, loss or corruption of data, loss of profits, goodwill, bargain or opportunity, loss of anticipated savings or any other similar or analogous loss resulting from your access to, or use of, or inability to use this Website, or any content or material accessible at any time through it, whether based on warranty, contract, tort, negligence, in equity or any other legal theory, and whether or not we know or have been advised of the possibility of such damage; and

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless us, our officers, directors, employees, agents, subcontractors, licensors, and suppliers, from and against all claims, actions, demands, liabilities and settlements, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees, arising in connection with your use of this Website or resulting from, or alleged to result from, your use of this Website, the Content or a breach of any of these Terms of Use.