Who we are
Our website address is https://meroshare.net.

We respect the privacy of our visitors. We collect only such personal information as is needed to provide the information, service, or assistance that you request.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help with spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media
If you upload images to the website, please avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies and Web Beacons
We use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. This could include only showing you a popup once during your visit or enabling the ability to log in to certain features, such as forums.

We also use third-party advertisements on Meroshare.net to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technologies such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site. This may send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP, the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is typically used for geotargeting purposes (e.g., showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (e.g., showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

Embedded Content from Other Websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

DoubleClick DART Cookies
We may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads that are specific to you and your interests (“interest-based targeting”).

The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (e.g., if you have been viewing sites about visiting Las Vegas, you may see Las Vegas hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about hockey). DART uses “non-personally identifiable information.” It does not track personal information such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers, or credit card numbers.

You can opt out of this ad serving on all sites using this advertising by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx.

You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to log in to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.

Deleting cookies does not mean you are permanently opted out of any advertising program. Unless you have settings that disallow cookies, the next time you visit a site running the advertisements, a new cookie will be added.

Google Analytics
We use a tool called “Google Analytics” to collect information about the use of this site. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they used prior to coming to this site. We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve this site. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user on your next visit, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to this site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits to this site by disabling cookies on your browser.

How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is to recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

If you need any further information, please contact us via email {at} meroshare.net.

Thank you.