Hobeze.Com-Privacy

The Hobeze Pledge

Hobeze was designed to bring like minded hobby enthusiasts together in a website they could trust, in an environment conducive to safe and secure online discussion. For this reason a customer’s privacy is of extreme importance to us as it goes to the core of our customer-centric strategy.

The core elements of the Hobeze Privacy Policy are:

Hobeze retains your personal information on it’s high security servers which are protected with industry leading firewalls
Hobeze does not disclose your personal information to any third party save those which are explicitly stated to you in advance
You have full capacity to edit your information or delete your profile at any time and without reason.
4. Hobeze does not engage in ‘spam’ or ‘junk mail’
By using the services provided by the Hobeze website you are implicitly stating your full acceptance of this privacy policy.

Personal Data collected by Hobeze

Hobeze collects information during the registration process pertaining to your personal contact details, your hobbies of interest, images, video and your location. This data is important as the email address provided is our sole point of contact with you and information on hobbies and location is used to build your profile.

Hobeze automatically collects information pertaining to your online interactions with Hobeze. The site uses cookies and tracks your IP address and browser type. This is a normal process instigated when your web browser requests access to a file or application stored on our servers.

Data Usage

Hobeze empowers its members to determine what level of personal information is displayed on their profile. Every application box whether it be ‘comments’, ‘viewed me’, ‘calendar’ or any other can be made ‘public’, ‘private’ or ‘switched off’. This level of privacy customisation illustrates the company’s firm commitment to your privacy. Hobeze will send emails on occasion to the email address you provide. These emails will contain important information pertaining to any aspect of the Hobeze service. We view every customer as a valuable part of our company and not just another number, thus we will use your name in all our correspondence with you in order to personalise all our interactions with you.
Hobeze does not charge its members any site subscription fees. In order to sustain the service we provide, we generate revenues from advertising. Therefore Hobeze will use the personal information you provide e.g. age, gender and hobbies of interest to display ads on selective sections of the website. Unlike general websites where you would be exposed to ads for products or service that don’t interest you, on Hobeze you will only be exposed to ads that relate to your hobbies of interest. This in effect reduces the frequency of ads you are exposed to and ensures only ads for products / service that potentially interest you are shown. Hobeze reserves the right to transfer data pertaining to your use of the site to its advertising partners and other third parties, in order to further customise advertising messages, promotions, products or service offerings.
Statistical data pertaining to your use of Hobeze is retrieved by little files stored on your PC (cookies) as well as identifying your IP address. This helps us to improve our service based on your usage patterns of the site. This data may be shared with third parties who can assist us in further customising our service to our unique user base.
Hobeze does not disclose your name or contact details to any of its advertising partners; any transfer of these details is at your sole discretion. No personal contact information is extrapolated from any interaction you make with a targeted advertisement.
Hobeze will divulge your personal identifiable information if obligated to do so by virtue of any statute, law, decree, state authority, or to preserve and protect the rights and property of Hobeze, its affiliates or the public. Hobeze will also facilitate any investigation by a law enforcement entity into illegitimate behaviour by one of its members whether it be in relation to but not limited to paedophilia, bullying, harassment, terrorism, sectarianism, intellectual property rights or any other form of illicit conduct.
Hobeze may disclose your personally identifiable information or usage data extrapolated from cookies, to business partners where we feel it would enhance the service from our customer’s perspective. In these circumstances, such third parties would have to commit to our strict ‘Privacy Policy’ and its affiliated code of conduct. Any personal data they receive will only be used for their interaction with Hobeze and never divulged to any external party or entity commercial or otherwise.
Hobeze reserves the right to transfer your personal information to a third party vendor in the event of any takeover of the company whether it be in the form of an acquisition, merger or otherwise. If this new entity asserts to modifying this privacy policy, you will receive prior notification.

Tell-A-Friend

The success of any social network is determined by the number of individual interacting within the network. Therefore Hobeze uses a ‘Tell a Friend’ referral system to encourage members to invite friends who may be interested, to their network. If you use the system to invite a friend, you will provide Hobeze with your friends ‘Name’ and ‘Email Address’. This information is used to send your friend a single email invitation to join Hobeze. Should your friend accept, this automatically constitutes an ‘Opt-in’ clause which grants Hobeze permission to contact this individual. If the individual does not accept the invitation they may send Hobeze an email via our ‘Contact Us’ page and request that their information is removed from our database. Hobeze will facilitate such a request within 28 days of receiving the email.

Links to affiliates, partners, advertisers and unrelated sites

Hobeze was designed to provide hobby enthusiasts with useful information that enabled them to ‘Express their passion’ and further develop their interest in their hobbies of interest. In order to facilitate this objective the company has listed external websites, companies and resources to which useful information exists. Hobeze cannot in any way be held liable for privacy practices pre-existing on such websites.

This Privacy Policy pertains exclusively to Hobeze and is not transferable or applicable to any other website, whether or not you accessed this external website via Hobeze.

We strongly advise site members to read the privacy policy of any website which requests personal identifiable information.

There may be certain instances when Hobeze will frame an external website within Hobeze to provide additional features and functionality to our members. In these circumstances it will appear that the user is still on the Hobeze website when in fact they may be on an external website and thus the privacy policy pertaining to that site will be in effect.

Testimonials

Hobeze promulgates customer testimonials on its website and may also include same on promotional emails. When you submit a testimonial to Hobeze you are granting the company permission to use your testimonial in this regard as well as displaying your first name if included in said testimonial.

Cookies are a ubiquitous internet technology used by virtually every major website on the internet. They are in effect small pieces of information sent by a web server to store on a user’s hard drive so it can later be read back from that browser. Hobeze use cookies to enhance a members browsing experience, for example to store your login username and password. They enable Hobeze to personalise site content based on your past browsing history and click through streams. Cookies are also used to build up a profile of where you go, and what adverts you click on. This information is then used to target ads at you which you are most likely to be interested in. It tracks which ads have been displayed to you so that the same ad is not displayed twice. This effectively reduces ad frequency and is a positive application of this technology. Hobeze advices it’s members to allow cookies as this ensure optimal service can be delivered. If for whatever reason, you are opposed to the use of cookies you can disable cookies at any time by completing the following steps.

Right click ‘Internet Explorer’ à Select ‘Properties’ à Select ‘Privacy’ Tab à Slide the slider to the far end of the scale until it reads ‘Block all Cookies’ à Select ‘Apply’ à Select ‘Ok’

If these instruction are followed precisely, your computer will not accept cookies going forward. For more detailed information on securing web browsers or for information pertaining to disabling cookies on other browsers such as ‘Safari’ or ‘Firefox’ please visit the following site: http://www.us-cert.gov/reading_room/securing_browser/.

Hobeze’s advertising partners often use cookies and other tracking mechanisms such as ‘Web Beacons’ to customise target advertising content. These company's privacy policies are applicable in these situations.
Hobeze may on occasion extrapolate information from cookies and match it to other personally identifiable information in order to aggregate site statistics and personalise content delivery.

Information Sharing

Hobeze strongly recommend that you do not share personally identifiable information. If you do so, it is at your own risk. Hobeze provides you with full functionality so you decide exactly what level of information is viewable to the public.
A profile can be made viewable or non-viewable to members of the public by pre-selection of either the ‘Public’ or ‘Private’ setting.

Profile Modification

You have complete control over the revision and modification of privacy settings within your user account setting. If you require assistance please contact Hobeze via the ‘Contact us’ web page.

Discretion required for the disclosure of personal information

Every time you promulgate personal information on the internet whether it be in blogs, forums, chat rooms or otherwise, this information is viewable by members of the public and may be used by individuals for illegitimate motives including ‘spam’. It is strongly recommended that you only disclose personal information to websites you trust or those with a very strong ‘Privacy Policy’. .

Children

It is strictly forbidden for any individual under the age of 13 to join, submit information or in any way interact with the Hobeze website. If it is discovered that a child under 13 years is using the service, their profile will be deleted immediately. Hobeze will not intentionally collect information from individuals under 13 years of age. Any realisation of inadvertent collection of information pertaining to individuals under 13 will result in deletion of this information. If you are aware of any instance of this occurring please contact us and we will take the appropriate action.
Any individual between the ages of 13 and 17 should seek parental permission prior to any submission of personal details over the internet.

Security and confidentiality

Only authorised personnel within Hobeze will have access to your personally identifiable information. This permits these individuals to conduct their jobs and thus facilitate effective implementation of the Hobeze service.
It is of extreme importance for the preservation and security of your personal information, that you never disclose your account password to any individual whatsoever. Any disclosure of this sensitive information constitutes a security risk to your personal information. Hobeze accepts no liability for negligence in this regard. It is possible that disgruntled individuals may gain unauthorised access to personally identifiable information. By using this service you accept that such possibilities exist and that Hobeze are not liable in such circumstances. If you feel that such a security breach may have occurred, please contact Hobeze via the ‘Contact us’ page.

Hobeze may modify this privacy policy at its sole discretion and at any time. It is advised that you review this ‘Privacy Policy’ periodically to view any modifications made.

Continuing usage of Hobeze after any modification has been made to its privacy policy, constitutes your binding acceptance of the alterations. If any element of the modifications made are unacceptable to you or otherwise cause dissatisfaction, you are to cease using the service with immediate effect.

Membership Cancellation

Hobeze Members retain full functionality and can cancel their membership at any time without reason from within their account settings

Co-Branding

Hobeze reserves the right to co-brand with a partner or partners.

Contact

If you have any queries or concerns pertaining to the content of this ‘Privacy Policy’ please contact us via the ‘Contact Us’ section of this website and clearly state your concerns.

This ‘Privacy Policy’ was scripted on the 25^th August 2008 and is effective as of 6^th September 2008.