The ZOO is committed to respecting the privacy rights of visitors to The ZOO's web site. While visiting The ZOO's web site, we may ask you to register and/or provide information that personally identifies you ("Personal Information") for purposes of interacting with the site. To further the protection of your Personal Information, The ZOO has adopted a set of information management guidelines (outlined below) which serve as the basis for our customer and advertiser relationships. These guidelines have been developed with the recognition that Internet technologies are rapidly evolving, and that underlying business models are still not established. Accordingly, guidelines are subject to change. Any such changes will be posted on this page. Please see the Effective Date stated at the conclusion of this Policy.

Information Collected - What are Cookies?
There is a technology called "cookies" which can be used to provide you with tailored information from a web site. A cookie is an element of data that a web site can send to your browser, which may then be stored on your system. This element of data is a piece of text, not a program. The Site can only access the information from a cookie sent by the site. We cannot access other cookies sent by other web sites or the information contained therein. Additionally, we cannot learn your email address or any other information about you through the use of a cookie. The only way we would learn such information is if you specifically submit that information to us, for example, through our registration system.

Why does The ZOO use cookies?
The ZOO uses cookies to track usage of the Site and further customize your experience when you are visiting the Site. By tracking usage, we can best determine what features of the Site best serve the users. We never give out information to others about individual usage. However, we may provide our advertisers with aggregate information about our users, such as "5,000 people viewed your ad today."

May I decline to accept a cookie?
On those pages of the Site that do not require registration, you may decline to accept cookies sent by the Site by selecting an option on your browser to reject cookies. However, some portions of the Site may require registration in order to access those areas. In such case, we ask that you register and provide us with basic information on our registration page. Cookies enable our server to know that you are a registered user; therefore, our registration system requires that you accept the cookies from the Site. Other sites linked to this Site may also send cookies; however we do not control such activities.

What benefits do I receive from cookies?
Overall, the use of cookies helps to give you a customized experience at the Site. Through the use of cookies, we'll know what's working and what's not. That information is then used to keep our Site fresh and relevant to you the user. Cookies also allow you to avoid retyping your user id each time you access the Site, as well as personalize any online services we provide to you.

What happens with the information collected in a cookie?
At times, we use an advertising server developed by a third party to display ads on the Site. Some of these ads may contain cookies that are set by third parties (i.e. advertising agencies or advertising clients). We do not have access to these cookies or any information that they may contain; please contact the advertiser for more information on these cookies.

IP Addresses
The ZOO does log IP addresses and unique computer identifiers for systems administration, security and troubleshooting purposes.

Use of Personal Information
The ZOO may match aggregated user information with third party data. Also, The ZOO discloses aggregated user statistics in order to describe our services to potential advertisers, partners and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes. Additionally, The ZOO will use reasonable efforts to ensure that only our employees with a "need to know" will have access to your information. We do not release personal information about you as an individual to third parties.

It should be noted, however, that this Privacy Policy only addresses the use and dissemination of information that we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose any information to other parties, whether through, for example, message boards, game rooms, personal ads, or the like, or through other web sites throughout the Internet, different policies may apply. Since The ZOO does not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy customs and policies, if any, of that third party, and The ZOO shall not be responsible for the use or dissemination of your private information by that third party. Therefore, we encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

Links to Other Materials
If any link is offered connecting you to a third party web site, it is as an accommodation to the respective third party site owner and without charge. Third party sites linked to and from the Site are not necessarily under the control of The ZOO. The ZOO shall have no responsibilities or liabilities whatsoever for the content or privacy practices of any such linked site or any link or linking program at any time. The ZOO does not necessarily endorse companies (or related products or services) to or from which the Site is linked. If you decide to access any of the third party sites linked to the Site, you do so entirely at your own risk. The ZOO hereby disclaims any rights to trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos, copyrights, patents, domain names or other intellectual property interests of third parties.

Children's Privacy
The ZOO cares about the safety of children and their use of the Internet. Therefore, in accordance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, we will never knowingly request or solicit personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without prior verifiable parental consent. In the event that we receive actual knowledge that we have collected such personal information without the requisite and verifiable parental consent, we will delete that information from our database as quickly as is practical.

Effective Date and Changes
This Privacy Policy is effective as of January 1, 2007. The ZOO reserves the right to modify the terms of this policy at any time and in our sole discretion, by posting a change notice to this page. Your continued use of the Site following our posting of a change notice will constitute binding acceptance of those changes.