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	about us privacy policy

How and why we collect information from our visitors
We collect personally identifying information that users voluntarily provide to us about themselves or others by using services such as subscriptions, renewals, gift subscriptions and our discussion forums. We may use that personal information editorially to improve and customize our content. We do evaluate site usage by analyzing user information in the aggregate, in a way that does not identify any individual user.

Subscriptions
People subscribing, renewing or buying gift subscriptions to Mothering, are asked to provide their name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and billing information, such as a credit card number. This personal information is used by us and by our fulfillment house to manage a subscriber's account, for example, for billing purposes and to fulfill a request for products or services. This information is not shared with third parties except in certain circumstances. From time to time, Mothering may rent our subscriber mailing list for one-time use to compatible companies or organizations. Some of these have included: Families for Natural Living, Music of Little People, Natural Baby Catalog, Holistic Education Press, Biobottoms, Co-op America, Utne Reader, Working Assets, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Organic Style. If you would prefer not to have your name rented, please call us at 800-984-8116 and ask to delete your name our list rental program.

Mothering's Discussion Forums
Those who wish to use our discussion forums are asked to provide certain personal information when they register, including a user name of your choice, a password, birth name and e-mail address. Mothering does not share this information with any third party. Discussion forum users should be aware that by voluntarily disclosing personal information on the Mothering Forums, they make those details easily collectible by third parties.

Cookies
Our Web site and discussion forums may use "cookies," which are text files places in your computer's browser to store your preferences. To keep improving our site to meet user demand, we may gather some general information about those who access our sites. Cookies enable us to determine the user's operating system, browser type and version, Internet Service Provider, and other such general information. Cookies, which do not contain any personally identifying information, are a standard industry technology and help readers by saving such information as passwords and editorial preferences on user hard drives. A cookie cannot pass on a computer virus, or even capture e-mail address. Visitors have the ability to configure their browsers to refuse acceptance of cookies.

E-mail
When visitors send e-mail inquiries to Mothering, the return e-mail address is used to answer the inquiry. Mothering does not use the return e-mail address for any other purpose or share it with any third party.

Advertisers and Other Third-Party Sites
We may share aggregated and non-personally identifying information about our visitors collected on our site with our advertisers. This privacy policy applies only to Mothering Inc. and its web site, www.mothering.com. Other sites that we link to or that advertise with us may have practices different from ours. Please consult the other sites' privacy notices, as we have no control over those of our advertisers, or any other sites we may link to.

Our Commitment to Security
We are committed to protecting the information you share with us. Our web site and our host have security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. However, we cannot guarantee that these security measures will prevent third-party "hackers" from illegally obtaining this information.

Special Cases
Mothering may disclose personal information about visitors, or about their uses of the web site, if, in our sole discretion, we believe it is reasonable to do so, including; to satisfy laws such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, regulations, or governmental or legal requests for such information, to operate our site properly and to protect Mothering and our visitors.

How to Contact Us
If you have any questions or concerns about our policy, please contact us at webmaster@mothering.com.