We take your privacy very seriously. Please read the following to learn more about the privacy policies of bluegrassworks.com and its owner, Bluegrass Works LLC (collectively, "BW").

What this Privacy Policy Covers

• This policy covers how BW treats personal information that BW collects and receives, including information related to your past use of our site and services. Personal information is information about you that is personally identifiable like your name, address, email address, or phone number, and that is not otherwise publicly available.
• This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that BW does not own or control, or to people that BW does not employ or manage.
• This document should be read together with our Terms & Conditions, and our Copyright Policy, both of which may be referred to in this document.

Information Collection and Use

General

• If you are merely a visitor to our site (a "Visitor"), we may collect personal information when you visit our pages.
• If you are a Visitor, we may receive and record information on server logs from your browser, including your IP address and "session cookie" information. What is known as a "session cookie" is placed on your computer for the duration of your visit. It's primary use is to optimize your time on the website - make pages load faster, optimize caching time, know which page was your previous page, so we can send you back there faster. It also sets your site status as a "visitor", which means there's certain pages you cannot access, including forum comment creation pages and membership pages, and the like. The cookie is disabled once you leave the website and close down your browser. The next time you visit us, you're completely anonymous again, and we put a new session cookie on your computer. This tool provides us with pertinent information - not about you, but about the numbers you represent - it counts the pages you visit, it counts the times someone from your IP (it could be you, it could be someone else on your ISP) visit the site, it counts the amount of kilobytes you're responsible for downloading from the site. It also looks to see what link you clicked to arrive at this site. (known as 'referrer'). One thing it doesn't do is personally identify you for our records - you are more or less "anonymous". Many websites use "cookies" to target specific ads your way, registered or not. Currently, we do not do that.
• Visitors are not required to register with us in order to view the publicly available portions of our website. However, registration with us will give you access to additional features not available to Visitors, such as the ability to post comments and messages, to engage in private messaging, to email fellow users, to post Event Information, and the like.
• If you register with us and become a member of the site (a "Member"), we may ask you for certain information such as your name, email address and personal interests. Once you register with BW, you are not anonymous to us. If you have signed up as a Member, we track the information listed above for Visitors, and may track additional information about you. We store information about you in a secure database. There are many reasons why we may collect and use this information, and (almost) none of them have to do for profit reasons:
  1. Database Data Collection: Members' information, including email addresses, username, password and other associated information entered into the site by you, either voluntary or required information, may be stored in our "site user" database. This database is highly secure.
  2. Database Usage: Our site user database is used within the BW website in many ways: to fill out your profile page should anyone click on your name in the forum or in a post, thread or discussion board comment; to identify you when you post a comment; to track what posts you've read, to track if you've voted in a poll (so you cannot vote twice); and other ways.
  3. Cookies: In addition to the way we use cookies for Visitors, we use your session cookie and permanent cookies based on what you have selected in your preferences. If you have selected "log me on automatically", we store a permanent cookie on your computer so the next time you access the website, you're logged on. We do not use cookies to get any kind of personal or private information from you, and your username and password are not stored on the cookie.
  4. Email addresses: Although we ask that you provide us with your email address, we will never disclose your email address on our website. No other Member or any Visitor will see your email address if they visit your Member Profile page. If you want other Members who utilize the Forum to be able to communicate with you, you may elect not to receive email, but instead to receive only "Private Messages" - in which case, you will receive an email from us notifying you of the new Private Message in your inbox on our site. If, however, you elect to receive email, other members may (without seeing your email address) send you an email. If you reply to such message by email (rather than by Private Message, you will be disclosing your email address to that member. Likewise, if you opt to send an email to another member who has elected to receive email, to you will be disclosing your email address to that member. BW requires your email address for site activation (so that all accounts can be active), so that we may contact you if we need to notify you regarding your participation on the website or should questions arise or should you win one of our many planned contest giveaways, and so that we may improve our service to you, conduct research or offer you information which we believe we may be of value to you. We do not harvest, repackage, disseminate, reuse, or sell your private email address to anyone, and we work our hardest to keep it away from those who would abuse it.
  5. Usernames vs. Real Names: BW asks you for a username and a real name. We ask for the username so you can have an easy-to-use name when logging in, and also for your participation in our Forum - people prefer "nicknames" where they can get them, and we recognize that.
  6. Advertiser Provided Information: We may provide advertisers with a wealth of information about our users, but none of it identifies who you are, and none of it is personal and confidential information about any specific person. We tell advertisers, upon request, the following information: how many total members the site has; how many views we have for (i) the site, (ii) for sections, or (iii) particular pages or topics; how many visitor sessions we have in a day, a week, a month, or a year; how many times their specific ads have been viewed and clicked; and from time to time, we let them know other site traffic numbers and information on a general basis.
  7. Site Advertisers or Sponsors: At this writing (note, this could be subject to change), we do plan to run a self-managed advertising system that we hope is enough to break even. Self managed advertising is great in many ways. It provides advertisers with a very low cost way of getting the message out about their products and offerings to you, a "targeted market" (we're all bluegrass music lovers, thus a target). It also lets advertisers control their own ads, so if they want to run a special one week, they can. If they want to run a special just for Members of BW, they can do that too.
     
     One way self-managed advertising is great for you, the site Visitor or Member, is that there is no nefarious things going on behind the scenes. No "single pixel identifier gifs" from third party sites that haunt you as you travel around the internet. No cookies placed on your computer by advertisers. No pop up or pop under ads (ever, if we have anything to say about it). No advertisers collecting any information about you, be it anonymous IP addresses, or worse things, like your email address for their next spam outing. Self managed ads are no frills in many ways, but the high targeting we provide to our advertisers more than makes up for any shortfalls that more traditional advertisements can provide.
     
     With that said, we hope that you will patronize our site sponsors, and recognize that it is their money, their hard work that creates that money, that (we hope) makes this site a continuing possibility. Without you as a customer, they have no income. Without any income, they cannot advertise with us. And without advertisement revenue from them, we either have to opt for much more intrusive (and annoying) advertising, or shut the site down completely. We don't want that. We hope you don't either. Please consider becoming patrons of the BW advertisers and sponsors. They continue to make this site possible.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

• BW does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide products or services you've requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:
• We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims;
• We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of BW's terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
• We transfer information about you if BW is acquired by or merged with another company. In this event, BW will notify you before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
• Our site and service is complicated. As such, it is possible that we may inadvertently make uses or disclosures of your information in ways not contemplated by, or in direct contravention of, this policy. No software is hack-proof; if it exists on the Internet, the best we can do is make it "hack resistant". In addition, although highly unlikely, it is possible for Internet transmissions containing your personal information to be intercepted by others. It is impossible for BW to ensure the privacy and security of all transmissions made to and from the site while in transit.

Your Ability to Edit and Delete Your Account Information and Preferences

General

• You can edit your BW User Profile at any time.
• We reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to the BW service, such as service announcements and administrative messages.
• You can delete your BW account by sending an e-mail to admin@bluegrassworks.com. Certain historical information may possibly remain in our archived records after your account has been deleted.

Confidentiality and Security

• We limit access to personal information about you to employees and consultants who we believe reasonably need to come into contact with that information to provide products or services to you or in order to do their jobs.
• We have physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to protect personal information about you.
• Your BW Account Information is password-protected.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

• BW may update this policy. We will notify you about significant changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your BW account or by placing a prominent notice on our site.

Questions and Suggestions

• If you have questions or suggestions, please contact us at admin@bluegrassworks.com