Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how your information is protected, collected and used. Updates may be made periodically. Any changes will be posted on Local Dirt and Local Dirt will provide notice of materially significant changes to this Privacy Policy by posting notice on Local Dirt.

This Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance for new users and is otherwise effective on June 1, 2009.

Privacy

We see privacy as a basic Community principle. Out of respect for your privacy, Local Dirt does not:

Place monitoring devices onto your computer such as web beacons, or single-pixel gifs.
Sell or distribute a member's information to third parties for marketing purposes.
Send unsolicited communications for marketing purposes.
Run banner ads, pop ups, pop unders, or any other kind of commercial ads.
Engage in cross-marketing or link-referral programs with other sites.

Use

Our goal when collecting information is to provide users with a convenient, efficient, and safe experience. You agree that your personal information may be used to provide the services you request, provide customer support, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, collect fees, prevent illegal activities, enforce our User Agreement, and improve our services.

Collection

You are welcome to browse Local Dirt without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. Once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous to us. If you choose to provide us with personal information, you consent to the transfer and storage of that information to our servers located in the United States. We may collect and store the following personal information:

Email address, physical contact information.
Transactional information based on your activities on Local Dirt (such as buying, selling, products and content you generate or that relates to your account).
Community discussions, chats, dispute resolution, correspondence through Local Dirt, and correspondence sent to us.
Computer sign-on data, statistics on page views, traffic to and from Local Dirt, ad data, and other information, including IP address and standard web log information.
Supplemental information submitted for verification or requested if site policies are suspected to be violated (for example, if we ask for cooperative status verification).
Supplemental information from third parties (for example, rating feedback).

Our Disclosure of Your Information

We may disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements, enforce our policies, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property, or safety. We may also share your personal information with:

Service providers under contract who help with our business operations (such as fraud investigations, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs and co-branded credit cards).
Other third parties to whom you explicitly ask us to send your information (or about whom you are otherwise explicitly notified and consent to when using a specific service).
Law enforcement or other governmental officials, in response to a verified request relating to a criminal investigation or alleged illegal activity.

Other business entities, should we plan to merge with, or be acquired by that business entity.

Without limiting the above, in an effort to respect your privacy and our ability to keep the Community free from wrongdoing, we will not otherwise disclose your personal information to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties without a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal procedure, except when we believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected illegal activity.

Information You Share on Local Dirt

Your business name is displayed throughout Local Dirt (and so available to the public), and is connected to all of your Local Dirt activity. Other people can see your items for sale, Profile Page, ratings, feedback and associated comments. Notices sent to other Community members about suspicious activity and policy violations on our site refer to your business name and specific item listings. So if you associate your name with your business, the people to whom you have revealed your name will be able to personally identify your Local Dirt activities.

If you access our site from a shared computer or a computer in an internet café, certain information about you, such as your email address, activity or reminders from Local Dirt, may also be visible to other individuals who use the computer after you.

Cookies

We use "cookies" (small files placed on your hard drive) on certain of our pages to help analyze our web page flow; customize our services, content and advertising; measure promotional effectiveness; and promote trust and safety.

A few important things you should know about cookies are that:

We use cookies to help identify you and maintain your signed-in status.
Most cookies are "session cookies," meaning that they are automatically deleted from your hard drive at the end of a session.
You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although doing so may interfere with your use of our site or services.
You may encounter cookies from third parties on certain pages of the site that we do not control. (For example, if you view a web page created by another user, there may be a cookie placed by that web page.)

No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing

Local Dirt and our users do not tolerate spam. You are not licensed to add other Local Dirt users, even a user who has purchased an item from you, to your mailing list (email or physical mail) without their express consent. To report Local Dirt-related spam or spoof emails, please contact us. You may not use our communication tools to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate our User Agreement. We automatically scan and may manually filter messages to check for spam, viruses, phishing attacks and other malicious activity or illegal or prohibited content, but we do not permanently store messages sent through these tools. If you send an email to an email address that is not registered in our Community (via Refer-a-Friend or other tools), we do not permanently store that email or use that email address for any marketing purpose. We do not rent or sell these email addresses.

Account Protection

Your password is the key to your account. Use unique numbers, letters and special characters, and do not disclose your password to anyone. If you do share your password or your personal information with others, remember that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of your account. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personal information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately notify Local Dirt and change your password.

Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information

You can see, review and change most of your personal information by becoming a member of Local Dirt. Generally, we will not manually modify your personal information because it is very difficult to verify your identity remotely. You must promptly update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it. Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable law. We do retain personal information from closed accounts to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our User Agreement and take other actions otherwise permitted by law.

Security

Your information is stored on our servers located in the United States. We treat data as an asset that must be protected and use lots of tools (encryption, passwords, physical security, etc.) to protect your personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure. However, as you probably know, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, and other users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the site. Therefore, although we work very hard to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private.

Third Parties

Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. If you disclose your information to others, whether they are buyers or sellers on our site or other sites throughout the internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Local Dirt does not control the privacy policies of third parties, and you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties where applicable. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

Our web site may contain hyperlinks or "links" to and from other web sites. These web sites may have privacy policies that differ from our Privacy Policy. Our Privacy Policy applies solely to our web site. Please review the online privacy policies of any other web sites that you visit. These links do not imply any affiliation between Local Dirt and the owners of other web sites, or any endorsement, approval or verification of any content contained on other web sites.

General

We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on this site. All amended terms automatically take effect 30 days after they are initially posted on the site. In addition, we will notify you through a Local Dirt Message. If you have further questions, you may contact us online.