Privacy & Security Policy

1. 1. Our basic pledge
2. 2. Necessary Disclosure
3. 3. Sharing of Information
4. 4. Contests
5. 5. Surveys

1. 1. Application & Account Information
2. 2. E-mail Communications and Opting-out
3. 3. MENAFN Alliances and Promotions
4. 4. Browsers and Encryption
5. 5. Security Issues
6. 6. Cookies, GIFs and other Web Tools

During your use of our Site and/or upon opening an account with us, we will collect various information about you, your browsing behaviors, what services you use and what links you click on ("Personal Information"). We use this information to provide you with new and better products and services.

The following is our policy regarding privacy of information gathered on this Site and various other links.

1. Our basic pledge. We pledge and undertake to you that:

1. Our collection of Personal Information is limited to what is necessary to administer our business and ensure provision of a satisfactory service. This would include advice regarding various products, services and opportunities that might be of interest to you;
2. We do not, and will not, sell Personal Information to anyone;
3. Personal information will be shared with others only as provided for herein;
4. Whilst collecting any Personal Information from you, we will refer to this pledge and explain to you how we intend to use the information that you provide to us. We will only use the information for the purposes that we have identified, for the purpose of providing you with additional information about relevant products and services or to evaluate your financial needs;
5. We will continuously reevaluate our privacy and security policies and we will inform by email all registered users who have provided us with their email addresses of such changes; and
6. We will allow you to review and update any Personal Information that we hold about you

2. Necessary Disclosure. In situations where we do believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary by reason of:

1. Pursuant to the law or valid requests from law enforcement authorities;
2. To perform necessary credit checks;
3. To collect debts owed to us;
4. To protect our rights or property, or
5. Upon reasonable request by a mutual fund in which you have chosen to invest, we reserve the right to disclose such required information.

3. Sharing of Information.   In order to provide you with better products and services that cater to your needs, we may choose to shares Personal Information with our agents, subcontractors or affiliates. Companies or third parties hired to provide support services or to act as our agent are required to conform to our privacy standards. All employees with access to Personal Information are subject to a confidentiality agreement with MENAFN and strict regulations to ensure that the use of such Personal Information is for business purposes only. On occasion we may assist a company that is not affiliated with MENAFN in providing or offering a product or service to you. For example, if you are a mutual fund customer, we may share personal information with the mutual fund company or its agents or affiliates. In such circumstances, marketing materials will include instructions on how you can request not to receive those communications in the future. In all cases your personal information is protected by strict confidentiality undertakings or agreements. We do not allow any non-affiliated company to retain your Personal Information longer than necessary to provide the product, service, or information, unless you affirmatively grant us permission to do so.

4. Contests. We sometimes offer contests in which certain personal information is required for registration. If the contest is being administered by a third party, this information will be disclosed to that third party. However, entrants are instructed to choose contest names different from their login names and information is not linked in any way to their login names.

5. Surveys. We may ask registered users to participate in surveys intended at obtaining general information about the users of our Site.  Participation in such surveys is completely voluntary.  In addition, some columnists will on occasion take polls of their readers.  Such polls are solely for editorial use of the columnists and participation is also voluntary.

Top of Policy

1. 1. Application & Account Information
2. 2. E-mail Communications and Opting-out
3. 3. MENAFN Alliances and Promotions
4. 4. Browsers and Encryption
5. 5. Security Issues
6. 6. Cookies, GIFs and other Web Tools

1.    Application & Account Information

Customers applying online for an account have the choice to opt out of the application process before completion. Nevertheless, information gathered during this process may be used to send you information regarding MENAFN and the services and products provided throughout. You will be notified of this during the application process.

If you have any concerns about the personal or account information held by us about you, please feel free to communicate your concerns to us. In addition, if you have any comments or would like to modify, edit, correct any such information, please email us with this respect and we will see to it immediately.

2.   E-mail Communications and Opting out

Communication between MENAFN and its customers through emails is important. Emails sent to us from our secured Sites are encrypted with SSL technology. However, any email sent to us from outside the secured Sites is not protected, so please do not include any account details or personal information in such emails.

In your account agreement we reserve the right to send you emails containing important information relating to your account. Sometimes we might ask for your permission to send other information to you by email.

We may use your email address to send you news and information about services and products that we believe may be of interest to you. This will be done via unencrypted emails. You can opt out from receiving such emails by logging onto the Site and contacting us respectively.

3.    MENAFN Alliances and Promotions

When MENAFN joins with another company to offer or provide products and services, both parties may cross-reference their databases to search for customers in common. This existing information may be used to help identify business alliance opportunities and to enhance the information already contained in the existing databases.

MENAFN on its own, or jointly with other organizations and web sites, may offer contests, sweepstakes, and promotions. You may be asked to supply additional personal information to participate in these promotional events, which may then be used by the sponsoring parties for marketing purposes. Even if you have previously opted not to receive information or mailings about MENAFN, you may still receive information about MENAFN via these promotions if you choose to register for them. Rules and guidelines for each promotion will be clearly posted, as will notification about how the information gathered may be used. You may opt not to participate in these special promotions if you do not want to receive information about MENAFN or share your information with all sponsoring parties.

4.    Browsers and Encryption

Personal Information entered on our Sites is encrypted using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to protect it as it crosses the Internet. Strong encryption applications are recommended to support an SSL-capable browser. The use of a 128-bit browser like Netscape 4.06 or higher or Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.01 or higher automatically activates SSL when you sign onto your MENAFN account. To ensure that you are visiting a secure area within a web site there is a symbol on the bottom of the browser window. A lock or key will appear if you are using either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer and when the symbol appears unbroken or the padlock is in the locked position then the transfer of information is done via a secure server.

Should you need a strong encryption browser, the most updated version of either Netscape or the Microsoft can be downloaded from the Internet. We do not recommend the use of beta browser versions.

Please do not attempt under any circumstance to use software, programs, applications, or any other devices to access or log-in to the MENAFN web site, or to automate the process of obtaining, downloading, transferring, or transmitting any content to or from MENAFN's computer systems, web site, or proprietary software.

5.    Security Issues

You may only access your account through the use of a password which you should keep private, never share it with anyone and continue to change it periodically through our Site. Your passwords must:

• Be at least 6-8 characters long
• Contain no symbols (!, %, #, etc.)

In the event that you should forget your password, please contact one of MENAFN's representatives on Click here

For added security, it is recommended that you always log off after you have finished using your MENAFN account. This ensures that no one else accesses your account if you leave your computer unattended and your session has not "timed out" or automatically shut down.

6.    Cookies, GIFs and Other Web Tools

Through the use of cookies, GIFs and other web tools, we try to make interaction with our Site as easy and meaningful as possible. They allow us for example to collect information about where your browser goes and whether you use certain features of our Site. We may use the information collected by such tools to improve navigation, revise our services to suit your needs and target emails and messages to you based on your preferences and previous activities. Knowing where your browser has been on our Site helps us present useful information and offers to you.

Standing alone, cookies, GIFs and other web tools, as well as data derived from them, do not identify you personally. They merely recognize your browser. Unless you choose to identify yourself either by responding to a promotional offer, opening an account, or registering for an online service you remain an anonymous user.

Cookies

When accessing our Site, the web server will automatically send your computer a cookie.

A cookie is simply an electronically transmitted file that holds small pieces of information. When you navigate through our web site, your browser "requests" pages for you to view, and those requests will include the information stored in the cookie we previously sent to your computer. This process is like an electronic "handshake" between MENAFN's system and your computer; the information exchanged allows us to recognize your browser. For example, if you go to one of the links provided for and ask you to read the terms and conditions related thereto, once you click and confirm that you've read them that fact is reflected in a cookie, so if you visit us again with the same browser we won't ask you to read it again.

There are mainly two types of cookies. "Persistent cookies" which continue to be embedded on your browser after you have closed it. They contain information which identifies whether you have been to our Site before or whether you are a MENAFN customer. "Session Cookies" are cookies that disappear once you close your browser. They contain encrypted or encoded information about your identifying information and account details in order to allow us to process your information more efficiently.

GIFs

"Graphics Interchange Format" files, commonly known as 'GIFs' are used to recognize users and collect and transmit information online. On the Web, GIFs allow us to keep your session active while you may be using various services so that you will not have to log in again when you return to our Site. In an email message, a GIF allows us, for example, to determine if your email reader is HTML capable or how fast your connection to the Internet is. This allows us to deliver content in a format most appropriate to your computer's capabilities.

Links

When we include links to services or products on other web pages we may embed a code that allows us to know whether you clicked on that link. We do this so that we can personalize your experience, such as recognizing you when you reach the web page you clicked to, or by displaying information and content we believe will be relevant to you. We also do this to measure the effectiveness and usefulness of our advertisements and the messages we send, and we use this information to continually improve the way we communicate.