Privacy Policy

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY!

PRIVACY POLICY AND CONSENT
The Bay Area Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau ("BAHCVB") respects the privacy and confidentiality of individuals who visit the BAHCVB web site located at www.visitbayareahouston.com. The BAHCVB maintains this Privacy Policy to help you understand the commitment of BAHCVB to safeguard the privacy of the information you provide to the BAHCVB on the BAHCVB Website. This Privacy Policy outlines the information which BAHCVB will collect from you, via our hosting company, Galveston.com, on the BAHCVB Website and how BAHCVB will use that information.

YOUR CONSENT
By using the BAHCVB Website, you consent to the collection and use of the above-described information by BAHCVB (and Galveston.com, in which case, once such Galveston.com is in possession of your information, we can not control such Galveston.com use of your information). If you do not agree with the terms and conditions stated in this Privacy Policy, please do not access or use the BAHCVB Website.

COLLECTION OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION BY BAHCVB
The BAHCVB’s mission is to provide you with personalized services and offerings designed to enhance your Bay Area Houston experience. To do so effectively, BAHCVB collects the following information:

(a) Personally Identifiable Information. BAHCVB, through the use of the BAHCVB Website, only collects personally identifiable information about you when you voluntarily provide such personally identifiable information to BAHCVB using the BAHCVB Website. If you do not wish your personally identifiable information to be collected, please do not submit it.

(b) Information from the Use of "Cookies". The BAHCVB Website employs "cookie" technology. Cookies are small pieces of data stored in files on your computer allowing the BAHCVB Website to track your use of the BAHCVB Website as you visit and revisit the BAHCVB Website. The use of cookies by the BAHCVB Website complies with generally accepted programming standards and practices. Please note that you can choose to block the use of cookies through settings in your web browser but be advised that certain features of the BAHCVB Website may not work properly without them.

USE OF YOUR INFORMATION BY BAHCVB
It is the policy of the BAHCVB not to sell, share, transfer, or rent to third parties any information you provide to the BAHCVB, through the use of the BAHCVB Website, without your written consent except as required by operation of the law or in compliance with legal authorities; provided, however the BAHCVB may share your personal information with certain third parties ("Galveston.com") without your written consent in order to further the purpose for which you voluntarily provide the BAHCVB with the information. Additionally, the BAHCVB engages third party information management service providers to help maintain efficient operations. Because such information management service providers may access our systems, such information management service providers may have access to your information. The BAHCVB makes reasonable attempts to protect and preserve the ownership of information maintained about you within the BAHCVB systems and databases by entering into agreements which retain ownership of the information and require these information management service providers to sign confidentiality agreements regarding the information found in our systems. The BAHCVB cannot, however ensure the compliance with these agreements, nor the protection of such information in the hands of parties other than the BAHCVB.

The BAHCVB routinely collects, compiles, and reports statistics and information reflecting the use of the BAHCVB Website and information services in order to enhance membership services, advertising services, improve marketing and promotional efforts, analyze BAHCVB Website usage, improve the BAHCVB Website’s content and layout, generate aggregate reports on trends, interests and behavior and enhance service offerings.

The BAHCVB reserves the right to take any action the BAHCVB deems prudent or necessary to safeguard the BAHCVB Website and your information in the BAHCVB systems and databases from malicious or unwarranted attack by viruses, hackers, or other miscreants.

CONTESTS ON WWW.VISITBAYAREAHOUSTON.COM
To participate in any available current contests, you may go to www.visitbayareahouston.com to fill out an entry form. Entry form will be on the contest page. The BAHCVB is not responsible for entries not received due to difficulty accessing the internet, service outages or delays, computer difficulties or other technological glitches.

Contests are open to all who are 18 years of age or older. Employees of the BAHCVB, advertising agencies and participating sponsors/promotional partners are ineligible to participate or win. The BAHCVB does not sell, lease, exchange or disclose your personally identifiable information with third-party non-affiliated persons other than our sponsors or partners, unless it is required by law or disclosure is necessary to those persons that operate our websites, manage our contests/events and conduct prize fulfillment ("operational providers") and to protect the safety of our visitors, employees or property.

The BAHCVB may provide aggregate statistics about our contestants, traffic patterns and related website information to reputable third-party vendors but these statistics will not include personally identifying information.

Decisions of BAHCVB management with respect to the contests are final.

Contest winner(s) are chosen at random. Winner(s) will be contacted by phone and e-mail. If the winner(s) cannot be contacted within 72 hours after the prize is awarded, an alternate winner will be selected.

Odds of winning depend upon the number of eligible entries received. Payments of all federal, state and local taxes are solely the responsibility of the winner. Winners may be required to sign an IRS Form W-9 or the equivalent.

The BAHCVB, in its sole discretion, reserves the right to disqualify any person tampering with the entry process, the operation of the BAHCVB Web Site or who is otherwise in violation of the rules. BAHCVB further reserves the right to cancel, terminate or modify the contest if it is not capable of completion as planned, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention or technical failures of any sort. Failure to comply with the contest rules may result in a contestant’s disqualification, at the sole discretion of the BAHCVB.

The BAHCVB is not responsible for typographical or other errors in the printing, the offering or the administration of the contest or in the announcement of a prize.

COLLECTION AND USE OF YOUR INFORMATION BY THIRD PARTIES
Please note that third parties offer goods and services on and through the BAHCVB Website. The BAHCVB does not have any responsibility for their privacy practices.

CHANGING AND DELETING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
You may request the BAHCVB change or delete your personal information in BAHCVB systems and databases by submitting a detailed description of the desired action to the following e-mail address: info@bahcvb.org

Please note that after the BAHCVB processes a change or deletes your personal information from active BAHCVB systems and databases, it is possible that non-active residual copies of your information may still exist in BAHCVB systems and on archive or backup media.

ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTERS
We offer free, electronic newsletters, updates and e-mail reminders as a service to our registrants, based upon your voluntary subscription. You will only receive an electronic newsletter if you have requested it (opted-in). We do not share our mailing lists with any third parties.

GENERAL PRIVACY GUIDELINES
We use your Personal Information to provide you with the features, services, or goods you request. We will also use your Personal Information to notify you about updates, new features, programming and activities that may be of interest to you. (We explain below in the next section what our policy is for the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information to Advertisers.)

We may also use your information for hiring, operational and business purposes, or to find out how we can improve our website via surveys or online tracking mechanisms. We use aggregate Personal Information to help us to evaluate and modify existing services and features. We also use your Personal Information to develop new services and features that may be of interest to you.

We will not sell, exchange, rent, lease or otherwise disclose your Personal Information to third party marketers or any such persons that are not associated with the BAHCVB unless it is necessary to: 1) conform to regulatory and legal requirements or to comply with legal process; 2) to protect the safety and security of our users, employees, or property; 3) to defend the rights of the Site or BAHCVB; or 4) to enforce the Terms of Use Agreement.

It is also necessary that we share your Personal Information and Sensitive Personal Information with our operational service providers, the specialists that provide internal marketing support to the BAHCVB and activities in regards to Site design, development, hosting and operations including maintenance, management, storage and/or fulfillment of our membership and e-mail clubs, various contests, sweepstakes, services, events and online stores. We use operational service providers to efficiently provide the full range of content, activities and membership services we bring to you and we request that our operational service providers also protect your privacy and not disclose your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information to third party marketers that are not associated with the BAHCVB or website. Additionally, such providers are not to use your personal Information for their own marketing or promotional purposes.

WEBSITE COLLECTION, USE, AND DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Generally, you may browse this Site without providing any Personal Information. For certain activities the Personal Information you voluntarily provide may include your first/middle and last name, home address, business address, email address, telephone number, mobile phone/text messaging device number, birth date, gender, employer or personal preferences, depending on the activity.

COOKIES
The use of cookies is an industry standard and they are currently used on most websites, including this Site. Cookies are a small text file containing a unique identification number that is transferred from a website to the hard drive of a user’s computer so that the website administrator or a third party operational service provider may identify the computer and passively track the user’s activities on the website. We may share the information we receive from cookies and image tags with third-parties and our Advertisers in aggregate form, which means that such information does not contain specific Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information about any one visitor.

In short, cookies and image tags collect a user’s Internet protocols and server information. Such data files allow our Site to remember your web browser when you visit our Site and are necessary tools for quick and efficient access to membership clubs, awards programs and contests. A cookie will not allow the Site to learn any Personal Information (such as your real name and email address) or Sensitive Personal Information that you have not otherwise disclosed. Cookies and image tags allow the Site to remember important information that will make the Site easier for you to use and helpful in our administration of various activities. We do not use cookies or image tags to collect other Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information unless you give us permission to do so.

You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie or image tag is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all such devices. This is done through your browser. If you turn cookies off, you may not have access to many features at our Site that make your Internet experience more efficient and enjoyable - like the features mentioned above - and some of our other services will not function properly.

CHILDREN’S PRIVACY POLICY
Although persons of all ages may visit our Site and participate in activities that do not require the collection of Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information, we do not knowingly or intentionally collect Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information from children under the age of 13. Except for the limited circumstances listed below, we will automatically reject and delete the registration or entry of any person we believe in good faith to be underage. Any false or fraudulent registration or entry from a minor will be deemed to be ineligible and will disqualify the minor from the receipt of a prize, benefit, or other participation. Except to meet Federal Communications Commission ("FCC"), or other regulatory and legal purposes, we will not use, store, or disclose any child’s Personal Information to a third party without prior parental consent.

This Site may have a special section designed for children or may have contests and prizes that could appeal to children. However, we do not knowingly or intentionally collect personal Information from children. If we unintentionally receive Personal Information from children under the age of 13 in relation to this activity, we will comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 ("COPPA") and reject and destroy such correspondence upon knowledge of such collection, except for the limited circumstances above. For more information about COPPA, please see the Federal Trade Commission’s website: www.ftc.gov.

MONITORING AND USE OF AGGREGATE PERSONAL INFORMATION
We reserve the right to monitor and edit any Personal Information about our users, including information about the use of website activities and services, the contents of users’ email and messages for internal purposes, and when necessary, to disclose to law enforcement personnel, and/or the employer and/or Internet Service Provider of a user that is not in compliance with the Terms of Use Agreement or Privacy Policy. We will take such measures if we believe it is necessary to protect the security, integrity, and operations of this Site. Without disclosure of Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information about individual users, we may provide aggregate statistics about our users, traffic patterns and related website information to Advertisers, reputable third party vendors or marketing companies.

This Site may license third party ad-server software to provide banner advertising on the Site. In such instances we will place cookies on your computer that collect Personal Information, monitor your website or Internet usage via this software and such information will be collected, used, and stored in the same manner that other Personal Information is collected on this Site. The third party software licensor does not have access to your Personal Information.

YOUR QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS
If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or any of BAHCVB’s use of your information, please contact the BAHCVB at the following e-mail address: info@bahcvb.org.

HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM NEWSLETTERS
If you’d rather not receive news and updates via e-mail, simply: Send a blank email to remove-galveston@sonic.sparklist.com and write "unsubscribe" in the subject line, or Send a letter to Bay Area Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau, 20710 Gulf Freeway, STE 40, Webster, TX 77598. You will be removed from our list promptly.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
On occasion the BAHCVB may amend or change this Privacy Policy by updating or revising this posting, with the revised terms taking effect as of the date of its posting.

Posted: June, 2008