Privacy Policy

Welcome to Tech Bench

Tech Bench considers your privacy to be very important. To better protect your privacy, we provide this privacy policy notice (“Privacy Policy”) explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we make it available on our homepage and at every point where personally identifiable information may be requested.

Data We Collect and How It May Be Used

Requested Information. There are pages on this site where we request specific information about you, in order to register you for site membership, process reviews, process transactions, fulfill your requests for information, communicate with you regarding reviews and transactions, and keep your knowledge about our products and services current. You may choose not to provide requested information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of some of the features in our site. Whenever we collect information from you, we may also save such information so that we do not need to ask you for it repeatedly. The types of personal information collected and saved at these pages may include but are not limited to:

Contact Information such as name, email address, postal addresses, and phone / fax numbers. We may use your email address to send you self-publishing and confirmation emails, authenticate user accounts, provide subscription email services, register for forums, etc.

Financial Information such as credit/debit card information. Note that we do not store credit card information. Credit card transactions are securely transmitted to a financial gateway using Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) technology.

Transactional Information as pertaining to your activities in creating reviews, tracking reviews, posting content, monitoring reviews, processing information, etc. Note that all postings are stored in our database, even after “deletion,” and may be further archived elsewhere.

Information you provide as feedback, comments or content in reviews, interactive forums, community discussions, dispute resolution, or if you contact us directly.

Technical Information collected in our website logs including standard web log entries for each page served that contain your IP address, page URL, and timestamp. Our website logs help us to diagnose problems with our server, to administer our site, and to otherwise provide our service to you. Our website logs and other technical records are stored indefinitely.

Membership Information to include your user ID and password, additional identification questions/answers, and your preferences regarding receipt of informational e-mail messages from Tech Bench.

Optional Information supplied voluntarily.

We may invite you to provide business feedback, provide dispute information, participate in voluntary surveys or otherwise supply additional optional information. Responding to these requests is completely voluntary and is your choice. We collect and analyze information voluntarily supplied in order to rate businesses, track and improve service to our customers and potential customers, for internal marketing purposes, and for any additional purposes indicated in the request for information.

We may use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design our website and to share with advertisers. For example, we may tell an advertiser that X number of individuals visited a certain area on our website, or that Y number of men and Z number of women filled out our registration form, but we would not disclose anything that could be used to identify those individuals. We also use this demographic information in evaluating new products that may be made available from Tech Bench.

Automatic collection of information.

Like many web sites, our site may periodically utilize a technology called “cookies” to improve your experience in using the site, as well as our efficiency in processing your transactions. A cookie is a small data file that a web server can deliver to your browser, which is then stored on your computer’s hard drive. Cookies are designed to permit us to provide better or more personalized service when you are visiting our site.

You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, providing you with as much control as you wish as to the decision to accept/reject the cookie, and deletion of the cookie upon leaving our web site. Please note, however, that if your browser does not accept cookies, you may not be able to actually complete review transactions through Tech Bench or make other uses of the site. Please refer to your browser’s help information for details on setting cookie notification services.

Note that we do not employ tracking devices (e.g., cookies, “web beacons,” single-pixel GIF files, etc.) for marketing purposes. We may, however, track computer source information from which people contact us such as Internet domains and IP addresses. We may, from time-to-time, gather information concerning the “referring” domain that was visited prior to viewing our site, and the “destination” domain that may be visited after leaving our site. Information automatically collected is used to identify and analyze the trends and statistics of visits to our web site and to make our web site more responsive to the needs and interests of our customers.

Links to Third Parties’ Sites

This website may contain links to other third party organizations’ websites. Please note that Tech Bench is not responsible for the privacy policy, practices or content of such websites. Our links to third party websites does not imply any endorsement of the material or information on such other sites. Users are encouraged to review the privacy policy of each linked site before sharing personal information on such sites.

Disclosure of Information

Information about our customers is important to our business, and we are not in the business of selling or distributing it to others. We don’t share your information with third parties for marketing purposes. There may be times when we will need to disclose your information to our providers, contractors or distributors for the purpose of processing your transactions or otherwise. Before doing so, we will require the organizations receiving such information to commit to the same level of protection for your information as is provided in this Privacy Policy. We will not knowingly distribute your name, address or other information you provide outside of the Tech Bench family of affiliates, or publicize the fact that you submitted information to us, unless we ask your permission or notify you beforehand, or we are required to do so by law or government order. Finally, we never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways unrelated to those described above without also providing you an opportunity to opt-out or otherwise prohibit such unrelated uses.

Although our general policy is that we do not disclose information that you provide to us, we do reserve the right to access, preserve and disclose any submitted information or otherwise use information we have received about you: (1) in response to subpoenas, court orders, legal process or when otherwise required by law; (2) to establish, protect, or exercise our legal rights or defend any legal claims; (3) to protect our rights and property; (4) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent or take action regarding unauthorized distribution of intellectual property, illegal activities, fraud or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person; (5) to resolve disputes or to investigate problems. We may disclose or access information whenever we believe in good faith that the law so requires or if we consider it necessary to do so to maintain service and improve our website, products and services. Specifically, we may use information such as your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to manage our website or to enhance our website based on usage data.

Choice and Consent

By providing personal and business information on our registration form and by accepting any cookies provided by Tech Bench, you consent to our collection and use of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the provisions of this Privacy Policy, you can refuse to register, refuse to accept cookies, or refuse to volunteer optional information.

Data Security

It is not possible for web sites to achieve perfect security. We do, however, take commercially reasonable physical, electronic, and managerial precautions using widely accepted methods to safeguard the security of your information against inadvertent disclosure to unauthorized persons. Security controls may include standard SSL to protect the security of information transmitted directly through this website. As is generally the case, this protection does not extend to Internet e-mail messages sent outside this website directly to and from individual e-mail addresses.

Note that your Tech Bench membership account is password protected. You understand and agree to keep your login username and password confidential, and accept all consequences and liabilities resulting from your disclosure of such login information. 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 Tech Bench and change your password.

For your protection, our forums use basic web server authentication as well as logout protocols to terminate user sessions.

Our Commitment To Children’s Privacy

Protecting the privacy of the young is especially important and we share the view that children’s use of the Internet and e-mail requires special consideration regarding privacy and information protection. Our site does not generally feature information and services of interest to children or anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect any information from any minors, and we comply with all applicable federal and state privacy laws including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the associated Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules for collecting personal information from minors. We do not knowingly collect any information from persons under the age of 13. If we learn that a posting is by a person under the age of 13, we may remove that post.

International Users

Notwithstanding the fact that you may be accessing the site from a non-Canadian physical location, by visiting our website and providing us with data, you acknowledge and agree that we may collect, store, receive and transmit your data both inside and outside the Canada. You agree that given the international dimension of this site we may use, store, receive and transmit collected data for the purposes identified in this Privacy Policy outside your resident jurisdiction.

Access to your information

You can access all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain through your account home page. We use this method to allow you to correct, amend or delete any inaccurate entries, and to better maintain and safeguard your information.

To protect your privacy and security, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections.