Privacy Policy

Gilbert Guide is a licensee of the TRUSTe Web Privacy Seal Program. TRUSTe is an independent organization whose mission is to build user's trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the Web site http://www.gilbertguide.com. Because this Web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact Jason Gilbert at (415) 668-1532 or jason@gilbertguide.com. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns.

Information Collection & Use

Registration
In order to utilize certain functionality on this Web site, you must first complete the registration form and create a user name and password. During registration you are required to give contact information (such as name and email address) and other demographic information (such as zip code and role in caregiving process). We do not currently use this information for any specific purpose but will, from time to time, add site features that utilize this information to personalize content based on your demographic.

Gilbert Guide distributes newsletters on a regular basis. Registering on this Web site automatically registers you to receive the newsletter, which contains articles relevant to senior care issues and topics. Out of respect for your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe. Please see the "Choice and Opt-out" section.

Gilbert Guide is the sole owner of the information collected on GilbertGuide.com. Gilbert Guide collects personally identifiable information from our users at several different points on our Web site.

Tell-A-Friend
If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend's name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. Gilbert Guide stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email.

Your friend may contact us at info@gilbertguide.com to request that we remove this information from our database.

Comments and Reviews
This Web site allows users to contribute comments on articles and reviews of senior care providers listed in our national directory. This information is solely for the purposes of discussion and the education of other readers of this Web site.

If you provide comments or reviews on this Web site, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums.

Uses of Information
This Web site provides information summaries and the opinions of the reviewers about various long-term care facilities and services ("listings") and is intended to provide a convenience to readers by aggregating and summarizing large amounts of information about listings in various regions around the U.S. Personally identifiable information provided by users on this Web site is never displayed on screen. Aggregated, non-personally identifiable information is used by Gilbert Guide to tailor the content on the site to meet the needs and interests of our readers.

Communications from the Site

Newsletters
If you wish to subscribe to our newsletter(s), we will use your name and email address to send the newsletter to you. Out of respect for your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe. Please see the "Choice and Opt-out" section.

Service-related Announcements
We will send you strictly service-related announcements on rare occasions when it is necessary to do so. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send you an email.

Generally, you may not opt-out of these communications, which are not promotional in nature. If you do not wish to receive them, you have the option to deactivate your account. You may opt-out of these communications. Please see the "Choice and Opt-out" section.

Customer Service
Based upon the personally identifiable information you provide us, we will send you a welcoming email to verify your username and password. We will also communicate with you in response to your inquiries, to provide the services you request, and to manage your account. We will communicate with you by email or telephone, in accordance with your wishes.

Profile
We store information that we collect through cookies, log files, clear gifs, to create a "profile" of your preferences. We do not tie your personally identifiable information to information in the profile, in order to provide tailored promotions and marketing offers and to improve the content of the site for you.

We do not share your profile with other third parties. We share your profile in aggregate form only.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable)
We only share aggregated demographic information with our content providers to more appropriately focus new content development to what our readers need or are interested in. This information does not identify individual users. Content providers are the individuals or companies that write content to be published on this Web site.

We do not link aggregate user data with personally identifiable information.

Personally identifiable information:
We DO NOT Share Personally Identifiable Information with Third Parties unless you make a specific request of Gilbert Guide to share information with a specific party.

Service Providers
We use other third parties to distribute our newsletters. When you sign up to receive our newsletter, we will share your email address as necessary for the third party to provide that service.

These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose.

Legal Disclaimer
We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site.

Choice/Opt-out

If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by emailing us at info@gilbertguide.com. You may contact us via telephone (415-668-1532) or email (info@gilbertguide.com) to have your registration information removed from our Web site.

You will be notified when your personal information is collected by any third party that is not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not to share your information with that party.

Log Files

As is true of most Web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data.

We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users' movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole.

We do not link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information.

We use a third-party tracking service Google Analytics that uses cookies to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors to our site in the aggregate (usage and volume statistics) to inform us of activity on the Web site.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user's computer for record-keeping purposes. We use cookies on this site. We do link the information we store in cookies to personally identifiable information you submit while on our site to pre-fill forms to expedite any information submission you choose to make.

We use session ID cookies and persistent cookies. We use session and/or persistent cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our site. A session ID cookie expires when you close you browser. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser's "help" file. More information on Cookies

We set a persistent cookie to store your passwords, so you don't have to enter it more than once. Persistent cookies also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site.

If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some areas of our site, such as saving your favorite articles or senior care providers, will be limited.

Some of our business partners (e.g., advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies. See "Third Party Advertisers".

This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by GilbertGuide.com (this site) only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Clear Gifs (Web Beacons/Web Bugs)

We use clear gifs in our HTML-based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. If you would like to opt-out of these emails, please see "Choice and Opt-out".

Third Party Advertisers

The ads appearing on this Web site are delivered to users by Caring.com, our advertising partner. We share Web site usage information about users with Caring.com for the purpose of targeting our Internet banner advertisements on this site.

Caring.com does not use cookies or clear GIFs on this site. No personally identifiable information is shared with Caring.com.

Links to Other Sites

This Web site contains links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by Gilbert Guide. Please be aware that we, Gilbert Guide, are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites.

We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information.

This privacy statement applies only to information collected by this Web site.

Access to Personally Identifiable Information

If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may update or deactivate it by emailing our Customer Support at info@gilbertguide.com or by contacting us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed below.

Security

The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, once we receive it. All data is stored on servers in a secure data facility. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can send email us at info@gilbertguide.com.

Business Transitions

In the event Gilbert Guide goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personally identifiable information will likely be among the assets transferred. You will be notified via email 30 days prior of any such change in ownership or control of your personal information.

Changes in this Privacy Statement

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the page, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at:
Telephone: (415) 668-1532
FAX: (415) 422-0569
Email: info@gilbertguide.com
Address: 215 Second Street, Third Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105

Last Updated: August 18, 2008

Additional Site Information: Copyright policies and terms for use of this website can be found here.