Privacy & Discussion Policies

There are a number of places on our Web sites where we ask for your e-mail address. This is for our own internal use. We promise not to sell your e-mail address to any outside party or to drive you crazy with spam.

Multi-Housing News (MHN) and Commercial Property Executive (CPE) are committed to safeguarding your privacy online. Please read the following policy to understand how your personal information will be treated as you make full use of our many offerings. This policy may change from time to time so please check back periodically.

This policy will let you know:

What personally identifiable information of yours is collected
What cookies are and how they are used
How your information is used
Who is collecting your information
With whom your information may be shared
What choices are available to you regarding collection, use, and distribution of your information
How you can access or update your information
How MHN & CPE treat your personal financial information
The kind of security precautions that are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of your information
How MHN & CPE protects children’s privacy
What else should I know about my privacy

What personally identifiable information does MHN & CPE collect from me?

MHN & CPE collect information in several ways from different parts of our network of Web sites.

Some personal information is gathered when you register. During registration, MHN & CPE ask for your name, e-mail address, and other personal information. The more information you volunteer (and the more accurate it is), the better we are able to customize your experience. Once you register you are no longer anonymous to MHN or CPE and are able to take full advantage of MHN & CPE’s many offerings.

In addition to registration we may ask you for personal information at other times, including (but not limited to) when you enter a contest or promotion sponsored by MHN or CPE and/or our many partners; when you make a purchase at our store and when you report a problem with one of our sites or services. MHN & CPE also occasionally asks users to complete surveys that we use for internal research. Wherever MHN & CPE collects personal information we make an effort to include a link to this Privacy Policy on that page.

What are cookies and how does MHN & CPE use them?

As part of offering and providing customizable and personalized services, MHN & CPE may use cookies to store and sometimes track your information. A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a Web server and may be stored on your computer’s hard drive. If you choose to have MHN or CPE remember your user name and password we will require that you accept cookies. (See “What are my choices regarding collection, use, and distribution of my information?” for more information on cookies.)

Generally, we use cookies to:

Remind us of who you are and to access your account information (stored on our computers) in order to deliver to you a better and more personalized service. Estimate our audience size. Each browser accessing MHN & CPE may be given a cookie which is then used to determine the extent of repeat usage, usage by a registered user versus by an unregistered user, and to help target ads based on user interests and behavior. Assist us to track visits to and business at the MHN & CPE store, and to process the items in your shopping basket. Track your progress and number of entries in some of our promotions and contests.

When a MHN or CPE -hosted promotion uses cookies, the information written to the cookie may be used to track entries, submissions, and status in award drawings; measure certain traffic patterns; track the areas of MHN & CPE’s network of Web sites you have visited; track the Web site through which you came to MHN or CPE and your visiting patterns in the aggregate.

We use this research to understand how our users’ habits are similar or different from one another so that we can make each new experience on MHN & CPE a better one. We may use this information to better personalize the content, banners, and promotions that you and other users will see on our sites.

Advertising networks that serve ads onto MHN or CPE sites may also use their own cookies.
MHN & CPE also collects IP addresses for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers.

How does MHN & CPE use my information?

MHN & CPE’s primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide you, the user, with a customized experience on our network of sites. This includes personalization services, interactive communications, online shopping and many other types of services, most of which are completely free to you. In order to provide services free of charge, we display advertisements. By knowing a little about you, MHN & CPE is able to deliver more relevant advertisements and content and hence better service, to you.

In our role of delivering targeted advertisements, MHN & CPE plays the middleman. Advertisers give us an advertisement and tell us the type of audience they want to reach (for example, males over 35 years old). MHN & CPE takes the advertisement and displays it to users meeting those criteria. In this process, the advertiser never has access to individual account information. Only MHN & CPE has access to individuals’ accounts. This kind of advertisement targeting is done with banner ads as well as promotional e-mail. You will only receive special offers via e-mail from MHN & CPE if you have indicated during registration that you would like to receive them. You can change your preferences at any time.

MHN & CPE does internal research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behavior based on the information provided to us upon registration, during a promotion, or from our server log files. We do this to better understand and serve our users. This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregated basis.

Who is collecting information?

When you are on a MHN & CPE site and are asked for personal information, you are sharing that information for use by MHN & CPE alone, unless it is specifically stated otherwise. Some MHN & CPE services may be offered in conjunction with a partner company. In order to provide this service to you, it may be necessary for us to share your personal information with our partner company. In such cases you will be notified prior to the time of the data collection or transfer. If you do not want your data to be shared, you can choose not to allow the transfer by not using that particular service.

Promotions that run on MHN & CPE may be sponsored by companies other than MHN & CPE or may be cosponsored by MHN & CPE and another company. Some or all data collected during a promotion may be shared with the sponsor. If data will be shared, you will be notified prior to the time of data collection or transfer. You can decide not to participate in the promotion if you don’t want your data to be shared. Currently, most MHN & CPE promotions are limited to US or North American residents.

Please be aware that MHN & CPE advertisers or Web sites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. The information practices of those Web sites linked to MHN & CPE are not covered by this privacy statement.

With whom does MHN & CPE share my information?

As a general rule, Multi-Housing News and Commercial Property Executive will not disclose any of your personally identifiable information except when we have your permission or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it or under the circumstances described below. The following describes some of the ways that your information may be disclosed.

Business Partners & Sponsors: Multi-Housing News and Commercial Property Executive may disclose your personal information to business partners or sponsors, but this is specifically described to you prior to data collection or prior to transferring the data. Some or all data collected during a MHN & CPE promotion may be shared with a sponsor. If personally identifying data about you will be shared, we will tell you before we collect or transfer the data.

Many promotions offer opportunities to request additional information from sponsors. By requesting more information, you give MHN & CPE permission to transfer your personal information to the sponsor so they can fulfill your request. In many instances, only your e-mail address will be shared.

MHN & CPE Store: If you make a purchase from a MHN & CPE store, the information obtained during your visit to the store, and the information you give such as your credit card number and contact information, may be provided to a merchant if necessary to process your transaction.

Third Party Data & Data in the Aggregate: Under confidentiality agreements, MHN & CPE may match user information with third party data. Also, MHN & CPE discloses aggregated user statistics (for example, 45% of our users are female) in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes.

Other: MHN & CPE may also disclose user information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) MHN & CPE rights or property, other MHN & CPE users, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities. MHN & CPE may disclose user information when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.

What are my choices regarding collection, use, and distribution of my information?

If you indicated upon registration that you are interested in receiving offers or information from MHN & CPE and our partners, we may occasionally send you e-mail or postal mail about products and services that we feel may be of interest to you. Only MHN & CPE (or agents working on behalf of MHN & CPE and under confidentiality agreements) will send you these direct mailings and only if you indicated that you do not object to these offers. If you do not want to receive such mailings, simply tell us when you give us your personal information.

Or, at any time you can easily edit your MHN & CPE registration information to no longer receive such offers and mailings. You will need your MHN & CPE username and password in order to access your MHN & CPE registration information.

On some types of MHN & CPE promotions, we will ask for your e-mail address in order to update you on your score, entries, and status in award drawings. When you participate in these types of promotions, you may automatically receive promotion-related e-mail. Occasionally these promotion-related e-mail messages may include targeted advertisements.

You also have choices with respect to cookies. By modifying your browser preferences, you have the choice to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set, or to reject all cookies. If you choose to reject all cookies you will be unable to use those MHN & CPE services that require the use of cookies in order to participate. These services may include (but are not limited to): special arrangements with other sites, discussion groups, and the MHN & CPE store.

MHN & CPE does not sell or rent user information to anyone. We will notify you at the time of data collection or transfer if your data will be shared with a third party and you will always have the option of not permitting the transfer. If you do not wish to allow your data to be shared, you can choose not to use a particular service or not to participate in certain promotions or contests.

What is MHN & CPE policy on allowing me to correct and update my personally identifiable information?

You may edit your MHN & CPE registration information at any time by using your MHN & CPE username and password.

How does MHN & CPE protect my personal financial information?

Keeping your personal financial information private is vitally important to us. As with all personal information, MHN & CPE will never rent or sell your personal financial information. Knowing that you use certain services or features may help us to offer you better and more relevant content and advertisements. But as with all personally identifiable information, we do not make this available to any third parties without your permission.

Please note that there may be places on the MHN & CPE network of Web sites where you can transmit credit card information in order to complete a purchase transaction or for verification purposes. Any time we ask for a credit card number we transmit that credit card number in an encrypted format. We use industry-standard, SSL (secure socket layer) encryption.

What security precautions are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of my information?

Your MHN & CPE registration information is password-protected so that you and only you have access to this personal information. You may edit your MHN & CPE registration information by using your MHN & CPE username and password.

We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. MHN & CPE will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or in an unsolicited e-mail. We recommend that you should not ask MHN & CPE to remember your username or password on a computer that can be accessed by others. This is to ensure that others cannot access your personal information and correspondence if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place like a library or Internet cafe.

Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, MHN & CPE cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.
What about children’s privacy?

Naturally, the safety of children is very important to us. Children should always ask a parent for permission before sending personal information to MHN & CPE, or to anyone online for that matter. MHN & CPE does not share personal information about users under the age of 13 with third parties and we do not sell or rent personal information about any of our users, regardless of age. In addition, MHN & CPE will not send any direct e-mail offers to users who indicate they are under the age of 13 without first obtaining their parents’ permission.

What else should I know about my privacy?

Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online–for example on message boards, through e-mail, or in chat areas–that information can be collected and used by others. In short, if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.
Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and/or any registration information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you’re online.