We do provide your information to appropriate Great Rivers & Routes members who can be helpful in accordance with your inquiry, for example, if you are planning an individual or group visit, seeking relocation information, planning a meeting or special event, etc.

INFORMATION COLLECTION & USE

Registration

In order to use this Web site, request more information, and/or sign up for certain services at our Web site, you must first complete a registration form (and/or in some cases create a user name and password.) During registration you are required to give contact information (such as name and email address). We use this information to contact you about the partners and services on our site in which you have expressed interest. You have opportunities to provide additional information to us; we encourage you to submit this information so we can provide you a more personalized experience on our site. Great Rivers & Routes is the sole owner of the information collected on www.riversandroutes.com.

Tell-A-Friend and e-Postcards

If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site and/or send a friend an e-Postcard, 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. Great Rivers & Routes stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our referral program.

COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE SITE

Special Offers and Updates

We will occasionally send you information on events, partners, products, services, special deals, promotions. Out of respect for your privacy, we present the option not to receive these types of communications. Please see the "Choice and Opt-out."

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.

Customer Service

Based upon the personally identifiable information you provide us, we will send you a welcoming email. We will also communicate with you in response to your inquiries, to provide the services you request, and to manage your account.

Profile

We store information that we collect through cookies, log files, clear gifs and/or third party sources to create a "profile" of your preferences. We sometimes tie your personally identifiable information, and/or your purchasing history, 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 or any personal information with other third parties.

Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable)

We share aggregated demographic information about our user base with our partners and advertisers. This information does not identify individual users. We do not link aggregate user data with personally identifiable information.

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

We provide you the opportunity to "opt-out" of having your personally identifiable information used for certain purposes, when we ask for this information. 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@riversandroutes.com. 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 click stream 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 sometimes link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information. We use a third-party tracking service that uses cookies to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors to our site in the aggregate.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user's computer for record-keeping purposes. We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. We use session 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.

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 contests or surveys or myPlaces, will be limited. This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by Great Rivers & Routes only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Clear GIF's (Web Beacons/Web Bugs)

We and/or our third party advertising partner(s) employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs), that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user's computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We do not tie the information gathered by clear gifs to our customers' personally identifiable information.

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 our advertising partner(s). We share Web site usage information about users with a reputable third party for the purpose of targeting our Internet banner advertisements on this site. Our advertising partner(s) use(s) cookies and clear GIFs on this site, which allow it/them to recognize a user's cookie when a user visits this site. The information that is collected and shared through this technology is not personally identifiable.

Links to Other Sites

This Web site contains links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by visitalton.com. Please be aware that we, Great Rivers & Routes, 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 correct, update, delete or deactivate it by making the change on our member information page or by emailing us at info@riversandroutes.com.

Changes in this Privacy Statement

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, 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: info@riversandroutes.com or Great Rivers & Routes CVB, Attn: Web Privacy Policy, 200 Piasa Street, Alton, IL 62002.