General Provisions of Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

 This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) discloses the privacy practices for this Site, which is provided by the United States Billiard Association (referred to as “USBA”, "us" or "we") and is located at http://www.usba.net. USBA is committed to protecting your privacy online. Please read the information below to learn the following regarding your use of this Site:
 

In order to better provide you with our numerous services, we collect two types of information about our users: Personally Identifiable Information and Non-Personally Identifiable Information. Our primary goal in collecting information from you is to provide you with a smooth, efficient, and customized experience while using our Site.
Personally Identifiable Information: This refers to information that lets us know the specifics of who you are. When you engage in certain activities on this Site, such as registering for a membership, ordering a product or service, submitting content and/or posting content in discussion forums or other public areas, filling out a survey, or sending us feedback, we may ask you to provide certain information about yourself by filling out and submitting an online form. It is completely optional for you to engage in these activities. If you elect to engage in these activities, however, we may ask that you provide us personal information, such as your first and last name, mailing address (including zip code), e-mail address, employer, job title and department, telephone and facsimile numbers, and other personal identifying information. When ordering products or services on the Site, you may be asked to provide a credit card number, other information related to the credit card and billing and shipping information. Depending upon the activity, some of the information we ask you to provide is identified as mandatory and some as voluntary. If you do not provide the mandatory data with respect to a particular activity, you will not be able to engage in that activity.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information: This refers to information that does not by itself identify a specific individual. We may gather certain information about you based upon where you visit on our Site in several ways. This information is compiled and analyzed on both a personal and an aggregated basis. This information may include the Web site's Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") that you just came from, which URL you go to next, what browser you are using, and your Internet Protocol ("IP") address. A URL is the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web. An IP address is an identifier for a computer or device on a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol ("TCP/IP") network, such as the World Wide Web. Networks like the Web use the TCP/IP protocol to route information based on the IP address of the destination. In other words, an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the web, allowing web servers to locate and identify your computer. Computers require IP addresses in order for users to communicate on the Internet

We do not collect any Personally Identifiable Information about you unless you voluntarily provide it to us. You provide certain Personally Identifiable Information to us when you:
(a) register for membership and register your e-mail address with us;
(b) sign up for special offers from selected third parties;
(c) send e-mail messages, submit forms or transmit other information by telephone or letter to us; (d) submit your credit card or other payment information when ordering and purchasing products and services on our Site.
We may also collect information from you at other points on our Site that state that such information is being collected.

In addition, we may also collect, or our third party service providers may collect, certain Non-Personally Identifiable Information which may be categorized and stored in various formats and locations, including, in some cases, specific URLs. We use your IP address to diagnose problems with our servers, software, to administer our Site and to gather demographic information. Our third party ad servers will also provide us with summary, but not individual, reports that will tell us how many ads were presented and clicked upon at our Site. We will primarily use your Personally Identifiable Information to provide our services to you, as required by our agreements with you. We will also use Personally Identifiable Information to enhance the operation of our Site, fill orders, improve our marketing and promotional efforts, statistically analyze site use, improve our product and service offerings, and customize our Site's content, layout, and services. We may use Personally Identifiable Information to deliver information to you and to contact you regarding administrative notices. We may also use Personally Identifiable Information to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems and enforce our agreements with you, including our Terms of Use and this Privacy Policy.

We do not sell, trade, or rent your Personally Identifiable Information to others. We do provide some of our services through contractual arrangements with affiliates, services providers, partners and other third parties. Our service partners and we may use your Personally Identifiable Information to operate our Sites and to deliver ours/their services. For example, we and/our service partners must release your credit card information to the card-issuing bank to confirm payment for products and services purchased on this Site; release your address information to the delivery service to deliver products that you ordered; and provide order information to third parties that help us provide customer service. The use of your Personally Identifiable Information by our service partners is governed by the privacy policies of those service partners, and is not subject to our control. Occasionally we may be required by law enforcement or judicial authorities, and local, state or federal governmental agencies (collectively, the “authorities”), to provide Personally Identifiable Information to such authorities. We will disclose Personally Identifiable Information to such authorities upon receipt of a court order or subpoena, or as otherwise required by law, and to cooperate with any law enforcement investigation or investigation or proceedings by such authorities as shall be determined in our sole discretion. We fully cooperate with such authorities in identifying those who use our services for illegal activities. We reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies and other authorities as we may deem appropriate any activities that we in good faith believe to be unlawful, as determined in our sole discretion. We may also provide Non-Personally Identifiable Information about our customers' sales, traffic patterns, and related site information to third party advertisers and services providers, but these statistics do not include any Personally Identifiable Information.

We believe you should have the ability to access and edit the Personally Identifiable Information that you have provided to us. You may change any of your Personally Identifiable Information in your profile (herein referred to as your “profile”) online at any time by linking to your profile in accordance with instructions posted elsewhere on this Site. You may also access and correct your personal information and privacy preferences by writing us at: Privacy Officer, United States Billiard Association, 58 Hawthorne Ave., East Islip, NY 11730. Please include your name, address, and/or e-mail address when you contact us.

We encourage you to promptly update your Personally Identifiable Information if it changes. You may ask to have the information on your profile deleted or removed; however, because we keep track of past transactions, you cannot delete information associated with past transactions on this Site. In addition, it may be impossible to completely delete your information without some residual information being retained because of backups.

We may, from time to time, if we asked at the time you registered on this Site and you indicated upon such registration that you are interested in receiving offers or information from us, send you e-mails and/or direct mail about products and services that we feel may be of interest to you. Only USBA (or agents working on our behalf) will send you such 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 profile information to no longer receive such offers and mailings. You also have choices with respect to cookies, as described below. 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 some parts of our Site may not work properly.

At our Site you can be assured that your Personally Identifiable Information is secure, consistent with current industry standards, subject to the caveats set forth in the paragraph. The importance of security for all Personally Identifiable Information associated with our user is of utmost concern to us. Your Personally Identifiable Information is protected in several ways. Your Personally Identifiable Information resides on a secure server that only selected USBA personnel and contractors have access to via password. Personal information that you provide that is not Personally Identifiable Information also resides on a secure server and is only accessible via password. In order to most efficiently serve you, credit card transactions and order fulfillment are handled by established third party banking, processing agents and distribution institutions. They receive the information needed to verify and authorize your credit card or other payment information and to process and ship your order. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your Personally Identifiable Information, you acknowledge that: (a) there are security and privacy limitations of the Internet which are beyond our control; (b) the security, integrity and privacy of any and all information and data exchanged between you and us through this Site cannot be guaranteed; and (c) any such information and data may be viewed or tampered with in transit by a third party.

When you use our Site we may store cookies on your computer in order to facilitate and customize your use of our Site. A cookie is a small data text file, which a Web site stores on your computer's hard drive (if your Web browser permits) that can later be retrieved to identify you to us. Our cookies store randomly assigned user identification numbers, the country where you are located, and your first name to welcome you back to our Site. The cookies make your use of the Site easier, make the Site run more smoothly and help us to maintain a secure site. You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, but some parts of our Site may not work properly in that case.

Except as otherwise discussed in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. Other sites accessible through our Site have their own privacy policies and data collection, use and disclosure practices. Please consult each site's privacy policy. We are not responsible for the policies or practices of third parties.

You must be at least 13 years old to register to use certain portions of our Site, for example, posting to our public forum. Our policy is that we do not knowingly collect, use or disclose Personally Identifiable Information about visitors that are under 13 years of age. When a person tries to submit his/her registration he/she will be asked to submit the same kind of information as indicated above in the section, “What Information do we collect from you?” When a person submits that information he/she represents to the USBA that that information is completely accurate. Furthermore the information provided by the person and gathered (for instance through the use of cookies) during his/her visit may be used as indicated in the said above section. However, if the information you provide to us about your age indicates that you are a person under the age of 13 and you try to register on our Site, you will not be allowed to register on this. We encourage parents and guardians of children under 13 to regularly check and monitor their children’s online activities.

You should also be aware that when Personally Identifiable Information is voluntarily disclosed (i.e. your name, e-mail address, etc.) in the discussion forums or other public areas on this Site, that information, along with any other information disclosed in your communication, can be collected and used by third parties and may result in unsolicited messages from third parties. Such activities are beyond our control and this Privacy Policy does not apply to such information. Any submissions to public forums or other public areas on this Site are accepted with the understanding that they are accessible to all third parties. If you do not want your comments to be viewed by third parties, you are advised not to make any submissions. Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your password and/or profile information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you are online.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this Site, or your dealings with this Site, please contact us by sending a letter to: Jim Shovak/Privacy Officer, United States Billiard Association, 58 Hawthorne Ave., East Islip, NY 11730. You may also contact us by e-mail at JimShovak@USBA.net.

As required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, we have designated the following individual for notification of potential copyright infringement regarding websites hosted by the USBA: Jim Shovak, 58 Hawthorne Avenue, East Islip, NY 11730, 516-238-6193, f-631-981-2599, JimShovak@USBA.net. If you believe a website hosted by USBA includes material that infringes a copyright, please provide the following information to the person identified above (17 USCA § 512):

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or authorized agent;
2. Identification of the copyrighted work(s) claimed to have been infringed;
3. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of the infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material;
4. Information regarding how we may contact you (for example, mailing address, telephone number, e-mail address);
5. A statement that the copyright owner or its authorized agent has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and made under penalty of perjury, and, if an agent is providing the notification, a statement that the agent is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

This Privacy Policy and all conditions and covenants set forth herein are entered into in the State of California and shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California, exclusive of its choice of law rules. Each person using this Site submits to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts sitting in the County of Santa Clara in the State of California and waives any jurisdictional, venue, or inconvenient forum objections to such courts. In the event that any of the terms of this Privacy Policy are held by a court or other tribunal of competent jurisdiction to be unenforceable, those provisions shall be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary so that the terms of this Privacy Policy shall otherwise remain in full force and effect.