Privacy Policy

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Overall Privacy Statement
Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. Because we gather certain types of information about our users, we feel you should fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we gather, how we use it, and how to correct or change it.

GPAWF respects your privacy
We here at GPAWF intend to give you as much control as possible over your personal information. In general, you can visit our portal and forums without telling us who you are or revealing any information about yourself. There are times, however, when we may need information from you, such as your username, email address and birthday.

If you choose to give us personal information via the Internet in order to participate in our forums, it is our intent with this privacy statement to let you know how we will use such information.

Other Web Sites
GPAWF is a community of Christian musicians and may contain links to other Web sites that are associated with the interests of Christian musicians. These might include links to churches, Christian band sites, other forums, personal home pages, weblogs (blogs) and resources of interest to us as a whole. GPAWF is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Web sites.

The Information GPAWF Gathers and Tracks

We gather two types of identifiable information about users:

1. data that users provide through optional, voluntary registration on our interactive forums and classifieds
2. through optional, voluntary participation in occasional raffles designed to raise funds for the operational expenses of this web site

We also collect aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our site. Such information simply enables us to determine the number of page hits we receive on a daily basis. GPAWF will never divulge information about an individual user to a third party and will never send our members email spam as a result of their membership with us.

GPAWF gathers user information in the following processes:

The use of IP addresses
Our portal and forum software logs IP addresses for systems administration purposes. IP addresses are logged to track a user's session. They are also logged each time a post is made in our forums or classifieds. This allows us to track and take appropriate action against activity that does not adhere to our rules and policies. We do not use IP addresses for any other purpose. Our web host allows us to track the domains from which people visit us. We will occasionally analyze this data for statistical purposes, and then we discard it.

Discussion Forums and Classifieds
GPAWF offers free voluntary registration to users of our Discussion Forums and Classifieds. By registering, users can enter these facilities without having to log on each time and they can take advantage of personalization (the ability to select or edit content according to a user-supplied profile). During registration the user is required to supply a birthday, username, password, and email address. During registration the user has the option of supplying a first name, last name, and other personal details. In addition, the user can opt to have his or her email address and/or URL appear in his or her profile. Although we require all users to set their birthday so that we can maintain our compliancy with COPPA laws in the United States, each user has the ability to prevent that information from being publicly displayed from within their profiles.

Private Messages and Emails
The Private Message and Email Systems are available for all. Their purpose is to take private discussions out of the "general public" view of the forums here at the GPAWF. In the normal course of operations, the GPAWF Webmaster, Technical Admin and Moderators DO NOT have access to the private messages of members. However, if any member here receives a Private Message or Email from another member via this site, and they feel the PM or Email is offensive, intimidating, harassing, of a proselytizing or promoting nature of another religion, or of what could be deemed a cult from another member here, they are strongly encouraged to notify the webmaster immediately by forwarding the offending Private Message or Email to him.

This policy is meant to protect our membership. Under such circumstances, GPAWF Admin and Moderators can, and do, reserve the right to read Private Messages and Email whenever any member wishes to bring inappropriate behavior to our attention. Our Private Message and Email Systems will not be utilized as a tool to skirt around the rules and protocols here at the GPAWF. Anyone sending such a PM or Email, if such PM or Email is brought to our attention, will be dealt with by the GPAWF Administration. Likewise, if it meets certain criteria as set forth by the laws of the United States, or International law (as applicable), the offending PM and/or Email will be turned over to the appropriate authorities along with the username and email address of the offender, the recorded IP address at the time of instigation, and whatever other applicable data we can provide.

Abuse of the GPAWF Private Message and/or Email Systems will not be tolerated!

COPPA (Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act) and children under 13
In compliance with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) laws governing online services, GPAWF requires a completed COPPA permission form be provided to our webmaster by a verifiable parent or legal guardian of any registrant under 13 years of age. Until we receive such a form, the child will not be allowed to post and no part of his or her profile will be publicly visible. More detail about COPPA can be found in our Registration Agreement and from the child's User Control Panel (UserCP). This site makes use of a required birth date upon registration to determine COPPA status of the registrant. If the date set falls below 13 years at the time of initial registration, the system will set a cookie on the registrant's computer to flag them as a COPPA registrant. You must manually clear (delete) the cookie on the computer to remove the COPPA restrictions on our web site. Methods of doing so vary by web browser.

United States Federal Law pertaining to COPPA and public web sites can be found here:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.htm

Polling
The members of GPAWF may from time to time post interactive polls in conjunction with forum posts so they can easily share their opinions with other members and see what their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ believe about various issues of interest to them. The software will use a Cookie to "tag" users after they have voted, so they vote only once on a particular question.

Cookies

A cookie is a small data file that certain Web sites write to your hard drive when you visit them. A cookie file can contain information such as a user ID that the site uses to track the pages you've visited. But the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. GPAWF uses cookies when you register as a member for our Discussion Board and Classifieds.

Turning cookies off
If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. You do not need to have cookies turned on to view our web site, however the Discussion Forums and Classifieds may not function correctly if you do turn cookies off.

Opt-out Policy
GPAWF gives users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include: Opting not to provide certain personal information when registering for the Discussion Board and Classifieds. Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need for any information from our users

Correct/update policy
GPAWF offers users the ability to correct or change the information collected during registration for any interactive area (see above). The instructions for doing this can be found in the online help section for each member's profile, which is found from the "UserCP" link in our Discussion Forums. Users may change this information at any time and as often as necessary. Users who are experiencing problems or who have any questions about how our services work can contact us at gpawf@yahoo.com, or use the "contact us" link found at the bottom of any page.

Contact Guitarists Praise and Worship Forum
Email: gpawf@yahoo.com
or click the "Contact Us" link found at the bottom of any page.

In Christ's Love,
stephen
GPAWF!!! webmaster