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VBOtp Privacy Statement
 Effective Date: September 21, 2004

We recognize and respect your need for privacy and security as you visit and interact with this site. When you visit the VBO public access areas to view any pages, multi-media videos/tutorials, or use interactive forms or tools, you do so without telling us who you are and without revealing any personal information. While we do not
collect identifying information about visitors to our site, we do use standard software to collect information for the strict purpose of tracking activity on our site. This allows us to better understand how many people use our site and which pages and features are most popular.

Member's Only Access Areas:

The VBO member's only access areas, however, do use a tracking technology called cookies.

What's a cookie?
A cookie is a small file that's sent to your computer by a site's server. A cookie can be a record of your visit to a site, including information such as your User Name, time of last visit, pages viewed, etc. Contrary to what you might read elsewhere, cookies cannot get information from your hard drive against your will, destroy files, send you viruses, etc. An important point: Cookies can only contain as much information as you disclose to the site that sent it to you! In our case, that means any information included in your subscription form or that you input during the setup of your Member's Only Access account.. We can also track aggregate -- not individual -- page views, which helps us develop new features and services that our users are interested in.

We employ the use of cookie technology throughout the members only pages, to allow you to move more quickly and securely through our pages. Along with a registration process that uses data encryption, we offer consistently secure, efficient online sessions that allow you to validate your subscription, access and manage your account.  And this is all made possible by cookie technology.

Why do you use cookies?
We use cookies for basic reasons: To allow you to move more quickly and securely through the Member's Only Access area. We accomplish this in many ways, using cookie technology. When you first enter the member's only access area, for example, we use cookie to confirm your browser's ability to retain cookies, check our database to verify your subscription and log the Internet protocol (IP) that your session originates from. A cookie is then temporarily "set" within your browser to allow you to proceed -- without having to ask you for your User Name and Password with each subsequent page you request. Without cookie technology, we wouldn't be able to offer you convenient features such as the ability to store your User Name and Password. Click here to read the full version of our Cookie Disclosure Policy.

Public Forums:
VBOtp makes some public chat rooms, forums, and message boards available to its users. VBO does not ordinarily log public chat sessions, however, any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should therefore exercise caution when deciding to disclose your confidential information in such places.

Scheduled moderated training chat sessions and discussion forums, such as those in the VBO message board forums and chat rooms, may be logged and made available to members for download, print or viewing online and stored in the VBO search archives.

Security of Confidential Account Information:
VBO does its best to ensure that the personal information we have about you is secured. Users with a VBO member's only access account can check and update or change personal information such as their email address and password 24/7. We encourage members to change their account password often for added account security.

Sharing of Information:
Personal information is NEVER shared or sold to external third parties. VBO does share statistical data with military / base installation Family Employment Program Managers in an effort to determine the success of the Virtual Business Owners program at a particular base/installation.

VBO Community Mailing List:
Periodically, VBO sends community news and updates to it's members using a standard mailing list. If a member wishes not to be a part of the community email list, they have the option to unsubscribe. An "Unsubscribe" link is included at the end of each mailing. If a member experiences difficulty unsubscribing they should contact the VBO Help Desk immediately at: http://www.vsscyberoffice.com/cgi-bin/vbottx/ttx.cgi  for assistance.

SPAM:
VBO does not and will not tolerate members spamming other members. If a member is found to be spamming other members, they will immediately be removed from the community without further access.

We hope you find the website and community useful and informative. We are always willing to answer questions and receive suggestions. If you have either, please e-mail the webmaster at (mailto:vbo_project@vsscyberoffice.com). Thank you.

* We reserve the right to change our privacy policy. A revised policy statement will only apply to data collected subsequent to its effective date. Any revisions will be posted at least 30 days prior to its effective date.