Disclosures

Note: This page is required by the FTC. However, instead of reinventing the wheel, I took the generous offer from Gen Y Finance Guy and Tim Ferris to borrow the text and images from his disclosure page.

This blog is not primarily financially driven. I put it up in 2019 to build a community and share my experiences and learn from other smart readers.

Regardless, beginning December 1, 2009, the FTC requires bloggers to disclose whenever there could be hidden interests or unspoken biases related to recommendations. So here goes…

FTC Disclosure

Per the FTC rules, if I interview someone and they grab the bill for lunch, I would need to disclose this. Ditto if I use an Amazon link that gets me 8 cents instead of an Amazon link that gets me 0 cents. If someone gives me a comfy t-shirt with a logo and I wear it in a photo, the same deal. Disclaimers all over the place. This would be tedious for me and even more tedious for readers. But rules are rules. To cover my ass and preserve your reading experience, please assume that, for every link and product I use, the following all hold true:

General Terms and Conditions applicable to Use of a Web Site

Per FTC guidelines, this website may be compensated by companies mentioned through advertising, affiliate programs, or otherwise. Any references to third party products, rates, or websites are subject to change without notice. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers.

Web Site Terms and Conditions of Use

1. Terms
By accessing this web site, you are agreeing to be bound by these web site Terms and Conditions of Use, all applicable laws, and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. If you do not agree with any of these terms, you are prohibited from using or accessing this site. The materials contained in this web site are protected by applicable copyright and trademark law.

2. Use License
a. Permission is granted to temporarily download one copy of the materials (information or software) on ThriftyHustler.com’s web site for personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only. This is the grant of a license, not a transfer of title, and under this license, you may not:
i. modify or copy the materials;
ii. use the materials for any commercial purpose, or for any public display (commercial or non-commercial);
iii. attempt to decompile or reverse engineer any software contained on ThriftyHustler.com’s web site;
iv. remove any copyright or other proprietary notations from the materials; or
v. transfer the materials to another person or “mirror” the materials on any other server.
b. This license shall automatically terminate if you violate any of these restrictions and may be terminated by ThriftyHustler.com at any time. Upon terminating your viewing of these materials or upon the termination of this license, you must destroy any downloaded materials in your possession whether in electronic or printed format.

3. Disclaimer
a. The materials on ThriftyHustler.com’s web site are provided “as is”. ThriftyHustler.com makes no warranties, expressed or implied, and hereby disclaims and negates all other warranties, including without limitation, implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement of intellectual property or other violation of rights. Further, ThriftyHustler.com does not warrant or make any representations concerning the accuracy, likely results, or reliability of the use of the materials on its Internet web site or otherwise relating to such materials or on any sites linked to this site.

4. Limitations
In no event shall ThriftyHustler.com or its suppliers be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of data or profit, or due to business interruption,) arising out of the use or inability to use the materials on ThriftyHustler.com’s Internet site, even if ThriftyHustler.com or a ThriftyHustler.com authorized representative has been notified orally or in writing of the possibility of such damage. Because some jurisdictions do not allow limitations on implied warranties, or limitations of liability for consequential or incidental damages, these limitations may not apply to you.

5. Revisions and Errata
The materials appearing on ThriftyHustler.com’s web site could include technical, typographical, or photographic errors. ThriftyHustler.com does not warrant that any of the materials on its web site are accurate, complete, or current. ThriftyHustler.com may make changes to the materials contained on its web site at any time without notice. ThriftyHustler.com does not, however, make any commitment to update the materials.

6. Links
ThriftyHustler.com has not reviewed all of the sites linked to its Internet web site and is not responsible for the contents of any such linked site. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by ThriftyHustler.com of the site. Use of any such linked web site is at the user’s own risk.

7. Site Terms of Use Modifications
ThriftyHustler.com may revise these terms of use for its web site at any time without notice. By using this web site you are agreeing to be bound by the then current version of these Terms and Conditions of Use.

8. Governing Law
Any claim relating to ThriftyHustler.com’s web site shall be governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to its conflict of law provisions.

9. Use Of Pictures
You may use the pictures taken by ThriftyHustler.com if you provide a credit link back to ThriftyHustler.com and an e-mail notification or comment on a post that you have done so. However, please note that sometimes I use Creative Commons picture and you must credit the original source (if needed).

10. Legal Age

You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if 1) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Thrifty Hustler, or 2) you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of the United States or other countries including the country in which you are resident or from which you use the Services.

Privacy Policy

Protecting your private information is our priority. This Statement of Privacy applies to the domain www.ThriftyHustler.com & Thrifty Hustler, and governs data collection and usage. For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, unless otherwise noted, all references to Thrifty Hustler include www.ThriftyHustler.com and Thrifty Hustler. The website is a blog on a variety of things such as personal wellness, travel, and personal finance. By using the website, you consent to the data practices described in this statement.

Cookies

The website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of the website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

If the settings on your browser are adjusted to accept cookies, and you continue to use our website, you accept our use of cookies. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can learn how to do this below, however, doing so will likely mean that our site will not work as you would expect.

Our own cookies:

We use cookies to make the website work including:

Determining if you are logged in or not
Remembering your search settings
Remembering if you have accepted our terms and conditions
Allowing you to share and comment on our content

Third party functionality:

The site, like most websites, includes functionality provided by third parties. The site includes the following services which use cookies:

Google

Disabling these cookies will likely break the functions offered by these third parties

Social media cookies:

So you can easily like or share our content on social media, we have included sharing buttons on our site. Cookies are set by:

Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest
Google+

The privacy implications on this will vary from social network to social network and will be dependent on the privacy settings you have chosen on these networks.

Site improvement cookies:

We sometimes test new designs or site features on our site. We do this by showing slightly different versions of our website to different people and anonymously monitoring how our site visitors respond to these different versions. Ultimately this helps us to offer you a better service.

Advertising cookies:

Cookies are widely used in online advertising. Neither us, advertisers or our advertising partners can gain personally identifiable information from these cookies. Advertising cookies may be set by:

DoubleClick – owned by Google
Atlas Solutions – owned by Facebook

DoubleClick DART cookies

We also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads specific to you and your interests (”interest based targeting”). The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (For example, if you have been viewing sites about visiting Las Vegas, you may see Las Vegas hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about hockey). DART uses “non personally identifiable information”. It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers or credit card numbers. You can opt-out of this ad serving on all sites using this advertising by visiting <a href=”http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx</a>

Remarketing cookies:

You may notice that sometimes after visiting a site you see increased numbers of adverts from the site you visited. This is because advertisers, including ourselves, pay for these adverts. We use these adverts to offer special offers to encourage you to come back to the site.

Affiliate cookies:

We promote a number of partners and may be awarded a commission for purchases made through our site. Cookies may be set by us and these providers to record how and when service was accessed through our site.

Thrifty Hustler is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Turning cookies off:

You can learn more about cookies, how to delete them, and how to adjust your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies, by visiting http://www.whatarecookies.com/.

Uses made of the information you supply

This section describes how we may use the contact information you supply to us through requesting content or posting on the Thrifty Hustler comments/message boards.

Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through Thrifty Hustler public message boards (post & comments), this information may be collected and used by others.

Thrifty Hustler encourages you to review the privacy statements of websites you choose to link to from Thrifty Hustler so that you can understand how those websites collect, use, and share your information. Thrifty Hustler is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on websites outside of the Thrifty Hustler website.

We may use information held about you in the following ways:

Information you give us

This includes;

email address;
first and last name;
website address;
other information you choose to divulge.

We will use this information to:

to provide you with the information and content you request;
provide you with information about other content and services that may be of interest to you;
permit carefully selected third parties to provide you with information about content or services we feel may interest you;
notify you about changes to the website;
ensure that content from the site is optimized for you and for your computer.

Information about you

We will use this information:

to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
to improve our site to ensure that content is optimized for you and for your computer;
to allow you to participate in interactive features of our content;
as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
to measure, understand and deliver relevant advertising to you;
to make suggestions about content or services that may interest you or them.

Information we receive from other sources

We may combine the information above with information obtained from other sources for the purposes set out above.

Disclosure of your information

We may share your personal information with any member of our partner network for the purpose of providing or evaluating any relevant services.

We may share your information with selected third parties including:

Business partners, suppliers, and sub-contractors for the performance of any services.
Advertisers and advertising networks that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others.
Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimization of our site.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, personal data we hold may be one of the transferred assets.
If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, enforce or apply any of our terms or other agreements; or to protect our rights, property, or safety of our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Where we store your personal data

All information you provide is stored on secure servers and we endeavor to minimize replication of such data. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site or services, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site and any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent any unauthorized access.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers, and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Access to information

The Act gives you the right to access information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act. Any access request may be subject to a fee to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.

Opt-Out & Unsubscribe

We respect your privacy and give you an opportunity to opt-out of receiving announcements of certain information. Users may opt-out of receiving any or all communications from Thrifty Hustler by contacting us in the reply section below this page.

Changes to this Statement

Thrifty Hustler will occasionally update this Statement of Privacy to reflect company and customer feedback. Thrifty Hustler encourages you to periodically review this Statement to be informed of how Thrifty Hustler is protecting your information.

Contact Information

Thrifty Hustler welcomes your questions or comments regarding this Statement of Privacy. If you believe that Thrifty Hustler has not adhered to this Statement, please contact Thrifty Hustler in the reply section below this page.

Effective as of May 31, 2019

Please feel free to use the text and images on this page with proper attribution. There is no reason why each blogger should have to reinvent the wheel.

(Illustrations courtesy of Louis Gray and Jeannine Schafer)