Community Agreement - Lutherans.com

Welcome to Lutherans.com!

Community Rules

Lutherans.com (LDC) is an online gathering place for Lutherans across the world.
If you follow the goal of "Keeping Lutherans.com Friendly," you should have no problem fitting in the with Lutherans.com crowd!

Keep Lutherans.com Friendly:
A Couple Guidelines:

No insults, name calling, or inflammatory comments intended to start a fight. Refrain from posting personal attacks or grievances publicly. Avoid broad negative generalizations about other Lutherans.com members.
If many people might interpret a message or picture as racist, bigoted or sexist, please refrain from posting it.
Don't pretend to be someone else, or post under several usernames.
Never post personal information without permission, either publicly or in private messages.
No "stalking behavior," including: following a member from one discussion thread to another while criticizing him/her; following someone into another thread and trying to continue a disagreement that began elsewhere; disparaging an individual in a thread where that person is not participating.
Debate can be lively, but must remain civil and respectful.
Keep the forums clean: messages that are too crude may get deleted. Don't post sexually explicit or violent pictures.
No business solicitations on the forums, please.
"Keep Lutherns.com Friendly" applies to all participation on the site, including private messages.

Moderators have the final word on forum decisions. Any message that we feel doesn't keep the LDC forums friendly and inviting for others, may be removed or locked by moderators. We are willing to discuss disputes in a calm manner, but publicly attacking a moderator, or intentionally undermining a moderator's actions, will get your account locked.

Hey, What About Free Speech?
Lutherans.com is a privately owned web site, which means we can and do restrict certain conversations on the forums. We do this with the goal of keeping Lutherans.com a friendly and inviting place for most members of the Lutheran church. This includes a range of beliefes, liberal and conservative. Just like you couldn't curse at church, or use racial slurs at Disney World, without getting kicked out; we have set certain reasonable limits on Lutherans.com members in order to participate. This generally means making sure your messages are friendly and respectful of other Lutherans. The Internet is a big place, and there are many web sites where all types of controversial and inflammatory discussions are allowed, but Lutherans.com is not one of them.

*YOUR* Help Is Needed:
There are three ways you can help:

Contact us if you'd like to volunteer as a Lutherans.com moderator.
Remind other members of the rules if their behavior is getting out of line, or creating an unfriendly environment for others.
Click the gray flag icon at the bottom of a message if you think it breaks the spirit of "Keeping Lutherans.com Friendly"

Lutherans.com Copyright Agent Contact Information and Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy

Lutherans.com respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same. Lutherans.com has no responsibility for content on other websites that you may find or access when using Lutherans.com's products or services. Material available on or through other websites may be protected by copyright and the intellectual property laws of the United States and/or other countries. The terms of use of those websites, and not the Lutherans.com Terms of Service, govern your use of that material.

It is Lutherans.com's policy, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, to disable and/or terminate the accounts of users who may infringe or repeatedly infringe the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of Lutherans.com and/or others.

Notice for Claims of Intellectual Property Violations and Agent for Notice

THIS PROCESS IS FOR COPYRIGHT AND OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MATTERS ONLY. Correspondence regarding other matters will not be responded to. For reports of abuse and related concerns, please see the link below to Contact Us.

If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or that your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, please provide Lutherans.com's Agent for Notice with the following information (your "Notice"):

An electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other intellectual property interest;
A description of the copyrighted work or other intellectual property that you claim has been infringed;
A description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the Lutherans.com site, with enough detail that we may find it on the website (in most circumstances, we will need a URL);
Your address, telephone number, and email address;
A statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright or intellectual property owner, its agent, or the law;
A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright or intellectual property owner or authorized to act on the copyright or intellectual property owner's behalf.

In some circumstances, in order to notify the subscriber, account holder or host who provided the allegedly infringing content to which Lutherans.com has disabled access, Lutherans.com may forward a copy of a valid Notice including name and email address to the subscriber or account holder.

Lutherans.com's Agent for Notice of claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement can be reached as follows:

By mail
Copyright Agent
c/o Lutherans.com
562 Kingwood Dr, Ste 3
Kingwood, TX 77339

By phone
(281) 358-0989

By fax
(281) 754-4319

By email

Please note that, due to security concerns, attachments cannot be accepted. Accordingly, any notification of infringement submitted electronically with an attachment will not be received or processed.

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or subscribe to our newsletter.

When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name or e-mail address. You may, however, visit our site anonymously.

Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your site. Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy..

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

-- To personalize your experience
(your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs)

-- To improve our website
(we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you)

-- To improve customer service
(your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs)

-- To process transactions

Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested.

-- To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature

-- To send periodic emails

Note: If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you access your personal information.

We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential.

After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be stored on our servers.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information

We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

California Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

Because we value your privacy we have taken the necessary precautions to be in compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. We therefore will not distribute your personal information to outside parties without your consent.

As part of the California Online Privacy Protection Act, all users of our site may make any changes to their information at anytime by clicking the blue 'Edit Profile' button found on any page, then clicking 'Edit My Profile', or by clicking the blue 'My Account' button found any page, then clicking 'Edit My Account'.

Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Terms and Conditions

Please also visit our Terms and Conditions section establishing the use, disclaimers, and limitations of liability governing the use of our website at http://www.lutherans.com/community_agreement.php

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our online privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.

Contacting Us

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy you may contact us using the information below.

http://www.lutherans.com/contact.php

Opt Out:

You can opt your business or personal data out of our online directories by sending a request with your name/business name through our main contact form.