Discover France has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this website:

IP Address and Domain Info

An IP address is the number assigned to your computer during a live connection to the Internet. For users who access the Internet via dial-up (modem connection) through an ISP or services such as AOL, this number changes each and every time a new connection is made. Users with broadband service (cable, DSL, etc.) may have either static or dynamic IP addresses, depending on their provider.

We use your IP address and the domain from which you access the Internet, in order to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our Web Site. This information is also used to gather broad demographic statistics on our visitors. For example, we analyze reports to see how many visits originated from ".edu" domains (educational institutions) or certain geographic regions around the world. This helps us ultimately to provide material which is relevant to both our broadest audience as well as certain special interest "niches". Such information is NOT used to identify individual users.

Browser

Our administration software can usually determine which web browser you use to visit our site (such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Safari, etc.), as well as its version number (7.0, 8.0, etc.). This information helps us to tailor content and special browser features which are compatible with the majority of our visitors' systems. The use of such features as dropdown menus, embedded video, mouse-over effects, and alternate type styles are among the design criteria that webmasters must consider, based on this information.

Cookies

A cookie is a small encrypted text file stored on your hard drive, which is commonly used so that repeat visits to a secure site do not require re-entering your username or password as you move from page to page. Merchant sites use cookies to keep track of items you have placed in your "shopping cart", until you are ready to check-out. Some sites use cookies to customize content according to your interests — such as news or stock reports — when you set up a personal "home page" for your browser.

Cookies, by themselves, cannot be used to discover the identity of any user. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. You can enable or disable your browser from accepting cookies at any time; in most modern browsers, you can selectively choose which ones to accept or reject, and you can also delete old cookies if you wish.

Keep in mind that many special features offered on web sites may not function correctly when cookies are declined. You should use your own best judgment, based on your perceived "trustworthiness" of a given site, before deciding whether to decline its cookies.

Our site uses cookies to make sure you don't see the same banner ads repeatedly. We also use cookies to provide tracking to vendors from whom you make purchases or travel reservations, letting them know that your visit originated from DiscoverFrance.net. (The modest commissions we earn from your purchases help to defray our operating expenses — and to support ongoing research, development, and growth of the resources at DiscoverFrance.net.) We respectfully request that you enable cookies in your browser when making such purchases at DiscoverFrance.net, as an indication of your support. Thank you!

Discover France works with a third party service called Google AdSense which serves ads to this site. Because Google has indexed the content of our web pages, the ads you see will usually reflect the subject matter of the particular page(s) you are viewing.

When you visit other sites which have also partnered with Google, cookies are used to track your interest categories (such as history, language, or travel), increasing the likelihood that the ads shown will be relevant to you. While this technology can greatly enhance your online experience, you can also choose at any time to opt out of the system. To learn more, we encourage you to read Google's Privacy Policy.

Guest Book and E-mail Subscriptions

Our online survey asks visitors for contact information (like their e-mail address) and other feedback regarding their experience at DiscoverFrance.net. Our online subscription form asks visitors for their name and e-mail address. We use contact data from our surveys and subscription forms to send the user periodic bulletins — featuring new topics on our Web Site, as well as current events pertinent to France. Other data and commentary collected in our surveys help us to improve our content and better respond to the interests of our visitors. None of this data is shared with — or sold to — any third parties. Users may opt-out of receiving future mailings (see the choice/opt-out section below).

Personal Information

Information collected by our business partners — such as the vendors featured in the DiscoverFrance.net Boutique, Bookstore, and Travel Center — is subject to their own Privacy Policies. We have chosen our affiliations with such partners carefully, to ensure that their practices do not violate our principles of trust and confidentiality. However, any transactions that you make with such vendors are private, between YOU and the VENDOR alone: vendors do not furnish personal financial information (such as credit card numbers) to anyone at DiscoverFrance.net. Their confidential reports to us only track the total products, quantities, "click-throughs" from our site, and commissions attributable to DiscoverFrance.net.

Links

This site contains many links to other sites throughout the world. These links are provided for informational and educational purposes only. DiscoverFrance.net is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Web Sites, and visitors follow such links at their own risk. However, all links to other sites are evaluated on an individual basis before being published on DiscoverFrance.net, and every effort is made to ensure that such other sites do not violate our Guidelines.

Public Forums

This site makes chat rooms, forums, message boards, and/or newsgroups available to its users. Please remember that any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information. DiscoverFrance.net will make every effort to remove material posted to our own message boards which could violate community standards of taste, or which encourage racial bigotry, hatred, violence, or illegal acts.

Please be aware that postings you make to online groups or forums are beyond our control, become immediately visible to Internet users throughout the world, and are stored on a number of international servers indefinitely. We recommend that you practice discretion and consideration whenever posting to public sites.

Security

This site has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. This extends to both electronic correspondence between visitors and staff at DiscoverFrance.net, as well as to commercial transactions made between visitors and vendors endorsed on this site.

For example, our selected vendors and travel providers utilize the latest state-of-the-art 128-bit encryption technologies — known as Transport Layer Security (TLS), or Secure Socket Layer (SSL) — to ensure that your personal information, including credit card numbers, is 100% safe. At any time you are requested to provide such information, you can rest assured that you are on a secure server.

Generally, you can confirm that you are on a secure server when asked for credit card information, by observing that the address in your web browser's address window begins with "https" instead of "http". Most browsers will also display an icon of a closed padlock in the status bar (bottom of the window), whenever you visit a secure page.

Credit-card companies are keenly aware of consumer concerns regarding identity theft and the security of online transactions. For this reason, most of them have adopted policies which protect you from any loss in the event of credit-card fraud (online or off). We encourage you to contact your financial institution or credit-card issuer to verify their particular policies.

Choice/Opt-Out

Our site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us and our partners at the point where we request information about the visitor.

This site gives users the following options for removing their information from our database, to not receive future communications or to no longer receive our service.

• You can send e-mail to *. Please indicate all names and e-mail addresses at which you have received correspondence from us. (This is particularly relevant if your request is sent from a server or e-mail service different from your own customary address.)

Correct/Update

This site gives users the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided.

• You can send e-mail to *. Please indicate all names and e-mail addresses at which you have received correspondence from us. (This is particularly relevant if your request is sent from a server or e-mail service different from your own customary address.) Since we maintain separate e-mail databases for varying demographic groups (such as educators, travelers, webmasters, students of French language, etc.), it would be helpful if you indicated the nature of your affiliation with the francophile community.

Contacting the Web Site

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this Web Site, you can contact us at *, or send correspondence via U.S. Mail to:

Webmaster
DiscoverFrance.net
P.O. Box 310185
Newington, CT 06131-0185
U.S.A.

* Note: In order to combat spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail, or UCE) generated by robot e-mail "harvesters" on the Internet, the e-mail addresses displayed above are in graphical format only, and double-clicking on them will not open your e-mail application or pre-address your message. You must enter the e-mail address you see manually. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, but we wish to cut down on the volume of spam we already receive, rather than add to it. If YOU are a spammer gathering this address visually, rest assured that we will pursue every legal option possible, in order to shut down your unsolicited transmissions to us!