Privacy Policy
Effective January 1, 2006
About LocalAutomation.com
LocalAutomation.com is an online service which brings together "users" and "providers" of automation technologies.
Information Collected from Automation Providers
An automation provider is a company or individual that provides industrial automation goods or services. After opening a "provider" account with LocalAutomation.com, automation providers are able to created detailed on-line profiles of their business, including: business name, business description, products sold, services provided, business phone numbers, e-mail addresses, local contact information, and much more. All of this information is fully disclosed on the LocalAutomation.com website. Any site visitor that visits LocalAutomation.com and navigates to a provider's "profile page" will be able to view all of the profile information that has been entered by that provider. The only information that is NOT disclosed is credit card information, including: credit card numbers, expiration dates, CVV2 numbers, and billing addresses.
LocalAutomation.com does not store credit card information.
When creating an on-line profile, an automation provider may disclose contact information for some or all of the provider's employees. Typically, a provider would want to disclose contact information for the business owners, local sales engineers, technical support engineers, and inside sales staff. It is the sole responsibility of the automation provider to use good judgment in disclosing this information, keeping in mind that ALL information will be readily viewable on the LocalAutomation.com website. It is generally advised to avoid using home addresses, home phone numbers, and personal e-mail addresses for employees and, instead, to only disclose company information.
Information Collected from Automation Users
An automation user is a company or individual that uses industrial automation products or services. An automation user would open an account with LocalAutomation.com for one of two reasons: to post automation questions and/or to send projects out for bidding. In order to maintain the relevance and integrity of all questions and projects that are posted, we require users to open a free account and provide their contact information before posting questions and projects. The collected information includes: first name, last name, business name, job title, business address, business website, phone number, fax number, and e-mail address. This information is disclosed on the website at the sole discretion of the automation user. When posting questions and projects, the user has the option of posting "openly" or "confidentially". If the user selects "openly", then all of the user's contact information will be posted along with the question or project. If "confidentally" is selected, then only the following information will be submitted: the user's job title, city, state, and zipcode. This information will reveal the location of the user, but not his / her identity.
The submitted question or project (including any submitted contact information) will only be viewable by registered automation providers. At the end of each day, all questions and projects are e-mailed to local automation providers (i.e. providers that are located near the user). In addition, the questions and projects are stored in a database which the providers may access after logging into their secure provider's area of the LocalAutomation.com website.
Automation users have the ability to remove their question / project at any time. This action will remove their question / project from the LocalAutomation.com database and prevent automation providers from viewing or responding to the deleted question / project.
Project and questions will automatically be deleted from the database after thirty days.
Security
LocalAutomation.com member accounts, including both providers and users, are secured by member-created passwords. LocalAutomation.com takes precautions to ensure that member account information is kept private. We use reasonable measures to protect member information that is stored within our database, and we restrict access to member information to those employees who need access to perform their job functions, such as our customer service personnel and technical staff. Please note that we cannot guarantee the security of member account information.
Use of Cookies
LocalAutomation.com uses cookies to store the city, state, and zipcode of all visitors to the website. As the name implies, LocalAutomation.com is a local website. Visitors that view the site from Chicago are able to view a custom site that is dedicated to Chicago and the surround area. Similarly, a visitor from New York City will view a different site which is dedicated to New York City and the surrounding area. To enhance the visitor's browsing experience, we store a cookie on the visitors computer which will allow us to remember the visitor's location next time they return to the site.
We do not link the cookie to any personally identifiable information that visitors may submit while on the website.
Links
LocalAutomation.com contains links to other websites. LocalAutomation.com is not responsible for the privacy policies and/or practices on other sites. When linking to another site, a visitor should read the privacy policy stated on that site. Our privacy policy only governs information collected on LocalAutomation.com.
Changes in Our Privacy Policy
From time to time, LocalAutomation.com may make changes to our privacy policy. If we make changes, we will post them on our site to make users and providers aware of what the changes are so that they will always be aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and when we may disclose it. A user/provider is bound by any minor changes to the policy when she or he uses the site after those changes have been posted. If, however, we are going to use personally identifiable information in a manner materially different from that stated at the time of collection, we will notify by posting a notice on our website for thirty days.
Contacting LocalAutomation.com
If you have any questions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at privacy@localautomation.com.