Privacy & Copyright Info « TruthForFree.com

Privacy & Copyright Info

To tell the truth friends, I'm really not interested in boring everyone to tears or frightening them with a big, technical privacy statement, but some people ask and are genuinely concerned about this information so I gladly post it for those interested… so let's get the formalities taken care of. Much of the following information is adopted from other website policy pages; however, I have adapted the information so that it applies to this website exclusively. TruthForFree.com (formerly The Prayer Shack) knows that you care how information about you is used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly. This is one of the reasons we have also made the effort to get our site labeled with the family-safe website watchdog organizations SafeSurf, ICRA, SurfSafely.com, and are awaiting approval to become an ICCS Certified, licensed member of iWatchDog (a.k.a. The United Federation of Child Safe Websites). We're also a participant in the WOT (Web of Trust) program, which is a user-rating system that helps identify trusted sites based on their good reputation (click here to install it on your browser and rate your experience with our site).

The following notice describes our privacy policy. By visiting TruthForFree.com, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy & Content Notice. Disclaimers and guidelines for using the material on this site (i.e. content printing & distribution) appear at the bottom of this page (please scroll down).

What Personal Information About Visitors Does TruthForFree.com Gather? TruthForFree.com is a personal website that has no vested interest in collecting personal information from those who browse the site. We also take increased measures to protect your information from being used in an unauthorized way by other parties. For example, any e-mail addresses that our visitors post in blogs are immediately and automatically encrypted to prevent unfriendly scraping programs from extracting those addresses and using them for SPAM. We continue to search for ways to make using this site even safer and more secure for our visitors.

Information You Give Us: The only data we receive is the information you personally choose to give us (i.e. messages sent via our contact page, which is sent directly to our e-mail box and is NEVER sold or distributed in any way without your permission or as may be required by law in case of emergencies, also any comments or selections you might submit in the way of answering surveys, responding in public blog posts, or signing our guestbook – the old Prayer Shack site used a third party guestbook service that allowed your information, such as e-mail addresses, to be removed from the immediate control and discretion of the webmaster. This has since been changed. While we still use a third-party guestbook service, it uses a number of security features to block SPAM and protect information. To the best of our ability we want to insure that your personal contact information is seen only by us; the only exception to this being that your e-mail, if submitted, may be displayed with your guestbook entry on our site.).
Automatic Information: We may receive certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many Web sites, we may use "cookies," and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses the TruthForFree.com website. Basically the information pertains only to the type of browser you are using to view the site, the date and time you visited our page, the length of time you browsed our site, what search engine referred you to our site, etc. This information is used merely as statistical data to get an idea of what kind of traffic is coming to the site. It contains nothing personal. This helps us to customize features for your enjoyment and it's just kinda cool to find out where our friends are visiting from.
Information from Other Sources: We may, on occasion, personally use and recommend the use of programs, such as instant messenger software (e.g. Skype), that enable you to chat with us live on the Web. Such programs are downloaded at the user's discretion and are not the responsibility or in the control of TruthForFree.com. It is possible that such programs may extract personal data. This data is not received by or used by TruthForFree.com. It is also possible that other websites that visitors arrive at via a link from our site may collect other information. Such possibilities are not known to us or monitored in any way. Generally speaking, we obtain absolutely NO information from visitors to our site other that what may be specified in this privacy notice.The one source accessible from TruthForFree.com that may have other privacy policies in use beyond our control is the Prayer Request Submission page. This page is essentially a guestbook powered by a third party company (we hope to change this option in the near future and eliminate the concern). It is recommended that you observe any privacy statements the thrid party site may offer.

What About Cookies?

Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that may be transferred to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser to enable our systems to recognize your browser and to provide features. Cookies may be used to help personalize various aspects of your visit or when connecting to another website's music or book store. TruthForFree.com does not currently have a book or music store and does not anticipate ever employing one since such, we feel, would be contrary to the expressed purpose of this website. That having been said, some features may be employed (at a future date) to assist in the process of sharing books, music and other information provided by third parties, which may use cookies and which may not be within the express control of this site. In general, any such use is intended only to enhance the browsing experience of our visitors and not to collect information for any other purpose.

Does TruthForFree.com Share the Information It Receives?

- Affiliated Businesses We Do Not Control: We work closely with some affiliated businesses, an example of which is Amazon.com, CDNow, and Christian Book Distributors, which we use as our trusted book and music sources. You can tell when another business is involved in your transactions, and we may share limited customer information related to those transactions with that business (however, it is unknown – even to us – what that information may include, as the only think we provide is a link to transfer visitors to the appropriate website. It is assumed by TruthForFree.com that the only information collected is the referring URL. It is our opinion and understanding that nothing personal whatsoever is transferred and, again, we have no need of such information nor do we have any intention of collecting such for any reason.
- Site Provider: To our knowledge, our website hosting company does not extract any information from our visitors. We pay for the express use of server space and features provided by our hosting company. One of the primary reasons for this is to keep the site free of advertising and unwarranted collection of visitor information. We are thus far very pleased with the quality of service we have received through our present hosting company and do not perceive there to be any unethical or concerning practices associated with this company.
- Protection of TruthForFree.com: We release personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with law; however, as has been previously stated, the only information we receive that could be released is information that has been specifically designated to TruthForFree.com (e.g. through e-mail, etc.).
- With Your Consent: Other than as set out above, you will receive notice when information about you might go to third parties, and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information. This site does not imploy any kind of "spyware" or "adware" technology to target, annoy or extract any information from our visitors. As stated previously in this document, we employ many different security measures to insure that your information is used as safely as possible!

No. Information about our visitors involves only a very minor part of our service to the viewing public; in fact, other than the retrieval of e-mails and guestbook entries, we have no need of our visitors' personal information and we certainly are not in the business of selling it to others. That is our promise! We share visitor information only as is required through our affiliate programs such as when a link forwards the visitor to a book or music store (which is extremely rare since the book and music store was dropped from the website in May of 2010) and as may be required by law. Details are described below:

What Choices Do I Have?

As discussed above, you can always choose not to provide information, even though it might be needed to make a purchase or to take advantage of such TruthForFree.com site features as the guestbook, blogs, sharing prayer requests, or connecting to an affiliated Book or Music store.
If you do not want to receive e-mail from us, please contact us via the information provided on the site and we will respect your request and remove you from our e-mail lists or address book. (If you do not want to receive any legal notices from us, such as this Privacy Notice, those notices will still govern your use of the TruthForFree.com site, and it is your responsibility to review them for changes.)
If you are concerned about cookies and do not want to use them, simply disable the option in the security settings of your browser. Note, however, that some features of this site may be affected by such choices. There are products available that offer anonymous browsing. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission provides useful information about online privacy on its own Web site, Site Seeing on the Internet.
- TruthForFree.com does not sell products for purchase by children. Products available through our affiliate book and music stores are intended to be purchased by adults. If you are under 18, you may use these affiliate programs only with involvement of a parent or guardian.
- This site absolutely does not contain any pornographic or other material that may be considered inappropriate for children; however, we recommend that parents involve themselves in the browsing activities of their children and determin what sources may or may not be felt as appropriate viewing by their children. Our intent with this site is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. If, as a parent, you have any questions about the purpose or content on this site, please contact the site webmaster. We are rated with a number of services that help to insure safe browsing for families and children. God bless you!

Children: IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: TruthForFree.com (formerly The Prayer Shack) is a not-for-profit, non-commercial, personal website intended for the purpose of sharing information freely in the hope that readers may be encouraged in their faith, become more centrally focused on Jesus Christ, and strengthened in their alertness to false teachings which may be present in organized religion today. TruthForFree.com presents the articles and information contained within under the caution that the reader make responsible, personal choices to use spiritual discernment, study the Word of God and verify facts on their own before making conclusions. Simply because we have one or several articles by a particular Christian author or organization on this site does not mean we necessarily agree with everything, or even anything else, that person or organization believes. We are not responsible for errors and omissions on neighboring websites that may be referenced from this site. To the best of our knowledge, all information presented on this website is honestly conveyed and contains no misinformation but is not guaranteed and should be independently verified. Any questions concerning content should be immediately shared with the for investigation. We appreciate your assistance in this.

TruthForFree.com, (formerly known as The Prayer Shack) and design logos are trademarks owned by TruthForFree.com & The Prayer Shack, Kennewick, WA. Other site graphics are either used by permission or assumed to be in the public domain. If you see an image that you think should not be here, please . Thank you.

FAIR USE NOTICE: While many Christian writers do allow faithful reproduction of their work with all due credit, most of the other articles on this site has the specific permission of the author to use their work. However there is some copyrighted material on this site, the use of which has not always been specifically or directly authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to our efforts to advance understanding of Christian issues. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for educational purposes. For more information go to: (also, for your convenience, this section of the law is printed below as well). If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. TruthForFree.com is not responsible for misuse of content by visitors of this website.

United States Code TITLE 17 | CHAPTER 1 | § 107 § 107.