We care about your privacy and strongly desire to maintain your trust. Our web site is intended to serve in part as a community, giving you the opportunity to interact with other martial artists through our public message boards and discussion forums. The messages you leave can be viewed by anyone, so we have made special efforts to reduce the risk of unscrupulous viewers misusing the information you post in the message boards.

In addition, we offer opportunities for you to purchase products or apply for Seishin-Kan membership on this site, so we have also taken certain precautions to protect the privacy of the information you submit while making purchases or applying for membership.

We believe that understanding both our precautions and the limitations of those precautions will help you to exercise sound judgment in the protection of your privacy. Therefore, in this document we provide a thorough description of our privacy measures and practices to help you understand how to best protect yourself. In the best traditions of martial arts and self-defense, you should carefully read this Privacy Policy.

This Policy applies only to services provided and information collected on this Web-Dojo. It does not apply to the policies and practices of any other sites or vendors to which we link from this site, or whose services we may use in providing services to you.

General

Information We Collect

Membership Information. If you apply for membership, we will collect information about you and your martial arts experiences using an online registration form. This form is transmitted to us using your normal e-mail service, so the information will be no more or no less secure than your e-mail system. For that reason, we do not have you submit credit card information with your application, because it is not a secure method for the transmission of this information. Instead, we use a third party billing service, PayPal®, that provides secure credit card transaction services. Furthermore, we never request your social security or driver's license information as part of our membership or purchasing applications. These practices are a vital part of our effort to maintain the security of your personal information.

Cookies and IP Addresses. We do not use cookies or capture the IP addresses of our visitors. On our message boards and discussion forums, we have deliberately disabled these features in order to safeguard your privacy. As our site grows in complexity and sophistication, we might find it helpful -- even necessary -- to use cookies to store information to help visitors navigate the site. If this occurs, we will clearly describe such use here in the Privacy Policy. Similarly, if and when we develop "members only" sections of the site, it may be necessary to incorporate the use of cookies and/or capturing IP addresses to facilitate the use of passwords for access to restricted areas. Those members to whom this will apply will be notified before any such use occurs.

Purchases, Sales and Other Services. If you buy and products or services offered on our site we store all information regarding your purchase apart from this web site on a separate server, so that it is inaccessible to anyone trying to misuse it. Furthermore, because we use third party vendors to process your credit card transactions, we do not become privy to your credit card account information. That was a deliberate choice we made in order to safeguard your privacy. While it involves an extra step for those who purchase and additional processing costs to us, we believe it is a worthwhile practice for protecting your privacy.

Referral Information. We do not use any electronic means to track how you were referred to our site from another web site or search engine, nor do we track any web sites you visit prior or subsequent to visiting the Web Dojo. If we decide we would like this information to help determine our search engine popularity or link popularity, we will ask you for it. That way, you can decide if you are willing to let us have this information, and if you provide it to us it will be strictly voluntarily. It is possible, however, that the company that provides our hosting service (DirectNIC) does track this type of information.  If you are concerned about this, we encourage you to contact DirectNIC about it.

Our Use of Your Information

Our Services. We use any information you provide us solely to facilitate services you specifically request or shipment of products you purchase. We may also use this information to track shipments you have requested, and to follow-up to confirm delivery and/or your satisfaction with those products or services. Once a particular transaction is complete, we make no further use of this information. We do not use it to solicit additional purchases, or place you on any mailing lists -- even our own -- without your specific consent.

Future Services. We may use your information to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to statistically analyze site usage, to improve our content and product offerings, or to improve and enhance our site's content, layout, features, and services. All such use, however, will be strictly within the Seishin-Kan. We will not divulge any personal information about you to any third party assisting us with web design or web development without your prior expressed consent. We will restrict such information only to generalized statistical or demographic information about our customers, visitors, and/or members as a whole.

Marketing. We do not use your information to notify you of new products, features, or events, unless you specifically request or authorize us to do so.

Our Disclosure of Your Information

Purchasers. If you participate in a purchase or membership transaction, you will receive a third party's invoice, and you may receive follow-up or confirmation information from the Seishin-Kan. If you apply for membership, you will be assigned a membership number and/or User ID for use in all communication related to your membership. You will receive additional communication from us regarding all membership privileges, events, and opportunities, as well as notifications regarding expiration and/or renewal of your membership.

Postings to Message Boards.  Any person browsing the Internet can view information you post in any of our guest books, message boards, or discussion forums, including your name and your email address if you post them. For this reason, posting your name, e-mail address, or other personal information is strictly optional in all of the visitor messaging sections of our web site. You do not have to post or provide any personal information in order to use these services, and we strongly recommend that your exercise good judgment and caution in doing so in order to prevent unscrupulous visitors from misusing such information.

Investigations. We will disclose any information in our records about you to law enforcement, other government officials, or third parties only upon service of a legally binding warrant, subpoena, or other due process of law that requires us to do so. We will not disclose any such information unless legally required to do so, or unless you specifically direct or authorize us to do so.

Contractors and Third Party Service Providers. As previously explained, we use certain contractors to assist us in providing certain services to members and purchasers. Only that information that is specifically required in order for them to provide services you have authorized, requested, or purchased will be divulged to any of these contractors. Usually these contractors will enter into an agreement that places restrictive provisions on their use and disclosure of all information they obtain through the relationship. We also use third party service providers to help with certain aspects of our operations that may require disclosure of your personal information to them. Most of these contractors, like billing services, the U.S. Postal Service, or transportation companies are prohibited from selling or disclosing your personally identifiable information to others.

The Corporate Family. We have no parent company, per se. We are affiliated with the Jikishin-Kai International (JKI) and the Nippon Karate-do Kai, but we will share with them only that information about you that you authorize in writing (such as a dual membership application or a specific request to be contacted by, or referred to, them).

Your Use of Other's Information

Discussion Forums and Message Boards. You are not permitted to use or sell any information about other visitors that you view on this web site. You are not to solicit from visitors to this site, either on this site or by private communication, nor are you permitted to sell information about other users and visitors.

Spam. We and our users do not tolerate spam. Therefore, without limiting the foregoing, you are not permitted to add any user to any mailing list (email or physical mail) without their expressed consent after adequate disclosure.

Reviewing and Changing Your Information

We allow you the ability to review and change the personal information you provide to us in connection with membership or any purchase you make. You have the ability to choose whether you wish to receive promotional mail from us. You agree to keep your information as current as possible and agree not to provide us with falsified or fraudulent information.

Security of Your Information

We make every effort and follow industry best practices to safeguard the confidentiality of each user's personal information. We use third party billing services to ensure that all credit card information you submit is encrypted through secure server software (SSL). This information is never divulged to us by those third parties.  When you conduct a transaction on our site, we request only the information needed to complete the transaction you are requesting through unencrypted means. Despite our best precautions, however, "absolute, 100%" security does not exist on the Internet and cannot be guaranteed. Therefore you should not expect that your information will never be accidentally disclosed or wrongfully accessed by criminals.

Miscellaneous

Your Use of E-mail. We provide you with opportunities to contact us via e-mail. Certain information in our membership application and order forms are also submitted to us by e-mail using a link that activates the e-mail software on your computer. If you use these services, your name and e-mail address will be submitted to us in the e-mail. We do not store in an easily-retrievable way, the e-mail addresses of people who contact us or submit orders and membership applications. As a protection for you, this information is not stored on our web site, nor on the server that hosts our web site. Nevertheless, you should not assume that e-mails or forms sent through these features are totally inaccessible. Unencrypted e-mails can be intercepted by unscrupulous individuals who possess the necessary software, and certain government agencies do routinely scan e-mail for evidence of illegal activities.

Other Information. You may provide us and we may receive other personally identifiable information that is not contemplated in this Policy. For example, we may receive information from another user regarding you. As you would expect, we will treat that information under the same principles as this Policy, and make reasonable efforts to safeguard your privacy to the same extent as if you had submitted the information to us yourself.

Limits on Our Abilities. While it is our desire and intention to run our service perfectly to ensure your satisfaction, neither people nor technology are ever perfect. We may make inadvertent uses and disclosures of your information in ways not described in this Policy. For example, if our site is infected with a virus, your personal information could be displayed or e-mailed to others without our knowledge. We may also make uses of your information in ways we have not contemplated here. We will, however, always do our best to maintain your privacy and promptly correct any errors we make. Your sole remedy in case of our error is to have us try to fix the problem as soon as we possibly can and/or to remove your personal information from our site.

Password and Identity Control. Except as specifically permitted by this Section, you may not disclose your membership number, or any password or authenticating information to any third parties nor share it with any third parties. If you lose control over your membership number or password, you may lose substantial control over your personally identifiable information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf by those in possession of this information. Therefore, if your identifying information has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately contact us and request that it be changed.

Third Party Collection. Except as otherwise expressly discussed in this Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties in the course of making transactions with us, different rules may apply to the use or disclosure of the personal information you disclose to those third parties. Since we do not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy customs and policies they establish. We strongly encourage you to ask questions of all such third parties before you disclose your personal information to them.