About Your Privacy

We believe Passions in Poetry is one of the most interactive web sites on the Internet. Poetry, after all, should not be a passive art form. It should come alive for you, and provoke - or even demand - a response.

At the same time, however, we are very much aware of the privacy issues that concern many people on the Internet. There are studies indicating that the longer a person is on the Internet, and the more they learn about its infrastructure, the more likely they are to trust in its security. That shouldn't be too surprising. It's just another way of saying what we all already know: Trust must be earned.

Your privacy is important to us. We know that your email address is a private thing, and when you use it on our web site we realize you are entrusting us with a private thing. We want you to know we will never violate that trust. Your email address, and those of your friends should you choose to send them poems, will never be used to send you advertising. We will never - and I mean never - give or sell your address to anyone else. We want to earn your trust.

Poetry is about communication. So, too, is email. Our goal is to make Passions in Poetry as interactive as possible, to build a community of people that write and love poetry as we do. The only way we can reach that goal is with your support. And, of course, with your trust.

More Details about Your Email Address

Submitting a Poem When you submit a poem to Passions in Poetry, we ask for your email address. Each poet, however, is given the opportunity to "hide" the address if they desire (though we encourage them to participate in email discussions with their fans). At no time will their address be given out if they don't wish it.

Voting for a Poem When you vote for a poem you admire (and we hope you're doing it regularly), we again ask for your email address. This is simply to help insure each author gets a fair one-vote-per-day from each visitor. Your address does go into our off-line (inaccessible) database and is stored for future reference. But - once again - it will never be given out to any other parties.

Private Email If you send Private email to a poet, obviously your address will go to them as well (so they can answer you, of course). Obviously, we have no control over the poets, but we would be very surprised to discover any of them would ever violate your trust. If you have a complaint about a poet, please let us know. Of course, if you send Private email to our web site (and please do so!), we will also receive your email address. We read and answer every letter we get, and both your letter and email address is stored in our database for future reference. But (need we say it?), neither your letter nor your email address will ever be given out to any other parties.

Sending a Poem to a Friend When you send a favorite poem and note to a friend, we ask for both your email address and your friend's. Obviously, we need the latter so we can send them the poem. We ask for your address only so we can include it with the poem and your friend can easily respond. Neither of the addresses, not yours nor your friends, is ever stored on our system. Not only will those addresses never be given to any other party, but we don't even save them beyond the few seconds it takes to send the poem.

Sending a Greeting Card The same rules that apply to sending a poem also apply to the Greeting Cards - with one exception. We don't store the email addresses for the poems, but those addresses will be stored with your Greeting Card for the life of the Card (usually about 14 days). There are, however, absolutely no links to the Cards on the site, so you and the recipient are the only ones who can easily find them.

Our Newsletters and Notifications When you subscribe to a newsletter or ask to be notified when the web site is updated, your email address is stored in our off-line database with the same safeguards employed throughout our system. We will never, at any time, sell or otherwise make available our list of subscribers to any other party.