Privacy Policy
September 19, 2001

November 20, 2004 Revised

Introduction:

Your privacy is important to niagara.com. We are committed to protecting and safeguarding your privacy and personal information.

niagara.com has implemented a Privacy Policy to comply with the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act* that came into effect on January 1, 2001. (``*An Act to support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances, by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or record information or transactions and by amending the Canada Evidence Act, the Statutory Instruments Act and the Statute Revision Act''.)

At niagara.com we believe it is important for our customers to know about our privacy practices and policies and their rights regarding personal information that we collect, use and disclose.

niagara.com ensures that its employees who have access to your personal information are educated and trained to handle and protect your personal information and to abide by niagara.com's Privacy Policy at all times. In addition, third parties with whom niagara.com may share your personal information are subject to the requirements of the Privacy Act as well as niagara.com's Privacy Policy.

What is Personal Information?

Personal Information is defined as "information about an identifiable individual" and includes information concerning matters such as race, ethnic origin, colour, age, marital status, religion, education, medical, criminal, employment or financial history, address and telephone number, numerical identifiers such as Social Insurance Number, fingerprints, blood type, tissue or biological sample, and views or personal opinions. It also includes information about your product and service subscriptions and usage. Publicly available information, such as public directory listings of your name, address, telephone number, is not considered personal information.

What Information do we collect and what do we use the Information for?

We collect and use personal information about you and your use of our products and services and our web sites (the "Information") to: (i) initiate and maintain our relationship with you in connection with our products and services; (ii) administer billing and accounting services and security measures in relation to your business with us; (iii) promote and market additional products and services offered by us, including by means of direct marketing; (iv) provide you with personalized features and services; (v) contact you to fulfill distribution of prizes if you win a promotion or contest; and (vi) comply with any legal and regulatory requirements, including requirements or requests of government agencies or pursuant to a subpoena or other legal proceeding.

niagara.com - Customer Privacy Policy

niagara.com its subsidiaries, affiliates, successors and assigns ("niagara.com", "We", "Us" and "Our"), does not collect personal information about individual users ("You") except when such personal information is provided to us on a voluntary basis. Your privacy is important to niagara.com and we are committed to protecting and safeguarding your personal information. Personal information may be gathered from the registration process for subscription or products and services and in connection with content submissions, a contest or sweepstakes registration, postings in discussion areas or other public areas, suggestions, voting/polling activities and transactional areas. We may request personal information from time to time in order to enable you to participate in and enjoy various niagara.com product and service offerings.

This statement and the Privacy Code disclose niagara.com's privacy practices and policies. By using niagara.com's products and services, you agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy.

What Information do we collect and what do we use the Information for?

We collect and use personal information about you and your use of our products and services and our web sites (the "Information"): (i) to consider initiating and to initiate, maintain and develop our relationship with you in connection with our offering and servicing of products and services; (ii) to administer billing and accounting services and security measures in relation to your business with us; (iii) to monitor your customer history, evaluate your credit standing, to share or exchange credit reports and information with credit reporting agencies, credit bureaus and to collect any unpaid amounts owing to us; (iv) to promote and to market additional products, goods and services offered by us, including by means of direct marketing; (v) to provide you with newsletters via email; (vi) to customize content on our web pages; (vii) to provide personalized features and services; (viii) to analyze traffic and use of the niagara.com web sites in order to determine which features and services people like and don't like so that we can improve what we do; (ix) to prepare aggregated user statistics or information summaries in order to describe our services to third parties such as prospective business partners and advertisers and for other lawful purposes; (x) to present web page advertisements that we hope will be of particular interest to you; (xi) to contact you to fulfill distribution of prizes if you win a promotion or contest; and (xii) to comply with any legal and regulatory requirements, including requirements or requests of government agencies or pursuant to a subpoena or other legal proceeding.

If you choose not to provide the requested information, niagara.com may not be able to offer you some of the personalized products and services that depend on this type of information to function.

You consent to our collection from, verification with and communication to, any third party and our use of, the Information for the above purposes. You also authorize these parties to give us the Information. In addition, you agree that we may disclose Information to: (i) any person who, in our reasonable judgment, is seeking the Information as your agent or (ii) a person involved directly or indirectly in supplying the product or service to you, including, without limitation, our sales and marketing agents, to the extent the Information is required and used only for such purposes, including the efficient supply of products and services to you, and provided that such person is required to keep the Information confidential; or (iii) a person retained by us to collect amounts which you owe us or to enforce our rights under our terms of service, if the Information is required for, and is to be used only for that purpose and that person is required to keep such Information confidential.

We may also use Information in our records for as long as it is needed for the purposes described above and your consent remains valid after the termination of our relationship with you.

We reserve the right to conduct statistical analyses of your on-line behaviour and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of niagara.com's products and services, niagara.com's proposed products and services, the niagara.com web sites and the Internet and to provide advertisers with information such as the number of users that have been exposed to or clicked on their advertising banners. We will provide only aggregated data from these analyses to third parties. Also, you are advised that we may permit third parties to offer subscription and/or registration-based services through the niagara.com web sites. We are not responsible for any actions or policies of such third parties and you should check the applicable privacy policy of each such third party when providing personal information. We are also not responsible for any actions of any third party sites that you access through the niagara.com web sites and the Internet and you are responsible for checking the applicable privacy policy of such third party sites.

What are "cookies" and how do we use them?

You should also be aware that non-personal information and data may be automatically collected through the standard operation of our Internet servers or through the use of "cookies". "Cookies" are small text files that contain a unique identification number that is transferred from a web site to the hard drive of your computer so that that we may: (a) recognize repeat users; (b) track usage behaviour; and (c) compile aggregate data that will permit content improvements and targeted advertising. Cookies cannot extract information from your hard disk. You should be aware that we can not control or prevent the use of cookies or any information obtained through such cookies by advertisers or third party content providers. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, most browsers permit you to disable the cookie feature. However, you are advised that cookies may be required for the use of certain features on the niagara.com web sites.

Who has access to your Information?

Occasionally, we may or any of our advertisers or partners may host a contest or promotion where it will be your option to enter and your option to provide the requested information. Data collected during a promotion or contest is typically shared with the sponsor or co-sponsor. If you do not want your data to be shared, you can choose not to participate in the promotion or contest. Children under the age of majority must get parental or legal guardian permission before providing any information for contests or promotions.

niagara.com may disclose, on a confidential basis, to any third party with whom we have business relations, certain relevant information relating to your dealings with us and our products and services. niagara.com does not sell or redistribute your Information. niagara.com may enter into third party agreements from time to time for the purposes of providing you with goods and services we think may interest you and may share your Information with these third parties solely for these purposes. We may share Information with potential business partners of, or investors in, niagara.com. All such disclosure is made solely under a confidentiality agreement with the third party who is required not to disclose or use the Information for any other purpose other than is necessary to fulfill the agreement with niagara.com.

Please note that niagara.com's web sites contain links to other sites. In addition, we may occasionally allow other sites to be co-branded with niagara.com. We cannot represent or guarantee that other sites' privacy policies conform to our own, so please bear in mind that sites linked from niagara.com's web sites may have privacy policies which differ from those of niagara.com. Our privacy policy does not cover third party data collection and niagara.com does not assume any responsibility for the actions of any third parties. You should make every effort to read the individual privacy policies of the partners, advertisers or co-sponsors. You may opt out of sharing your information with such partners, advertisers or co-sponsors by choosing not to use their service or content.

Any submissions to Internet discussion areas or other public Internet areas on the niagara.com web sites are accepted with the understanding that they are accessible to all third parties. If you do not want your comments to be viewed by third parties, you are advised not to make any submissions on the Internet.

Can you access, edit or delete your Information?

At your written request, we will: (a) provide you with reasonable access to your Information that is in our records within a reasonable time period; and (b) use reasonable efforts to allow you to update or correct information which you state is incorrect to the extent such updating or correction will not compromise our privacy or security interests and subject to the understanding that it may be impossible to completely delete your Information without some residual information because of back-ups. In the event that we are unable to grant you access to your Information, we will provide you with a written explanation of the reasons for denying access.

What is our Opt-out Policy?

You may request to decline receiving promotional and/or marketing information from us. Notwithstanding your wish to cease receiving such promotional and/or marketing information, we reserve the right to contact you regarding account status, changes to any niagara.com service agreement and other matters relevant to the underlying service and/or the personal information collected.

When your Internet account is established with us, your primary email address is automatically subscribed to the following mailing systems lists:

• "niagara.com Billing Notification Information" which provides you with information about your account: invoices, statements, receipts, e-mail reminders of amounts due, and so forth;
• "niagara.com Information Announcements", which provides you with news updates, newsletters and announcements from our niagara.com portal homepage;
• "niagara.com System Announcements", which provides you with emergency systems status notifications, network alerts, management bulletins to our clients, and virus warnings from Technical Support, Customer Services or niagara.com management; and
• "niagara.com Offers", which notifies you of special offers and sends you marketing newsletters from niagara.com and selected niagara.com partners.

©1994-2001 niagara.com

All rights reserved. niagara.com, niagara.com, and the niagara.com logo are service marks or registered service marks of niagara.com, a numbered company, located in St. Catharines in the Province of Ontario, Canada.