Introduction
The Shielders® company develops, promotes, and provides personal control and self improvement products such as its Shield Method Weight Loss Course and related products and services. We respect and value personal privacy – yours and ours. This policy statement (“Privacy Policy”) is written to explain how we gather and do and do not use the information shared with us by those who visit and use our website and instructional content.

User cooperation is necessary for the effective use of the Shielders® website, learning products, and services and for the generation of beneficial learning outcomes through Shielders® proprietary content. Provision of Shielders® learning products and services depend firstly upon user honesty in self-representation and user answers to questions in tests and evaluations.

Shielders® strongly advises its users to read its Privacy Policy and legal documentation.

General Policy
This Privacy Policy applies to the Shielders® website and its users and governs any and all data collected and used by us.

Shielders®’s primary purpose for gathering user information is to understand users’ ongoing needs and provide the best possible online experience and outcomes. Its other purposes are to document changes that users make as a result of taking its courses, to help us to continue to improve our proprietary products and services and to inform others who could benefit from our courses and products.

Users may upload text, images and videos to the Shielders® to show their ideas, opinions and progress in the program. Shielders® may use this data, comments, and images, separately and together, to analyze, evaluate, and improve the Shielders® Method or Shielders® website and share those results, anonymously or openly with user consent, with those who could benefit from the Shielders® Method now or in the future.

Shielders® server may accept and retain the following information about course participants: Answers to questions and comments on tests and evaluations. These tests and evaluations include information about the eating habits of user-participants who are learning on the Shielders® website and about the many ways that their habits may or may not affect them. We may also retain comments and media voluntarily uploaded by user-participants and those obtained during and after events and other contacts with Shielders®. Additional information necessary for maintaining user access to the website, providing them with Shielders® products and services, and maintaining Shielders® legally required records may also be retained.

Shielders® does not sell your personal information and will not disclose or provide information to third parties, except to researchers, statisticians, legal and government officials (as legally requested) and to public relations contractors, for purposes of analyzing our results, helping us improve our products and services and making them available to the public.

Closing Your Account
All visitors and users of the Shielders® website learning products and services may opt to discontinue their participation and communication with Shielders® and the Shielders® website at any time by requesting to close their Shielders® account. We may retain users records for statistical, research, development and public relations purposes, during and after their active participation, while taking steps to keep their identity private, as described below. (See important information about our “Refund Policy” and instructions on our “Terms and Conditions” page.)

Steps we take to protect your identity
Shielders® lists participant results in publicly-viewed reports by number, not name; showing only first names and last initials in comments and testimonials; and by blurring or not showing full faces in images that may be used for public view, unless we are given your express permission to show and publish your full name or images. Attendance at Shielders® events involve still and/or video photographs of participants and may show recognizable full faces and body images along with full names, unless the participant informs us in writing of both the desire to attend with an express request to be excluded from photographs, voice, or other recordings. Those and other other similar arrangements (such as might occur with a celebrity or celebrity endorser) must be made, in advance, by separate contractual agreement with Shielders®.

Contacts with you
Shielders® will never email a user to request directly any type of personal identification or other privileged information.

Shielders® respects user privacy and reserves the right to contact users for security purposes, including security breaches, account issues, or changes in products or services. If deemed necessary, Shielders® may use its website or other public media or means to post a public or user security notice.

The Shielders® company or website may contact users regarding requested products and services, the status of their Shielders® accounts and contracted learning products. Shielders® also may contact users to inform them of available special offers and opportunities or to proffer their opinions or suggestions to Shielders®.

A primary goal of Shielders® is to continue to improve our programs and develop new programs to help individuals gain greater personal control over eating and other behaviors. If we find from a review of records or other sources that you could contribute to one of these studies or benefit from a new program, we may contact you to ask if you would like to participate. You can accept or decline our invitations, and unsubscribe from such contacts if you so wish.

IT Security
User payment and related personal identification records are retained solely by independent, trusted, contracted financial service providers that maintain highly encrypted off-site links and security systems provided by its trusted, contracted, commercial affiliates according to prevailing state and federal laws and commercial codes. To verify the security of any third-party site, check for the lock icon in the address bar and “https” at the start of their webpages.

Anyone using the Internet may be able to download images from it and extract embedded location data from any image that contains it. For that reason, Shielders® advises its users to avoid uploading images that include embedded location data (EXIF GPS).

If at any time any user finds and uses a link on the Shielders® website and is taken unexpectedly or inappropriately to another online page or website, the user is expected to report that experience immediately to Shielders®.

Any and all User identification (ID) or passwords through which a User gains access to any part of this website must be held confidential by the User and updated or replaced upon the request of Shielders®.

Users sometimes notice that Shielders® uses an anonymous code string (“hash”) created from their user email addresses through our secure Gravatar service provider. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available at https://automattic.com/privacy/.

To support spam detection, visitor data left on the Shielders® website are collected alongside their IP addresses and browser user agent strings.

European Union Users
Providing personal information to Shielders® means consenting to the storage and use of personal information as described in this Policy, even if you reside in the European Union (EU). Shielders® operates in the United States. If you live in the EU and access the Shielders® website, any information you provide Shielders® is transferred from the EU to a server in the US in accord with the adequacy decision on EU-US Privacy (1 Aug. 2016). Its Privacy Shield protects the free transfer and personal rights of any person in the EU whose data is transferred to a commercial enterprise operating in the US. The Shielders® website does not yet comply with EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

User Acceptance of This Privacy Policy
By using the Shielders® website, you are actively accepting the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy as here expressed. Continued use of the Shielders® website is implicit consent to this Privacy Policy Agreement. Shielders® reserves the right to make changes in this and any other of our terms and agreements at any time, as it sees fit. Users are encouraged to consult this Privacy Policy Agreement periodically in order to view any and all updates, changes, or content additions that follow.

Inquiries & Other Communications
This Privacy Policy Agreement is governed by the laws of the state of Nevada, USA. For any legal or business questions regarding this Agreement, please direct all correspondence to Underscore Management, Inc., DBA Shielders® at 3225 McLeod Drive, Suite 100, Las Vegas, Nevada 8912