BellaOnline is an editor-run site and as such, we are all very aware of and sensitive to privacy issues. We get enough spam in our own mailboxes - we don't ever want to add to that problem for anybody else!

Here are the ONLY ways in which BellaOnline sends out email messages, with a full description of each system.

Editor Contact
When you contact an editor directly from her biography page, you use a contact form. You have the option in that contact form of supplying your email address, if you wish for that editor to respond to your question. You can always opt not to provide an email address, if you just wish to make a comment. If you do supply your email address, it is only used for that one response. It is not saved in any way, added to any database, distributed, sold or otherwise used. An example of this would be writing the hair editor to ask her for suggestions on shampoo for dry hair, and wanting to receive her response.

Editor Site Newsletter
On each page of an editor's site is a sign-up box for that editor's site newsletter. When you enter your email address, you are subscribing to receive that editor's newsletter. Depending on the editor, that might be sent out weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or on another schedule. That one newsletter is the only thing you will ever receive for your sign-up. You can unsubscribe at any time, by using the link on that newsletter's footer. Nobody can see your subscription information, not even the editor. When she sends her newsletter, she just clicks a "SUBMIT" button and it automatically goes out to all of her members. We take privacy very seriously here.

Note that because we take privacy so seriously, when you sign up for the newsletter you are sent a confirmation message so that you know you were signed up for it, and can immediately opt out if you wish. This is to help prevent people from maliciously signing up other users for newsletters. Note that we do NOT require you to re-opt-in a second time to get our newsletters. We have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and in polls we have made they have all been quite vocal in not wanting the sign-up to be a two part process. In the history of BellaOnline the "fake subscription" rate has been incredibly tiny, so it would be unfair to penalize all users in our system for the malicious acts of a few users. Our log files naturally track the date, time, IP address and other details of every subscription, which is solely used to track down and prosecute malicious subscriptions. If you feel someone has maliciously signed you up for one of our newsletters, let us know immediately and we will work with you to have that user brought to justice.

Garden Game
In our members area is a two-person "garden game" that involves interactive back and forth gameplay. If you choose to play the garden game, you can choose to have the system send you alerts when it's your turn to move.

BellaOnline Forum
If you choose to sign up for our forums, you can choose to have the forums send you alerts when you get a private message. This can be turned on and off. In addition, we very infrequently (once a year or so) send out important system alerts to our forum members when we will be taking the forums down for maintenance for more than a few hours. You can choose in your forum profile to not receive these alerts if you wish.

Full BellaOnline Privacy Policy