Now the author suggests that the cited coupons.com extract means: “We can share whatever you provide us whenever you touch or interact with our site”

To my reading it means nothing like that. One of us is suffering severe reading comprehension problems. Is it me?

I read it something like: "We do not share ... information ... _except_ as part of [something you've] chosen to participate in."

Maybe they could bend it to say choosing to participate in the site allows them whatever they please? Even though the word 'specific' is used, how can you use it in a legal sense? (How broadly can you apply the use of the word?)

I hate reading privacy policies for the exact reason of not being able to absolutely discern how they affect me without having to get a lawyer.

It depends how you arrive at it. If you visit coupons.com, the couponsinc.com policy is linked at the bottom of the page, and the exception covers any meaningful use of coupons.com (but not random browsing without typing out any information; then again that may fall into the “non-identifying” part of the policy).

Not really. The problem is that this is a press release without the traditional "experts say" part, which ruins the persuasiveness of the interpretation. So you got left behind.

I too am having trouble with this interpretation, though I'm certainly among the paranoid on the subject. Here's their quote:

"We do not share personally identifiable information... except as part of a specific program or feature that you have chosen to participate in..."

and the OP's translation:

“We can share whatever you provide us whenever you touch or interact with our site”

To me these are not the same.

If you want to see a combined privacy rating for both the website and all the advertisers that you're exposed to when you visit a site, PrivacyChoice has a browser plugin that will help you.

One thing that I've noticed is that old-school media tends to have absolutely terrible scores, and they tend to share lots of stuff, and they share it with less privacy-conscious ad networks. I was very surprised that Facebook and Google, companies that are supposedly so predatory that they have the FTC in house to monitor them, stack up better.

Yep, that's something that I definitely found. I think people are scared by Google/FB more because of their size/power than because their privacy policies are below industry par.

I agree with the problems, so for website owners, are there examples of "good" policies or templates to learn from?

I thought this was a melon card competitor, but it seems as though they just changed their name.

We did (its transitional right now, both sites work perfectly on the same back-end as we slowly inform our users), thanks for noticing. We're hard at work absorbing all of the privacy policies of the web, good things are happening for privacy. Would love your ideas or feedback, robert@safeshepherd.com