Our Commitment To Privacy



Nothing is more important to the owners and staff of AboveTopSecret.com than making every effort to protect the privacy of all members. To better protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used.


The Information We Collect:

This notice applies to all information collected or submitted on the AboveTopSecret.com website, and any other site owned and operated by AboveTopSecret.com. On some pages, you can specify personal profiles that may be viewable by other registered members of this website. However, at no time do we collect your personal information such as name, address, or phone number, and only require a functioning e-mail address for membership. At no time do we attempt to reconcile any information you provide (included your IP address as indicated below) with offline identity or other personal information.


The Way We Use Information:

We use the information you provided about yourself at registration to authorize your access when you post messages on our discussion forum. We also record IP address you're using at the time of each posted messages.

We use the e-mail address you provided to confirm your discussion board password. Your addresses are not used for any other purpose other than registration for the AboveTopSecret.com email newsletters, and will never be shared with outside parties and are not viewable by unregistered members.

We use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design our website and to share with advertisers. For example, we may tell an advertiser that X number of individuals visited a certain area on our website, or that Y number of men and Z number of women filled out our registration form, but we would never disclose anything that could be used to identify any individuals.

The non-identifying aggregate information is not stored on any server owned by AboveTopSecret.com as we do not collect nor store any log files of activity on our websites. Instead, we employ the Google Analytics software (which does set a cookie) to obtain traffic analysis data.

Finally, we never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways unrelated to the ones described above. Your profile information is protected from web-spiders that search for e-mail addresses, and AboveTopSecret.com will never release your e-mail address or any other information about you and your account unless specifically asked, in writing, by authorized law enforcement parties.


Data Cookies:

From time to time data cookies will be set by various portions of the application code that runs the forums, features, games, and other specialty items running on our web servers. At no time is any personally identifying information (other than site username) ever stored in these cookies. The cookies are used to provide our application with page-to-page awareness of your user status and/or access privileges. Most of these cookies expire within days, however, some may expire in moths or years.


Third Party Data Cookies:

Advertising networks that serve advertising on AboveTopSecret.com may write their own cookies for the purposes of determining advertising frequency and relevance. We have performed reasonable diligence on all advertising networks authorized to serve ads on our websites to ensure that their data cookies are for this purpose and nothing more. Many of the providers serving display ads on AboveTopSecret.com provide users with the ability to opt-out of these third-party cookies. Below is a list of the networks which may, from time to time, deliver ads to our users (many may only occasionally deliver ads):
Media Mayhem (via adbureau.net)
DoubleClick
Mediaplex
Eyeblaster
Eyewonder
Interpolls
PointRoll
Unicast
Safecount
Factor TG
TribalFusion
Casale Media
Specific Media
Value Click Media
24/7 Real Media
Pulse 360


Data Mining:

At no time will your personal profile information, posting history, or any other activity specific to your time on our websites be used for the purposes of targeted messages from advertisers or marketers purchasing ads or other marketing products on these websites.


Our Commitment To Data Security:

To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.


Our Commitment To Children's Privacy:

Protecting the privacy of the very young is especially important. For that reason, we never collect or maintain information at our website from those we actually know are under 13, and no part of our website is structured to attract anyone under 13.


Our Commitment Communication Privacy:

Members are provided with a private messaging system (U2U service) as part of their account privileges. Every reasonable effort is made to ensure the private messaging system is maintained in a secure fashion so as to ensure the privacy of any and all messages sent between members. Staff and/or owners will not observe the content or flow of any private messaging unless explicit reports of Terms & Conditions violations are received. The private messages may be subject to run-time content filtering (such as vulgarities) that is used to filter the content of thread posts.


How You Can Access Or Correct Your Information

You can access all your profile information that we collect online and maintain by AboveTopSecret.com. We use this procedure to better safeguard your information. Use the "Member Center" link in the top of the discussion board menu-bar.

To protect your privacy and security, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections.


Our Commitment To Accuracy:

From time to time, members may post controversial material for which demands of proof or other evidentiary corroboration may be requested. At such time as this becomes required, your privacy, and that of your source, will be guaranteed by the ownership of AboveTopSecret.com via a legally binding non-disclosure agreement (NDA). At no time will you ever be required to reveal information to any one on staff, and any cooperation is purely voluntary and limited to on of the site principals: Bill Irvine, Mark Allin, or Simon Gray.



How To Contact Us:

Should you have other questions or concerns about these privacy policies, please send us an email using our Contact Form.



(Edit to ad links to advertiser's Privacy Policies and/or websites)

[edit on 3-1-2008 by SkepticOverlord]



(Edit to ad link to Media Mayhem Privacy Policy)

[edit on 14-7-2008 by SkepticOverlord]