AboveTopSecret.com Privacy Policy

Commitment To Privacy


Nothing is more important to the owners and staff of AboveTopSecret.com, ATSnews.com, media.AboveTopSecret.com, BelowTopSecret.com, AbovePolitics.com, AboveNetwork.com and any other website(s) owned and operated by The Above Network, LLC (collectively the "Websites") 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.

Network Advertising Initiative


The Information We Collect:

This notice applies to all information collected or submitted on the Websites. On some pages, you can specify personal profiles that may be viewable by other registered members of the Website. However, at no time do we collect your personal information such as name, address, or phone number, and we only require a functioning e-mail address for membership. At no time do we attempt to reconcile any information you provide (including 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 the 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 and to notify you of any violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (hereinafter "DMCA") by one or more of your posts. Your address is not used for any additional purpose other than registration for the Website and/or email newsletter and will never be shared with outside parties and is not viewable by unregistered members.

To receive newsletters and administrative emails (other than DMCA notifications), you must first respond in the affirmative to the opt-in notification email you will receive soon after joining the site or subscribing to the email newsletter service. If you do not opt-in, you will receive no newsletters or promotional emails. You may opt-out of the emails at any time by clicking the opt-out link in each email, replying to the email with the subject line "unsubscribe."

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 specific individuals.

The non-identifying aggregate information is not stored on any server owned by the Websites as we do not collect or 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 other personal information. We reserve the right to disclose any personally identifiable information associated with your account and/or posting history as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on The Above Network, LLC.


Voluntary Input Of Personally Identifiable Information:

If you use a the bulletin boards (forums), blogs, private messaging, or chat room on the Websites, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums and services, and may, at our discretion, remove any personally identifiable information you submit that appears in public view.


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, but some may expire in moths or years.


Third Party Data Cookies:

Advertising networks that serve advertising on the Websites may write their own cookies for the purposes of determining advertising frequency and relevance, and to match ads against your interests based on aggregate non-personally identifiable information learned about your Internet browsing. 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 the Websites provide users with the ability to opt-out of these third-party cookies. Below is a non-exhaustive list of the networks which may, from time to time, deliver ads to our users (many may only occasionally deliver ads). For more information about these and other companies, and your options for restricting the use of your data, visit networkadvertising.org:
Google
Comscore
DoubleClick
Mediaplex
Eyeblaster
Eyewonder
Interpolls
PointRoll
Unicast
Safecount
Factor TG
TribalFusion
Burst Media
CPX Interactive
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.


Affiliate Relationships and Service Providers:

Certain partner websites (such as Cafepress.com and DisInfo.com) may provide additional content, features, and even shopping cart services for products carrying the Websites identity and/or content. While the URL subdirectory or subdomain for partner sites such as these may contain "abovetopsecret," you must be aware that these are separate companies with privacy policies that may be different from ours. At no time is your personal information from the Websites provided to such sites, and we do not collect data from them that correlates to your member account on the 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 The Privacy Of Children:

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 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 violations of the Terms and Conditions of Use or the Terms and Conditions of Membership 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 the Websites. 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 the Websites 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 one of the site principals: Bill Irvine, Mark Allin, or Simon Gray.


Changes To This Privacy Policy:

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the home page, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.


How To Contact Us:

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

Written queries may be sent to:
The Above Network, LLC
15111 North Hayden Road, Suite 160-156
Scottsdale, AZ 85260.