Cyber Top Cops - Privacy Policy
PRIVACY POLICY - COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY
Updated: 25 July 2008
This site is owned and operated by Cyber Top Cops. Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At Cyber Top Cops, we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe.
Because we gather certain types of information about our users, we feel you should fully understand our policy and the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we gather and how we use it. It also discloses specific practices that we strongly condemn, have a strong policy against and never employ on our site.
INFORMATION CYBER TOP COPS GATHERS AND TRACKS
Cyber Top Cops gathers three types of information about users:
- Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to receive our electronic newsletters, to participate in our message boards or forums, to email a friend, and from participation in polls and surveys.
- Information that users provide when reporting cyber crime or requesting support.
- Information Cyber Top Cops gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers' needs and to help our advertisers and sponsors better understand the demographics of our audience. Because Cyber Top Cops derives its revenue mainly from sponsorships and advertising, providing such aggregated demographic data is essential to keeping our service free to users. Under no circumstances does Cyber Top Cops divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.
Cyber Top Cops Gathers User Information In The Following Processes:
Optional Voluntary Information
We offer the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:
1. Electronic newsletters policy (Dispatches)
We will offer free electronic newsletters/blog articles to users. Cyber Top Cops gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by following the link provided in every newsletter that points users to the subscription management page. FeedBurner currently administers e-mail subscriptions to our blog and RSS feeds.
2. "E-mail this to a friend" policy
Our site may offer users the choice to electronically forward a link, page, or documents to someone else by clicking "e-mail this to a friend". The user must provide their email address, as well as that of the recipient. This information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any other purpose.
3. Polling
We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues. Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable to any particular user. Cyber Top Cops may use a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.
4. Surveys
Cyber Top Cops may occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience. We sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our sponsors, advertisers and partners. We never share any of this information about specific individuals with any third party.
We understand that reporting cyber crime is not always optional and voluntary and in certain circumstances you may have no other choice but to report cyber crime. We will require evidence about the cyber crime that was committed to enable us to conduct a thorough investigation. Some evidence may contain personal and private information and most of the time we are required to supply this evidence to the appropriate authorities without altering or changing its contents.
We handle all cases with strict confidentiality and care and it is very important to us that your privacy and safety, as an honest cyber citizen, are protected at all costs. You may stay anonymous when reporting cyber crime, but as mentioned in the previous paragraph, it may be necessary for us to supply your personal information or evidence, containing information about you, to the appropriate authorities. We will however ask for your permission before supplying this information, unless it is required from us to supply this information in order to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.
Requesting Support
Users can request support either via standard e-mail or via our Live Online Priority Support service. Our e-mail service is powered by Google Mail and our Live Online Priority Support Service is powered by Google Talk. It is important for us to disclose the names of the parties involved in the services that we provide. Please refer to the SHARING OF THE INFORMATION clause of our privacy policy for more details about our information sharing policy.
Children
Consistent with the Federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting parental consent.
Usage tracking
Cyber Top Cops tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. Cyber Top Cops does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser).
Cyber Top Cops sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking is never associated with individual users. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you.
We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. The cookie itself does not contain Personal Information although it will enable us to relate your use of this site to information that you have specifically and knowingly provided. But the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Cyber Top Cops uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above). Our advertising system delivers a one-time cookie to better track ad impressions and click rates.
You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, polling, surveys and special features on our site.
USE OF INFORMATION
Cyber Top Cops uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.
As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to send out electronic newsletters and to enable users to participate in polls, surveys, message boards, and forums. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regular schedule (depending on the newsletter), and occasionally send out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in something we are doing. Cyber Top Cops never shares newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors or partners. FeedBurner, who is a trusted service provider, administers the mailing lists of e-mail subscriptions to our blog and RSS feeds
We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you. We track search terms entered in our Search function as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a particular user enters.
Cyber Top Cops creates aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for advertisers, sponsors and partners. This allows our advertisers to advertise more effectively, and allows our users to receive advertisements that are pertinent to their needs. Because we don't track the usage patterns of individual users, an advertiser or sponsor will never know that a specific user clicked their ad. We will not disclose any information about any individual user except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.
Cyber Top Cops uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs, to provide a useful service to our visitors and help our advertisers better understand our audience's demographics. This is essential to keeping our services free. All support queries and the information provided during these support sessions are handled with strict confidentiality. We will not share any personal or confidential information about individual users with any third party, except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.
Cyber Top Cops has a strong policy against malicious software (viruses, spyware, adware, etc.), scams, hoaxes and spamming activities. We shall keep our site free of these items and practices to the best of our abilities. Please note that we publish examples and information about the aforementioned subjects for educational purposes only and we do not promote or support these activities and practices in any way. Our site does not contain or promote pornography, hatred, racism, warez, piracy, nudity, hacking activities, violence, degradation, harm, slander or any content that's obscene, vulgar or indecent. We hereby declare that our site is Legal, Family Friendly and Child Safe.
OPT-OUT POLICY
We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:
- Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters.
- Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviate the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users.
YOUR CONSENT
By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by Cyber Top Cops. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.
