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We have created this privacy policy
in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy while visiting our
web site. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination
practices. It is updated whenever our privacy policy is modified.
If you have any questions regarding this policy or you think we are not abiding
by our posted privacy policy, please send your concerns to us through our feedback
form.
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Information This Site
Collects:
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Top10Links is the sole owner of the information
collected on this site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others
in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement. Top10Links collects
information from our users at several different points on our website as described
below.
1) Information you explicitly provide:
In order to use some parts of this website, a user must first provide some contact
information (such as name and email address). This information is used to contact
the user about the services on our site for which they have expressed interest.
It is optional for the user to provide demographic information (such as income
level and gender), and unique identifiers (such as social security number), but
may be encouraged in some cases so we can provide a more personalized experience
on our site.
A) We offer a free email newsletter to those who voluntarily
provide:
- email address
B) We offer free web based email accounts to those
who voluntarily provide:
- user name
- password
- email address
- first and last name
- full address
- email contents
C) We offer free weather conditions
over the web and by email to those who voluntarily provide:
- city and state OR zip code
- email address
D) We offer the ability to leave comments on sites in our directory to those who
voluntarily provide:
- first and last name
- email address
- comments
E) We offer a traffic partnership program to
those who voluntarily provide:
- user name and password
- email address
- site URL and title
- site description
F) We offer a feedback form to those who voluntarily
provide:
- name
- email address
- feedback
G) We offer a help form to those who voluntarily
provide:
- name
- email address
- account id
- ICQ or AOL IM address
- description of problem
H) We offer a survey form to those who voluntarily
provide:
- name
- email address
- age
- gender
- various site ratings
I) We offer branding and advertising services to those who voluntarily provide:
- personal name
- company name
- email address
- web site address
- mailing address
- credit references
- HTML code
- financial info
J) Occasionally we may offer contests to those who voluntarily provide:
- name
- email address
- mailing address
- demographic info
K) We offer a "Tell a Friend" features through a third party to those
who provide:
- your name
- your email
- zip code and country
- friends email
- optional message
2) Information we automatically collect:
We record IP addresses, browser types, browser versions, paged visited and site
addresses that referred you to our site - all in individual and aggregate form.
We may also send cookies to your computer.
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| Use Of The Information This Site Collects: |
1) Personal information you provide:
A) If you subscribe to our newsletter, we will use
the email address you provided to send you our newsletter from time-to-time.
B) If you sign up for our free web based email accounts
we will use the following information,
- user name
- password
- email address
- first and last name
- full address
- email contents
to enable your account's operation, maintenance, troubleshooting, aggregate statistics,
and to contact you about news regarding our email service or one of our other
site features. Your email contents are not monitored or edited and used soley
for the purpose of the normal sending and receiving of mail.
C) If you sign up to receive free weather
conditions available over the web or by email we will use the following information,
- city and state OR zip code
- email address
to determine what geographic region you would like weather conditions for and
if you sign up to have them delivered to you by email, we will use your email
address to email them to you as requested.
D) If you leave comments on sites in our directory, we will use the following
information,
- first and last name
- email address
- comments
to publicly display your name, email address and your comments regarding the site
you commented on.
E) If you participate in our traffic partnership program,
we will use the following information,
- user name and password
- email address
- site URL and title
- site description
for account maintenance purposes, aggregate statistics, and to display your site
name, link and banner on our traffic partnership program statistics pages.
F) If you provide feedback using our feedback form
we will use the following information,
- name
- email address
- feedback
to read your feedback and email you a reply.
G) If you request help using our help form,
we will use the following information,
- name
- email address
- account id
- ICQ or AOL IM address
- description of problem
to troubleshoot the problem you are requesting help on and to reply to your request
of help by email or an instant message address.
H) If you participate in our survey we will
use the following information,
- name
- email address
- age
- gender
- various site ratings
in individual and in aggregate form to help us understand peoples opinions of
our site and how we can improve it. If questions are asked in the survey we will
use your provided email address and name to respond to your questions.
I) If you use Top10Links advertising or branding services we will use the following
information,
- personal name
- company name
- email address
- web site address
- mailing address
- credit references
- HTML code
- financial info
to enable us to provide the requested services,
consider offering credit terms and for billing purposes. If we need to contact
you regarding the requested service, for example if we have trouble processing
your order, this information will be used to contact you.
J) If you participate in one of our contests, we will use the following information,
- name
- email address
- mailing address
- demographic info
in aggregate and individually to notify the winners and award prizes.
K) If you use our "Tell a Friend" feature to tell a friend about our
site, the following information,
- your name
- your email
- zip code and country
- friends email
- optional message
will be used in the aggregate by Top10Links and individually, by Recommend-It
for the purpose of sending a one time email to your friend. Recommend-It
has its own privacy policy which we invite you to read here.
2) Automatically collected information:
- We use IP address information in the aggregate
and individually for administrative & security purposes. For example, to help
diagnose problems with our server. Or to prevent visitors from violating our voting
rules.
- We use browser types and version
information in the aggregate and individually to help us design & improve
our site. For example, if we noticed many visitors using certain brand browsers,
we would be able to redesign parts of our site so that web pages are displayed
properly for those browsers.
- We use pages visited in the aggregate and individually to determine what pages
are the most popular among our visitors. This information helps us provide recommendations
as to what pages our visitors may find valuable.
- We use sites addresses that referred you to our site in aggregate and individually
to learn what sites have linked to us. This helps us determine where the majority
of our traffic is coming from (search engines, directories, guides, partners,
reviews, etc. ...).
- We may use a feature of your browser to set a "cookie"
on your computer. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable
information while on our site. In most cases, once you close your browser, the
cookie simply terminates.
This allows us to measure and report aggregate information to advertisers such
as the number of people who see their ad (reach) and the number of times people
see their ad (frequency). It also allows us to avoid delivering the same ad too
many times. If for some reason you would rather not take advantage of the benefits
made possible with cookies, most browsers allow you to reject cookies or to choose
which cookies to accept.
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| Sharing Of The Information This Site
Collects: |
We may share demographic information
in the aggregate with our partners and advertisers.
This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual
person.
We use an outside payment processing companies to bill customers for all purchased
services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable
information for any secondary purposes.
If we partner with another party to provide specific services and a user signs
up for these services, we will share names, or other contact information that
is necessary for the third party to provide these services. These parties are
not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose
of providing these services.
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| Links to 3rd Party Sites: |
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Top10Links contains links to other
web sites on the Internet. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the
privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when
they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site
that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies
solely to information collected by this web site.
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| Security of User Information: |
Top10Links takes every precaution
to protect our users’ information. When users submit sensitive information via
the website, your information is protected both online and off-line.
If and when we or one of the payment processing companies we use asks users to
enter sensitive information (such as credit card number and/or social security
number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption
software in the industry - SSL.
While on a secure page, the lock icon on the bottom of web browsers such as Netscape
Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to unlocked,
or open, when you are just ‘surfing’. To learn more about SSL, click here.
While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do
everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users’
information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted
in our offices.
Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example,
our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to
personally identifiable information. Our employees must use password-protected
screen-savers when they leave their desk. When they return, they must reenter
their password to regain access to your information. Furthermore, ALL employees
are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Every quarter, as well
as any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded
about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers’
information is protected.
Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are
kept in a secure environment, behind a locked cage. If you have any questions
about the security of your personal information at our website, please contact
us.
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| Supplemental Information: |
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In order for this website to properly
fulfill its obligation to our customers, it may be necessary for us to supplement
the information we receive with information from 3rd party sources.
For example, to determine if our customers qualify for credit terms, we may use
their name and social security number to request a credit report. Once we determine
a user’s creditworthiness, this document is destroyed.
Or in order for Top10Links to enhance its ability to tailor the site to an individual’s
preference, we may combine information about the purchasing habits of users with
similar information from our partners to create a personalized user profile. When
a user makes a purchase from one of our partners, they collect and share that
purchase information with us so we can tailor the site to our users’ preferences.
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| Advertisments: |
We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit networkadvertising.org. |
| Correct/Update/Delete Policy: |
If your personally identifiable
information changes (such as your zip code), or if you no longer desire to use
one of our services, we will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update or remove
any of your personal data you provided to us.
If instructions for doing this are not provided in the area of the site for which
you need to correct, update or delete your information, you may email your corrections,
updates or notice that you wish to discontinue use of one of our services though
our feedback form and we will make the requested changes.
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| Opt-Out Policy: |
Many of our web site services
( newsletter, branding, advertising, rankings, etc.) involve the sending of occasional
emails from us to you for various reasons ( for example to provide the requested
service, account maintenance, site news, etc.).
If you do not wish to receive these emails you can immediately stop them by notifying
us of your desire to no longer use one or more of our services.
Instructions for how to do this are usually provided on pages relevant to the
web site service you wish to stop using. For example to unsubscribe from our newsletter
simply enter your email address in the form at the following URL:
http://www.top10links.com/newsletter/
If removal instructions are not in the area you wish to be removed from, simply
email us the following information:
- your email address
- the service you wish to be removed from
- your account ID, if any
Upon receipt of the above information we will cancel your account and email you
a confirmation that it has been canceled.
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| Children Policy: |
As per our sites terms of service, minors are
not permitted access to our site without the express permission and supervision
of their parent or legal guardian.
We do not knowingly collect online contact information from minors under age 18
without prior verifiable parental consent or direct parental notification of the
nature and intended use of this information, which shall include an opportunity
for the parent to prevent use of the information and participation in the activity.
Where prior verifiable parental consent is not obtained, online contact information
shall only be used to directly respond to the child's request and shall not be
used to re-contact the child for other purposes.
We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable off-line contact information
from minors under age 18 without prior verifiable parental consent.
We do not knowingly distribute to third parties any personally identifiable information
collected from a minor under age 18 without prior verifiable parental consent.
We do not give the ability to minors under age 18 to publicly post or otherwise
distribute personally identifiable contact information without prior verifiable
parental consent, and will make best efforts to prohibit a child from posting
any contact information.
We do not entice minors under age 18 by the prospect of a special game, prize
or other activity, to divulge more information than is needed to participate in
such activity. |
| Notification of Changes: |
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If we decide to change our privacy
policy, we will post those changes on our home page so our users are always aware
of what information we collect, how we use it, and under circumstances, if any,
we disclose it.
If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner
different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users
by way of an email if possible. Users will have a choice as to whether or not
we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in
accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.
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| Contact Information: |
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If you have any questions regarding
this privacy policy, please direct them through our feedback
form.
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Glossary of Terms:
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Aggregate
When we state that we collect information in the aggregate, we mean for summary
purposes only. For example, we collect referrer addresses "in the aggregate"
to answer such questions as: "How many people from Yahoo visited our site
last week?"
Cookies
Cookies are pieces of information that we store in your computer. Temporary cookies
only last as long as your browser is running. Persistent cookies are stored on
your hard disk (they take up very little space). We use cookies exclusively for
advertising purposes.
IP Address
When you are connected to the Internet, your computer has a unique Internet ID
called an IP Address. Most people that connect through a dial-up service, such
as America Online, get a different IP Address each time they login. Others might
have a permanently assigned IP Address, called a static IP Address. It is difficult
or impossible for a web site to collect personal information about you (i.e.,
your name, email address, etc.) from your IP Address alone.
Browser Types
Browser types refers to the brand of browser that you are using to access pages
on our site. Some examples of popular browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer,
Netscape Navigator & Web TV. By tracking what browser types are accessing
are site, we can make sure that our pages are displayed properly to our visitors.
Browser Version
Browser version is a number the browser developers assign to their software programs
in order to keep track of different versions of their browsers. For example Microsoft
Internet Explorer 3.0 or Netscape Navigator 4.5.
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