Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy last updated 14 February, 2008

You can use the MacCentralCafe sites without providing any Personal Data, however, you may not be able to use certain Services.

Simply Put:

Your private data provided to the MacCentralCafe Media: the MacCentralCafe Apple/Tech News & Network, the MacCentralCafe Forum, Planet MacCentralCafe, and Club MacCentralCafe, such as that provided for registration (for example, your email address), is safe and secure; you won't receive unsolicited email; and private data is not accessable by third parties, except employees, contractors and agents for specific business-related functions such as maintaining datasbases, or in order to develop or improve services or features. Those individuals are bound by confidentiality. Datacenter physical security bars unauthorized access, and includes 24/7 deadly force security personnel, concrete perimeter barriers, biometric readers, motion detection, CCTV.

Contact without Spam or Email Address Harvesting:

Contact or Email links in registered MacCentralCafe members' profile pages utilize a contact form whereby the recipient's email address is not made publicly visible, in the body of the communique, headers, etc; and email addresses and private information are secure and not harvestable. 

Legal Requirements:

Private data may be disclosed if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to (i) comply with a legal obligation, (ii) protect and defend our rights or property, (iii) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of the Site or the public, or (iv) protect against legal liability.

The MacCentralCafe Portal Proper, The MacCentralCafe Apple/Tech News&Network:

The MacCentralCafe portal proper doesn't require registration, and therefore does not ask for private information, however, it does use:

• Log files: We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the Site, track user movements, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to Personal Data and are not themselves considered Personal Data.
• Cookies: We use a software technology called "cookies" to collect non-personal information about our visitors. Such information includes: Type of browser software a visitor uses to access the Internet (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Camino, etc.); type of operating system (i.e. Windows, Macintosh, etc.); or the domain name of the visitor's Internet service provider. We also count the number of visitors who come to our site each day in an aggregate form. Such information allows us to better assess which attractions are best meeting our audience's needs. We also use cookies to set a persistent logged in state, for user convenience, so that user name and password is set once, 'remembered', and the user does not have to repeatedly re-enter that login information.

MacCentralCafe Forum:

The Forum requires membership/registration in order to activate certain member features/privileges (such as the ability to post); and private data, such as email address, is submitted in the registration process. Your private data is not shared with any third party, except by court order pursuant to criminal investigation, you will not receive unsolicited email, the host-data environment is secure against exploits or intrusion, and the datacenter is secure (24/7 deadly force security, concrete perimeter barriers, bulletproof walls, biometric readers, motion detection, CCTV).

Planet MacCentralCafe and the MacCentralCafe Pibb Chat Channel:

Planet MacCentralCafe and Club MacCentralCafe are powered by the KickApps and Ning platforms, respectively, and require membership/registration in order to activate certain member features/privileges (such as the ability to chat/post, or to create webpages and profiles, or to blog or upload media). Private data is submitted in the process of membership/registration to KickApps and Ning servers, and so private data is subject to KickApps and Ning privacy policies which are basically similar to MacCentralCafe portal proper and MacCentralCafe Forums in key points meaningful to the end user, i.e., private data is secure and access is limited to only the information required to perform a specific business-related function such as maintaining databases.

Planet MacCentralCafe and Club MacCentralCafe Security:

KickApps and Ning take reasonable steps to protect the Personal Data provided via the Sites from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. These steps include internal reviews of their data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where they store Personal Data. However, no Internet or e-mail transmission is ever fully secure or error free. In particular, e-mail sent to or from the Site may not be secure. Therefore, you should therefore take special care in deciding what information you send to via e-mail. Please keep this in mind when disclosing any Personal Data to us Provider via the Internet.

They restrict access to Personal Data to their employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve their Services. Those individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline if they fail to meet those obligations. Private data may be disclosed if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to (i) comply with a legal obligation, (ii) protect and defend our rights or property, (iii) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of the Site or the public, or (iv) protect against legal liability.

Linking and Framing:

• Framed Site: MacCentralCafe does not control and has no liability with respect to content which is incorporated from a framed site (a website operated by another entity whose material is presented in a browser window frame along side material from our Sites). Use of such content may be subject to other terms and conditions imposed by the operator of such site. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information that may be collected by such third party Site.
• Links: Our Sites may contain links to other Sites. Please be aware that MacCentralCafe is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage you to be aware when you leave any of our Sites and to read the privacy policies of every website that collects Personal Data. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by our Sites.

Exclusions:

This Privacy Policy shall not apply to any unsolicited information (such as comments and feedback) you provide to MacCentralCafe media through the Sites and/or that you post to any public areas of the Site, such as bulletin boards, VOIP and Webcam communication, instant messaging, and comment fields (collectively, “Unsolicited Information”). All such Unsolicited Information shall be deemed to be non-confidential and MacCentralCafe shall be free to reproduce, use, disclose, and distribute such Unsolicited Information without limitation or attribution. You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose Unsolicited Information online, that Unsolicited Information can be collected and used by others. For example, if you post your email address in chat rooms or online forums, you may receive unsolicited messages from others. MacCentralCafe has no control over the use of Personal Data that you voluntarily post in public forums.

Notification of Changes:

From time to time we may make changes to our Privacy Policy If we make changes, we will post them on the Site to make Users aware of what the changes are so users will always be aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and when we may disclose it. A User is bound by any changes to the policy when she or he uses the Site after those changes have been posted If, however, we are going to use users' Personal Data in a manner materially different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify by posting a notice on our Site for 30 days.

One more thing, a public service announcement (just a suggestion):

RTFPP (Read the Fucking Privacy Policy)!!!

On the internet (or anyplace, for that matter), do not join anything, sign up for anything, submit any private data, or anything like that until you check out the privacy policy.