Throughout this document, the abbreviation "TPN" refers to "The Personals Network™". 

"The Personals Network™" and "TPN™" is Trademark and copyright 1997-2002, The Maddock Family Trust

TPN also embraces and includes all other domains directly related to The Personals Network.  ie. Teens Personals Network™, The Australian Personals Network™ etc. including standard abbreviations of those sites.  ie. "Auspersonals", "BiPerNet"  etc.

TPN provides a forum on the Internet to enable anyone from around the world to find, use, and share the personal information they want to share in order to find the person they seek.

We recognize and support the need to protect the privacy rights of our members through disclosure of our practices of the collection and use of members information and also by empowering YOU as to what YOU want divulged to third parties - if at all.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

As a member of TPN, you can visit the relevant TPN sites on the Web that you are a member of, at any time - Internet problem times excluded :))
When you log into our sites, we log the IP address, type of operating system and browser software as well as other incidentals such as time, date etc, used by each visitor to any TPN site, and from this information we can derive the identity of the visitor's geographic location and Internet Service Provider. We use this data in aggregate form to build higher quality and more useful facilities by analyzing the collective characteristics of our members and measuring usage of each area of our sites. We also provide statistical information based on this aggregate data to our advertisers, potential advertisers and other business partners. We do not EVER give your data to other parties or entities.

The information is also used for internal security reasons to help protect our members.

Persons using 'anonymisers' may be refused entry.

In some circumstances we will ask you to provide us with personal information, such as when you apply for membership in any TPN website, or in connection with entering certain TPN-sponsored contests, promotions or events. 

In all cases where we ask you for personal information we will: 

1. Notify you that such information is being collected, or it will be self evident, 
2. Identify which items are optional,
3. Not divulge your information except as laid down in this document.

TPN's policy is that any available optional services will be automatically disabled and that to get those service(s) you must specifically request TPN to enable it.
In other words, under our system, your personal information will be automatically invisible except where the service will not be possible without it. ie. Email addresses are invisible unless you send a contact email to another member where your email address is provided so that member can reply directly to you.

TPN will not disclose to third parties your credit or other personal information or payment details or options, except to the extent necessary to complete a transaction initiated by you, on a TPN site.

TPN will provide you with a secure server connection (encrypted information exchange) to make any credit card payments. (With an option for you to choose to do so over a less secure, but more standard, connection).
It is to the members advantage to ensure that a browser is used that supports 128-bit Encrypted Information Exchange Technology.

TPN will not EVER sell, or give willingly to any other person or company, your details except as you allow. This includes but is not limited to, your email address, as well as other personal details.

The ONLY time TPN will reveal members details will be where a properly executed search warrant or court order is executed on TPN, and then only to the specified  limit of that order. Alternatively, we reserve the right to forward any relevant information to the proper legal authorities in the relevant country if we are of the opinion that an unlawful act has been committed on one of the TPN sites.

COOKIE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

There is a technology called "cookies" which is a file transferred from a website to the hard drive of your computer so that the website operator may track activities on the site. TPN uses cookies to help track activity at TPN's sites so that TPN can make its sites more interesting and useful to visitors. Cookies allow us to understand who has seen which pages and which ads, to determine how often particular pages are visited, and to track the most popular areas of each TPN site. Cookies also allow us to make our sites more convenient to use by, for example, allowing us to save your password so that validation is much quicker when you visit a TPN site. Cookies from TPN are as standard practice on the internet and will not harm your computer in any way.

A cookie from TPN will not permit a website operator to learn any personally identifying information about you, such as your real name and address or email address. We note that you can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, giving you the opportunity to decide whether to accept it. Bear in mind that it is possible that some functions may not be available without allowing cookies to be set and that this option is entirely at your risk.

TPN do not interrogate other (non-TPN) sites cookies in any way shape or form. We specifically frown on this practice and consider it under-handed and unethical. We endeavour to make cookies from TPN sites encoded so that they will be of no practical use to any other site.

TPN does not favour Java scripts/applets due to the inability of some browsers to correctly interpret Java either correctly, or in a consistent manner. As such, we will refrain from using Java scripts/applets as much as possible and in any case we will not endeavour to use it to gather, or cause to be gathered, any personal information (such as your email address) for any reason except as validation of your given details and that any such information gathered will be destroyed immediately upon validation, or the failure of, has been processed. You will be advised accordingly at the time.

TPN's sites can contain links to other Internet sites. We encourage all of our partners, contributors and third parties to implement policies and practices that fully respect the privacy of our users.
However, TPN is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites.

Please note that we review our privacy practices from time to time, and that such practices are subject to change.

We ask that our members/visitors periodically review this page to ensure familiarity with the most current version of our privacy statement.