Terms of Use, Copyright, Privacy and Legal Information

Terms of Use, Copyright, Privacy and Legal Information

by Assyrian Information Management (AIM)

Last updated on May 27, 2008

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Public Domain Philosophy System Abuse Policy Privacy Policy • Information Collection & Use • Assyrian Conferences • Registration • Newsletter • Cookies • Surveys • Log Files • Security • Sharing Information • Personal Information • Website Links • Notification of Changes

Click image to bookmark Thank you for visiting the website! The Internet is an amazing ecosystem of information.  It has the power to change the way we live, and we're beginning to see that potential every day.  It's important to the development team at AIM to help you by providing information to take advantage of all the Internet has to offer. Do you have a question?  Check our   Frequently Asked Questions, FAQs.

The Public Domain Philosophy

The information in “Atour: The State of Assyria” website (www.atour.com) is in the public domain, unless otherwise stated as copyrighted by other respective companies, organizations or individuals, and can be reproduced without permission from atour.com.  Please use the public domain information in your media programs, publications, websites, radio or television programs to bring further awareness to the plight of the Assyrian nation.

Assyrian activists...  “I do not believe the need to duplicate information on the Internet, your website is in violation by copying and publishing my articles and images. Can you delete all my articles regarding Assyrians that you took from my website, immediately!?” Our philosophy of promoting Assyrian culture, language and history has led to the development of a systems design capable of making information easily available, referenced and presented in a professional manner on the Internet.  Selection of articles updated on the website are based on many requests from visitors and the results from their search queries.  Additionally, many articles, photos and other files are also submitted for inclusion to the website by the authors and concerned Assyrians who believe the information will be beneficial to have here.  These are some of the important benefits of having articles posted on this website: bring further awareness to the article's message and the dedication of the author who prepared it solidifies the viewpoint of the message since we further promote it by publishing it on the website articles are preserved and presented in a professional manner information within the document is searchable by our search engine and most importantly, information within the document is also searchable and referenced properly by major search engines, effectively giving the article vast online Internet exposure In summary, we believe that removal of Assyrian related information (documents, photographs, audios, and videos) from the website and the strict implementation of copyright laws will ultimately hinder Assyrian nationalism and awareness, by limiting the amount of information on the Internet. We remain hopeful that the important advantages listed above and the educational benefits which they generate by having the information physically located on our website, will mutually help our common objectives and the needs of our own communities, including the search queries of many foreign researchers. To continue this issue further, contact us by using this online form and give the exact filename you want deleted.  Those documents will be updated with a message stating you requested their deletion from the website, this is done to inform the researchers.   Every 24 hours, the digital universe grows by 1,287,671,232,877 Megabytes. — IDC white paper, “The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe,” sponsored by EMC, March 2008.

System Abuse Policy

Web, E-mail, and Usenet Terms of Service

System abuse is strictly prohibited.  AIM may terminate or modify service immediately and may bill for any resulting support charges if the client engages in system abuse.  Following is a list of actions which are defined to be system abuse.  This list is non-exclusive; any action about which there is any doubt should be referred to AIM for evaluation.

Actions which constitute system abuse include, but are not limited to:

• attempting to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network, or account on AIM systems or the Internet at large ("cracking");
• attempting, in any way, to interfere with or deny service to any user or any host on the Internet;
• forging email or USENET posting header information;
• sending large numbers of unsolicited mail messages (i.e. "junk mail", "SPAM"); this includes adding or attempting to add addresses to any mailing list without explicit positive consent of the addressee.
• forwarding or posting "chain letters" (multiple forwarding) of any type;
• posting inappropriate messages to USENET newsgroups e.g., posting large numbers of unsolicited posts indiscriminately ("spamming"), or posting encoded binary files to USENET newsgroups not specifically named for that purpose;
• attempting to cancel, supersede, or otherwise interfere with email or USENET posts other than one's own;
• engaging in harassment, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages;
• using an account at another provider to promote an AIM Web site in an abusive manner;
• using an AIM account or network connection to collect replies to messages sent from another provider which violate these rules or those of that provider;
• reselling AIM services to third parties who do not abide by these guidelines.

Privacy Policy

AIM is committed to safeguarding your privacy online.  Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online - for example on forums, through email, or in chat areas - that information can be collected and used by others.  In short, if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.

Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and/or any account information.  Please be careful and responsible whenever you're online.

Information Collection and Use

AIM is the sole owner of the information collected on this site.  We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others.  AIM collects information from our users at several different points on our website.

Registration

In order to use certain features in this website, a user must first complete the registration form.  During registration a user is required to give their 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, so we can provide a more personalized experience on our site.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer (hard drive) containing information about the user.  Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site.  Once the user closes their browser, the cookie simply terminates.  For instance, by setting a cookie on our site, the user would not have to log in a password more than once at our forums, thereby saving time while on our site.  If a user rejects the cookie, they may still use our site.  The only drawback to this is that the user will be limited in some areas of our site.  For example, the user will not be able to use the enhanced features of our Assyrian Conferences (forums) or viewing Assyrian Website Links sorted with their preference.  Cookies can also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site.

Log Files

We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.  IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Sharing Information

We will not share aggregated demographic information with anyone, this includes partners, advertisers, organizations or any other institution.

Website Links

The Atour website contains links to other sites.  Please be aware that we, Assyrian Information Management (AIM), are not responsible for the information published and/or privacy procedures of such other sites.  We encourage visitors 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.  Thus, this privacy statement applies solely to information collected by our site.

Newsletter (Mailing Center)

If a user wishes to subscribe and/or unsubscribe to the Atour Newsletter, we ask for contact information such as an email address.  We send an email message about once or twice a month to keep our readers aware of new updates and developments at Atour.  Readers who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials from Assyrian organizations may simply unsubscribe at any time from the mailing center.

Surveys

There are various Atour Surveys that you can participate in.  We only use IP addresses to ensure users vote in the survey questions only once.  Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether to participate or not.  Survey information will be used for informational and statistical purposes only.

Tell-A-Friend using the Assyrian Conferences

If a user elects to use our referral mailing service for informing a friend about our site or messages posted in the Assyrian Conferences, we ask them for the friend’s name and email address.  Atour will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to visit the site or conference.  Atour stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email.

Security

The Atour website takes every precaution to protect our users’ information.  When users submit sensitive information via the website, the information is protected both online and off-line.

When our web/email registration form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as web username and password), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - Secure Sockets Layer, SSL.  While on a secure page, such as our registration form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just ‘surfing’.  NOTE:  Versign charges companies and organizations with websites, an annual $395 to merely notify the visitor that the website has registered with them and is secure.  We are not subscribed to Verisign, since we prefer to use the $395 yearly fee to further develop our website.  Thus, your browser will alert you of this simple notice, simply click on trust the "Atour.com" website or security certificate.  We assure you the security at Atour is as secure as any commercial and organizational websites on the Internet today.

While we use 128 bit 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 website.  Only the development personnel at Atour who need the information to perform a specific related task (for example, to create a web and email address account) are granted access to personally identifiable information.  ALL development personnel are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices.  Every quarter, as well as any time new policies are added, our development personnel are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our users’ information is protected.  Finally, the server that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment within the facilities of the leading Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the world.

If a user’s personally identifiable information changes, or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update or remove that user’s personal data provided to us.  This can usually be done at the member information page or by emailing our development personnel at AIM.

Users of our site are always notified when their information is being collected by any outside parties.  We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with services that require an outside party, or not.

Notification of Changes

Of course, if we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our website so visitors are always aware of what information we collect, if any, and how we use it.