AKA Privacy Policy

AlwaysKnownAs.com a division of eM.Interactive, inc., wants to safeguard the privacy of your personal information no matter what. We've designed our privacy policy and our software to guarantee the absolute security of your personal information. And in order to be totally open with our members, we've written this policy to be short, honest, and easy-to-read.

Policy Highlights:

•	You own and control your personal information
•	You determine who has access to your personal information
•	We will never share your personal information with any 3rd party without your permission, unless required by law
•	You have the right to discontinue using AlwaysKnownAs.com at any time
•	You have the right to permanently delete your personal information at any time
•	You will never receive an unsolicited e-mail from AlwaysKnownAs.com
•	Your contacts will never receive an unsolicited e-mail from AlwaysKnownAs.com
•	AlwaysKnownAs.com does not upload your address book to our database, so your contacts' personal information is never exposed to any sort of privacy risk
•	In the event of a business transition (i.e. sale or merger of AlwaysKnownAs.com), we guarantee that these privacy highlights will not be subject to substantive changes

Please let us know if you have any questions about this privacy policy, or if you have any suggestions which could help us make your information even more secure. We're constantly trying to make AlwaysKnownAs.com better.

Questions about Privacy Issues:

What personal information does AlwaysKnownAs.com collect from me?
How is my information used?
How is my information never used?
What kinds of e-mail will I receive from AlwaysKnownAs.com?
What about the privacy of my friends and colleagues?
What if I want to stop using AlwaysKnownAs.com?
How do you utilize cookies?
How old do you have to be to be an AlwaysKnownAs.com member?
What if AlwaysKnownAs.com is ever sold to another company?
Can the AlwaysKnownAs.com privacy policy ever change?
What else do I need to know about my privacy?
What security safeguards does AlwaysKnownAs.com use?

What personal information does AlwaysKnownAs.com collect?

AlwaysKnownAs.com requires only a valid e-mail address, your name and location, and a password from you to facilitate your membership. If you are a guest (non-member) and are requesting information from an AKA member, we require only your name and a valid e-mail address.

For AKA members we also store your contact information (including address, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc.) and allow you to organize this information using "cards". When you share your AKA with others, they will always be able to look up your current contact information. You, however, control exactly which information is to be shared. If you wish, all your information can be marked "private", and you can decide which specific information you want to share with each individual requestor. In other words, no information is ever shared without your control or permission.

Additionally, if you choose to pay for premium AKA features offered in the future, a credit card is required for payment. We store these credit card numbers in an encrypted format on a secure administrative server which is not connected to the internet. When your annual premium subscription fee comes due again, we use the credit card number on file to process your renewal. If you choose to not renew, then all your personal information and your credit card number are deleted from our databases.

If you purchase a product from the AKA Shop, your credit card number is used to process your order and is then immediately deleted when the transaction is complete.

How is my information used?

•	Your AKA, your openID and your password are used to facilitate logging-in to AlwaysKnownAs.com and to other openID participating sites
•	Your contact information is provided to users and websites who look up your openID in accordance with your privacy settings
•	Our business model allows us to receive a small fee from participating websites when you update your contact information. This fee is only received from sites when you've decided that you want them to receive updates and have given explicit permission to do so
•	Your credit card number is used to pay for AKA premium services (as offered in the future)
•	Certain data related to site usage (visits, pages viewed, etc.) is used in aggregate to analyze how visitors and members use our website

How is my information never used?

•	We do not use your personal information to send you spam
•	We do not allow others to send you spam
•	We do not provide your information to anyone without your control and permission
•	We do not sell your information to 3rd parties
•	We do not provide your personal information to 3rd-parties for any reason, unless required to do so by law
•	We will not sell your personal information
•	We never expose your e-mail address to anyone without your control and permission

What kinds of e-mail will I receive from AlwaysKnownAs.com?

•	You will receive a confirmation e-mail from support@AlwaysKnownAs.com when you sign-up for our service
•	You will receive notifications from the sender whenever an AKA user or guest requests hidden information from you. These notifications link back to the AlwaysKnownAs.com website, where you are able to grant or decline permissions to access your information. If you wish to not receive e-mail notifications and would rather manually check your "Requests" page at AlwaysKnownAs.com, simply click here to update your settings.
•	You will receive notifications if an AKA user grants your request to see more of their information
•	You may periodically receive system messages from support@AlwaysKnownAs.com which communicate information pertinent to the functioning of the software
•	You will receive a reminder e-mail 30 days before your annual subscription fee for premium services is due
•	You can choose to receive periodic AKA newsletters, but these will never be sent without your explicit permission.

What about the privacy of my friends and contacts?

•	We do not upload your address book to our system, so the personal information of your friends and contacts is never collected by AlwaysKnownAs.com or subjected to any sort of privacy risk
•	Your friends and contacts will never receive spam from AlwyasKnownAs.com
•	If another AKA member requests hidden information from you, they will receive a confirmation e-mail from support@AlwaysKnownAs.com if you grant them access to additional information
•	If you choose to invite contacts or friends to join AlwaysKnownAs.com using our invitation tool, they will receive an e-mail from you which will include any special offer we might be offering.

What if I want to stop using AlwaysKnownAs.com

Simply click here to terminate your membership. All your personal information will be deleted automatically. The last current contact information you provided about yourself will remain in other AKA members' address books, although it will no longer continue to be automatically updated.

What about cookies?

We use cookies to facilitate certain functionality on AlwaysKnownAs.com:

•	We use cookies to identify you when you return to AlwaysKnownAs.com
•	We identify you as a guest or a member to determine which features of the software you have access to
•	If you choose to have AlwaysKnownAs.com automatically log you in when you return to the site, we store your log-in information in an encrypted cookie
•	We also store your IP address to help us analyze traffic patterns for AlwaysKnownAs.com. This information, nor any of your personal information, will ever be sold or shared.

Can anyone use AlwaysKnownAs.com?

You have to be 18 years old to be a member of AlwaysKnownAs.com.

What if AlwaysKnownAs.com is ever sold?

We've asked ourselves this question and have made the following decision. We feel obligated to never sell or share your information with anyone. Our promise is that AlwaysKnownAs.com will never be acquired if it means compromising this privacy policy.

Changes to the AKA Privacy Policy

If this privacy policy is changed or updated, we will notify you via e-mail and will also place a notice on the AlwaysKnownAs.com homepage. Any changes will be posted 30 days prior to their effective date. We'll give you a summary of any changes and if you don't approve of them, we'll give you a link to automatically un-subscribe.

What else do I need to know about my privacy?

•	We have designed elaborate safeguards to prevent either manual or automated harvesting of contact information from the AlwaysKnownAs.com website
•	If you have a common or easily guessable AKA or openID (i.e. "elvis"), you may have complete strangers requesting your private information. Two suggestions. One, be absolutely sure who's on the other end of the request, and don't share any private information if you're not comfortable. Two, don't choose an AKA or openID that's too popular or easy to guess.
•	AlwaysKnownAs.com may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for practices or policies of websites other than AlwaysKnownAs.com, so be cautious and informed.
•	Your personal information never passes over an unsecured connection, so it is encrypted and safe.

Security Practices

AKA's commitment to the privacy of your personal information relies on our security systems and procedures. We protect your information in the following ways:

•	Your private information is always transmitted in an encrypted format using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.
•	We require an account confirmation from all members to activate their membership, which verifies their e-mail address to protect against fraud.
•	Your password is stored in an encrypted format.
•	We never send your password via e-mail.
•	To prevent the introduction of viruses or other destructive software via email, our inbound mail is handled by servers on a separate network.
•	To prevent unintentional misuse of your account, we expire all web sessions to prevent unauthorized persons from using your account to access AKA.
•	We prevent automated harvesting of contact information by challenging AKA lookups by guests with a random graphic code which must be manually read and input before the lookup is allowed. The number of lookups per day is limited per user.
•	A secure firewall is used to protect our network.
•	Database and administrative servers are isolated on a private network, which has no direct connection to the internet.
•	Database and administrative servers can only be accessed by authorized employees, and their access is safeguarded by certificate-based authentication.
•	We monitor, in real-time, all activity on our network using software which can detect a wide variety of potential security breach attempts.
•	We employ an adaptive rating system to identify any user engaging in inappropriate use of AlwaysKnownAs.com.
•	We employ strict internal procedures to control and limit data access to authorized employees.