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Privacy and Security Policy This policy applies to CampusActivism.org, the Activism Network (a newly created network of websites), and any website that uses our data that we syndicate/provide through web services, RSS, or any other feed. GNU GPL While the software on this site is free and subject to the GNU General Public License (GPL) – the data’s availability is restricted to promote security and privacy. Your Information Any information that is submitted to this website will be listed publicly and syndicated unless you request that it not be listed (except for obvious stuff like your password). For instance, when you add yourself you have the option of either having your information listed publicly or not listed at all (Note: this is only true for people, everything else can only be listed publicly). You might choose to add yourself to our site, but keep your information private if you want to receive the biweekly email from our site with upcoming events and new resources. If you are listed publicly, your information will show up in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. Alternatively, you can determine your own level of privacy by -using a pseudonym – this will allow people to still find you without giving out your real name -not giving a phone number -not giving an email address -not giving your street address -not giving your city, state, or zip -not giving out ANY personal information – instead people can find you through the group(s) that you are involved in (Be sure to list the group.). The less information you give, the less useful some of the site’s features are, however in exchange you get more privacy. Email Privacy (Note: this is implemented on Activism Network, but has not yet been implemented on CampusActivism.org where the default setting of medium is universally applied. It should be implemented in late July or August.) You can choose from three settings Passwords We don’t store your password in our database (instead we store a md5 hash of the password which is hard to decrypt). Thus if someone manages to gain access to our database, your password will not be compromised. This is a good thing if you are using the same password for multiple websites (note: you shouldn’t do this!). Syndication We are syndicating all of the data that is currently public on this website. Other websites can install software that will pull data from CampusActivism.org. Thus information you post on CampusActivism.org will be available on other websites. In some ways this is similar to how blogs share information. So You Want To Email Everyone on the Site? Do It This Way! The best way to contact as many people as possible is to host an event or post a resource. If you do that, then we will send out a link to them in the regular email “newsletter” which the majority of people on the site get every two weeks. Also, we would strongly encourage you to write personal emails to people or, even better, to call them as this extra personal touch will make your work dramatically more effective. One-Time Mass Emails – Please Don’t If you want to do a one-time mass email to everyone on the site, I’d urge you to reconsider and to post an event or add a resource instead. The more people use email to do spam, even if it is with the best of intentions, the less useful email is for promoting progressive activism. A lot of people are going to dislike you and not want to cooperate with you if you use spam, even if you have the best ideas about the most important issue in the world. This may be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act NEVER Send Multiple Mass Emails If you repeatedly mass email people who are listed on our site, or if you subscribe them to an email list, then you are in violation of our site’s privacy policy. Please do not do this. If you do this, we will ask you to take corrective action (ex. remove everyone from your email list). If you do not take corrective action, we will tell our users and other non-profit organizations (targetting ones that working on the same issues that you work on) that your organization/you as an individual are engaging in SPAM. You probably don’t want that reputation! This may be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act Discouraging Automated Spam We use javascript and form-based email to hide email addresses from bots. Note: this only protects email addresses that are listed in fields labeled “Email”. If you write an email address in a “Notes” or “Bio” or any other field – you are not protected from the email-collecting spam bots. Import only Small Amounts of Relevant Emails from our Network into Your Database Do not import all of the email addresses from our site into your database. Feel free to import smaller numbers of *relevant* email addresses, for instance, if you wanted to build a city-coalition, or to network around a campaign with people/groups that had connected themselves to the campaign. Then you might want to get 50 email addresses. The key here is to ensure that your email is only sent to a select group of people or groups to whom it will be *relevant*. Mass Mailings If you want to send out a mass mailing (eg letters, not email) to people on our site, you are free to do so. You might want to target your mailing so that you are not wasting your money. At a minimum, most college students move every 1-3 years, and thus you will not want to mail to their school addresses that are older than 1-2 years. Changes to This Policy Significant changes to this policy will be mentioned on the campusactivism.org or activismnetwork.org homepage under “News”. For more information Email Us |