Privacy Policy
This privacy policy, which outlines how your personal information is handled at our site and what rights of privacy you have here, was created in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy.
About Us
Arcanum Cafe is primarily an online community for poets & writers to showcase their works, share their lives and provides others with some fresh writing in a wide array of styles to read. In public areas, we try to maintain a family friendly environment and what can best be considered a PG-13 rating if the site was a movie. There are private areas of the site reserved for adults to post or read more mature content. We attempt to screen those seeking access to such areas as best possible.
Information Collected
Arcanum Cafe (AC) is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We (Arcanum Cafe and all staffers) will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement. All information collected via this site, emails and/or private messages to staff members may be shared with ArcanumCafe.com webmasters, administrators, moderators, advisors, other designated site personnel and IPP (internet presence provider -- webhost). No identifiable information will be shared with anyone outside staff unless required by a court order.
Please remember any information disclosed in our forums or chat room is available to the public. So exercise caution when deciding to disclose any personal information. In order to comply with U.S. federal laws (COPPA) we require parental permission in order to grant pre-teens (12 years old and under) participation in our interactive areas.
Arcanum Cafe collects information from our users at several different points on our website.
Forum Registration & Usage
In order to actively participate in our forums or the blogs within the forum area, a user must first complete a registration form. During registration a user is at a minimum required to: provide their email address, select a user name (a name or nickname of your own choosing) and a desired password, select a gender identity, and provide your date of birth. The email address may be used by the AC staff to contact the user as needed to administrate the site and about services on our site for which they have expressed interest. Other forum members can also email you indirectly via our forum software without your email address being disclosed to the other person. You may opt-out of allowing other members to email or private message by editing your forum options in the User CP area of the forums.
Gender identity is required during the registration process only in an effort to better allow other members to use proper pronouns when addressing each other and to possible aid AC staff in determining site demographics. Members may opt out by selecting the 'undisclosed' answer at time of registration or any time thereafter via editing your profile in the User CP area. In addition, date of birth is required at time of registration or upon updating an existing profile if wasn't required at time of registration. This is in order to ensure continuing compliance with United States federal COPPA laws as well as aids in determining if meet certain requirements to access private forums upon request. Request of access to such private forums, which is completely optionally, also requires submitting your full real name in the appropriate profile field. If provided, the full real name information is only accessible to staff members and shall only be shared amongst staff or court of law if so order. All other additional demographic information (such as interests, location, biographical info, instant messaging contact info, etc.) collected during registration or thereafter that will be listed publicly on the member's profile and is completely optional. Upon registration, all new members are sent a verification email which includes instructions on how the user can complete a final step (visiting an activation link) to activate the account.
IP addresses are collected from all visitors and members to our forums or blogs within the forum area. IP data is only retained, beyond that last 30 minutes of activity, from logged in, registered members and only accessible to staff solely for administrative purposes. IP addresses are never made publicly available and only accessed by staff or our IPP (webhost).
Contact/Request Forms
As a user or visitor of AC you may contact the staff via our "Contact Us" form or similar as well as email to request or provide site assistance or give us feedback. Here a user must provide some minimal contact information, like name or username and of course email address. This information is used solely in order to respond to the user regarding their feedback, request for assistance or to seek more information about the situation and while doing so to be able to address the person by name as well as hopefully by the proper gender identity. Additionally some 'contact use' pages may have an optional field for URL or website address, which is optional and only to aid those suggesting we link to their website.
Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's hard drive containing information about the user. Usage of a cookie is in no way directly linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site. In order to enjoy the full range of forum and/or blog features registered users of AC's forums are recommended to utilize the cookie option. However a user can certainly choose not to use a cookie for our forums and still be able to participate. In addition our links section offers users the option of establishing a personal page of their favorite links, called MyLinks, built from our links database using a cookie. This cookie is not necessary to access nor use any part of the links section other than the "MyLinks" page. Our advertising software also uses cookies on our site but this is to merely track how often it should display new or certain ads to users/visitors. AC currently doesn't use nor allow 3rd party cookies on our site.
Tell-A-Friend
If a user elects to use referral features to inform friends or others about our site, our software will ask for the friend's name and email address. A choice of accompanying message is optional. We will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to visit the web page recommended. Arcanum Café may store this information for the purposes of sending this one-time email, tracking the popularity of the service and/or web pages recommended. Such information is never used for any other purpose. The initial user and/or receiptent may contact Arcanum Cafe at admin@arcanumcafe.com to request the removal of this information from our database.
Newsletters
If a user wishes to subscribe to our email newsletter(s), we will of course require your email address. Subscriptions may also ask for or require your first and/or last name only in order to customize salutations. Any such personal information may only be shared amongst staff and our IPP (webhost) and will not be used by, sold or distributed to any 3rd parties.
Surveys
From time-to-time our site requests information from users via demographic or other surveys or polls. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested doesn't typically involve any identifiable information other than temporarily logging the last few IP addresses to minimize data inaccuracy or abuse. Survey information is used for purposes of entertainment and/or improving the site and visitor satisfaction. General demographic data about our users collected from such surveys, which contains no personally identifiable data, may be distributed publicly on our site for site promotion and/or for generate advertising revenues to support the site.
Log Data
Arcanum Café collects IP addresses and other browser data to analyze trends, administer the site, track user's movement only on this site, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information except those registered in our forums. Aggregated demographic information, which cannot be used to identify any individual person, may be shared with our IPP (internet presence provider -- webhost), advertisers and third party service providers when necessary and as we see fit. Users' IP addresses or other identifiable information are shared with our IPP and law enforcement only as needed or demanded legally.
"Private Messages"
Private messages, a forum feature, shall remain private communications strictly between receiver and sender provided another user doesn't lodge a complaint that the sender is harassing them, specifically violating applicable laws or rules of the site and/or unless the administration has reason to believe you have lied about your age at time of registration, in seeking access to a private forum requiring members meet a certain age or other just cause to believe you are violating our Terms of Service and/or forum rules.
Links
This site contains links to other sites. Arcanum Café is not responsible for the privacy practices of these sites. Users are encouraged to be aware of the privacy policies or statements of every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this site and on the arcanumcafe.com, arcanumcafe.net and arcanumcafe.org domains.
Merchandise/Paid Subscription Orders
Arcanum Cafe users may opt to purchase ArcanumCafe.com or other recommended merchandise or paid subscriptions to portions of our website through third party providers we've chosen to use. All transactions and information supplied during that process are subject to the privacy policy of the applicable provider. Some providers may provide minimal information about such transactions to Arcanum Cafe. Any indentifable information shared with us will not be used or shared in any manner. Third party provider's use of that information is subject to their privacy policies.
Security
This website and our IPP take as much precaution to protect our users' information as possible, but given that no system is truly impenetrable there is always the possibility of unwanted and unauthorized access to the data files including usernames, email addresses and passwords. It is always recommended to not use the same password you utilized to access your ISP (internet service provider) nor any other vital services or programs.
Correcting/Updating Information
We will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update or remove a user's personal data provided to us if possible. Forum user's information can be updated/corrected by that user at any time via the 'Edit Profile' page within the "user cp" area linked to at the top of forum pages. Email admin@arcanumcafe.com with the necessary info to have any other information deleted or modified if possible. To provide added security for personal information, requests for change of indentifable information will only be accepted via direct email from the same email address on record. Requests made via our 'Contact Us' page will be subject to a request for direct email confirmation from the email address on record.
Choice/Opt-out
Our users are given the opportunity to 'opt-out' of having their information used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask for the information.
Forums
A registered user may opt out of having their email address or date of birth displayed in the forums to other users at the time of registration or any time after via the "User CP" under "Edit Options" area linked to at the top of forum pages. Members' email addresses aren't made public nor visible to other members or visitors in the forums, who instead have to fill in a web form which sends the message to a member's email address. Replying to such emails however does make your email address visible to the person. (User's address remains available to forum administrators and moderators in order to administrate the site and our terms of service but members may opt out of receiving general email notices occasionally sent to members that are merely site news announcements or promotion). Members may opt to hid their age and/or date of birth by editing their profile options. However staff will have still access to this information for solely for administrative purposes regardless of privacy settings enabled by the forum member.
Newsletter/Updates
Users who no longer wish to receive newsletters or promotional materials may opt-out of receiving these communications by emailing admin@arcanumcafe.com with "newsletter unsubscribe" in the subject line and body of the email or by using the newsletter subscription boxes found on many pages to "unsubscribe." Newsletters sent as part of forum membership may be opted out of via the method described in above section.
Cookies
The cookies used in the forums may be deleted at any time. See the forum faq for an automated way of deleting such cookies. The cookie used in the MyLinks area of the links section, if used, is set to remain on your hard drive for 3 years. There is no area of our web site that provides automated deleting of that cookie, but it can be purged manually from your computer at any time.
Notification of Changes
Changes to our privacy policy will be posted in AC's Open Discussion forum, on this page and/or in newsletter updates so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If at any point we decide to specifically use your personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will first notify users by way of an email and announcements in our forums. Users will then have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.
Contacting Us
If you have any questions or feel AC is not abiding by this privacy policy, you can contact: Joe Lavigne, Site Administrator, at joe@arcanumcafe.com.
