Privacy Statement for APTS Website
America's Public Television Stations (APTS) has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. APTS is committed to honoring the privacy of our members and general users who access this site. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for APTS's website at www.apts.org. On our site, we use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, derive usage statistics and to administer our website. All usage statistics are only used as aggregated data to derive statistics and not to identify individuals accessing the website. We have contracted with other vendors to provide services and information to our website users. We use our best efforts to ensure the contract with such vendors only permits the vendor to use the data collected to diagnose problems and to administer our website.
Member Profile Data and Unique Identifiers
In APTS's website, general profile data on members are accessible to other members in aggregate form. Information provided to other members includes a member's name, city, state, job title and workplace as part of an online member directory. Other identifying information is not available. Unique identifiers (such as membership identification numbers) are collected from website visitors to verify the user's identity, provide customized web pages, and customized information, and for use as account numbers in our record system. Such unique and individually identified information is never sold nor provided to third parties.
Cookies
Our site uses cookies to identify specific users and user options for our continuing education, surveys, online e-commerce system and online Community platform. Cookies are also used in surveys, voting and polling to prevent users from duplicating responses in any of these website events.
Financial and Customer Information
Our site uses order forms that allow our users to request information, products and services. We collect a visitor's contact information (email address), unique identifiers (their membership identification number) and financial information (account or credit card numbers). Contact information collected from the order form is used to send materials to our users. Financial information is used to collect payment from the user for billable products and services.
Links
This site contains links to other sites. APTS is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of websites linked from APTS's websites, nor does linking to other websites indicate any endorsement of the site or the products or information provided on such sites.
Data Collection
Online surveys, polls and all demographic information collected through the sites are used for internal benchmarking and research. Identifying information is not disclosed to outside parties, other than subcontractors of APTS, or used to contact users unless they have indicated that they wished to be contacted for follow up.
Public Forums
The site makes chat rooms and discussion forums available to its users. Although chat rooms and discussion forums are only viewable by APTS members, please remember that any information disclosed in these areas becomes public information, and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information. Forums and chat rooms may be monitored for content by APTS.
Security
APTS has security measures in place that endeavor to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Our site is a part of private networks, that do not provide direct access by outside parties to the servers. Firewalls are also in place to prevent unauthorized access to equipment and servers. All systems are monitored for suspicious activity to prevent any breaches in security. APTS also employs a secure socket layers (SSL) security protocol, which is a standard industry tool used to provide data encryption on pages and areas where personal data is collected. SSL protects the personal information transmitted from a user's computer to APTS, allowing for safe transmission of personal and financial information over the Internet. APTS also uses digital certificate authentication to ensure secure transactions.
Contacting the Web Site
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, APTS's website practices, or your dealings with this website, you can contact:
America's Public Television Stations
1225 S. Clark Street, 410
Arlington, VA 22202
Email: skarp@apts.org