Please note that Hooksexup provides free memberships, paid (“Premium”) memberships, and a separate dating service, run by FastCupid. The following Privacy Vow applies only to Hooksexup memberships. Changes were made to the previous version in January 2006, focusing the Privacy Vow on Hooksexup memberships.
Users of Hooksexup Personals can view the relevant Privacy Vow of FastCupid here.
Hooksexup has created this Privacy Vow in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. We have adopted the following policies to safeguard your personal information and are committed to protecting its confidentiality
Information Automatically Captured from Visitors
We use your IP address (the series of numbers associated with your individual computer) to help us maintain our site and identify problems with our server. Your IP address does not disclose any personally revealing information about you.
We use cookies to identify traffic that comes through advertising and to facilitate a more user friendly experience. We also use cookies to keep you logged in across all the different services for Hooksexup memberships. Cookies are small pieces of information that a website places on your computer's hard drive so we know it's you when you visit. This helps us to create a personalized experience for you when you visit our site. The use of cookies is a very common practice on the Internet.
Personal Information
When you become a Hooksexup member, you will be asked for some general identifying information which will enable us to provide you with this individualized service. We gather contact information (like your email address), demographic information (like your gender and age), and, if you choose to buy a Hooksexup Premium Membership or other products on the site, we then gather financial information (like your credit card number and expiry date). We will only use this information in the course of providing our service to you. Should this entail sharing information with professional advisors or consultants, the sharing will be limited to demographic (non-identifying) information, for research purposes.
Use of and Access to this Information
We use your contact information to send you valuable updates, timely notices of promotions, status reports and newsletters from Hooksexup and Hooksexup's partners and friends, if you choose to have them sent to you. When you register for Hooksexup memberships, you are asked the following two questions: "Would you like to receive HooksexupNews, a weekly email highlighting the best of hooksexup.com?" and, "Would you like to receive occasional email updates from Hooksexup partners and friends?" If you say "yes" to the first question, you will receive emails from Hooksexup on a regular basis; if you say "yes" to the second question, you will receive regular emails from other partners of Hooksexup, and occasional emails from advertisers we think you'd like to hear from. If you say "yes" to the first question and "no" to the second, you will only receive emails from Hooksexup. The demographic information that you gave at registration (e.g. your gender and age) may be used to tailor these emails to you. We may also customize these emails to you based on the location (area code, city, etc.) that you enter. However, we will not use any other information to customize these emails to you. You can always change your answers to these questions after registering by clicking on the “help – my accounts" link at the top of any page in hooksexup.com and follow the instructions there.
If you say "no" to both questions, you may receive occasional emails from Hooksexup regarding urgent site updates or special membership offers. However, if you don't want to receive these updates, please follow the link to your Account Status page that is included at the bottom of each email. Once you log into your Account Status page, you may change your email preferences. Please allow up to 1 week for the changes to take place.
In addition to the above options for unsubscribing from mailing lists, every email you receive from Hooksexup will explain why you are on that particular mailing list and how you can remove yourself from it.
Your demographic (non-identifying) information is used to personalize your experience on the site, allow other members to find you through a search result and to compose your personal ads if you are a personals member. Your contact information is never available to other members; they can only contact you via your Personals nickname, using the anonymous Personals messaging system, provided you have joined Hooksexup Personals.
In the event that you decide to buy either a Hooksexup Premium membership or a Hooksexup personals membership, you will be asked for your financial information (like credit card number and expiration date), which is encrypted via a secure server and sent to a third party intermediary for processing. This information is used to bill you for those products or services which you choose to purchase. Before entering your financial information, you will be transferred to a secure server to ensure that your transaction is secure. This ensures that your information is encrypted and cannot be read by others when you initiate your order. You will know you are in secure mode when the tiny padlock icon — located at the bottom of your browser — appears "locked."
The personally identifiable information we collect from you may be used to improve the content and functionality of our website, customize the content or layout of our pages for each individual member or to notify members about updates to our website. Your personally identifiable information is not shared with other organizations that are not partners or friends of Hooksexup without your consent, except in situations where required by law.
In the case that you opt-in to receive subscriptions from our Magazine partners, we will pass your mailing address to the selected magazine choices for the purpose of sending your subscriptions. We will not pass any other personal information to our magazine partners, except in the case of those choosing online subscriptions (such as The New Republic Digital), in which case we will also pass along your email address.
Changing Profile and Account Information
For Hooksexup memberships, you can always change your registration information after registering by clicking on the “help – my accounts" link at the top of any page in hooksexup.com and following the instructions there. Additional Questions
If you have any further questions about our Privacy Vow in relation to Hooksexup Personals, send an email to the Personals customer service teama>.
If you have any further questions about our Privacy Vow in relation to Hooksexup memberships, send an email to Hooksexup customer service via the Hooksexup Help Wizard.