Privacy Policy



TopCools knows that you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and we take your privacy very seriously. Please read the following to learn more about our privacy policy.

This Privacy Policy describes the policies and procedures of TopCools(“we” or “us”) on the collection, use and disclosure of your information on http://www.TopCools.com and the related services, features, content or applications we offer (collectively, “TopCools”). In connection with your use of TopCools, we receive information about you from various sources, including: (i) through your TopCools user account (your “Account”); (ii) your use of TopCools generally; and (iii) from third party websites and services. When you use TopCools, you are consenting to the collection, transfer, manipulation, storage, transmission, disclosure and other uses of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

What Does This Privacy Policy Cover?

This Privacy Policy covers the treatment of personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) we gather when you are using or accessing TopCools. This Privacy Policy also covers our treatment of any Personal Information that our business partners share with us or that we share with our business partners.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of third parties that we do not own or control, including but not limited to any third party websites, content sources, services and applications (“Third Party Services”) that you elect to access through TopCools, or to individuals that we do not manage or employ. While we attempt to facilitate access only to those Third Party Services that share our respect for your privacy, we cannot take responsibility for the content or privacy policies of those Third Party Services. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policies of any Third Party Services you access.

What Information Is Collected by TopCools?

The information we gather enables us to personalize, improve and continue to operate TopCools. In connection with certain aspects of TopCools, we may request, collect and/or display some of your Personal Information. We collect the following types of information from our users.

Sign-In Information:

When you create an Account or login using your Twitter, Facebook, and/or Google credentials, you will provide information that could be Personal Information, such as your username, password and email address. You acknowledge that this information may be personal to you, and by creating an account with TopCools and providing Personal Information to us, you allow others, including us, to identify you and therefore may not be anonymous. We may use your contact information to send you information about our Services, including without limitation, notifications regarding the Services and, upon your request, email digests of content shared by those that you follow on TopCools, Twitter, Facebook, and/or Google. You may unsubscribe from these messages through your Account settings, although we regardless reserve the right to contact you when we believe it is necessary, such as for account recovery purposes.

User Content and URL Information:

TopCools allows you to provide content to TopCools, such as the ability to TopCools and Submit collections of content and uniform resource locators (“URLs”), written descriptions of content or URLs, comments, text, images and video. We may also collect and store information regarding the content in your TopCools, Twitter, Facebook, and /or Google feeds and the original URL, and associate that information with your Account. We also collect and store (i) the time and date on which the content was first chosen, submitted, or shared and (ii) information on the channels through which the content was shared, e.g., to other TopCools users, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and/or Google connections.

We share certain information about you, such as your username, any avatar or image you elect to post, your Twitter, Facebook, and/or Google username, your reading feeds through TopCools, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other Third Party Services, and other information you elect to make public to your followers in TopCools, your followers on Twitter, your friends on Facebook, and/or your connections on Google. This may include Personal Information, but only to the extent that you decide to share such information with others.

We may retain content submitted by you to TopCools indefinitely, even after you terminate your Account.

TopCools Reader Information:

If you are a TopCools Reader user, we will maintain information about the sources and subscriptions, including RSS and other content feeds, that you choose to follow. We will collect and store (i) all articles and posts that are part of your subscribed feeds, (ii) data associated with those items, such as the time and date they were published, (iii) whether and when you viewed, saved, or marked them as read, (iv) information related to your organizational choices, such as the folders or tags you assign to sources, and (v) information necessary to complete actions you may choose to take with particular items, such as TopCoolsing, saving, liking, recommending, or sharing to Third Party Services. If

Metrics and Analytics:

We collect information about accesses of content curated through TopCools, as well as interactions with TopCools Reader. This information includes, but is not limited to: (i) the IP address and physical location of the devices accessing the curated content or interacting with TopCools Reader; (ii) the time and date of each access or interactions; and (iii) information about sharing of curated content or content appearing in TopCools Reader.

Information Collected From Third Party Services:

Some features of TopCools allow you to share your TopCools curated content and TopCools Reader content through Third Party Services, as well as your content from Third Party Services through TopCools. If you choose to connect TopCools to such Third Party Services, we may collect information related to your use of those Third Party Services, such as authentication tokens that allow us to connect to your Third Party Service accounts. We may otherwise collect information about how you are using TopCools to interact with those connected Third Party Services. Note that Third Party Services may have the ability to restrict the information that is provided to us.

IP Address Information and Other Information Collected Automatically:

We automatically receive and record information from the TopCools application or your web browser when you interact with TopCools, including your IP address and cookie information. This information is used to facilitate collection of data concerning your interaction with TopCools (e.g., what content you have clicked on).

Generally, TopCools automatically collects usage information, such as the number and frequency of users accessing TopCools, TopCools Reader, and its various streams of content. We may use this data in aggregate form, that is, as a statistical measure, but not in a manner that would identify you personally. This type of aggregate data enables us and third parties authorized by us to figure out how often individuals use parts of TopCools so that we can analyze and improve them.

Information Collected Using Cookies:

Cookies are pieces of text that may be provided to your computer through your web browser or application when you access a website or service. Your browser stores cookies in a manner associated with each website or service you visit. We use cookies to enable our servers to recognize your web browser or TopCools application and tell us how and when you visit and use TopCools through the web or through an application.

TopCools cookies also allow us to track when you have accessed content through TopCools. Each access is tracked using a unique identifier assigned to you in one or more cookies stored by your web browser or application and associated with TopCools.

TopCools cookies do not, by themselves, contain Personal Information, and we do not combine the general information collected through cookies with other Personal Information to tell us who you are. As noted, however, we do use cookies to identify that your web browser or application has accessed content through TopCools and may associate that information with your Account if you have one.

This Privacy Policy covers our use of cookies only and does not cover the use of cookies by third parties. We do not control when or how third parties place cookies on your computer or device. For example, third party websites may set their own cookies.

Aggregate Information:

We collect statistical information about how people use TopCools (“Aggregate Information”). Some of this information is derived from Personal Information, such as your location (which, in turn, can be derived from your IP address or through location based services used by your device). This statistical information is not Personal Information and cannot be tied back to you, your Account, your web browser or your TopCools application.

How and To Whom Is My Information Shared?

TopCools is designed to help you share information that you or people you choose to follow locate on the web with others. As a result, much of the information generated through TopCools is shared publicly or with third parties. All TopCools content is public. Your activity on the TopCools network is public and can be distributed to anyone that follows you. We may also distribute content and feeds through an email digest to users who have elected to receive such email digests.

Public TopCools Activity Information:

Some of your activity on and through TopCools is public by default. This includes, but is not limited to, URLs that you have transferred or URLs submitted to TopCools. Individuals reading this information may use or disclose it to other individuals or entities without our control and without your knowledge. Therefore, we urge you to think carefully about these actions.

Information You Elect to Share:

In addition to reviewing this Privacy Policy, you should also review the terms of service and privacy policies of any Third Party Services that you access through TopCools. TopCools respects the privacy settings/policies that you have selected with Third Party Services, and only shares information consistent with those privacy settings and policies.

You may otherwise access Third Party Services through TopCools, for example by accessing curated content. We are not responsible for the privacy policies and/or practices of these Third Party Services, and you are responsible for reading and understanding those privacy policies. This Privacy Policy only governs information collected on or through TopCools.

User Profile Information:

User profile information including your username, avatars or images you elect to upload and other information you enter may be displayed to other users to facilitate user interaction within TopCools. We will not directly reveal users’ email addresses to other users.

Aggregate Information:

We share Aggregate Information with our partners, service providers and other persons with whom we conduct business. We share this type of statistical data so that our partners can understand how and how often people use TopCools and their services or websites, which facilitates improving both their services and how we interface with them. In addition, these third parties may share with us non-private, aggregated or otherwise non Personal Information about you that they have independently developed or acquired.

Information Shared with Our Agents:

We employ and contract with people and other entities that perform certain tasks on our behalf and who are under our control (our “Agents”). We may need to share Personal Information with our Agents in order to provide products or services to you. Unless we tell you differently, our Agents do not have any right to use Personal Information or other information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us. You hereby consent to our sharing of Personal Information with our Agents.

Information Disclosed Pursuant to Business Transfers:

In some cases, we may choose to buy or sell assets. In these types of transactions, user information is typically one of the transferred business assets. Moreover, if we, or substantially all of our assets associated with TopCools, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that we go out of business or enter bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of us may continue to use your Personal Information as set forth in this policy.

Information Disclosed for the Protection of Us and Others:

We also reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as it reasonably believes is necessary to (i) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, (ii) enforce these Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations hereof, (iii) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, (iv) respond to user support requests, or (v) protect our rights, property or safety, our users and the public. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and spam prevention.

Information We Share With Your Consent:

Except as set forth above, you will be notified when your Personal Information may be shared with third parties, and will be able to prevent the sharing of this information.

Email Communications:

If you sign up for The Daily TopCools email via the TopCools website or in any other TopCools application, you will receive an email once daily highlighting some curated or other content on TopCools.

Regardless of whether you decide to receive The Daily TopCools, as part of TopCools, you may occasionally receive from us email and other communication relating to your Account. These emails will only be sent for important purposes, such as password recovery.

We may receive a confirmation when you open an email from us. We use this confirmation to improve email deliverability or our customer service.

Is Information About Me Secure?

Your Account information (including your Twitter, Facebook, Google or other third-party logins) is protected for your privacy and security. You need to prevent unauthorized access to your account and Personal Information by selecting and protecting your password appropriately and limiting access to your computer and browser by signing off after you have finished accessing your account.

We endeavor to protect Account information to ensure that it is kept private; however, we cannot guarantee the security of any Account information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors, may compromise the security of user information at any time.

We otherwise store all of our information, including your IP address information, using industry-standard security techniques. We do not guarantee or warrant that such techniques will prevent unauthorized access to information about you we store, Personal Information or otherwise.

What Information of Mine Can I Access?

You can access information associated with your Account by logging into the web version of TopCools, or through the TopCools application. You can adjust settings and privacy preferences through your Account settings.

Registered and unregistered users can access all of the above information.

How Can I Delete My Account?

Should you ever decide to delete your Account, you may do so by visiting TopCools.com/settings or by visiting Account Settings in the TopCools mobile application. If you terminate and delete your Account, any association between your Account and information stored by, or in connection with, TopCools will no longer be accessible. However, given the nature of sharing using TopCools, any public activity on your Account prior to deletion will remain stored on our servers and will remain accessible to the public. If you would like us to remove such stored information, please send us an email at biz@TopCools.com.

What Choices Do I Have Regarding My Information?

As stated previously, you can opt not to disclose certain information to us, even though it may be needed to take advantage of some TopCools features.

You can delete your Account or adjust your Account’s privacy settings. Please note that we will need to verify that you have the authority to delete the Account, and activity generated prior to deletion will remain stored by us and may be publicly accessible.

What Happens When There Are Changes to this Privacy Policy?

We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. Use of information we collect now is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is used. If we make changes in the way we collect or use information, we will notify you by posting an announcement on or within TopCools or sending you an email. A user is bound by any changes to the Privacy Policy when he or she uses TopCools after such changes have been first posted.

What If I Have Questions or Concerns?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding privacy using TopCools, please send us a detailed message to: biz@TopCools.com. We will make every effort to resolve your concerns.

Effective Date: Jan 26, 2014