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Terms and Conditions
Top-Hat-Sec, LLC (hereafter mentioned as Top-Hat-Sec, LLC, Top Hat Sec, THS, Top-Hat-Sec, LLC, Top Hat Sec, LLC or any variant of said name) Terms and Conditions
Please note, we do our best when it comes to translating in other languages, however we are not responsible for miscommunications that may happen when any part of our site or its contents are translated into a language other than American English. If you have a question or concern about what you are reading (in American English or otherwise), please feel free to contact us with the question or concern.
Summary: These are the terms and conditions for Top Hat Sec, not to be confused with the Privacy Policy (found here). This is what is termed as “covering our arse.” The entire thing could probably be summed up in two sentences “Don’t do anything illegal or stupid.” and “Take responsibility for your own actions.” But that might be considered “offensive” or “unclear” to someone…
So here you go, just to make it clear…
By accessing and posting on the forum, you accept and agree to be bound by rules of the forum. In addition, when using the forum, you shall be subject to any posted guidelines or rules applicable to such services. Any participation on the forum will constitute acceptance of this agreement. If you do not agree to abide by the above, do not use this service.
By accessing any part of this website, and/or watching/reading/downloading any or part of course/module videos, digital content and pdfs, you accept and agree to be bound by the terms and provision of this agreement. In addition, when using any of the above mentioned content, you shall be subject to any posted guidelines or rules applicable to the laws. Any participation on the forum, or any participation in any page of the Top Hat Sec website, or any downloading or watching or listening to or reading content will constitute acceptance of this agreement. If you do not agree to abide by the above, do not use THS.
Please refer to our Privacy Policy (Other side of the page —>) if you have any questions or concerns about how we handle your privacy.
This site and its components are offered for informational and training purposes only; while we do try to ensure the information is accurate, technology will always continue to advance, which sometimes renders the contents of the THS site obsolete; this is the nature of the technology world. Furthermore, while something may be permissible in one country, province or state, Top-Hat-Sec, LLC is based in Virginia, in the United States of America, and therefore subject to the ever changing laws in this state. Each state, province and country vary in rules and we advise you to familiarize yourself not only with the laws of Virginia and the USA, but the laws in your own country and state. Top Hat Sec shall not be responsible or liable for misuse of information provided nor shall THS or its parties be responsible if you inadvertently or advertently break any form of law using information found on or in any part of THS. This site shall not be responsible or liable for the accuracy, usefulness or availability of any information transmitted or made available via the site, and shall not be responsible or liable for any error or omissions in that information either. Some people consider hacking a controversial subject. If you are one of those people, and feel offended by our website, please do not agree to the terms and conditions. Top Hat Sec strives to only be involved in Ethical or White Hat hacking, but we do not control the people who come to our site or participate in our training. Please see the revoking section for more information.
Furthermore, this web site most likely contains links to other sites; we do not guarantee any such links are safe; it is your responsibility to verify the links and/or sites before clicking on them. For example, if someone is talking about the latest malware and gives a link… it’s a safe bet that you should not click on that link unless you are in a sandbox trying to test the malware out or devise a way to detect it. If you have a concern about a link that another member put up please contact an admin so we can review your concern.
The Site and its original and current content, features, and functionality are owned by Top-Hat-Sec, LLC (Kimberly Drew aka GalaxyNinja), and are protected by international copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, and/or other intellectual property or proprietary rights laws.
Top Hat Sec does not currently use advertisers, as we rely on donations and our video series to fund the various costs involved in running a business (such as personal property taxes, filing fees, hosting services, etc.) however, if in the future we do advertise, we will make sure to only endorse products that fit THS values and will do our best to ensure the advertisers are aware and abide by the THS privacy policy.
The Top Hat Sec Store accepts both Pay Pal and credit cards. To pay with bitcoins, please contact us at [email protected], Alternatively, you can use the number below, however, the store will not process courses or items with this number; you will still have to contact us.
For all videos or items purchased, once you receive the username and password, or the downloadable link, your items will no longer be refundable. If you believe you purchased an item in error, please contact us at [email protected]
If you purchased a shippable item, your order can be cancelled up to the time we email the shipping information. Once the item is in transit, the order can no longer be cancelled or returned.
If you do need to return an item, you will receive a full reimbursement, minus shipping costs and restocking fees.
For items shipped inside of the United States of America, we will do our best to get the items purchased by you in a timely manner. Some delays may happen if a natural disaster happens and such delays are out of our hands. Some examples of natural disasters are blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, flooding, wildfires and the like.
For items shipped outside of the United States of America, there may be delays in your order. Once the postal service has transferred an item purchased/package shipped to the customs border of wherever your package is going, Top Hat Sec can no longer accept responsibility for when and if your item will arrive safely. THS has no control over third party shippers, nor do we have control over customs or postal services outside of the USA.
We will always try to ship your item the most responsible way possible, unless you indicate otherwise during ordering.
Please make sure you are aware of what can and can not be shipped to your country as Top Hat Sec will not assume responsibility if an item is denied at customs.
We have yet to have that happen, but there is always a first time!
At certain times, items such as shirts may be shipped by a third party vendor, such as a long time THS member in good standing who can order shirts cheaper than THS could. If this happens, it will be notated in the store. Purchasing such an item will act as an agreement that your name, shipping address, and possibly phone number and/or email, may be given to that individual so they may ship your item.
If you have any questions or concerns about your order, please contact us at [email protected] so we may address that concern.
The items you purchase are yours alone. With the exception of gear (shirts, lanyards, pens etc), your purchase will be watermarked or digitally injected with your personal information to help protect us against digital piracy. If you do not agree to this, do not purchase the items!
The exceptions to this are immediate family members of the purchaser. You are allowed to share videos and pdfs with your immediate family members, however if a course comes with a certificate of completion or a certification after passing a test, the family member will need to purchase the test / certification to receive credit for the course. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to email us at the email address above.
If you have registered on the forum or another part of the site, we may revoke, suspend and or terminate your account and access thereof without notice, which may result in any information in your account to be destroyed. If we terminate your account, we may not be able to get your information back. An example of something that might cause termination would be if you tried to commit fraud, pentest any part of our site without permission, and/or deliberately input misinformation into a THS Wiki. These are only a few examples, and are not all inclusive.
It is on the burden of the revoked, suspended or terminated member/guest to prove your innocence in order to be reinstated. Top Hat Sec reserves the right to use our best judgement as to whether or not to reinstate you. Regardless of whether or not you have been terminated, suspended or the like, you still agree to hold Top-Hat-Sec, LLC blameless and uphold all of the rules and provisions stated herein.
Contests and Promotions:
From time to time, THS may host various contests (such as a ctf or a knock box) or promotions (such as a spring sale).
Participation in these surveys, contests or promotions is completely voluntary so the user has the choice whether to participate and disclose the information needed to participate in such events. Information requested may include contact information (such as name, shipping address, email, and/or phone number) and demographic information (such as zip code, age level, male, female, or other). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site (including future contests).
Top Hat Sec, LLC reserves the right to change these terms and conditions from time to time as we see fit. Your continued use of the site and/or forum will signify acceptance on your part of any adjustment to these terms and conditions. If there are any significant changes made to the terms and conditions, we will announce that these changes have been made via our blog site and/or homepage and/or forum. Any significant changes to our terms and conditions will be posted 30 days prior to these changes taking place. You are therefore advised to re-read the terms and conditions on a regular basis. For changes relating to our privacy policy, please see the privacy policy document (Other side of page—>).
If you feel that this company is not abiding by its terms and conditions or its privacy policy, contact Top-Hat-Sec, LLC at [email protected] or [email protected]
Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy for Top-Hat-Sec, LLC (hereafter mentioned as Top-Hat-Sec, LLC, Top Hat Sec, THS, Top-Hat-Sec, LLC, Top Hat Sec, LLC or any variant of said name)
Top Hat Sec collects information from our users at several different points on our website. If you choose to offer us your e-mail address, name, address, phone or comments, we may store this information where we can access it in case of a breach of the terms and conditions.
THS may also use this information to contact you if you purchase an item from our store. For example; if you purchase a t-shirt, we will use your name and address to send the t-shirt to you. We may also call or email you if we need more information before mailing an item.
For example, if you need an item shipped to Africa, and you give us your address, but it is not in an international format, or if you leave your zip code off by accident, we would need to get in touch with you in order to ship your product.
The most used piece of information you provide us with will be your email address, because we often use it to send confirmation emails and links to digital products. If we send you a link and you are unsure if it is a legitimate link, please contact us and we will respond within 24-48 hours. Generally we will respond much sooner than that.
THS will not trade, sell, or give away any member’s personal information.
However, we reserve the right to put your information on/in the videos and documents you purchase to protect ourselves. We will not be held liable if you chose to disobey the terms and conditions and put the videos/pdf’s purchased somewhere where others may be able to access your information.
If you provide us with your email, we may use your email to send information about contests (such as ctfs), new videos, new content, newsletters and the like. You may request to opt out of this at any time and we will process the request and stop the information within 2 weeks from the request sent. If we do not respond to the request, please email us at [email protected] and we will respond promptly.
Cookies:
Yeah, I love to bake; cookies are yummy! But these types of cookies are pieces of data stored on your, the user’s, hard drive on a computer, tablet, mobile phone or the like, that collects information about you, the user. We may collet this information if you just visit our site, but we for Sure will collect this information if you log into any part of our site. This information can include your ip address. On the forum, your IP address is often linked to your forum name. Only a THS admin should be able to see that information. We realize that you may try to use a proxy or hidden ip address when visiting our site. Not all ip addresses may be allowed on the site because of malicious acts or spamming in the past. If your ip address falls into this category and you feel this to be in error, please contact an admin so we may review your concern.
Links:
This web site will often contain links to other sites; we don’t control sites other than our own and our privacy policy only applies to this site and not to outside sites. You are responsible for reading the privacy policy of any linked or out that you may go to.
Breaches / Hacked Site
Because of the nature of this site, it is plausible that it might always be under attack. Although we do our very best to ensure the safety of your information, there always remains a chance that all or part of our site may end up compromised at some time. Remember the Heartbleed Bug or the Shellshock Bug? If massive companies end up with major bugs, we may end up with a few ourselves. Once we are made aware of, and have verified a breach, we will notify you via the email provided to us. We will ONLY notify you if any relevant information has been compromised. For example, if someone is able to get all of the names of every forum member there is and the number of posts, but they have not been able to get hashes, emails, private pm info, etc, then we may mention the breach in the forum or blog boards, but will not email you.
Bug Bounty
On that note, if you are interested in joining our bug bounty hunter team, please send us an email. We do not authorize Anyone to test any part of our sites without prior approval.
Testing our sites for bugs without first contacting and gaining written approval from TheGalaxyNinja will most likely result in the termination of your membership as well as possible state, federal or international charges. You also will not get any incentives from us.
The bounties are small and only apply to bugs found on the THS website that have not been already found. $20 usd for major bugs reported and anywhere from $1 usd to $10 usd for smaller bugs, depending on the potential of the bugs to be used for malicious means.
But, if you are a good bug catcher, and report the catches without trying to exploit this website, we can throw in the incentive of a letter of reference either typed on nice paper and signed by the Owner/CEO of Top-Hat-Sec, LLC and mailed to you, or a digitalized letter of reference emailed to you.
If you (a member of our bug bounty hunter team) do find a major bug on the THS website that you can cash in to one of the big bug bounty hunter programs, please notify us within 24 hours. That should allow you time to submit your bug to the proper people. THS has no interest in stealing your thunder; we just want to protect our members.
Typos do not count as bugs. For more information, please contact us at [email protected]
Changes:
If there are any significant changes made to our privacy policy, we will announce that these changes have been made via our blog site and/or homepage and/or forum. Any changes to our privacy policy will be posted 30 days prior to these changes taking place. It is your responsibility to review the privacy policy on a regular basis to ensure that you are properly informed. If you disagree with the privacy policy, you can stop using the site.
If you feel that this company is not abiding by its terms and conditions or its privacy policy, feel free to contact Top-Hat-Sec, LLC at [email protected] or [email protected]
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