Use of Collected Information

As part of the normal operation of a web site anonymous technical information is offered by every visitor as part of the standard initial connection process to any web site, not just ours.

This offering and acceptance of technical information can be compared to your car offering it's license plate information to anybody who sees it, no matter if it is in your driveway or being driven down the road.   That information includes the locality where it is registered, the registration expiration date, and a unique identifying number.   Rarely is that information used by an observer, but those three bits of information are offered to everyone as part of the normal every day use of the vehicle.

All of the information we collect via this mechanism is used only as anonymous aggregate and statistical data to to measure the use of our site and to improve the content of our site.   Picture a highway traffic counter box set up on a road near you.   It counts each and every car that drives over it's sensor hose, but it doesn't care if the car it counts is a Audi, a Chevrolet, a Ford, a motorcycle, a truck or a school bus, it just tallys one total count of vehicles from time A to time B (perhaps 8am to 9am), another total count from time B to time C (perhaps 9am to 10am), and so forth.   That's all we are doing - gathering totals.

For instance, we can tell the server to keep a total count on the number of visits to a certain web page, and the amount of time visitors spent on that page, but the server does not keep any identifying information from any individual visitor.   We would do this to determine which sections of the web site and which pages are the most popular.

Other information that your browser offers includes your browser type and the version number (i.e. Internet Explorer 6.01, Netscape 4.72, Firefox 2.01, etc), your operating system (i.e. Solaris, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Linux, or perhaps MacOS), where our visitors are coming from (i.e. what websites are referring users to us - google.com, aol.com, etc.), when our servers are busiest, etc.

"Cookies", etcetera.

Other than the Oreos that the webmaster is munching on as he types this, we do not use "cookies".   Web cookies are small text files delivered to your computer by the web server and stored by your computer in a special area reserved for them, usually transparently to you.   Cookies by themselves cannot obtain personally identifiable information such as your e-mail address, or any other information stored on your hard drive.   You can quite easily prevent cookie data from being sent by adjusting your browser settings. Many other web sites will not function properly if cookies are not enabled as they are used to identify your computer on current and future visits to web sites.   Many sites require registration and they leave a cookie indicating that you have done so.

One parameter in a cookie is a "expiration time" - which can be for a fixed number of seconds, a date, or for the duration of the connection to the web site.   The last form is useful for example, to implement a shopping basket that "remembers" what you have in it as you pick and choose multiple items from several pages on a single web site (like amazon.com), and then the cookie is automatically deleted when you "check out" or leave the web site.

A cookie can be made to appear as permanent by setting an expiration date that is far, far in the future (like in the year 2099).   One indication of a permanent cookie is a web site greets you personally on a later visit, and possibly remember details of the last time you visited (like what you purchased then).   Another use of permanent cookies is to hold membership information to subscription web sites - for example a financial or stock trading newsletter that has a limited, perhaps paid circulation.

One very questionable use of permanent cookies - and the one that has received the most media converage - is to track your browsing.   Each web site you visit could leave a persistent cookie on your computer on the first visit, and on each visit thereafter both reads it and updates it with the new date and time.   This can provide interesting information by allowing the operator of the web site to see when you visited, how often you visited, and what you did while you were there.

Again, we do not use cookies.   We don't offer any services that requires them.   If in the future we offer a service that requires them, we will update this page with the new information.

Linked Sites

This web site contains links to other sites.   We are not responsible for the content, availability or the privacy policies of those sites.   In fact, the privacy policies of those sites are probably very different than that of this site.