Privacy Policy and any other Legal Notice We Think Of

revised 12/8/08 

Our privacy policy is very simple. We don’t collect any personally identifiable data about anyone. Ever. If our internet provider or hosting company does collect it, we don’t know it, and don’t look at it.

If you send us something with your name or e-mail address, we don’t sell or give it to anyone. If you put it in a post we may leave it there. If it’s an offensive or obviously fake name or address we may delete it, or not, depending upon whether we figure it out in time or whether we’re feeling like it. It’s your risk. If you don’t want us to use it for something, don’t send it to us. That includes things we might not have figured out yet and things you might not have figured out yet.

We promise not to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. We may not even respond personally to your questions. Generally if you send a question we answer it on the site. That may mean your e-mail containing the question gets used on the site.

If you send it to us, you are granting us permission to use it. Even if the e-mail or message contains something saying DO NOT USE THIS, or something equally clear to us, although we’ll try to honor your request, if we make a mistake on that, your sending it to us is a waiver of any remedy for our mistake - it’s permission to use it, no matter what you say. So you don’t get to sue us, or get to do anything other than complain to us if we post it anyway. This is our way of saying we’ll do our best, but you don’t get a guarantee.

The only things we look at from time to time are things like numbers of hits to various pages, the times at which those hits occur, and aggregate data that shows us what internet service providers those hits come from. For example we can tell that we get a large number of hits from people using rr.com (that’s Roadrunner, we think) - but we can’t tell where on the Roadrunner system they come from.

If you send us something with your name on it, some lawyers have tried to claim that your name or e-mail address is “personally identifiable data.” If you sent us an e-mail with your name or e-mail address, hey, no mystery, we know what you’ve sent us. We also know what your e-mail to us says, including each word that you used.

This doesn’t come as any mystery to you, we know - you sent us the message, right?

We can see the IP address from which a comment is posted, though we can’t identify who the IP address belongs to. Therefore, we do not regard your IP address as “personally identifiable data.” As we have noted in responding to posts, we use IP addresses from time as one way to try to prevent individuals from posting under multiple names. We also use IP addresses to prevent message spam.

But we want to keep those pesky little twerps in legal happy, and off our backs. So, here you go. If you have any questions about our policy, send us a message with “DO NOT PUBLISH THIS” on it, or just use our comment function. We’ll try to answer your questions.

Things we don’t post in comments: Spam. Obscenity. Things that we think might be libelous or which accuse someone of a crime. We don’t care what side of an issue you’re on, but we appreciate civility.

For those of you curious about what information shows up when we look, here’s an example of the report we can get about who’s visiting the site.

1 rr.com 150 17.92%
2 pacbell.net 120 14.34%
3 verizon-gni.net 85 10.16%
4 googlebot.com 67 8.00%
5 mindspring.com 52 6.21%
6 optonline.net 41 4.90%
7 marsh.com 25 2.99%
8 sbcglobal.net 21 2.51%
9 comcast.net 20 2.39%
10 videotron.ca 20 2.39%
11 charter.com 15 1.79%
12 cox.net 13 1.55%
13 cloud9.net 12 1.43%
14 linkline.com 11 1.31%
15 covad.net 10 1.19%
16 perfora.net 10 1.19%
17 qwest.net 10 1.19%
18 bellsouth.net 9 1.08%
19 level3.net 9 1.08%
20 cbs.net 8 0.96%
21 tiscali.it 8 0.96%
22 buzzmetrics.com 7 0.84%
23 rim.net 7 0.84%
24 cinergycom.net 6 0.72%
25 layeredtech.com 6 0.72%
26 speakeasy.net 5 0.60%
27 cogentco.com 4 0.48%
28 telepacific.net 4 0.48%
29 tmodns.net 4 0.48%
30 atdoner.com 3 0.36%
31 bergerassociates.com 3 0.36%
32 shentel.net 3 0.36%
33 swbell.net 3 0.36%
34 telecomitalia.it 3 0.36%
35 algx.net 2 0.24%
36 ameritech.net 2 0.24%
37 assistmed.com 2 0.24%
38 cableone.net 2 0.24%
39 callplus.net.nz 2 0.24%
40 capgroup.com 2 0.24%
41 cvnt.net 2 0.24%
42 frontiernet.net 2 0.24%
43 grey.com 2 0.24%
44 hevanet.com 2 0.24%
45 mdsg-pacwest.com 2 0.24%
46 ntl.com 2 0.24%
47 paetec.net 2 0.24%
48 rcn.net 2 0.24%
49 rogers.com 2 0.24%
50 1dial.com 1 0.12%
51 andycable.com 1 0.12%
52 arxan.com 1 0.12%
53 cnt.org 1 0.12%
54 comcastbusiness.net 1 0.12%
55 coretel.net 1 0.12%
56 dataweb.net 1 0.12%
57 donovandata.com 1 0.12%
58 dslextreme.com 1 0.12%
59 eircom.net 1 0.12%
60 embarqservices.net 1 0.12%
61 esinet.net 1 0.12%
62 gblx.net 1 0.12%
63 harvard.edu 1 0.12%
64 hqglobal.net 1 0.12%
65 iprimus.net.au 1 0.12%
66 lightning.net.uk 1 0.12%
67 lyse.net 1 0.12%
68 m-online.net 1 0.12%
69 myvzw.com 1 0.12%
70 nau.edu 1 0.12%
71 networktel.net 1 0.12%
72 newline.net.ua 1 0.12%
73 ragingwire.net 1 0.12%
74 sohonet.co.uk 1 0.12%
75 transedge.com 1 0.12%
76 tudor.lu 1 0.12%
77 tvstages.com 1 0.12%
78 twtelecom.net 1 0.12%
79 ussignalcom.net 1 0.12%
80 vii.com 1 0.12%
81 wanadoo.nl 1 0.12%
82 yahoo.com 1 0.12%
Basis: 837 results from 1662 unique visits of which 825 unknown/could not be evaluated.

We may change this policy from time to time. We also reserve the right to take steps to prevent misuse of the system, and we want you to understand that our definition of misuse may not be the same as yours. Our defnition controls. That means that if we believe you are misusing the system, we may take steps we deem appropriate to prevent the misuse. That may include publishing that information we have which suggests that you’re engaged in misuse, including your IP address and any e-mail address or other information we may have about you.

This site is not intended for those under 13 years old. If you’re under 13, go away.