Privacy Policy for freenet.org.nz
I shall attempt here to spell out a privacy policy that is short,
simple and explicit. If you see anything lacking, please email me and express your
concern and I'll update this document accordingly.
0. Attitude
- I neither know nor care who
you are when you visit this site. I do
care, however, that you enjoy your surfing of this site and find the
information and resources useful.
- I am a vigorous advocate of privacy and personal liberty. It
would be totally out of integrity for me to indulge in any activity
which may compromise your privacy or safety
1. What Information is being collected
- This site collects absolutely no information whatsoever. The
underlying HTTP server software is Apache 1.3 which logs site accesses;
however, a cron script on this server deletes the logs daily
2. Is collected information personally identifiable?
- The Apache HTTP server logs contain only an IP address - no
information about your system, browser or referring pages is recorded.
Only your Internet Service Provider can map this IP address to personal
identifying information about you. Again, these logs are deleted daily.
3. What is the situation with Cookies?
- In all areas of this site (with only one exception), no cookies
are written to, or read from, your browser.
- The exception is the pyWeb area, which only writes two
cookies in respect of this domain, freenet.org.nz.
- Absolutely no 'off-site' cookies are written to your browser. The
owner of this site vehemently opposes the practice of writing off-site
cookies - cookies targetted at a domain other than the one being
visited.
- The purpose of writing these two cookies is simply to demonstrate
the capability of the pyWeb software to make cookie I/O accessible and
convenient to the client programmer.
- The two cookies contain only a session ID, plus a small
collection of status variables. No information stored in these cookies,
can identify a user personally.
- In the case of Session ID, this ID can be used to reference a
database record relating to individual users. However, this will only occur if the user has previously created
themself an account on the
website, and voluntarily provided personal details.
- In cases where users create themselves accounts on this site,
users are welcome to use false names and provide false non-identifying
information - the only requirement is that they provide an email
address (temporary webmail accounts like Hotmail and Yahoo welcome)
from which they can receive messages.
- No identifying HTTP header information, such as IP addresses,
operating system data, user agent (browser) information etc will ever
be stored in the database.
- Any information in the database, stored when users create their
own access accounts, is strictly kept within the confines of this site.
Under no circumstances will the operator of this site reveal user
account information to any other agency. It is the policy of this site
that the operator will securely delete the database files and face
prosecution rather than relinquish account information to any external
agency.
- In the pyWeb area of this site, the
cookies stored will be visible in your browser cookie store under the
domain freenet.org.nz or www.freenet.org.nz, and are normally set to
expire within 31 days or sooner. If you feel any concern, your browser
will allow you to delete these cookies.
4. Are There Any 'Web Bugs' etc?
- A 'web bug' is an image tag placed in the HTML code sent to your
browser, which causes your browser to access an external server.
Normally, such web bugs are tiny transparent graphic images, invisible
to the user
- The typical purpose of a web bug is to facilitate the sharing of
personal information about site visitors amongst a potentially huge
consortium of corporate and/or government entities, without the
visitor's consent, for purposes which range from distasteful to
downright violating.
- This site does NOT use web bugs, and does not
send any HTML code to your browser which would cause your browser to automatically access any other site.
The only exception is the familiar explicit off-site web links, which
are clearly visible as web links, which cause your
browser to load pages on other sites only when you deliberately
click on them
5. Use of JavaScript
- At time of building this site, no javascript code is used within
this site.
- The owner of this site remains suspicious about javascript,
because it may be used to access browser cookies not belonging to the
site (eg javascript may be used to retrieve your Amazon.com access
history, and much personal data). Also, javascript codes may cause
client browsers to perform off-site http accesses, which similarly may
compromise users' privacy
- The owner of this site is concerned that browsers only provide
enable/disable javascript settings, and do not permit a setting which
allows javascript for site aesthetics and functionality without
allowing javascript code to access cookies or perform offsite http
access.
- If at any time I place javascript code in the HTML code sent to
your browser, it will only be for the purpose of client-side
functionality, such as menus, visual effects whatsoever. You have my
undertaking that no javascript will ever be sent to your browser which
may even attempt to compromise your privacy
6. Complaints, Concerns
- I have tried in this privacy policy document to convey my utmost
respect for your rights, and explain the bare minimum of information
collection which takes place
- If you have any concerns, or if there's anything I haven't
adequately addressed here, then please email me immediately and put
forward your concern.