|
| |
What information are you cat-nabbing?
Every computer connected to the Internet is given a domain name and a set of numbers that serve as that computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address. When a visitor requests a page from the mycritter.com domain, our webservers automatically recognize your domain name and IP address. This doesn't tell us a whole heck of a lot. If you try to hack us, post something obscene, or what-not, we will do our best to follow the trail back to you and ask you to quit being a moron. If you promote terrorism or post child porn or something, we'll ship everything we can about you to the proper authorities. And if we weren't so lazy and understaffed, we could theoretically look at data in general - meaning, we could see who all amongst our users were coming from a certain domain, perhaps country, and so on. Usually we don't care. We're trying to help animals find quality homes, not be your Big Brother.
What are cookies?
If you have to ask, your grandmother should be ashamed of herself. Okay, just kidding. Cookies are little morsels of data that our server places on your personal machine. It isn't a virus and it can't read your diary or erase your hard drive. What it can do is help us tailor your web experience to your tastes or save you time. For example, we could give you a cookie that says "hey, server, here is my password, so don't make me log in every time, okay?" Or we could set a cookie that says you look for dogs 99% of the time, so we show dogs as featured pets and not a bunch of buffalo or something. But hey, if you want to see buffalo and keep us from tinkering around on your machine, then feel free to change the settings of your web browser - go into options and tell it to snarl and bark and refuse any kind of cookie whatsoever.
How do you use single-pixel images? (usually a GIF)
Mostly to fool search engines so we get higher scores on the whole search engine scoring game. No, really. Some people use them as web bugs or beacons, which counts page views or hits and gathers a bunch of other information. See our comments about lazy and understaffed above. Like we care if you live in Alaska. Get a furry pet, that's about all we suggest.
What information do you collect when I register for something?
Um, duh. Sometimes I wonder who decides to write this sort of mumbo-jumbo in the first place. Look, if the form asks for it, we gather it. If it is not on the form, we don't gather it. We're not going to magically lift your credit card numbers just because you give us your zip code. And even on the forms mycritter does use, many times the information requested is optional. Take your name for example. We don't need it. Now, if you want to sell a Golden Retriever for $350, and the buyer sees that your name is either not available or is a joke, like "Bark Bark" - well, you might not make that sale. Up to you, really. As for the e-mail address and the zip code, which we do require, well, we need your e-mail or we can't send you leads on buying or selling. And your zip code we run against a crude proximity search to give you a rough estimate of distance. We don't think it's very nice of us to break your heart when you find out that cute widdle kitty-cat is 1,200 miles away.
What else should I know about my privacy when online?
Well, it is possible to jump from our site to somewhere else. Someday we might have advertisers. Wouldn't that be nice (hint hint, all you rich people out there so bored you are reading this drivel). Anyway, if you click on a banner and ramble off to look at the latest in flea collars or something, you'll be under the policies and rules of whichever web site you are surfing, and we're really not responsible for that. Note that we don't send third parties anything we know about you, other than your social security... KIDDING! Just trying to keep you on your toes. As for other stuff you might not know, well, realize that many times if you disclose personal information - like say giving out your home phone number on our bulletin boards (etc etc) - well, duh, other people might see it and call and harrass you and who knows what else. We strongly suggest you not do this. And for the record, if you are under 13 years of age, GET OFF OF OUR SITE! Ah, boy, this is getting tiresome. Of course we want young people on our site. But if you are under thirteen, we are especially concerned for your safety and well-being. Do not engage in personal information exchange with strangers, especially without asking your parents or legal guardians first. Use your head - remember there are some total freaks out in cyberspace - people so deranged they would, for example, type a privacy statement like this off the top of their head - and live to tell about it! But back to our monologue, please be aware that if you post personal information to our site or any other that is accessible to the great unwashed (the public), you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return. Some will be merely annoying, and some may be considered quite vulgar and/or in poor taste.
And now for the "don't blame us" legal quote of the day: ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your personal information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you are connected to the web!
Your Consent To This Agreement
By hanging out with us on mycritter.com, you consent to the collection and use of information by our site administrators as specified above. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes here in sort order. The mere thought of looking at this page ever again so pains us that we're pretty sure that won't happen any time soon.
Please send any questions about this Privacy Policy, hop on over to our home page and click on the left-hand link that gives you a happy little form to contact our staff.
Whew, I am so glad this is over - aren't you? Hello? Hello?
|
|
