Privacy
Everyone needs a privacy policy these days. In brief, this website assumes that anything you do not post in a public area of the forum is private and should stay that way. Your information is not stolen, or sold on, and no other mad stuff is done with it.
But you do leave a trace behind you as you use the internet. This page describes what that trace is on this site, who knows about it, how to avoid leaving that trace, and even how to request to have it removed.
Log files
Like most website servers we use log files. These files record IP address, high level operating system and browser details, and if you followed a link to this website where that link was. The data is used to record website traffic and occasionally to help diagnose problems reported by visitors.
There is no mechanism to remove the trace of your visits from the log files, partly because it's impossible to tell which logs are from you and which are from someone else with the same internet service provider.
Cookies
The forum uses cookies for authentication. These allow the forum to remember who you are so that you don't have to log in on every visit, and to help in forum features like highlighting unread posts. Cookies are small text files, so are harmless.
If you do not wish to accept these cookies you can set up your browser to disable cookies or if you get clever with the options in your browser you could refuse cookies only from this website. The site would still work, just not quite so well (that's why we have the cookies).
Google advertising
We sell a little space on some pages to Google who fill it with their adverts. The adverts come from their server so when you view a page on this website containing their adverts you are effectively looking at one page on this website and one page on their website at the same time.
Their contribution is covered by their privacy policy. They can collect much the same information as this site can collect (see the log files and cookies sections above).
It is possible to refuse cookies from Google. Possibly this would reduce the functionality of their adverts. They may still be able to collect log file information.
The forum
The email address you submit when you register with the forum is not visible to other members and not disclosed to any third parties. So long as you don't make it public by including it within a forum post it should remain completely safe.
Any information you submit to the forum may be visible to the administrator, either through the administrator control panel or through manual examination of the forum database. The private messaging system is not visible through the control panel, but can be viewed via the database access if abuse of the system is reported. That has not happened so far as abuse has been caught by other means.
In the future the forum may send a newsletter, possibly on an annual basis. If you do not wish to receive this then click "do not receive emails from administrator" on registering, or amend the options in the user control panel.
The "edit options" section in the user control panel also contains options where you can set the forum to notify you by email of new posts to a thread you have contributed to. That's something that is useful to new members but annoying for very active members, so is on by default when you join, but something you can turn off whenever you want to.
You may request that we remove any personal information on the forum by sending a private message to malcolm.
Links to other sites
The website and forum often contain links to other websites. We can't vouch for these third party websites.
You can avoid these other websites by sticking around here. It's a much cooler place than those other sites anyway.
