Privacy Policy

What Information Do We Collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site and gather data when you participate in the forum by reading, writing, and evaluating the content shared here.

When registering on our site, you may be asked to enter your name and e-mail address. You may, however, visit our site without registering. Your e-mail address will be verified by an email containing a unique link. If that link is visited, we know that you control the e-mail address.

When registered and posting, we record the IP address that the post originated from. We also may retain server logs which include the IP address of every request to our server.

What Do We Use Your Information For?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

• To personalize your experience — your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs.
• To improve our site — we continually strive to improve our site offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you.
• To improve customer service — your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs.
• To send periodic emails — The email address you provide may be used to send you information, notifications that you request about changes to topics or in response to your user name, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.

Do We Use Cookies?

Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). These cookies enable the site to recognize your browser and, if you have a registered account, associate it with your registered account.

We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our site, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our web site privacy policy.

Other Information

We are using TianJi Analytics and Google Adsense¹. These services utilise cookies to track your presence on the net. I don't really know all the details but this is something you can opt out if you feel concerned. These snippets are cut and pasted from Google to give you a idea on how these cookies are used:

• How this website and third-party vendors use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) or other first-party identifiers, and third-party cookies (such as Google advertising cookies) or other third-party identifiers together.
• How visitors can opt-out of the Google Analytics Advertising Features you use, including through Ads Settings, Ad Settings for mobile apps, or any other available means (for example, the NAI's consumer opt-out).

If you feel alarmed by this, opt out by going here and change your settings.

The web server also logged IP addresses. That is beyond our control as logging can't be disabled via my host provider. Besides, knowing the regions of people who are interested in Snakeoil may well give me the information to make Snakeoil better.

Your emails to us may be published under Letters in the News section. If we do publish your letter we will remove all identifying information. Usually only the first name will be used.

Otherwise your details are safe (unless this system is hacked of course). We do not keep any of your financial information on record as we never ask for money (this is a not for profit project). Donations are handled by PayPal and all the information are kept and maintained by PayPal and should be secure.

If security is a concern to you please sign up with a throwaway gmail account and use a pseudonym, or lurk.

Foot notes:

1. Adsense is just a way for me to recoup my costs of hosting these pages. I am happy to spend time on Snakeoil but don't really want to sink too much money into this at this stage. The ad revenues + donations will hopefully fund the costs of web hosting. DO NOT click the ads to support the Snakeoil project, only click if the ads are genuinely offering something you are interested in. Adsense ads may be disabled if I have enough buffer to cover a year's worth of operating costs.