Privacy on ourtimelines.com

The Timeline and Peers Forms

ourtimelines.com does not archive, sell or give away any information you provide the site via the timeline or peers forms. This means names, dates, and custom events.

This information is only placed into the web page being generated for you. Your computer is the only one that will receive this web page (unless you post it on your site, of course, and make it public yourself.)

Once the CGI engine has generated your timeline or peer group page, the names, birth-dates and custom events that were provided as CGI data from the form's input fields are immediately discarded from our server — absolutely no storage of this information, even in temporary form, on a hard drive or other system device ever occurs. For this reason, it is not possible to "hack" your personal information from the site. Your information cannot be retrieved from the server's filesystem under any circumstances — it's literally "not there." Even the server logs are discarded without backup after a very short period of time. This site was designed from the ground up to respect your privacy.

Cookies

ourtimelines.com may use "cookies" to control banner operations. In that case, the cookies place a single integer number in storage within your browser. This number tells the CGI which banner was displayed on the page you were looking at if the CGI retrieves it from your browser. If you then click on the banner, the CGI retrieves the cookie and uses the number to determine which web site address to send you to. At this time, the CGI also adds one to the counter that tracks how many times people have clicked that banner to visit the web site in question. Then it forwards your browser to the web site you wanted to visit.

Note that the count referred to above is a count of click-throughs only. It is completely general (meaning, anyone who clicks the banner adds one to the counter) and does not in any way identify you or track you.

The use the CGI makes of this counter is to provide a means for the advertiser know how many times the banner was clicked upon, as compared to the number of times it was displayed. That, in turn, gives the advertiser statistical information they can use to develop more interesting and effective banners, if they so choose.

These cookies immediately expire (go away completely) when you leave the ourtimelines.com web site.

Other Cookies

ourtimelines.com may participate in advertising services such as Google and other providers. These providers use cookies as well; but cookies cannot carry any information that you have not provided. In other words, unless you give the site your name, they can't store it in a cookie. They can't get your name or any other information from ourtimelines.com, so we consider any use of these banners to be somewhat benign as far as your privacy goes.

However, we do not actually know how these services utilize cookies; if you have concerns, visit the advertiser's site or ad network's site and examine the information they provide in this regard. Another option is to use a browser capable of controlling what cookies and domains are allowed to affect your web browser.

Java and other Active Technologies

Some banner services use JavaScript to control banners. These technologies may go considerably further than our own banner controls. I will try to avoid this type of technology unless I trust the provider (for instance, I trust Google. Mostly.)

No other active technologies are in use by ourtimelines.com.

My Pledge to You

I absolutely promise that if at any time I wish to gather information from the site's visitors, I will do so via a form that specifically and publicly declares its intent to gather and store such information. I will disclose the precise usage and limits of usage of that information clearly and publicly on that form, so you don't have to surf to a different page to see what it is you're getting involved in, potentially missing such a declaration.

At this time, I see no need to do any such gathering of information. As a general rule, I consider your privacy to be something I must respect, and will avoid any such information gathering unless I cannot see any other way to provide a worthwhile benefit to you.