SAGWatch

last revised 8/29/09

PRIVACY

Our privacy policy is no longer as simple as it used to be. Our new software collects what could reasonably be considered personally indentifiable information. We look at it for statistical purposes. We don’t ordinarily try to figure out who are users are, beyond the names you use in comments.

Note the use of the word “ordinarily.” We offer no promise that we won’t use it. It’s just a statement that right now we don’t see any need to do it on a regular basis.

One thing has not changed: we don’t sell, voluntarily exchange or give away your information to others.

If you send us something with your name or e-mail address, we don’t sell or give it to anyone, either. But – if you put it in a post we may leave it there. If it’s an offensive or obviously fake name or address we may delete it, or not, depending upon whether we figure it out in time or whether we’re feeling like it. It’s your risk. If you don’t want us to use it for something, don’t send it to us. That includes things we might not have figured out yet and things you might not have figured out yet.

We promise not to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. We may not even respond personally to your questions. Generally if you send a question we answer it on the site. That may mean your e-mail containing the question gets used on the site.

If you send us something with your name on it, some lawyers have tried to claim that your name or e-mail address is “personally identifiable data.” If you sent us an e-mail with your name or e-mail address, hey, no mystery, we know what you’ve sent us. We also know what your e-mail to us says, including each word that you used.

This doesn’t come as any mystery to you, we know – you sent us the message, right?

If you send it to us, you are granting us permission to use it. Even if the e-mail or message contains something saying DO NOT USE THIS, or something equally clear to us, although we’ll try to honor your request, if we make a mistake on that, your sending it to us is a waiver of any remedy for our mistake – it’s permission to use it, no matter what you say. So you don’t get to sue us, or get to do anything other than complain to us if we post it anyway. This is our way of saying we’ll do our best, but you don’t get a guarantee.

IP addresses: The only things we look at from time to time are things like numbers of hits to various pages, the times at which those hits occur, and aggregate data that shows us what internet service providers those hits come from. For example we can tell that we get a large number of hits from people using rr.com (that’s Roadrunner, we think) – but we can’t tell where on the Roadrunner system they come from.

We can see the IP address from which a comment is posted, though we can’t identify who the IP address belongs to. Therefore, we do not regard your IP address as “personally identifiable data.” As we have noted in responding to posts, we use IP addresses from time as one way to try to prevent individuals from posting under multiple names. We also use IP addresses to prevent message spam.But we want to keep those pesky little twerps in legal happy, and off our backs. So, here you go. If you have any questions about our policy, send us a message with “DO NOT PUBLISH THIS” on it, or just use our comment function. We’ll try to answer your questions.

Things we don’t post in comments: Spam. Obscenity. Things that we think might be libelous or which accuse someone of a crime. We don’t care what side of an issue you’re on, but we appreciate civility.

If a comment contains nothing but personal attacks  it’s not going up. If you have a comment related to an issue, it will go through. If it’s in between, depending on the mood of whoever is doing the reviewing, it may go up with deletions or get left behind – or it may be deleted entirely.

At the end of the day, the decision of whoever moderates your comment is final. It may seem arbitrary, and for that, we apologize. We try to be fair, but we’re not perfect.

If you don’t like the policy here, post somewhere else.

For those of you curious about what information shows up when we look, here’s an example of the report we can get about who’s visiting the site.

1 rr.com 150 17.92%
2 pacbell.net 120 14.34%
3 verizon-gni.net 85 10.16%
4 googlebot.com 67 8.00%
5 mindspring.com 52 6.21%
6 optonline.net 41 4.90%
7 marsh.com 25 2.99%
8 sbcglobal.net 21 2.51%
9 comcast.net 20 2.39%
10 videotron.ca 20 2.39%
11 charter.com 15 1.79%
12 cox.net 13 1.55%
13 cloud9.net 12 1.43%
14 linkline.com 11 1.31%
15 covad.net 10 1.19%
16 perfora.net 10 1.19%
17 qwest.net 10 1.19%
18 bellsouth.net 9 1.08%
19 level3.net 9 1.08%
20 cbs.net 8 0.96%
21 tiscali.it 8 0.96%
22 buzzmetrics.com 7 0.84%
23 rim.net 7 0.84%
24 cinergycom.net 6 0.72%
25 layeredtech.com 6 0.72%
26 speakeasy.net 5 0.60%
27 cogentco.com 4 0.48%
28 telepacific.net 4 0.48%
29 tmodns.net 4 0.48%
30 atdoner.com 3 0.36%
31 bergerassociates.com 3 0.36%
32 shentel.net 3 0.36%
33 swbell.net 3 0.36%
34 telecomitalia.it 3 0.36%
35 algx.net 2 0.24%
36 ameritech.net 2 0.24%
37 assistmed.com 2 0.24%
38 cableone.net 2 0.24%
39 callplus.net.nz 2 0.24%
40 capgroup.com 2 0.24%
41 cvnt.net 2 0.24%
42 frontiernet.net 2 0.24%
43 grey.com 2 0.24%
44 hevanet.com 2 0.24%
45 mdsg-pacwest.com 2 0.24%
46 ntl.com 2 0.24%
47 paetec.net 2 0.24%
48 rcn.net 2 0.24%
49 rogers.com 2 0.24%
50 1dial.com 1 0.12%
51 andycable.com 1 0.12%
52 arxan.com 1 0.12%
53 cnt.org 1 0.12%
54 comcastbusiness.net 1 0.12%
55 coretel.net 1 0.12%
56 dataweb.net 1 0.12%
57 donovandata.com 1 0.12%
58 dslextreme.com 1 0.12%
59 eircom.net 1 0.12%
60 embarqservices.net 1 0.12%
61 esinet.net 1 0.12%
62 gblx.net 1 0.12%
63 harvard.edu 1 0.12%
64 hqglobal.net 1 0.12%
65 iprimus.net.au 1 0.12%
66 lightning.net.uk 1 0.12%
67 lyse.net 1 0.12%
68 m-online.net 1 0.12%
69 myvzw.com 1 0.12%
70 nau.edu 1 0.12%
71 networktel.net 1 0.12%
72 newline.net.ua 1 0.12%
73 ragingwire.net 1 0.12%
74 sohonet.co.uk 1 0.12%
75 transedge.com 1 0.12%
76 tudor.lu 1 0.12%
77 tvstages.com 1 0.12%
78 twtelecom.net 1 0.12%
79 ussignalcom.net 1 0.12%
80 vii.com 1 0.12%
81 wanadoo.nl 1 0.12%
82 yahoo.com 1 0.12%
Basis: 837 results from 1662 unique visits of which 825 unknown/could not be evaluated.

ABOUT POSTS AND COMMENTS

We strive for accuracy in our posts. We disclaim responsibility for comments made by others. We do not fact check them, we do not screen them for content. Sometimes we comment on them ourselves if they catch our eye, and our rudimentary filters can catch most obscenities and most spam, which we try to filter out. But we are not professional publishers or editors, and have neither the capability nor the time to deal with the vast numbers of comments that are posted each day. Most of them go through reasonably automatically.

GENERAL POLICY AND COPPA

We may change these policies from time to time. We also reserve the right to take steps to prevent misuse of the system, and we want you to understand that our definition of misuse may not be the same as yours. Our defnition controls. That means that if we believe you are misusing the system, we may take steps we deem appropriate to prevent the misuse. That may include publishing that information we have which suggests that you’re engaged in misuse, including your IP address and any e-mail address or other information we may have about you.

This site is not intended for those under 13 years old. If you’re under 13, go away.