Privacy and Software Disclosure

Community of Interest

This web site is constructed to allow and facilitate communication between people who share a common interest, Astro*Carto*Graphy, and voluntarily provide information and read offerings of others.  It is a very public arrangement, and necessarily involves a loss of privacy.  It is important for the participants, however, to understand exactly the kind of privacy issues that are at stake, and to be able to make informed judgements as to the extent of their participation.

Identity and Reputation

Since the veracity of facts and opinions offered on the site depend in large measure on the identity and reputation of the author, this site asks participants to identity themselves with their real names.  The use of pseudonyms or impersonation of real individuals will not be tolerated to the extent it can be detected.  Because this is a public site and participants use their real names, topics and information which is personal or sensitive in any way should not be posted to the site. 

Email Addresses

Like physical mail addresses, email addresses are most effective for communication when they are easily available  for use.  However, the massive pattern of abuse of email on the  internet has led to a prevalent culture of protecting email addresses.  Therefor, we try to allow individuals to make their own decisions whether to reveal their email address or not.  Although providing email addresses is necessary to register with the site, these email addresses are not revealed on the site.  Member emails  are  used only:

1. For necessary communications involving the operation of the site, such as emailing a link to finish your initial registration.
2. To allow visitors of the site to send an email to you regarding information you might post on the site.  Please note that the site mails these messages on their behalf -- your email address is not revealed.  However, if you respond to the email, obviously you will be revealing your email address to that individual.
3. For important notices regarding the site.  Astro Numeric Service will not use these email addresses for product promotions.
   

"Cookies" and Javascript

Cookies (small, encrypted and private files our server stores on your computer) and Javascript (a computer language used by your browser to execute programs from our site) have come under a great deal of criticism in the past due to their potential for  abuse.  However, modern operating systems and browsers have largely eliminated these concerns.   Our site makes heavy use of both of these tools to provide a sophisticated and powerful user interface with the site.  If you choose to disable either of these tools in your browser, you will still be able to use the site, but lose many of its features.

Advertising and Promotional Links

Pages on this site may offer paid advertising and promotional links to outside commercial sites.  These will often use cookies to track referrals and facilitate payment.  For the most part this tracking is done quite anonymously.  However, if this makes you uncomfortable, you may want to disable "third party" cookies in your browser.

Inadvertent  or Wrongful Publication of Sensitive Information

Since the material published on this site is largely contributed by visitors, it is important to consider for each new post whether any personal privacy issue (including your own) is involved in the post.  Should you decide after you post some information that it is indiscreet or violates someones right to privacy, please use the site tools to retract the piece until it can be modified for re-publication.  If this happens with a discussion post, please use the "feedback" tab on the site to contact the site administration so the comment can be removed.

You may also encounter material posted by someone else which you feel violates someone's privacy.  You may contact the author directly using the author feedback button and ask them to modify their publication.  Or you may contact the site administration using the "feedback" tab.  Posting your objection publicly is not a good idea since it 1) calls attention to the information you think is inappropriate, and 2) is read by many people who have no ability to do anything about it.