Your privacy is critically important to us. At The Software Cottage we have a few fundamental principles:
- We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it. (We can’t stand services that ask you for things like your gender or income level for no apparent reason.)
- We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.
- We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of one of our services.
- In our blogging products, we aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what’s visible to the public, seen by search engines, kept private, and permanently deleted.
Below is our privacy policy which incorporates these goals:
It is The Software Cottage’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.
Website Visitors
Like most website operators, The Software Cottage collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. The Software Cottage’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how The Software Cottage’s visitors use its website. From time to time, The Software Cottage may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.
The Software Cottage also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on The Software Cottage blogs. The Software Cottage only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog commenter IP addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.
Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information
Certain visitors to The Software Cottage’s websites choose to interact with The Software Cottage in ways that require The Software Cottage to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that The Software Cottage gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. Those who engage in transactions with The Software Cottage are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, The Software Cottage collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with The Software Cottage. The Software Cottage does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.
Aggregated Statistics
The Software Cottage may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. The Software Cottage may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, The Software Cottage does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.
Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information
The Software Cottage discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on The Software Cottage’s behalf or to provide services available at The Software Cottage’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using The Software Cottage’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. The Software Cottage will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, The Software Cottage discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only when required to do so by law, or when The Software Cottage believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of The Software Cottage, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an The Software Cottage website and have supplied your email address, The Software Cottage may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with The Software Cottage and our products. We primarily use our various product blogs to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. The Software Cottage takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.
Cookies
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. The Software Cottage uses cookies to help The Software Cottage identify and track visitors, their usage of The Software Cottage website, and their website access preferences. The Software Cottage visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using The Software Cottage’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of The Software Cottage’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Ads
Ads appearing on any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by The Software Cottage and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, The Software Cottage may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in The Software Cottage’s sole discretion. The Software Cottage encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.