About Cookies and Privacy
Cookies
A cookie is simply a line of text that is stored in a special file on your computer by a Web site. This is the way various sites keep track of information about you. For example, a CD club that lets you shop on-line might have a "shopping cart" feature that keeps track of the CDs you've selected - this is done by writing that information onto your computer as a cookie. These types of cookies, which are the same kind we use at Rainy Side Gardeners, are written to your computer in a manner such that they cannot be accessed by another Web site.
Some marketing people, though, figured out how to make another type of cookie, called a "tracking cookie". Tracking cookies are able to gather information about what other Web sites you have visited, and store it; then the marketers can retrieve it. Fortunately you can disable tracking cookies if you have a recent browser. If you use Netscape 7, go to "Edit/Preferences" and click on "Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server" (in the Advanced section).
There is a broad misconception that disabling cookies will stop Web sites from gathering information about you. Cookies are stored on your computer, not the Web server. Web sites can still run server programs that save information about you -- they do not need cookies at all. But remember that with both cookies and with server applications, the only specific personal information they can get is information you provide. There is no way they can get your e-mail address, for example, unless you give it to them.
Your Privacy and Rainy Side Gardeners
What steps does Rainy Side Gardeners take to protect your privacy and keep your trust?
We do not save any information you enter on our forum registration -- it sits in the cookie file on your computer, and that's it. If for some reason in the future we think we have a reason to save this information ourselves, we will tell you in advance so that you can opt out if you wish.
The forum is protected in two ways from indexing by the search engines. First, it is included in our robots.txt file, so any well-behaved Web robots will not attempt to access it. Second, the forum pages are all dynamically generated. Web robots tend to stick to static HTML pages for a number of technical reasons. All this means that any posts you make will not be recorded by the search engines, so your name and e-mail address will not be indexed.
Finally, under no circumstances will Rainy Side Gardeners sell or give away the names and/or e-mail or mail addresses of anyone. You have our word that we will not distribute it.
Questions, comments or suggestions? Would you like to communicate with other Pacific Northwest gardeners? Please join us on our forum.