Linux Online respects your privacy. In order to show you that we take every measure to insure the privacy our visitors, we would like to explain what we do to make sure that any information gathered about our visitors, either directly or indirectly, is handled properly.

When you visit our website

When you visit Linux Online, your computer is connected to ours for the duration of your visit. This creates an entry in our logs containing information about your Internet Service Provider or other means that you have used to access our website and its pages as well as information about your browser and the time and date of access. We may use this information to try to improve the content of our website. We may also use this information to solve problems related to connections or viewing of our pages. But the entries contained in our access logs can never give us information about you as an individual.

E-mail Addresses

An Internet Service Provider or other organization that you use to connect to the Internet normally provides you with an e-mail address. Besides using your address for written communication, it also serves as a means to identify you. Linux Online receives e-mail addresses from its users voluntarily. You may provide your e-mail address in order to participate in our volunteer program, to make a suggestion or to ask a question. Linux Online keeps these e-mail addresses on file at our company. We do not make these e-mail addresses available to third parties.

You may also provide your e-mail address to our mailing list in order to receive our Linux Online newsletter and other mailings of interest to the Linux community. Please refer to the next section, Mailing Lists for information about the use of your e-mail address for this purpose.

Mailing Lists

Linux Online maintains an opt-in mailing list and occasionally we must provide bonded mailing houses with your e-mail address to carry out this service. The fact that they are bonded means that they do not provide your address to third parties. If you have signed up for an opt-in mailing list and you later wish to opt-out, you may do this by following the instructions on the newsletter or other mailing that you receive. This usually entails sending an e-mail to remove**AT**linux.org with your unique ID number in the body of the message.

When you sign up for our mailing lists, you will be sent our weekly Linux Online newsletter and other announcements of interest to Linux users and enthusiasts about site updates and new Linux products and services. Please be aware that Linux Online includes paid advertisements in them in order to defray the costs of providing you with the information in them.

Public Forums / Question and Answer Areas

Public forums are just as the name implies: public, as are question and answer services. The information given in these areas becomes known by individuals outside of our organization. You should use your judgment as to whether or not you want your e-mail address or any other information known by the public when posting information to a public forum or requesting or giving or requesting support in a question and answer area.

Volunteer Work

We are proud of the fact that our visitors go to great lengths to help us provide new and important content about Linux. If you choose to do volunteer work for us, you can be assured that any personal information we ask you to provide is only used to help us coordinate your much appreciated work and will remain strictly confidential.

Advertising

Advertising on any communication medium serves to get information and entertainment to the end user without incurring any costs upon him or her. Linux Online accepts and actively solicits advertisers in order to defray the costs of providing our visitors with information about the Linux operating system. This website displays banners and other advertising formats provided to us by other companies. Our visitors should know that when they click on one of these banners, they are making a decision to leave our website and view another. Linux Online makes every effort to insure that our advertisers activities meet with accepted standards of ethics and decency. However, Linux Online accepts no responsibility for the privacy policy of our advertisers, nor do we have any control over the information gathered by those advertisers on their websites.

Advertising may also take the form of inclusion on our Linux Online newsletter and other mailings of interest. As we stated before, Linux Online does not share e-mail addresses or any other information about the recipients of our mailing list.

Contests, Giveaways and Surveys

From time to time, Linux Online will engage in contests, surveys and giveaways aimed at improving the content of our website and awarding our valued visitors' loyalty to us. In order to participate in these activities, visitors may be requested to provide personal information, such as, but not limited to, name, address, postal information, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, age, educational level and recent purchases. Our visitors must provide this information voluntarily and if they feel that they do not want to reveal any of this data, they are requested not to do so. If a visitor chooses to provide us with this information, we want to make clear that it will be used by Linux Online only to create general demographic profiles to provide to our current and potential advertisers. This will assist them in making a decision to continue or start an advertising campaign. We will in no way use or divulge specific data about individual visitors.

Security For Your Purchases

Linux Online sells a ceramic mug with our company's logo on it to help defray the costs of telephone services. When you choose to purchase this item, you may do so by way of either a standard order form or a secure order form. Our customers should realize that the secure order form is the recommended means of making online purchases. This form uses the best industry standard encryption techniques known at this time. The data on this form will only be be handled by authorized personnel trained in the use of sensitive information. Our visitors should be aware that by choosing a method other than the secure form, sensitive data such as credit card numbers may be intercepted by third parties.

Cookies

A 'cookie' is small file which is sent to a user along with a web page so that websites may receive information about viewers' preferences. A company such as ours cannot obtain personal information about specific visitors by using 'cookies'. Furthermore, browser settings can be changed so that you never receive them or you only receive 'cookies' from those sites that you wish. This may, however, result in some content loss. If you feel that receiving such files is not in your best interest, we advise you to configure your browser so that you do not receive them. We will adhere to the same standards of privacy as regards to 'cookies' as with any other means of gathering information.

Children

Linux Online is a website designed to be viewed by anyone of any age who has an interest in the Linux operating system. We do not have any content area which we feel should not be viewed by children. We adhere to the strictest standards of decency and ethics demanded by our profession. Parents should know that when their children use the Internet without parental supervision they could divulge data about themselves unwillingly. Linux Online will not provide a good, service or information directly to a minor as far as it is in our power to determine a person's age.

This Privacy Policy

We are grateful to you, the Linux Online visitor for making this website the premier source of Linux information on the Internet. We are sure that you know that by visiting our site, you are acknowledging that you accept this privacy policy and recognize the measures we take to insure your privacy. The Internet is an industry that grows and changes everyday. At Linux Online we may make changes to this policy as we see fit to insure that we adapt to this growing industry. We will make every attempt to post those changes in a timely fashion. If you have any questions regarding this privacy policy, we invite you to contact our webmaster at webmaster**AT**linux.org