Privacy Policy
Thank you for reviewing our Privacy Policy. We recognize that visitors to our site may be concerned about the information they provide to us and how we treat that information. This policy addresses those concerns and may be updated periodically.
This website is owned and operated by the Center for Community Alternatives. You may contact us at the following postal address:
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Center for Community Alternatives
PO Box 931
Mebane, NC 27302
Summary
If you only read the Center for Community Alternatives website, no more information is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites in general.
If you contribute to the the Center for Community Alternatives website, you are publishing every word you post publicly. If you write something, assume that it will be retained forever. This includes forum comments, blogs, stories, polls and events. Some limited exceptions are described below.
Identification of an author
In order to contribute to the the Center for Community Alternatives website, you must have created an account and logged in under that account.
If you are logged in, you will be identified by your user name. This may be your real name if you so choose, or you may choose to publish under a pseudonym, whatever user name you selected when you created your account.
If you have not logged in, your visit will be identified by your network IP address. This is a series of four numbers which identifies the Internet address from which you are contacting the web site. Depending on your connection, this number may be traceable only to a large Internet service provider, or specifically to your school, place of business, or home. It may be possible that the origin of this IP address could be used in conjunction with any interests you express implicitly or explicitly by editing articles to identify you even by private individuals.
It may be either difficult or easy for a motivated individual to connect your network IP address with your real-life identity. Therefore if you are very concerned about privacy, you may wish to log in and publish under a pseudonym.
When using a pseudonym, your IP address will not be available to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of the the Center for Community Alternatives website by you or by another user with the same IP address. In all cases, your IP address will be stored on the ccalternatices.org website servers and can be seen by the website's server administrators. Your IP address, and its connection to any usernames that share it may be released under certain circumstances (see below).
Remember to log out or disconnect yourself after each session using a pseudonym on a shared computer, to avoid allowing others to use your identity.
Cookies
The ccalternatices.org website will set a temporary session cookie (PHPSESSID) whenever you visit the site. If you do not intend to ever log in, you may deny this cookie, but you cannot log in without it. It will be deleted when you close your browser session.
Passwords
Many aspects of the the Center for Community Alternatives's community interactions depend on the reputation and respect that is built up through a history of valued contributions. User passwords are the only guarantee of the integrity of a user's edit history. All users are encouraged to select strong passwords and to never share them. No one shall knowingly expose the password of another user to public release either directly or indirectly.
Private logging
Every time you visit a web page, you send a lot of information to the web server. Most web servers routinely maintain access logs with a portion of this information, which can be used to get an overall picture of what pages are popular, what other sites link to this one, and what web browsers people are using. It is not the intention of the the Center for Community Alternatives to use this information to keep track of legitimate users.
These logs are used to produce site statistics pages; the raw log data is not made public, and is normally discarded after about two weeks.
Here's a sample of what's logged for one page view:
71.0.20.139 - - [24/Apr/2007:05:58:31 -0400] "GET /node/19 HTTP/1.1" 200 3374 "http://www.ccalternatices.org/node/20" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
Log data may be examined by developers in the course of solving technical problems and in tracking down badly-behaved web spiders that overwhelm the site. IP addresses of users, derived either from those logs or from records in the database are frequently used to correlate usernames and network addresses of edits in investigating abuse of ccalternatices.org, including the suspected use of malicious "sockpuppets" (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruption of ccalternatices.org.
Policy on release of data derived from page logs
It is the policy of the the Center for Community Alternatives that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database, may be released by the system administrators in the following situations:
- In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement
- With permission of the affected user
- Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues.
- Where the user has been vandalising content or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers
- Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the the Center for Community Alternatives, its users or the public.
the Center for Community Alternatives policy does not permit public distribution of such information under any circumstances, except as described above.
Sharing information with third parties
Except where otherwise specified, all text added to ccalternatices.org is available for reuse under the terms of the GFDL.
the Center for Community Alternatives will not sell or share private information, such as email addresses, with third parties, unless you agree to release this information, or it is required by law to release the information.
Security of information
The the Center for Community Alternatives makes no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you provide. This information may be available to anyone with access to the servers.
E-mail and mailing lists
When you create an account on ccalternatices.org you provide your e-mail address and in your preferences you may elect to enable other logged-in users to send email to you through ccalternatices.org. Your address will not be revealed to them unless you respond, or possibly if the email bounces. The email address may be used by the the Center for Community Alternatives to communicate with users on a broader scale.
If you change your email address and forget to update your account information on ccalternatices.org to reflect your changed email address, you will not be able to reset your password by yourself. In this event however you may contact one of the ccalternatices.org server administrators to do it for you. You can also remove your email address from your preferences at any time to prevent it being used.
Mailing lists
If you subscribe to one of the ccalternatices.org's mailing lists, your address will be exposed to any other subscriber. The list archives of most of ccalternatices.org's mailing lists are public, and your address may find itself quoted in messages.