This site takes care to safeguard the privacy of its users. It is our policy to never release information about the access patterns of specific users to any third party without the prior written permission of the user.

As a general rule, we do not retain any information about the access patterns of specific users. Usage statistics and other log files are maintained only in aggregate format and do not contain information that could identify the user.

The site's server access logs are retained for one week only. At the end of the week they are analyzed to gather usage statistics -- such as the total number of visitors to the page and a list of the most popular pages -- and then deleted to reclaim the disk space. (A week's worth of log files consumes about 10 megabytes of space.)

We do retain most of the electronic mail we receive, including any email messages submitted through the Ask the Advisor service. The information contained in those messages is never used in any way that might identify individual users of the site. The frequency with which specific questions are submitted to the Ask the Advisor service helps guide decisions on future expansions to this site.

Update effective December 31, 2003.