Your privacy is important to us. 1in6 wants all visitors to 1in6.org to feel as comfortable as possible using the site and its services.

Please read the Privacy Statement below, so that you will understand both our commitment to you and your privacy, and how you can participate in that commitment. We describe the policy first in language that anyone can understand, then in greater detail and more technical terms.

Privacy Statement

Except as set forth in this section, 1in6 will never disclose to a third party any information it gathers from you that could be used to identify or contact you (“Personal Information”). Any Personal Information provided to this website will be treated in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Statement, unless you are otherwise notified. 1in6 will never intentionally disclose any Personal Information about you as an individual and we will never give your name, address, telephone number, or e-mail address to any third party without your permission, except as we discuss in this policy. Even so, we strongly discourage users from posting Personal Information on this website.

Personal Information you provide in order to borrow materials from this website’s Books & Films – Borrow or Buy section will be used only in connection with the operation of that section of the site and related site services such as the checking in/out and delivery of materials.

1in6 is committed to protecting your privacy. Accordingly, we will not release Personal Information except in the following circumstances: (i) where we believe we are required to release Personal Information to third parties to comply with a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena or court order, and (ii) in special cases, such as to prevent physical harm to you or to others.

If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Statement, please exit the site immediately.

Details and Technical Information

Information Collection

We do not request or collect any personally identifiable information from users as they browse our site. The only way such information comes into our possession is if you, the user, provide it to us, both voluntarily and knowingly.

Users may decide to borrow books from 1in6.org’s Books & Films – Borrow or Buy section. In that case, 1in6 necessarily requests a physical address or post office box to which the book can be sent. However, 1in6 does not require, or request, a real name or any other personally identifying information from those who wish to borrow books from 1in6.

Any Personal Information that is provided to us, despite our not having requested it (for example, an email address), is maintained in a secure environment, held in the strictest confidence, and never shared with a third party except as we discuss in this policy.

We do collect “aggregate information,” that is, general information on 1in6.org users such as overall traffic patterns, numbers of visits to certain pages, and the pages (of other websites) on which users clicked a link to access a 1in6.org webpage.

1in6 is able to collect such aggregate information, in part, by recording “IP addresses.” When your computer logs onto the internet, the network (of your cable or DSL provider, phone company, employer or school) that provides you with access to the internet assigns your computer an “internet protocol” number or “IP address.” The IP addresses are analyzed only in aggregate, with no connection ever made between you and your computer’s IP address.

An IP address can potentially be connected to particular computer used to access the site. But this would require a court order to get that information from the network that “assigned” your IP address when it gave you access to the internet. Also, under certain circumstances, which 1in6 will use its best efforts to not allow to occur, it is possible for an IP address to be connected to other personally identifiable information (e.g., your name, a credit card number, and your physical address). For example, some websites – but not 1in6.org – contain javascript code that allows not only the collection of IP addresses (e.g., the code necessary for the ‘Google Analytics’ service provided by Google, Incorporated), but its transmission to computers of a third party (e.g., Google), which could potentially match an IP address to credit card and other personal information (e.g., collected by a Google ‘partner’ company when someone makes a web-based purchase; Google’s current privacy policy rules this out, but it’s in the realm of the possible).

Your IP address is collected by 1in6 in only one way: it is written into ‘log files” that record all “requests” (for pages, etc.) sent by your browser to the server hosting the website. Once every three months 1in6 permanently and irrevocably deletes all IP addresses from its web log files and any backup copies of those files. This policy allows us to gather information essential to maintaining a functional website, for example, learning about certain kinds of technical problems and gathering basic statistics on how many visits the site and individual pages receive. It has the cost of limiting our ability to accurately track repeat visits from the single users or IP addresses, but that’s a cost we’re happy to accept in order to protect your privacy.

Information Use

1in6 performs statistical analyses of user behavior and characteristics. We do this in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the website. By “user behavior” we mean how users move from one page to another as they navigate 1in6.org. For example, if the first 1in6.org page that a user accesses is the home page, whether the user goes on to access additional pages and, if so, which ones, is user behavior that 1in6 analyzes – though only in the aggregate, never at the level of individual users.

By “user characteristics” we mean information that is not personally identifying, but that describes how users arrive at and navigate the website. (See “Information Collection, above.)

Cookies

“Cookies” are small text files that a website can place on the hard drive of users’ computers, which can be used to remember other pages you have visited during a particular “browsing session” and/or across several browsing sessions. Generally, cookies work by assigning a unique number to the user that has no meaning outside of the website that he or she is visiting. You can easily turn off cookies. Most browsers have a feature that allows the user to refuse cookies or to be issued a warning when cookies are being sent.

1in6 only uses “session cookies,” which are necessary for proper functioning of several components of the software behind the site (e.g., the “tabbed” pages of the Answers section). These cookies are only deposited on your computer during a “session of browsing” the website, and once the session ends the unique cookie number is deleted by the 1in6 software so that any cookie that you do not delete from your computer is never again accessed by 1in6.

Privacy Policies of Sites with Links from 1in6.org

Some links on webpages of 1in6.org will take you to websites of other organizations or businesses (e.g., links to books sold on Amazon.com). Those websites and organizations have their own privacy policies, which may include long-term storage of your IP address and the “referring website” (i.e., 1in6.org), depositing cookies on your computer that record your browsing behavior across multiple sessions, etc.

Of course, this is true of any website you visit that has links to still other websites. If you have concerns about this issue, please read the privacy policies of the relevant organizations (which you can do before following any particular link).