SmallBusiness.com:Privacy policy
SmallBusiness.com: The free small business resource
Summary
If you only read content on SmallBusiness.com, no more information is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites in general.
If you add or edit content on SmallBusiness.com, you are publishing every word you post publicly. If you write something, assume that it will be retained forever. This includes entries, directories, guides, articles, user pages and talk pages. Some limited exceptions are described below.
Publishing content on SmallBusiness.com
Simply visiting the web site does not expose your identity publicly (but see private logging below).
When you edit any page on SmallBusiness.com, you are publishing a document. This is a public act, and you are identified publicly with that edit as its author. In most cases, a link to your user profile is displayed on the page you create or edit. In most cases, the photo or "avatar" you have uploaded as part of your user profile is also displayed when you create or edit a page on SmallBusiness.com
Identification of an author, editor or contributor
When you publish a page on SmallBusiness.com, you must be a registered user and logged into a user account. When 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.
You user account will also be identified with the network IP address of the computer you are using when you register. This is a series of four numbers which identifies the Internet address from which you are contacting SmallBusiness.com. 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.
Your IP address will not be available to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a SmallBusiness.com page by you or by another user with the same IP address. In all cases, your IP address will be stored on the wiki servers and can be seen by SmallBusiness.com's server administrators and by users who have been granted "CheckUser" access. Your IP address, and its connection to any usernames that share it may be released under certain circumstances (see below).
If you use a company mail server from home or telecommute and use a DSL or cable Internet connection, it is likely to be very easy for your employer to identify your IP address and find all of your IP based SmallBusiness.com project contributions. Using a user name is a better way of preserving your privacy in this situation. However, 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
SmallBusiness.com 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.
More cookies may be set when you log in, to avoid typing in your user name (or optionally password) on your next visit. These last up to 30 days. You may clear these cookies after use if you are using a public machine and don't wish to expose your username to future users of the machine. (If so, clear the browser cache as well.)
When you register on SmallBusiness.com, your cookies must be enabled to complete the registration verification process.
Passwords
Many aspects of the SmallBusiness.com projects' 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 SmallBusiness.com projects to use this information to keep track of legitimate users.
These logs are used to produce the 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:
63.165.83.142 - - [21/Oct/2003:02:03:19 +0000] "GET /wiki/draft_privacy_policy HTTP/1.1" 200 18084 "http://smallbusiness.com/wiki/SmallBusiness.com_projects:Village_pump" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.5"
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 the wiki, including the suspected use of malicious "sockpuppets" (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruption of the wiki.
Policy on release of data derived from page logs
It is the policy of SmallBusiness.com that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, may be released by the system administrators or users with CheckUser access, in the following situations:
- In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement
- With permission of the affected user
- To the owner of SmallBusiness.com, his legal counsel, or his designee, when necessary for investigation of abuse complaints.
- 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 articles 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 SmallBusiness.com owner, its users or the public.
SmallBusiness.com 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 SmallBusiness.com projects is available for reuse under the terms of the GFDL, published elsewhere on SmallBusiness.com.
SmallBusiness.com 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 owner of SmallBusiness.com makes no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you provide. This information may be available to anyone with access to the servers.
Email address on your Account
You may provide your e-mail address in your Preferences page (accessible throught the "My Account" tab you'll see at the top of the page when you are logged in). You can enable other logged-in users to send email to you through SmallBusiness.com. 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 SmallBusiness.com ion to communicate with users on a wider scale.
If you do not provide an email address, you will not be able to reset your password if you forget it. However, you may contact one of the SmallBusiness.com server administrators to enter a new mail address in your preferences.
You can remove your email address from your preferences at any time to prevent it being used.
Email address and other information you display on your Profile Page
The email address you provide publicly on your Profile Page or User Page is being shared publicly. You should provide it only if you want to introduce yourself and promote information regarding yourself or your business. However, any information you share on your Profile Page is being made public and is no longer covered by other provisions of these privacy terms.
Mailing lists
Any time you share your email address with SmallBusiness.com in order to receive information from SmallBusiness.com via email. SmallBusiness.com will not sell your email address with third parties, unless you agree to release this information, or it is required by law to release the information.
User data
Data on users, such as the times at which they edited and the number of edits they have made are publicly available via "user contributions" and "user history" lists, and in aggregated forms published by other users.
Deletion of content
Removing text from SmallBusiness.com projects does not permanently delete it. In normal articles, anyone can look at a previous version and see what was there. If an article is "deleted", any user with "administrator" access on the wiki, meaning almost anyone trusted not to abuse the deletion capability, can see what was deleted. Information can be permanently deleted by those people with access to the servers, but there is no guarantee this will happen except in response to legal action.
