Privacy Policy
Marjorie was not amused when George took this picture of her getting out of the shower!
Last Updated: February 20, 2006
We care about your privacy. We will not sell your name or email address to any third party advertisers without your permission. Please read our privacy policy below for further details.
- Children's Privacy
- Types Of Information We Collect
- Disclosure Of Information
- Opting Out
- Storage Of Information
- Atlas Quest Mail
- Changes To This Privacy Policy
AtlasQuest.com respects the privacy of visitors to our site. This Privacy Policy governs the use and collection of information from you by AtlasQuest.com ("we" or "us") through your use of this site. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any information you may provide to us through other means; for example, at a live event, via mail, or via telephone. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully so that you understand our online privacy practices. By visiting this site, you agree that your visit, and any dispute over our online privacy practices, is governed by this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service. Questions regarding privacy issues should be directed to the Green Tortuga using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page.
Children's Privacy
Children should always get permission from their parents before sending any information about themselves (such as their names, email addresses, and phone numbers) over the Internet, to us or to anyone else. We won't knowingly allow anyone under 13 to register with our site or to provide any other personally identifying information, and no part of our website is structured to attract anyone under 13. If you're under 13, please do not provide us with any personally identifying information about yourself (such as your name, your email address or your phone number).
Please note that if it comes to our attention through reliable means that a registered member is a child under 13 years of age, we will cancel that member's account.
Types Of Information We Collect
The information we gather falls into two categories: (1) information (for example, your name and address) that you voluntarily supply when you register or initiate transactions, and (2) information gathered on usage patterns and preferences as visitors navigate through our sites and use our services such as the online logbook. In some cases, an agent or affiliate of ours collects the information on our behalf. Third party providers featured on or linked to by our site, such as vendors of products and services offered through our site, may be gathering the same kinds of information.
Registration Information: To make use of certain features on our site (such as the online logbook) visitors need to register and to provide certain information as part of the registration process. The information you supply will help us to offer you more personalized features, to tailor our site to your interests and to make our features more useful to you.
The more you tell us about yourself, the more value we can offer you. Supplying such information is entirely voluntary. But if you don't supply the information we need, we may be unable to provide you with the same services we make available to other visitors to our site. And we can't send you email alerting you to a new service we're offering if you don't tell us what you're interested in and give us your email address.
Cookies: To help make our sites more responsive to the needs of our visitors, we use a standard feature of browser software, called a "cookie," to assign each visitor a unique, random number, a sort of user ID, if you will, that resides on your computer. The cookie doesn't actually identify the visitor, just the computer that a visitor uses to access our site. Unless you voluntarily identify yourself (through registration, for example), we won't know who you are, even if we assign a cookie to your computer. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply. A cookie can't read unrelated data off your hard drive.
We use cookies to help us tailor our site to your needs, to deliver a better, more personalized service. For example, we use cookies to automatically log you in if you requested your computer to do that. In addition, we may use cookies to track the pages on our site visited by our users. We can build a better site if we know which pages our users are visiting and how often. Of course, you can set your browser not to accept cookies, but if you do, you may not be able to take advantage of the personalized features enjoyed by other visitors to our site.
Other Methods of Collecting Information: Our web pages may contain electronic images (called "single-pixel GIFs" or "web beacons") that allow us and our vendors to count users who have visited particular pages or to access certain cookies. We may use these tools and other technologies to recognize which pages users visit, and which links they click on.
Browser Level Information and IP Addresses: Our web servers automatically collect limited information about your computer configuration when you visit our site, including the type of browser software you use, the operating system you're running, the resolution of your computer monitor, the website that referred you, and your IP address. Your IP address is a numerical address that is used by computers connected to the Internet to identify your computer so that data (such as the web pages you want to view) can be transmitted to you. We also use IP address information for systems administration and trouble shooting purposes. Your IP address does not tell us who you are. We use this information to deliver our web pages to you upon request, to tailor our site to the interests of our users, and to measure traffic within our site.
Clues Hosted on Other Websites: While clues may be hosted externally on Letterboxing North America (www.letterboxing.org), Geocities (www.geocities.com), personal websites, and other locations, Atlas Quest may collect and store information about the clue to verify the link stays valid and other advanced features. Atlas Quest will never crawl beyond the original link specified in a given clue.
Disclosure Of Information
Why we want to know: As with any business, it's important for us to know our customers—their needs, their likes, what they want and expect from us. We use this information to update and improve this website to better fit your needs. Unlike most businesses, however, we deliver a valuable product to our customers without asking for anything in return. It's like prime-time television, only better for you!
Advertisers: Without your permission, we will not share the personally-identifiable information you provide when registering on our site with advertisers. In the future we may, however, take the information you provide and aggregate it with data from all the other people that use this site and associated services. Then we will use that pool of information to inform advertisers about our audience without identifying you personally. For example, we'll be able to say to an advertiser: "We have 3,470 users in this ZIP code," which happens to be your location.
Statistical Information: Much of the information we collect is in the form of aggregated statistics, such as the traffic that visits various pages within our sites, and the habits and preferences of our audience. Such aggregated information does not include any information that would identify you personally. We may use such aggregated information and disclose it to third parties as we see fit.
Sites to Which We Link: Of course, our site includes links to plenty of other websites, and provides access to products and services offered by third parties, whose privacy policies we don't control. When you access another site to purchase products or services or conduct other transactions, use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site you're visiting or the provider of such products or services.
Other Disclosures: We may occasionally release information about our visitors when release is appropriate to comply with law, to enforce our Visitor Agreement, or to protect the rights, property or safety of visitors to our site, the public, or our customers.
Please also keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online—for example through e-mail or in your profile—that information can be seen, collected and used by others besides us. We cannot be responsible for any unauthorized third party use of information that you disclose online.
Opting Out
If you register with us, you will have the opportunity to review, update, or delete the information you have provided us at any time (except, of course, any information that we do not store). If you remove your registration information completely, you may not be able to continue using certain services that require registration (such as the online logbook). You agree that we may use your information to contact you for customer service, to inform you of important changes or additions to our site or the services offered over our site and to send you administrative notices or any communications relevant to your use of our site. If you do not wish to receive these notices, you will have the option to opt out.
Storage Of Information
All information gathered on our site is stored within a database operated by us or by a contractor on our behalf. Sensitive information, such as your password, is encrypted for storage. However, as effective as encryption technology is, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our database, nor can we guarantee that information you supply won't be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet.
Atlas Quest Mail
Atlas Quest mail, also called AQ Mail, is readable by all administrators and webmasters. While we do not regularly monitor Atlas Quest Mail, it is stored within a database and we reserve the right to examine your mailbox at any time for any reason. Any mail in the archive folder will be stored indefinitely as long as the mail stays in the archive folder, but all other Atlas Quest mail is regularly purged from the database at regular intervals. We respect your right to privacy and generally refrain from reading or monitoring Atlas Quest mail unless a matter of some importance is brought to our attention regarding you or your account. If we happen to learn of some unspeakable crime that you have committed or plan to commit, we will not think twice about providing the mail to the proper authorities. The safety and well-being of the public, our members, and their letterboxes comes before your privacy.
Changes To This Privacy Policy
The Web is an evolving medium. If we need to change our privacy policy at some point in the future, we'll post the changes before they take effect.