Privacy Policy
Privacy
To help you make decisions about the information you provide anywhere on this site, this notice has been provided to outline our practices. You should know that we respect your privacy, and that I will never sell your information to anyone. Also, we hate spam as much as you do, so you will only ever get email from us that you have asked for and we have personally approved for distribution to the list.
We use secure hosting accounts and other security measures to protect our database and any information provided.
Any e-mail you receive from this site will contain the option to unsubscribe at the end of the e-mail. You can unsubscribe at any time.
If and when we offer products on this site, when you order a product, the information you provide will only be provided to outside parties if it is necessary to complete and deliver the order. Your information will never be shared or disclosed to other parties for any other reason.
Non-identifying information may be used to improve the site or shared with advertisers. For instance, information that is collected regarding traffic to the site or specific pages may be shared, but this will never include any identifying information.
Tracking
We don’t directly track your presence on this website. Your IP address is logged and we look at the server logs on occasion, but this is in an aggregate fashion for the purpose of determining why people come to visit us. What we are most interested in specifically are two things: The websites that link to us and send traffic here, and what keywords people use to find us via search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Cookies
We don’t directly set cookies, but we do run a number of scripts from providers such as Google. Some of these set web browser cookies. Google in particular quietly collects a tremendous amount of data on your browsing habits, and we participate in that data collection.
“Cookies” are data sent to your web browser from a web server (such as Google) that can uniquely identify your computer and store information about user preferences. Most web browsers will accept cookies by default, but they can be set to reject cookies, either from all websites or from specific sites. You can also manually delete cookies from your web browser. These options are generally set through a “Privacy” setting in your browser setup.
- Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your site.
- Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet.
- Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.
What are cookies?
A “cookie” is a small text file containing a string of alphanumeric characters. There are two types of cookies: a persistent cookie and a session cookie. A persistent cookie gets entered by your Web browser into the cookie folder on your computer’s hard drive. A persistent cookie remains in that cookie folder, which is maintained and governed by your Web browser, after you close your browser program. A session cookie is temporary and disappears after you close your browser. DoubleClick’s ad-serving and paid search listing (“DART Search”) products utilize the same cookie: the DART cookie. The DART cookie is a persistent cookie and consists of the name of the domain that set the cookie (“ad.doubleclick.net”), the lifetime of the cookie, and a “value.” DoubleClick’s DART technology generates a unique series of characters for the “value” portion of the cookie.
What is the DoubleClick cookie doing on my computer?
If you have a DoubleClick cookie in your Cookies folder, it is most likely a DART cookie. The DoubleClick DART cookie helps marketers learn how well their Internet advertising campaigns or paid search listings perform. Many marketers and Internet websites use DoubleClick’s DART technology to deliver and serve their advertisements or manage their paid search listings. DoubleClick’s DART products set or recognize a unique, persistent cookie when an ad is displayed or a paid listing is selected. The information that the DART cookie helps to give marketers includes the number of unique users their advertisements were displayed to, how many users clicked on their Internet ads or paid listings, and which ads or paid listings they clicked on.
Why does your cookie keep coming back after I delete it?
When you visit any website or search engine on which DoubleClick’s DART technology is used, our servers will check to see if you already have a DART cookie. If the servers do not receive a DART cookie, the servers will try to set a cookie in response to your browser’s “request” to view that Web page. If you do not want a DART cookie with a unique value, you can obtain a DoubleClick DART “opt out” cookie. Alternatively, you can adjust your Internet browser’s settings for handling cookies. This is explained in the next question.
How can I adjust my cookie settings to accept or decline cookies?
To eliminate cookies you may have currently accepted, and to deny or limit cookies in the future, please follow one of these procedures:
IMPORTANT: IF YOU DELETE YOUR OPT-OUT COOKIE, YOU WILL NEED TO OPT-OUT AGAIN. IF YOUR BROWSER BLOCKS ALL OR THIRD-PARTY COOKIES, YOU WILL BLOCK THE SETTING OF OPT-OUT COOKIES.
- If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0, go to the Tools menu, then to Internet Options, then to the Privacy tab. This version of Internet Explorer is the first to use P3P to distinguish between types of cookies. P3P uses standardized privacy statements made by the cookie issuer to manage your acceptance of cookies. Under the “Privacy” tab, click on the “Advanced” button. Select “Override automatic cookie handling” and choose whether you want to accept, block or be prompted for “First-party” and “Third-party Cookies.” If you want to block all cookies coming from DoubleClick’s doubleclick.net domain, go to the “Web Sites” section under the “Privacy” tab and click the “Edit” button. In the “Address of Web site” field, enter “doubleclick.net,” select “Block,” click OK (menu will disappear); click OK again and you will be back to the browser.
- If you are using Netscape 6.0+, go to “Edit” in the menu bar, click on “Preferences,” click on “Advanced,” and select the “Cookies” field. Now check either the box that says, “Warn me before accepting a cookie” or “Disable cookies.” Click on “OK.” Now go to your “Start” button, click on “Find,” click on “Files and Folders,” type “cookies.txt” into the search box that appears, and click “Find Now.” When the search results appear, drag all files listed, into the “Recycle Bin.” Now shut down and restart your Netscape. Depending on your earlier choice you will either be prompted by new cookie sets or no cookies will be set or received.
- If you are using Mozilla or Safari, please go to their websites to find out how to disable cookies in those programs.
What are Web beacons?
Web beacons are small strings of HTML code that are placed in a Web page. They are sometimes called “clear GIFs” (Graphics Interchange Format) or “pixel tags.” Web beacons are most often used in conjunction with cookies. DoubleClick uses Web beacons in connection with its products and services, including ad serving and paid search listings (“DART Search”). Because a Web beacon is only 1 pixel high by 1 pixel wide, it appears invisible on your computer screen. If Web beacons were made larger (e.g., 100 pixels high by 100 pixels wide), it would take much longer for your Web page to load and would clutter up the page that you have requested.
In 2002, working with a broad spectrum of companies, including other technology companies, seal providers and websites, DoubleClick helped draft “Best Practice” guidelines for disclosing the use of Web beacons. Please click here to see these guidelines – and a list of the companies that participated in developing them.
What is “personally identifiable information” (“PII”)?
“Personally identifiable information” is any information that can identify or locate a particular person, including but not limited to name, address, telephone number, email address, social security number, bank account number or credit card number.
What is “non personally identifiable information” (“non-PII”)?
“Non-personally identifiable information” is information that cannot identify a particular person. This type of information includes a user’s Internet Service Provider, a computer’s operating system and browser type, and a unique DoubleClick DART cookie ID.
DoubleClick’s ad-serving and search products utilize non-PII. Some of our clients may associate PII that you have given them (for example, a customer number, if you have registered at or purchased from their websites), with their advertising campaigns. Although this customer number may be passed from the client to DoubleClick’s ad servers during the ad delivery process, DoubleClick cannot recognize this information as PII and cannot link it to any person.
What is “sensitive information?”
To DoubleClick, “sensitive information” categorically includes but is not limited to data related to an individual’s health or medical condition, sexual behavior or orientation, or detailed personal finances, information that appears to relate to children under the age of 13 at the time of data collection; and PII otherwise protected under federal or state law (for example, cable subscriber information or video rental records). DoubleClick does not use any “sensitive information” to target Internet advertisements.
What is ad serving?
In order to support their content without charging visitors, websites sell advertising space on their Web pages. Companies like DoubleClick provide technology for the websites and advertisers to use to display ads on the websites. DoubleClick’s ad servers work at the direction – and on behalf – of our clients.
When you visit a website, your computer’s Internet browser transmits a “request” to that website’s server, “asking” that server to send you the Web page that you are seeking. Most Web pages contain components that are pulled from different sources. For example, a Web page at a news site may get its weather section from one provider, its sports results from a different source, and advertisements from other servers.
If the website is using DoubleClick’s technology to display ads on its site, the Web page will contain coding that directs your browser to fill the ad space on the Web page with content from one of DoubleClick’s ad servers. DoubleClick’s clients select the format, content, and location of the ads, as well as the criteria for controlling which ads to show and when to show them. DoubleClick’s ad-serving technology uses a cookie to help clients determine what ads to display. When a “call” is received by DoubleClick’s ad servers, the server checks to see if the “calling” browser has sent a cookie with the request for advertising. If the server doesn’t “see” either a unique DoubleClick cookie or an opt-out cookie, after “testing” to see whether the browser will accept cookies, the server sets a unique DoubleClick ad cookie. If the browser already has a unique DoubleClick ad cookie, the server “recognizes” the cookie and uses the unique ID for targeting and reporting purposes as specified by the DoubleClick client. If the browser has an opt-out DoubleClick cookie, the server uses only the non-cookie related information that is automatically transmitted in the Internet environment (e.g., browser type, Internet service provider, and information about the general content of the site or page displayed on your browser) to determine which ad to show. Sometimes Web beacons are used in conjunction with the DART cookie when clients want more versatile targeting or reporting capabilities.
How does an ad-serving client use DoubleClick’s technology to target or select which ad to deliver?
Our clients store their ads on DoubleClick’s ad servers. When you visit a Web page on which a client is using DoubleClick technology to deliver ads, coding that the website publisher placed in the Web page tells your computer’s browser to send a request for an ad to the DoubleClick ad server. When the DoubleClick ad server receives a request, it will select an ad based on the criteria that the client has chosen together with any information logged against the unique cookie id.
For example, a client’s website may attract an audience of mainly men, aged between 18 and 45, who are interested in sports, fashion and electronic gadgets. The client will therefore approach sports, fashion and electronic gadget retailers to see if they would like to advertise on the site. Those retailers will provide the client with ads, which the client will store on the DoubleClick ad servers. The client will assign those ads specific codes, such as sports = 1, fashion = 2, and electronic gadgets = 3. On the pages where the website publisher wants to show all three categories of ads, the website will install an ad tag that contains all three codes. On pages of the website that the client thinks attracts only men interested in sports, an ad tag that contains only the code for sports, code 1, may be installed.
DoubleClick does not tell clients which criteria to select or which advertisements to target against those criteria. Clients choose the categories they wish to attach to the advertising that they have contracted to show, what code(s) they wish to attach to those categories, and which code(s) they wish to include in each of their ad request tags. In their contracts with DoubleClick, DoubleClick’s ad-serving clients promise not to use information that DoubleClick could recognize as either “sensitive” or “personally identifiable” to target ads.






