SMTnet Cookies and You

You may have noticed that we have started using cookies on the site, and I wanted to explain the importance of cookies.

Cookies are used at SMTnet to facilitate future enhancements of the site like personalizing your experience while browsing our site. If you choose not to use cookies you'll still be able to easily browse SMTnet, but you'll be required to login, in order to submit to the features of SMTnet, and to have personalization.

Cookies have been long misunderstood. Since the cookie is stored on your hard drive, users have developed the false impression that cookies may allow unauthorized information to be transmitted from your computer. This is false, the use of cookies doesn't allow anyone to gain personal information about you, does not allow other sites to see your cookies nor do the use of cookies. Cookies are encrypted so that only the site issuing the cookie can see it. The information is only used to customize your browsing experience, and to make it easier for us to give you a better site in the way you want it.

We are storing only the minimum amount of information needed onto your computer, which is approximately about 30 bytes.

The information associated with the cookies or the registration information will remain private unless you agree to release it. We do track users with cookies and, as you may have noticed, with information appended to the URL, but we are only interested in faceless demographic information and statistics.

Soon, we will be putting up a seperate section of the site that will announce our plans in detail, so that we can get feedback from you, and to show you how much control you have in what information you receive and how much you give out.

Thanks, Cliff

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Cliff, I thought you always had a cookie in my jar? I noticed that when you changed the format of the forum it was as thoe I had never been here before! First I got really mad because I thought I threw out my favorite cookie! Knowing I wouldn't do such a thing I then accused every one else of deleting it! I searched the trash can, I looked every where! Throw away the stupid Disney cookies , but don't even touch the smtnet! Anyway I realized that your changing over must have had somthing to do with it? Please inform me if I am correct. I use the cookie to keep track of the threads that I have looked at. That way when I open the forum at a glance I can see what I have not read without having to look at each one closely. So now you tell me you have new and improved choco chip! way cool! This should make my browsing even better. Mucho big time thanks.....Jeff Sanchez

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Jeff, When we changed the forum over, all the messages changed names, and appeared all unread initially. This will be the last time for a while that we drastically change the forum.

Also, in the last few moments of creating the new forum, we decided to include two extra sorting methods, by message and author. Unfortunately, the messages do not appear to have been "read" in those other listings, when they have been. I have plans in the works to make the message links be more consistent across all sorting methods and the forum search also.

Thanks for your input, Cliff

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