Hello All!

I'll start by saying that my highest concern is always the security, anonymity, and personal privacy of you, the user, the survey participant. The purpose of this text is to reassure you of my concern, and describe some of the software, techniques, and 'attitude' I utilise to guarantee your privacy.

There are various stories around the WWW that 'the server can grab your name and email address from the browser'. In the early days of the WWW this did in fact happen; browsers were designed to supply it if the server asked for it. There was such an incredible major screaming brouhaha over that 'feature' that modern browsers don't allow that any more. Further, thesurvey.com does not utilise any software that can access this information.

There are also many stories about all the information that 'cookies' can find out about you. This is true to a very slight degree, however the only information the server can access is what it put there in the first place, and a server cannot access cookies placed by other servers. I guarantee that thesurvey.com does not employ any cookie technology.

Many surveys here ask questions dealing with health, finance, family issues, and controversial opinions, that you may not want to be made public. Most surveys offer these options:

• Give my name and email address to this survey's sponsors.

  If you do not select 'Yes' for this option, your name and email address cannot be sent to the survey sponsor.

• Post my opinion in this poll's summary screen.

  If you do not select 'Yes' for this option, your submission will be sent to the survey sponsor but cannot be posted to the summary page.

• Post my name and email address in this poll's summary screen.

  If you do not select 'Yes' for this option, and you did select 'Yes' to the 'post my opinion' question, your submission will be posted to the summary page but your name and email address cannot be posted to the summary page.

The reason I emphasize 'cannot' is that survey processing is fully automated. Whatever you specify in the above three points is exactly what the software does, there is no manual intervention. 'But software has bugs!' Well, that's often true, however the best reassurances I can offer are:

• I do have 15 years software experience, and know how to design, code, and test it.
• The software has been extensively tested under every conceivable mode for several months, and has been in daily use since Jan. 1997.
• The software is in fact, at it's heart, very simple: if a response to one of the above questions is 'Yes', then do 'this', otherwise do nothing, and the default responses are all 'No, do nothing'.

Normally, I also receive a copy of survey submissions as well as the survey sponsor. The primary purposes are to make sure all the software runs smoothly, and to keep count of survey usage. A secondary purpose is to keep a 'backup' of responses in case something unfortunate happens to the sponsor's email service or computer system. At my end, responses are simply automatically filed away. At the end of a survey's run I delete all responses to that survey.

I personally guarantee that information, names, and email addresses will never be sold or given away by thesurvey.com without your express permission.

Thank you for your time and attention.
Have a :) day!
jb

Thank you for your time and attention.
Comments, feedback and suggestions to:

URL: http://www.thesurvey.com/utils/perspriv.html