Policy announcement: Privacy

Always advisable to have a stated Privacy Policy and now it is "strongly recommended" by Her Majesty's Government thanks to the Data Protection Act coming into full force this month - so here it is.

We like our privacy and we like you to have yours.

As many of you will no doubt know, big corporates use Web sites to gather huge chunks of information which they can then hopefully pinpoint to you and then attempt to sell you all sorts of garbage at inflated prices.

They do this by inserting all sorts of things like cookies onto Web sites and then paying the Web site for the favour - well, in fact, they take out advertising and then use this financial leverage to make you take them.

Then there's promotions and quizzes and all sorts "interactive" rubbish that get you to type in information in the hope of a moment's laughter or the minuscule change of winning something that may make your life better for a couple of weeks.

Will we refuse to run any of these? Not on your Nelly. Money is money and we live in a capitalist society. However, we will make it abundantly clear to you what is happening and what is likely to be done with any information gathered. That includes giving you an opt out.

It's pretty unlikely anyway. The Rockall Times for one doesn't really have any interest in knowing exactly who you are - and if at some point we do, we'll put up a voluntary questionnaire, probably with some alcohol-based incentive. We have no cookies and we don't plan to have any.

If you visit the site, your IP address will be recorded on our server - there's nothing we can do about that - but then we don't intend to do anything with it, save see what's stories are doing well and which countries most of our readers come from. We do not and will not track anyone visiting the site.

We might run a headlines-by-email service at some point soon, when we will have your email address (obviously) and will probably ask you for some other info, but it'll be voluntary and we won't do anything nasty with it - like sell it - even if you do tell us.

If you send us any emails or letters, we reserve the right to publish them for our own entertainment. If you insist on not being named in the email, fair enough, we won't name you. Then again, you won't get published, so it's not really an issue.

The only problem with any of this privacy malarkey may come with DoubleClick. DoubleClick is a company that hosts ads on sites and we intend to set up an account with it because many advertisers insist that you go through the company.

DoubleClick has had a bad press in the past because it is one of the biggest (the biggest?) company of its kind. However, it is not stupid and has its own privacy policy in which it says it does not use any information gathered through its cookies for its own use.

If this worries you, it also gives you the option of opting out from the cookies altogether. Go here, if that's what you want to do.

And that about covers it. Any problems, email one of us - we're in the Contacts bit.