Anthrofiction Network

Privacy Policy

Anthrofiction Network is a labor of love. I will not sell or rent your personal information to anyone else. I will never expose your e-mail address on a public web page and it’s your choice how much personal information you make available to our members.

E-Mail

I will send you e-mail about our contests and other happenings on the site. If you register as an author you will get the most e-mail, as many as two or three pieces per month. If you register as a reader you will only get e-mail around contest judging time. You can change your registration type whenever you like.

As a reader you may set up a temporary account that expires two weeks after the end of the current contest’s judging period. This is useful if you’ve come to the site at the invitation of one of our authors. You may switch a temporary account to permanent before it expires. The system automatically deletes expired accounts from the database.

Anthrofiction Network uses a double opt-in technique to verify new members and to prevent tricksters from signing up the unwilling. It is imperative you enter your correct e-mail address.

Every member has a web page-based e-mail contact form, which is only accessible by other members. Both sender and receiver get a copy of the e-mail. The the sender’s e-mail address is exposed to the receiver so he or she can respond via e-mail. I do not store your e-mails other than in the outgoing buffer on the e-mail server, which is deleted upon successful delivery. I do log contact form activity.

Other Personal Information

I need your birthdate for COPPA compliance. I won’t display it, but I might use the month/day information for birthday greetings to members.

I do not need your legal name, a pseudonym is fine. A pseudonym also works fine under US Copyright law.

When you do anything that changes the information hosted on this site the server logs your IP address along with the change made. Logged changes include: signing up for an account, changing your profile, uploading or changing a story, scoring or commenting on a story, etc. The only reason to log this information is to better deal with: spurious accounts, spamming, hacking, cracking, or technical problems.

All other information is optional. You may reveal, or not, just about anything you choose to on your profile page.

Cookies

The Anthrofiction Network server uses a session cookie to keep track of who you are so that you may have access to our private pages. This cookie contains a personal identifier and an encrypted hash. The hash is to prevent someone else from hijacking your account. This cookie has a short lifespan and is refreshed every time you load a page. Most web browsers will immediately delete all session cookies when you exit the browser. You may also delete the cookie by clicking the “Log Out” button on this site. This site requires the session cookie for basic functionality.

For site statistics, everyone who visits (member or not) gets a persistent cookie. This cookie contains only a serial number and is used to count returning visitors. This site does not require the persistent cookie for functionality, but if you delete it or block it you will skew my returning visitors results.

Java Script

A few features will work better if you have Java Script enabled, but nothing on the site requires it for basic functionality.

However, I have a security measure that relies on Java Script. If you link to Anthrofiction Network from another site they may put this website inside a frame, and they can make the frame almost invisible. If you’re paying attention you’ll see the domain name in the address bar is wrong. When you’re inside someone else’s frame they can monitor everything you see and everything you enter in a web form including your account name and password. My Java Script strips off any foreign frames when you arrive here.

You may wish to have Java Script enabled when visiting Anthrofiction Network.