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Your privacy is important to VBnet and mvps.org are committed to protecting
the privacy and security of any information that may be obtained. This page outlines
the information is recorded by VBnet and how that
information is used.
The information we collect
None. At least not directly. The statistics package used by our ISP host
(mvps.org) tracks statistics on browsers/browser versions, operating systems/version, and pages viewed,
and does so solely to assist in the administrative chores of the mvps.org web
site owners. No personal information, such as name, address, phone
number, e-mail address etc. is collected or saved by VBnet.
How we use (the little) information we do obtain
The data obtained from server statistics has shown that over 85% of the visitors to VBnet use Internet Explorer. This information has been used in
deciding that Internet Explorer will be the browser this site targets when developing java scripts, cascading style sheets
and the overall page layout. If other browsers work too, great!
How
others use information
Affiliates accessed through a link on VBnet (e.g., our book supplier, barnesandnoble.com) may collect
additional information beyond that collected by
VBnet. In clicking an affiliate link from the site, the cryptic URL
passed essentially only contains the product code or page of interest, and the site ID assigned to
VBnet when joining the affiliate program. No information that VBnet has
obtained is passed to anyone you link to from our site. However, the information collected by affiliates,
and how that information is used, is governed by respective privacy statements
and outside the governance of VBnet or mvps.org.
Mmm
.... Cookies
Visitors to a web site rightfully expect that there
will be no hidden, nefarious actions taking
place behind-the-scenes. VBnet believes this belief is warranted given the number of communication activities a complex site performs between
the browser and the server in order to deliver content and to provide a comfortable user experience. Therefore, to set the record
straight, this is a listing of the behind-the-scenes code executing when you visit a VBnet page.
First, VBnet does not use any ActiveX controls, Java controls or utilities, nor does it use any
goofy scripting libraries such as the FSO - there is simply no need.
VBnet does make use of rather small JavaScript routines to provide several development and UI features:
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to provide standard browser detection,
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to build the frameset,
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to provide the
date on the Welcome page,
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to provide the
Google ads on each page,
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to provide rollovers for each page's topical menu items,
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to customize slightly the width of the navigation frames to accommodate Netscape's different offset handling over IE,
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to provide the 'copy bas', 'copy frm' and 'copy class' functionality on the code pages,
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to provide the image rollover on the Best Sites page,
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to provide the rotating graphics on a few of the more complex code pages (no, they're not animated gifs!),
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to kick a VBnet page out of another site's frames,
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to load a site page URL inside the site frameset to provide the user with full site navigation options,
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to detect whether the page is currently being edited in the FrontPage designer, which allows me to preview the page during the design stage without loading the frames, and
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to build my email address on-the-fly, rather than hard-coding it, to deter page scraping by spammers.
JavaScript code may be contained within a given page, and can be seen by viewing
source. Frequently-used Java routines are delivered to the user's
temporary internet folder as separate .js files (i.e. vbnetcopy.js) in
order to increase performance for the visitor. All VBnet JavaScript
code can be easily identified in the internet cache as each file begins
with "vbnet".
Confidentiality and Security of Information
Any information collected on the mvps.org
server has access restricted to mvps.org administrators only, of which I am one.
Access may also be granted to mvps.org employees on a need-to-know basis.
Visitor information is
*never* shared or provided to anyone.
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