JTAN Privacy Statement

JTAN's Overall Privacy Statement

This Overall Privacy Statement discloses the privacy practices for the JTAN as a whole. If you need clairification regarding something in this statement please contact us.

Information JTAN Gathers/Tracks

Our network comprises many computers that offer many different services. Each service usually has some sort of state information recorded. Therefore, any generalization made about information gathering needs to be understood as possibly having specific exceptions and complex "grey areas".

Anonymous Proxies

If you use your JTAN account to access our anonymous proxy and browse other web sites, there is NO explicit logging done by the proxy. Nevertheless, we emphasize the fact noted in the previous paragraph that some sort of state information is inevitably left behind when interacting with any computer. JTAN cannot guarantee that there is absolutely no possible way to trace your interactions with our computers, especially if you break the law. All we can say is that we do our best to turn of explicit logging at our proxies.

With a proxy you browse using the common JTAN IP. This is not associated with your account in any way.

Some providers use proxies that are part of the web server. Ours is not. Our proxy is a dedicated squid cache running in full anonymizing mode on a separate machine. It hides everything identifyable in your request. No log is kept. And even if one was, there's no way to access the proxy except through a SSH or VPN tunnel on a shared JTAN IP. So it's really a "double blind" proxy. The proxy itself doesn't know your actual incoming IP.

Remaining Anonymous as a JTAN Customer

We do not require your real name and address in order to do business with us. You have the right to attempt to hide or disguise your identity from us. However, if you do elect to remain anonymous, you still must adhere to all your responsibilities under our AUP, and you lose some rights. For example, you lose the right to pay with a Credit Card or PayPal, two convenient services that require you must reveal your identity. For all the details, read our AUP section on anonymous accounts.

General System Logs

Most of our machines have general activity logs. Typically this information is not specific to particular users, although there are exceptions. In general, all our machines roll all their text logs daily. There might be 7 days of daily logs on a particular machine with the 8'th day deleted automatically. However, some service logs roll based on size. Our mail log is an example. That log might roll over 7 times an HOUR, or 7 times a DAY or WEEK, depending on traffic. When JTAN is debugging a problem with a system, we may lenghten general log expiry for the purpose of gathering enough information to diagnose the problem. We may institute logging on any service temporarily to facilitate debugging. We discard these logs after their purpose is fulfilled.

But there are some logs that are kept forever. For example, our accounts receivable log is kept forever. That means we can remember if you paid for your account even if it was a year ago. Similarly, we do keep the email we receive from you. Our customers typically expect us to remember their last email, especially if it requested that we fix a problem or answer a question. We also have a service order log so that we can remember when customers ask us to do things or require new account features.

Our accounting and service logs are not publically visible. Nor is our email. We tend to use strong ciphers and dedicated machines to store these; they don't appear on user accessible machines.

We do NOT sell or otherwise distribute our logs to any other company. Logs stats, etc, are private to our company and to our customers and we do everything reasonably possible to keep this sort of information from leaking. We also do not save logs longer than necessary. Typically logs roll in 7 days, but there are exceptions.

Incoming Web Browsing to JTAN Hosted Sites

When someone visits a JTAN hosted web site, we collect aggregate information site-wide, including site statistics. We also log domain names and/or IP addresses. For example, we know that you are connecting from (none) [172.70.100.219], and you seem to be running Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; [email protected]). This information is logged in our web hosting statistics.

Incoming logs are retained for many months. These are private to the webmaster of the site in question. We provide webalizer site statistical analysis for our customers. Site statistics may be password protected as per an individual hosting customer's requirements. We excercise no control over what our customers use these logs for.

Treatment of Personal Information gathered by JTAN

On certain pages such as the JTAN Membership Form, we ask that users provide us with names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses, demographic, preference and other personal information, and various other kinds of details. This more personal information is gathered by us with users knowing and active permission and participation. We require the use of SSL encryption on web forms that aquire this information. On our systems we treat this information much as we do our own, with strong cryptographic ciphers and separate dedicated systems to help ensure security. As you will read below, we keep personal information strictly confidential. We DO NOT disclose this information to marketers.

Use of the Information the JTAN Web Site Gathers/Tracks

We review and discard the information in some cases (e.g. IP address logs for file transfers), while in others we may use the information to tailor our users web experience, generate site statistics, or to contact users via email or postal mail (e.g to send service outage notices, account billing notices, account changes, etc.)

Personal information that has been volunteered to us may also be correlated with data from third parties, such as telephone directorories to verify its authenticity. We do this in our overall effort to eliminate credit fraud. No such correlation will be done for marketing purposes.

Sharing of the Information JTAN Gathers/Tracks

JTAN does not share personal user information with other individuals or orgainizations except as required by law (e.g. law enforcement subpoena).

General web statistics, including hit statistics on user web pages are offered in a ~user/webstats directory. By default, these are configured to be available to anyone. If you don't like this default, you can delete the directory, or password protect it. Instructions for password protecting a directory are in the JTAN Web Page FAQ

IP traffic statistics are private by default, being given a secret URL only available from the JTAN Members page after login.

Other Information About Your Privacy at JTAN

JTAN's site generally stores no information about its visitors, with the exceptions of basic logging for site stats (just machine addresses, not personal email addresses), and information provided by users who fill out our online membership, order, guestbook, or contest forms.

Under no circumstances does JTAN compile "audit trails" of which individual users are browsing what pages, and under no circumstances will JTAN sell, rent, loan or give personally identifiable user information to marketeers. If you want to know exactly what logs look like, here are the last few entries in our web access logs.

JTAN's site does not monitor private communications (e.g. email) at all, much less make any use of such communications. Email transfers are logged, but the logs are used only for administrative purposes such as verifying proper system operation.

However, since we cannot control what other, unscrupulous companies, individuals, or governments may do, we cannot make any guarantee that third parties won't exploit security weaknesses to gain information about our users. That's why we encourage users to attempt to protect their communications privacy by using strong cryptography.

Policy Changes

While JTAN is owned by Julia Thomas Associates, the privacy policies stated herein will remain in effect with only minor modifications necessary for clarity or to defend ourselves from abuse. We will not suddenly "change our mind" and start selling your personal information.

However, should JTAN be sold to a third party, we can't promise what their policies might be. We can, however, promise to announce any such sale. Should this happen, we advise you to check back here to look for significant revisions in privacy policy.