We don’t have a fancy privacy policy. We use a free statistics service (StatCounter.com) that attempts to place a cookie on your computer. Our sole purpose in doing this is to know which visitors are new and which have visited us before, and to be able to track ‘footprints’ through the site on a user-by-user basis. Most browsers allow you to block cookies. That makes our life harder, but we understand why people do it. We also use other tools (such as Webalizer), provided by our ISP, that don’t place cookies but do track visitors’ IP addresses and collect other information about traffic (time of day, initial page visited, etc).

This information can not identify individuals, only ISPs such as AOL, Comcast, or (if at work) your employer’s gateway to the internet.

Our goal is to use this information to learn how to make our layout and content better. We do not and never will use this information for commercial purposes, sell or give away the data, or provide this information, except in gross form (‘we had x visitors yesterday’), to anyone not involved in creating Independent Sources.

In the future we may use other tools that place cookies (such as a more sophisticated statistics package). No matter what, we will continue to adhere to the commitment above.

All bets are off if you call us “stupid” in an email to us, in a comment on the blog, or in public (this means you, Michael Hiltzik / Mikekoshi / nofanofcablecos!).

Please contact us via a comment if you have any questions about this.

Thanks –

The Independent Sources Team