PSUBS Privacy Statement

[Jonathan Wallace <jon@whoweb.com>]

Hello,

For those of you who do not know already,
I am the technical representative of the
web site and mailing list.  Ray handles
the web site content while I take care of
any technical issues on the server.

Advanced Digital Research provides free use
of its servers for the PSUBS.ORG web site
and mailing list solely because of my interest
in the subject.  I've been on vacation for the
past week and unable to provide any answers to
questions in this thread.

It is true, that numerous search engines travel
the directory tree of the server and categorize
all pages within it.  The archives are nothing
more than HTML versions of your logged email
messages that are sent to the mailing list
address.  Any message you submit to the mailing
list is permanently captured by the mailing list
software and saved on the server as well as
being emailed to all the participants of the
list.

There is no mechanism available to ensure any
level of security or privacy for any contribution
you submit to the psubs.org domain regardless of
the method you choose to make your submission.
Anything you submit or contribute to the psubs.org
domain is open to public scrutiny via any means
they are able to obtain it.  While use of a
robot.txt file may help to restrict the
distribution of PSUBS archives in some search
engines, there is no built-in enforcement to honor
the robots.txt file and search engine robots are
free to ignore the file if they choose to do so.

In addition to search engines, any recipient of
the mailing list can take your statements and
forward them to someone else through private email
or print them on paper and physically mail them to
anyone of their choosing.  

If you are concerned about your privacy in general
or being sued over statements or other content
that you submit to the mailing list, please remove
yourself from the mailing list immediately.  If you
do not know how to remove yourself from the list,
simply send us an email message asking to be
removed and we will do it for you.

Having the PSUBS archive picked up by search engine
robots enhances the visibility of the group and
most probably brings us participants who otherwise
never would have found us.  It was never intended
that the archives be available only to people on
the PSUBS mailing list.  That would be an arduous
task involving updating passwords everytime someone
removed themselves from the mailing list, and also
place a burden on ADR to take measures to ensure
such security.

We can update the notice on the web site to include
language that states psubs messages are referenced
through various search engines as well, but we can
not state or suggest that any material submitted to
the psubs.org web site or mailing list is anything
but completely open to public scrutiny.  How the
public finds it really is not our concern.

If anyone feels a greater level of security is
necessary and wishes to take over ownership and
responsibility for the web site, mailing list and
domain name, ADR will be happy to open an account
in your name on our server or help with the transfer
of the domain to your own server.

Jonathan Wallace