Privacy Policy for gocek.org, gocek.net, gocek.com, photoscanusa.com, captainkangaroo.org

Updated 6 March 2016. This page describes information we collect, what we do with it, and what we don't do with it. "We", "us", "our", etc., refer to the administrators and authors of the content on the domains listed above.

Personal information is requested in the course of processing blog comments and LHS music requests. Web server logs report each hit from an IP address, although this is not correlated with individuals. See below for information on specific types of personal information. Personal information is never displayed on the web sites nor distributed to third parties. Authors of blog comments may choose to insert personal information into the body of their comments, and that information would be displayed. In this respect, an email address entered into a text box for email addresses is "different" than the same email address entered into a text box for arbitrary comments, so users need to be careful about how they provide personal information.

Email addresses are generally optional, but may be provided with blog comments or obtained from received messages or used with LHS music requests. Like any internet user, if we receive an email address, it may be saved in a private folder. Email addresses may be used to discuss and update comments with their authors, or to answer questions sent to us. Support for Gravatar and OpenID are planned, with which email addresses may be used. We may contact others in the course of maintaining the sites. Blog comments are saved in data-stores separately from original blog content. Content and comments are merged into the blog display pages as the pages are opened by readers. The comment data-stores are on the Internet, but the locations are not published. Email addresses, when available, are encrypted within the data-stores and can be decrypted by us for the purpose of privately discussing issues and modifying site content. Email addresses are never displayed on the web sites nor distributed to third parties. Authors of blog comments may choose to write their addresses within the body of their comments.

It is possible to extract demographic information from web server logs. It's interesting to see that the sites receive visitors from all over the world. Demographic information is not correlated with individual visitors, nor used for any particular purpose. We do not share aggregated demographic information about our user base with our partners and advertisers. We publish total "page views" for some time periods, but not in a way that could implicate individual users.

Third party services such as OpenID may be used to authenticate users when entering blog comments. Ultimately, blog comments can be entered anonymously, but authentication is performed to provide a level of trust. When someone signs a comment, that comment seems more trustworthy. Contact us if you think someone has used your name to leave a blog comment. The reliabilty of authentication, particularly OpenID, is imperfect but it's better than nothing.

Announcements, newsletters and other communications: We currently produce no emailed "generic" communications. Expect only personalized messages, such as if a visitor asks for news about a specific topic.

Our software products are downloadable for free either from the sites or from other software download sites such as sourceforge.net. You may be asked for information by third-party sites in order to download software, but these third parties do not share registration information with us. Although you get what you pay for, and you don't pay for our software, we would be happy to hear about your experiences. Currently, no fees are charged. We are not responsible and do not expect compensation for anything that happens (good, bad or otherwise) as a result of using the software.

The forum and its user database have been deleted, and registrants were notified by email on November 12, 2007. Some forum comments were migrated to blogs. In some cases, email addresses associated with forum registrations were migrated to the encrypted portion of a blog comment data-store, as described above.

Information entered with blog comments is saved into data-stores separate from the original blog content. The locations of these data-stores are not published. Email addresses are encrypted within the data-stores. We do not maintain a registration database. No personal information is shared with third parties nor used for unsolicited commercial purposes.

Customer service: Help may be requested. We'll help you in any way we can. There may be ways in which we can't help.

Service providers: We use www.HosTek.com to provide web hosting services. HosTek is obligated to view site information only upon request by us (the HosTek customer), and we would only make such a request in case of catastrophic service problems. In such a case, HosTek remains bound by typical confidentiality agreements. We do not share personal information with HosTek, although our files reside on a HosTek controlled server.

Legal disclaimer: Gary Gocek is the sole owner of the information collected at gocek.com/net/org. We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web sites. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently.

As is true of most Web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files, on our own or on our hosting service's servers. This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data. We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the sites, to track users' movements around the sites and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We do not link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information.

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user's computer for record-keeping purposes. A web beacon is typically a small, invisible image used with cookies to report browsing information to a server. This site serves Google ads and is required to state here that Google and third party advertisers may place and read cookies on your browser, or use web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served. You can adjust your browser to reject cookies. Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy. Our site software does not currently use cookies to maintain session information, but advertisers might. In general, your access to site features will not be affected if you choose to configure your browser to reject cookies. Even if you accept cookies, your browser will not transmit personally identifiable information to advertisers while visiting this web site. Your IP address might be transmitted. These statements about cookies are boilerplate disclaimers. This site does not share personal information with advertisers.

We employ advertisements delivered to our web pages according to page content. Such services do not collect user information, but advertisers may collect information at their own web sites. We do not share our user information with advertisers or ad servers.

Our Web sites contain links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by gocek.com/net/org. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our sites and to read the privacy statements of each and every site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies only to information collected by our Web sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites.

You may comment on our blog (web log) content. Personally identifiable information you submit in the visible portions of your comments (excluding entries for your name or email address) can be read, collected, or used by other readers, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit to these pages. We reserve the right to modify or delete comments for any reason. Modifications and deletions will usually occur only in response to general service termination or for users who use our services in a manner inconsistent with our Terms of Service. Blog comments are not editable once posted. Contact us to request changes.

The security of your personal information is important to us. Some blog articles accept comments from readers. When adding a comment, an ID is requested. This ID may be a full email address. This ID can be used by our web site software to access avatars or to validate deletion requests. The ID is encrypted and stored with the article comment. Article comments are stored separately from articles. IDs are partially exposed when comments are displayed on the blog pages, but email addresses are truncated to avoid exposure. The encryption mechanism will never be exposed to outside parties.

In the event gocek.com/net/org goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personally identifiable information will likely be among the assets transferred. You will be notified via prominent notice on our Web sites for 30 days of any such change in ownership or control of your personal information.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) managed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates the collection and distribution of a child's personal information, and empowers minors and their parents to control information that is collected. Our blog comment page collects names and email addresses for the purpose of operating the blogs. This information is optional, and the blogs are not directed at children and the age of users is not requested or known, so COPPA is not applicable. If a child under the age of 13 uses our sites and this becomes known to us, we will attempt to verify parental consent or delete personally identifiable information. When COPPA is not applicable, COPPA does not hold site operators liable when the age of participants is unknown. Contrary to internet folklore, the participation of children is not prohibited by law, but parental consent is required when the site operator learns that information has been collected on a participant under the age of 13. Our content is not directed at children but is family friendly, so given the safeguards of COPPA, children are not automatically discouraged. COPPA requirements generally apply even though COPPA does not apply to our sites. Since COPPA does not apply and we don't expect child participants, COPPA details are not provided here (parents may follow the link above to the FTC's site).

Contact us: Email address, Street address and phone. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us. We get a lot of spam, and if you send an email note with a subject like "blog", your email will not likely be read. Use a descriptive subject like, "Delete my gocek.org blog comment." Collect calls will not be accepted. US Mail correspondence will be accepted, but a stamped and addressed return envelope (or an email address) is required for a reply.