Privacy Statement
Purpose
This statement is the definative privacy policy regarding information submitted to Shards. Any activity seen as violating this policy should be reported to Starfyre IMMEDIATELY.
Personal Information
Any personal information submitted to Shards, including email address and name, is for account verification and management purposes ONLY. This information will never be sold, given away, or redistributed in ANY way except when required by a court order. Additionally, information such as originating host name and originating IP address of user submitions will NOT be revealed unless required by a court order.
Private Messages
Private messages are considered confidential and thus not readable except by the sender and the intended recipient. Private messages should NOT be considered secure for the transmission of business critical information or any other information requiring absolute security. Once a private message has been recieved by its intended recipient, it becomes the property of the recipient. Any further action taken with the message is NOT the responsability of Shards nor Shards administration.
Private Rooms
Messages posted in private rooms must NOT be publically retransmitted by ANY member of the Shards staff, except when explicately approved by the room owner or required by a court order. Private rooms MUST not be considered a secure place for transmitting information requiring absolute security. Shards is not responsable for any damage caused by USER retransmition of information posted in private rooms. Keep in mind that due to unknown bugs in the software, the security of private rooms cannot bu guaranteed. If any such bugs are discovered, please report them IMMEDIATELY so they can be fixed.
Logging
Room owners may opt to log conversations in their rooms. Any such logs can be read by anyone granted permission by the room owner and by the Shards staff. Retention of room logs is left up to the room owner, so any posts made to a logged room may be retained indefinitely depending on the policies of the room owner.
We may log private user tranmissions as necessary for enforcement of the acceptable use policy and for law enforcement purposes. Such logs are regarded as strictly confidential and will never be sold or revealed to third parties except as required by a court order. Logs of private user transmissions are kept for a period of no more than 5 years.
Cookies
The AdSense advertisements on Shards use the DoubleClick advertising cookie to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web. These cookies may be used to collect aggregate data about your browsing habits to provide targetted advertising. You may choose to opt out of the DoubleClick cookie at any time by using DoubleClick's opt-out cookie.
Some third-party advertisers used by Google may use a different cookie. You may opt out of most third-party advertising cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page, or by visiting this Consumers page to opt out of all advertising cookies.