PAS, LLC Privacy FAQ

1. What is personal information?
"Personal information" is information that you provide to us which personally identifies you, such as your name, email address or billing information, or other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by PAS.

2. What is a PAS Account?
You may access some of our services by signing up for a PAS Account and providing us with some personal information (typically your name, email address and a password). This account information will be used to authenticate you when you access PAS services and protect your account from unauthorized access by others. We may share personal information among our various services in order to customize content and enhance our services for you. No account information is shared with anyone other than PAS except as specified in the Privacy Policy or with your consent.

You can edit your account at any time through your PAS Account settings.

3. What is a cookie?
A "cookie" is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. When you visit the website again, the cookie allows that site to recognize your browser. Cookies may store user preferences and other information. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some website features or services may not function properly without cookies.

4. What are server logs?
Like most Web sites, our servers automatically record the page requests made when users visit our sites. These "server logs" typically include your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.

Here is an example of a typical log entry where the user is loading the home page from the Table of Contents, followed by a breakdown of its parts:

2005-10-25 05:33:14 GET /main.cfm 68.230.167.74 HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+ (compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+SV1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322) http://pasmail.com/toc.cfm

  • 68.230.167.74 is the Internet Protocol address assigned to the user by the user's ISP; depending on the user's service, a different address may be assigned to the user by their service provider each time they connect to the Internet;
  • 2005-10-25 05:33:14 is the date and time of the request;
  • /main.cfm is the requested URL (including any optional parameters);
  • Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+SV1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322) is the browser and operating system being used; and
  • http://pasmail.com/toc.cfm is the page that contained the link to the page being logged..

5. What information does PAS receive if I click on a link displayed on PAS?
When you click on a link displayed on PAS, the fact that you clicked on the link may be sent to PAS. In this way, PAS is able to record information about how you use our site and services.

We use this information to improve the quality of our services and for other business purposes. For example, PAS can use this information to determine how often users are satisfied with the first result of a query and how often they proceed to later results. Similarly, PAS can use this information to determine how many times an advertisement is clicked in order to calculate how much the advertiser should be charged.

6. What is sensitive information?
"Sensitive personal information" includes information we know to be related to age, finances, confidential medical information, racial or ethnic origins, political or religious beliefs or sexuality and tied to personal information.

7. What is aggregated non-personal information?
"Aggregate non-personal information" is information that is recorded about users and collected into groups so that it no longer reflects or references an individually identifiable user.

8. URLs and embedded information
Some of our services, send the uniform resource locators ("URLs") of web pages that you request to PAS. When you use these services, PAS will receive and store the URL sent by the web sites you visit, including any personal information inserted into those URLs by the web site operator. Some PAS services enable you to opt-in or opt-out of sending URLs to PAS, while for others the sending of URLs to PAS is intrinsic to the service. When you sign up for any such service, you will be informed clearly that the service sends URLs to PAS, and whether and how you can opt-in or opt-out.

For example, when you submit information to a web page (such as a user login ID or registration information), the operator of that web site may "embed" that information - including personal information - into its URL (typically, after a question mark ("?") in the URL). When the URL is transmitted to PAS, our servers automatically store the URL, including any personal information that has been embedded after the question mark. PAS does not exercise any control over these web sites or whether they embed personal information into URLs.

9. What protections do I have against intrusions by the government into my use of PAS services?
PAS does comply with valid legal process, such as search warrants, court orders, or subpoenas seeking personal information. These same processes apply to all law-abiding companies. As has always been the case, the primary protections you have against intrusions by the government are the laws that apply to where you live.

If you have any questions about this Policy, please feel free to contact us through our website or write to us at Privacy Concerns, c/o PAS, LLC, PO Box 586, Wilsonville, Oregon, 97070 USA.