[VBnet General] VBnet Behind the Scenes

VBnet Behind the Scenes - Our Privacy Policy
Visual Basic Developers Resource Centre

Your privacy is important to us and VBnet and mvps.org are committed to protecting the privacy and security of any information that may be obtained. This page outlines the information is recorded by VBnet and how that information is used.

The information we collect
None. At least not directly. The statistics package used by our ISP host (mvps.org) tracks statistics on browsers/browser versions, operating systems/version, and pages viewed, and does so solely to assist in the administrative chores of the mvps.org web site owners.

No personal information, such as name, address, phone number, e-mail address etc. is collected or saved by VBnet.

How we use (the little) information we do obtain
The data obtained from server statistics has shown that over 90% of the visitors to VBnet use Internet Explorer 4 or better. This information has been used in deciding that Internet Explorer will be the browser this site targets when developing java scripts, cascading style sheets and the overall page layout. If other browsers work too, great!

How others use information
Affiliates accessed through a link on VBnet (e.g., our book supplier, barnesandnoble.com) may collect additional information beyond that collected by VBnet.

In clicking an affiliate link from the site, the cryptic URL passed essentially only contains the product code or page of interest, and the site ID assigned to VBnet when joining the affiliate program. No information that VBnet has obtained is passed to anyone you link to from our site. However, the information collected by affiliates, and how that information is used, is governed by respective privacy statements and outside the governance of VBnet or mvps.org.

Mmm .... Cookies
Visitors to a web site rightfully expect that there will be no hidden, nefarious actions taking place behind-the-scenes. VBnet believes this belief is warranted given the number of communication activities a complex site performs between the browser and the server in order to deliver content and to provide a comfortable user experience. Therefore, to set the record straight, this is a listing of the behind-the-scenes code executing when you visit a VBnet page.

First, VBnet does not use any ActiveX controls, Java controls or utilities, nor does it use any goofy scripting libraries such as the FSO - there is simply no need.

VBnet does make use of rather small JavaScript routines to provide several development and UI features:

to provide standard browser detection,
to build the frameset,
to provide the rotating quote on the Welcome page,
to provide the rotating Sponsor ad on the Welcome page,
to provide rollovers for each page's topical menu items,
to customize slightly the width of the navigation frames to accommodate Netscape's different offset handling over IE,
to provide the gradual highlighting of the VBnet logos on mouse-over
to provide the 'copy bas', 'copy frm' and 'copy class' functionality on the code pages,
to provide the image rollover on the Best Sites page,
to provide the rotating graphics on a few of the more complex code pages (no, they're not animated gifs!),
to kick a vbnet page out of another site's frames,
to load a site page URL inside the site frameset to provide the user with full site navigation options,
to detect whether the page is currently being edited in the FrontPage designer, which allows me to preview the page during the design stage without loading the frames, and
to build my email address on-the-fly, rather than hard-code it to deter page scraping by spammers.

JavaScript code may be contained within a given page, and can be seen by viewing source. Frequently-used Java routines are delivered to the user's temporary internet folder as separate .js files (i.e. vbnetcopy.js) in order to increase performance for the visitor. All VBnet JavaScript code can be easily identified in the internet cache as each file begins with "vbnet".

In addition to the JavaScript, VBnet displays ads generated by a perl/cgi script running on the mvps.org server through a product called WebAdverts. VBnet is running one of the older versions (2.15) in non-SSI mode. When the banners are called via IMG tags, as VBnet does the WebAdverts software uses a temporary cookie. WebAdverts explanation for doing this is:

variable: ADVUseCookies

Cookies are only relevant when banners are called via IMG tags, which in general, will only be the case if no better option is available for a particular visitor. Even so, the number of IMG tag calls could be significant, so the efficiency of those calls should be considered. This variable determines whether browser-based "cookies" or a data file on your server will be used to keep track of which visitors have seen which banners. If you set it to 0, the script will not utilize cookies. That's bad. Unless you have a *VERY* compelling reason to do so, you should *never* set $ADVUseCookies to 0. Using cookies is *much* more efficient than constantly updating and reading a file on your server. Turning off cookie support *will* result in a noticeable increase in the load on your Web server, especially if you're running a busy site.

variable: CheckForCookie

If you set this variable to 1, then the script, before displaying a banner and "blindly" setting a cookie, will set a "dummy" cookie in order to be sure that the visitor's browser is actually set to utilize cookies. For those visitors who can't or won't utilize cookies, the script will "fall back" to storing data in a file on your server. Performing this check will result in a slight increase in the work your server is doing, though it still won't be working as hard as if cookies are turned off. On the "up" side, though, use of this check will ensure that *all* of your visitors, whether they allow cookies or not, will be able to click on your banners successfully. (Without this check, the script will simply have to assume that cookies are being set, which means that visitors who can't or won't allow cookies will get error messages when they click on your banners.)

To minimize the load on the mvps.org server as much as possible, both these variables are set to 1 at VBnet.

Finally, the WebAdverts software records into a temporary file on the mvps.org server the IP address of each the computer loading a WebAdverts banner graphic. This information is routinely and automatically overwritten by the WebAdverts software, and while such info may have application to other users of the WebAdverts software, it is of no use to me and is not used for any purpose whatsoever except to waste disk space.

Confidentiality and Security of Information
Any of the preceding information collected and saved on the mvps.org server has access restricted to mvps.org administrators only, of which I am one. Access may also be granted to mvps.org employees on a need-to-know basis. User information, outside of WebAdverts statistics presented to VBnet sponsors, is *never* shared or provided to anyone.

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