Commitment to Privacy

Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy we provide this privacy policy notice explaining our data collection practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this policy notice easy to find, we make it available in the 'FAQ' which can be accessed from any page of this website.

Information we Collect

Cookies
When you visit HoustonFishBox, we send one or more cookies to your web browser. A cookie is a small, harmless piece of information that is stored on your computer. Only the domain which set that cookie can access the information from it. (ie, other domains can't access cookies set by us and we can't access cookies set by others)

Server Logs
Whenever you access a file from our website, the server logs the following data: (i) Requested File name, (ii) Your IP address, (iii) Date & Time of request, (iv) Your user agent, (v) Referring webpage (if any), and (vi) Size of the requested document.

Forum Account
In the process of creating an account on HoustonFishBox Forum, we ask for your Email address. This is done to verify your identity and prove that you are a real human being, and not some unscrupulous bot submitting web forms across the internet. Also, each thread, post, message you create on the Forum is associated with your Forum account & stamped with your I.P. address.

Blog Comments
Comments can be made on the GeekPoint Blog without any account registration. The standard visitor information like: IP address, Email (not verified), Name (not verified) and your Website URL (optional) is logged against each comment you make on a blog post.

Visitor Patterns
We use a visitor tracking and analysis service (Google Analytics) to see how our website, website sections and webpages are performing. (e.g. Unique Visitors, Page Views, Total Visitors, etc.). No personally identifiable information is collected in this process.

Outbound Clicks
We track outbound clicks from our website too. Again, no personally identifiable information is collected in the process. Only pure statistical information like the URI of a clicked link and URI of the page from which the click was done, is stored.

Advertising Services
HoustonFishBox primarily uses Google Adsense to serve advertisements relevant to the website content. To know more about what information Google collects and uses, check out their General Privacy Policy and Advertising Policy pages.

How we Use It

E-Mail Addresses
Email addresses you entered while registering on the Forum are used to provide you updates of any content which you have subscribed to. Your Email addresses are safe with us. We won't sell it to anyone!

Passwords
The password which you use to login to the Forum account is salted and then encrypted before being saved in our database. It's NEVER stored in a plaintext format. This way even we can't see what your password is. And that's why in case you forget your login password, we can't retrieve it for you; we are only able to change it to something else.

Visitor Statistics
Visitor statistics and data logged by the server and Google Analytics are used to improve our site. We can quickly see which pages are performing well and which of them are not. Some statistics like Total Visitors, Unique Visitors, Aggregate PageViews per month are released to public. But no personal information is ever revealed.

Cookies
Cookies are used to store your personal preferences for a short time. They are used to customize the content that is served to you on the Forum (primarily) and/or other site's sections. Cookies are also used to store your site login credentials. (So you may or may not face difficulties accessing member-only functions, if you login with cookies disabled in your browser)

Data Security
Appropriate measures (user authentication, authorization, data encryption) are taken to ensure that the data we collect is safeguarded and secure from unauthorized access. Regarding the data submitted in Forum: private profile fields can only be accessed by site administrators, and I.P. addresses attached to the threads/posts can only be accessed by site administrators and moderators.

Children's Privacy
Protecting very young children's privacy is quite important. For that very reason we currently don't allow account registrations by children under 13 years of age, on our Forum without Parental Consent.

Accessing your Info
Wherever possible and feasible, we provide a way for you to edit and update your personal information. In the case of Forums, you can edit your personal information and site preferences via the UserCP (User Control Panel). The various options and setting groups available to you are explained below:

UserCP > Edit Your Details
Edit your personal information like birth date, birth date visibility preference, website URI, instant messaging (IM) contacts, your Location, Occupation, Hobbies / Topics of Interest, Biography, etc. All of these fields are optional and you can clear them out anytime you want.

UserCP > Profile Privacy
You can select the user types who can access your user profile. Data which you can restrict is: Contact info, Profile picture, Visitor messages, Albums, Biography, Friends list, Recent profile visitor list and Group membership list. You can set the access level to: Everyone (Guests included), Registered Members, Users on your Contact list, Your Friends.

UserCP > Edit Options
Various options are available to customise your Forum experience. The settings groups include: Login settings, Visitor and Profile Messaging, Thread Display Options, Date / Time / Timezone selection and some Miscellaneous options like the Forum's color scheme / layout (if multiple selections are available).

UserCP > Edit Email & Password
Pretty much self explanatory. You can edit the email address associated with the Forum account; and the password which you use to login. Please note that if you update your email address, you'll have to verify that new address too.

Any doubts or questions?

If you have any doubts or questions regarding the privacy policy and how we implement it, feel free to contact imagirlgeek via Private Messaging (PM) or the Contact Us form.