While browsing our site, we (webhostchecklist.org) will sometimes ask for and collect limited personal information about you in order to tailor our website to your particular needs. We will never sell, rent or give away any information to any third party unless required to do so by law.

Here’s a rundown of all the information we collect on our site, and how we use it:

Your name - You are encouraged to review web hosting companies that you are currently using and have used in the past, and submit that information to our site. You can submit these reviews using your real name, or a online handle (nickname), or you can choose to stay anonymous, and we will not publish your name on our review page. Also, when submitting a comment, the username you chosen when signing up to our site may be shown on the blog post or page that you have commented on. Your real name is not required to use our website.

Your email - We use WordPress to power our blog, and when you sign up, it may ask you for your email address. This is just a part of the software, and it is required in order for you to post comments and thoughts on our blog. Your email is never shown publicly, however your Gravatar will be shown next to your comment if you have uploaded one to their service.

Your IP address - Almost every website collects this address, either through the use of third-party analytics software or simple through the software used to serve their website. We are no different, and we collect your IP address in our Apache logs, and in our third-party Google Analytics tracking. We can’t use your IP to contact you, but we can, and do use it to tell us which parts of our site are popular, and which parts need some work done. Also, we may link to third-party advertisers that collect your IP address, however we will never willingly link to any such service that uses any of your personal information for malice, or sells your information to a third party.

Your browser’s user-agent string - Most web browsers, such as FireFox and Internet Explorer, have whats called a “user agent” string attached to them that tells web servers the name of the browser and possibly the name and version of the operating system you are using. This is mainly used for web analytics, and generally does not pose a threat to your computer. In our case, we simple use this to secure your user account when you log in (more on that in the next paragraph) and to track how many unique visitors we have total, through Google Analytics.

One piece of information we use to secure our website’s login system is your browser’s user-agent string. This is used (with additional security precautions) to determine if you should be able to access your account information by checking to see if you are using the same browser you used to login with. This is a small part of our overall security system, but it is used to secure your account while browsing our site.

Other information:

We encourage you to never post your address, phone number or financial information anywhere on our website, as we will never need this information. However, please note that if you do post any of that, it may be on our site for a while before we are able to take it off. It is also encouraged that you do not post incorrect accusations or information about any company in your review, as said company could sue you. And that’s bad.

Please use the contact form listed on our front homepage if you have any questions at any time regarding our policies.

This policy was originally created on Feb 20th, 2009, and last updated on Feb 20th, 2009. This policy can change at any time.