Privacy Statement

Protect and Survive
Inclusiveness
Anonymity
Intrusions
Cookies
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Internet user privacy is of paramount importance to the Doghouse and to our sponsors and to those affiliated to us. Below is information about our commitment to protecting your privacy and ensuring the integrity of the medium. We are not responsible for the lack of privacy in internet or webmail email systems, or the intrusions your Government take into your private matters.

Philosophy of Inclusiveness

We do not edit or judge the content that is provided, we we hold dear the tenants of Freedom of Speech and Expression - something that we do not feel should be granted to the few or to one section of a community, unless the content is in violation of our pragmatic "Hostility" policy.
Hostility: (Where freedom of speech would result in pages being withdrawn)

Data that a member provides on joining about interests, locale etc is included in the database on profiling typical members allowing us to better serve your needs. Typically adjusting site content, clustering adverts into relevant groups etc. This information is not passed onto a third party, however anyone could crawl through the site and painstakingly gather the same information.

The Doghouse honors the right not to be included in our index

The Doghouse respects the right to privacy of members to not be included in the adverts when they join. The do however take on full responsibility of choosing if level of detail to be displayed. From name and contact details, through to just email or not listed at all. Remember the very nature of the web allows exposure to all kinds of people, for your ideal Master through to your parents - just a balance of probability of who is likely to see it.

The Doghouse is Anonymous

Any of our advertising Partners do not have the name, email address, phone number, or home address of anybody who visits The Doghouse.
All users who receive an ad targeted by The Dog House remain completely anonymous. Since we do not have any information concerning names or addresses of visitors, we do not sell or rent any such information to third parties - likewise members information is also guarded, the list is never sold or leaves the confines of The Doghouse.

Intrusions into Privacy

In some places your access to the internet is 'spyed' upon.
This typically occurs where your access to the internet is provided 'by the state' (Russia/Saudi), or if you access the net from work, where your your Network support department has a list of which sites are accessed (like you should be working not using up bandwidth by catching up on sport results).
You might get error codes like 403/405 "profanity error", they might block your access using a Proxy Server or something like Cyber Patrol.

The Doghouse Users can Opt-Out of "Cookies"

Cookies are small text files a Web site can use (thousands of sites are currently using them) to recognize a repeat visitor to its site. Cookies are not programs that come onto a user's system and damage files. Utilization of cookies that contain no information about you - only a unique number that has no meaning whatsoever outside of the The Doghouse Network. The Doghouse may use this number to track ad exposure to assure a user is not bombarded with the same ad over and over again. It attempts to limit the hassle that you get from other sites, and irritation off switch.
While we believe that cookies enhance the Web experience for the user by limiting the repetitiveness of advertising, they are not essential. If you do not want the frequency of ad exposure controlled, there is a simple procedure that allows the user to deny or accept this feature.

Protect and Survive

You are also advised to protect yourself, as many right wing government such as the one in power in the UK will enjoy raiding your home in the search for 'porn' (porn is in the eye of the beholder, and can mean whatever they want it to mean), during which time your home and personal life has been violated. If there pics are clothed there is little problem, in theory they are interested in obvious hard-on, but thenwhen has that every stopped anyone.
They do not need an excuse, any can be fabricated, your life can be distroyed from malicious behaviour and yet there was no further action taken.
It is also not adviseable to take your PC into somewhere like PC world (as with Gary Glitter) and get them to repair the PC as they are dying to snoop around your PC, god help you if you are famous. You have to weight up the risk, trash the disk or take a chance or Protect and Survive.
To minimize such problems ensure that in:

MSIE that you regulary Delete all "Temporrary Internet Files" via Tools-> Internet Options -> General. Usually the files are stored under your windows directory for example in c:/win95/Temporary Internet Files/ or c:/winnt/Temporary Internet Files/ or within the User Profile area.
Netscape you will need to edit properties, and go into the Cache then delete the files.
Temp clear out the files that you may find in possibly your C:/TEMP or C:/Win95/TEMP directory, do a Fine file (Start-> FInd) on files such as *.tmp and in those directories you may see files such as *.jpg, *.gif or *.htm that you perhaps do not recognise. These should all be checked, many of them can be checked using one of the above browsers or you may use paint shop pro ( http://www.jasc.com/ ) to quickly view the pictures.
IRC clear out the files that you may have down loaded. If you keep a log of your chats, they may use email addresses of people you have spoken you for further raids, and could use the text to fabricate charges of intent.
Legal Advice It would not hurt to ensure that you have the name of a support service that offered leagle advice, such as NCLR or GLAD
You may also way to consider Encrytion such as that offered by pgp (http://www.pgpi.org/) from which you can down load the international edition of the PGP program
For example:
- PGPdisk is a program that lets you create encrypted disk partitions. This is suitable for your save area, for example Tempory Internet Files.
- PGPfone (Pretty Good Privacy Phone) is a software package that turns your desktop or notebook computer into a secure telephone.
- PGP for secure eMail. Both the US and international versions of PGP use full-strength, unencumbered 128-bit encryption and are completely interoperable with one another.
- Do not write the key down so that anyone could find it.
- Do not write the password to your PC down so that it could be easily accessed. They may take the Hard disk out and put it into another PC to look at it (dropping it as they return it to your PC).
Hay Stacks Another feature of successfull protection is to ensure that the needle is hidden in the haystack where that one file is hidden amongst all the other files.
For example put your pics into a ZIP file with password protection, then rename it to '.bin' or '.vxd' or ".dll" something that there is loads of on your PC, also change the name porn.dll is not the best choice - also choose whatever is bland/mundane to your life, for example wedding pictures on a gay persons PC might be a bit odd (unless its your Sisters).
PC failure It well it might not be the state that came for your PC, Windows and Intel do not offer the most robust of systems, so make back-ups.
Ensure that there backup are secure (in all senses of the word), consider what if they were stolen, or your mother started looking at them!
Do not make assumtions, consider risks and weight up their likelyhood of happening, what is the wortst that could happen, and take steps to protect yourself.
Plan through with "What Ifs".
You might want to invest in a CD Writer.