Automatically Collected

When you browse through any Web site, certain personal information about you can be collected. We automatically collect and temporarily store the following information about your visit:

• the name of the domain you use to access the Internet (for example, aol.com, if you are using an American Online account, or rice.edu, if you are connecting from Rice University's domain);
• the date and time of your visit;
• the pages you visited;
• the address of the Web site you came from when you came to visit; and
• any search terms you might have used to get here from a search engine.

We use this information for statistical purposes, to create reports and such, because we're technology geeks and log file geeks and scientists and are curious about who is visiting our site. Unless it is specifically stated otherwise, no additional information will be collected about you.

Cookies

We use cookies in the Work part of our site. These cookies enable the system to identify a user after login and maintain authenticity, while the user navigates pages of the site. The cookies we use do not collect any personally identifying information about you or provide us with any way to contact you, and the cookies do not extract any information from your computer.

Information You Provide

You do not have to give us personal information to visit our Web site. However, if you want to ask us a question or supply feedback, you will be directed to certain forms.

Our feedback form does request additional information about yourself. For example, if we know where you live it is easier to answer questions about animals you might have seen. Also, we might respond differently (different speed, different kinds of resources) to someone in elementary school and someone in college.

We maintain an archive of all questions submitted to us. We intend to analyze these data to spot trends and identify common questions. In the future, we may create a searchable archive of questions and answers, but we would remove all personal identification information from these beforehand.

We never share your personal information with any other party.

Children

Our feedback system is in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1999. We respond to the feedback question and then delete personal information from the stored record. In other words, we save the question and answer but delete any personally identifying information (name, email address, and age.)