Home >  Business >  Interact

Thursday, May 31, 2001

By David Radin

My son is angry with me because I won't let him register a computer game. "My friends have registered it," he said. "Why can't I?" Good question, but a better question is, "Why are their parents allowing them to register?"

The game we're discussing is Snoods, but the conversation is not a new one. We have had similar discussions for several downloadable games, as well as Web site registrations.

I've been holding the line based on privacy policy. If I don't like the privacy policy, I simply won't register the software or purchase the service. Nor will I allow my children. And I'm not a privacy fanatic, as many people are.

From a privacy perspective, three types of companies are on the Web. Those that don't state a privacy policy; those that state their policy and use fairly standard language setting limits on how they use collected data; and those that either don't limit their use of your information or have very broad limits. Snoods falls into the third category.

When a user registers for Snoods, he or she must (according to the Snoods license), concurrently accept licensing provisions for software called Gator ServWareApps, which is bundled with Snoods. Gator reserves the right to track you throughout the World Wide Web and to hold personal information about you on the company's servers. It collects your e-mail address, first name, ZIP code, Web addresses you've visited, how long you spend at each, your transaction activity, your gender, your income and "the version numbers of some of the software installed on your personal computer."

		Ask Your Questions Have a question for David Radin? Contact him at his Web site

The company says that if you register for optional services, it also might track your last name, street address, phone number and credit card information.

Even if you don't register for the optional services, they can easily run much of this information through a "data mining" application to check you against other databases to build a more complete profile about you.

The company states that they won't sell your data -- but they will allow third party contractors to access the data. This is simply not an acceptable policy to safeguard your personal information. Even though the company says the contractors are under similar obligations, this scenario is a privacy exposure waiting to happen. Too much information exposed; too many people with access. And there is no stated protection for children under 13 -- the most likely group to use Snoods software.

Parents need to read the privacy policies for the software they're loading for their children -- especially when the software includes Internet connected components. It takes only a few minutes (although they are boring minutes), and it could save you from a significant privacy breach.

Q: I often use numbered lists in documents. Sometimes, when I have two numbered lists, the second list tries to continue numbering where the first list left off. How do I get it to reset to "1" on the second list?

A: When this happens, right-click on the first numbered item in the second list. Select [Bullets and Numbering...] from the pop-up menu. On the [Numbered] tab, in the section called "list numbering," select the button labeled "Restart Numbering." Each subsequent list will start from 1. If you want to return to continuous numbering, place your cursor at the beginning of the first item in the bottom half of the list. Click once. Then backspace until that item actually becomes part of the last item in the previous list. Then press [Enter]. This will split the two items apart again while continuing the numbering for each subsequent item in the list.

David Radin is host of the nationally syndicated radio show "Internet Insider." You can comment or ask him a computer or Internet question by following the instructions at www.post-gazette.com/interact, where you also can find an archive of his previous Q&A columns.