Privacy policy for Universal Hub and Boston Blogs

Last update: 5/13/23. Adds information about Google ads.

At Universal Hub, we value your privacy. What follows is a description of how we collect information about you and what we do (or don't do) with it:

Your name and e-mail address

You do not need to register to read posts or replies on Universal Hub, or to post replies on the site. However, if you wish to post an article yourself, or if you wish to have the system keep track of messages for you - you will need to create a free account. To do so, you'll be asked for a user name and an e-mail address. Optionally, you can also add additional information that will be displayed to other users who click on your user name at the top of a posting or comment you make. Once you create an account, you can have the system send you e-mail notifications when people reply to your posts or when people post new messages in specific forums.

Universal Hub never makes your address public - although you can let other users contact you, it is done through a "proxy" system on our site - another user fills out a form, which our server then mails to you without revealing your address to the other person.

We do not sell or give out our user names and addresses to anybody. If somebody e-mails us seeking to contact you, we will forward the message to you, leaving it up to you whether to reply.

Cookies and other data-collection tools

Universal Hub and Boston Blogs currently use cookies in a couple of different ways:

If you post an article or comment on Universal Hub, or sign up for notification of replies in specific discussions, the software will attempt to put a cookie on your hard drive. This cookie will identify you to the system the next time you connect to it, so that it can tell you which messages are new (i.e., posted since the last time you logged in) and to display them in your preferred form. We do not do anything else with this information.

Universal Hub and Boston Blogs have banner advertising. Some of the advertisers may attempt to write a cookie to your hard drive when you visit their sites.

If you do not wish to receive a cookie, you can disable them via your browser (each browser has a different way to do this) or with add-on security software. Caveat: Without cookies enabled, you will not be able to have the sites remember your preferences or new-message settings from session to session, i.e., you will have to log in each time.

Similarly, Universal Hub and Boston Blogs employ tracking software from Google Analytics to gather overall statistics about page views and certain overall demographic information, such as where in the world our users come from. The software now links with Google's ad servers to provide more customized ads. You can read more details about how this works. You can also download a browser add-on that will keep your data out of Google Analytics and the associated ad server.

In addition to Google Ads, we use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

Universal Hub is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. If you click on an Amazon link on Universal Hub, a tracking code will be used during that visit to Amazon, allowing Universal Hub to be credited for anything you purchase.

This Site is affiliated with Monumetric (dba for The Blogger Network, LLC) for the purposes of placing advertising on the Site, and Monumetric will collect and use certain data for advertising purposes. To learn more about Monumetric's data usage, click here:  www.monumetric.com/publisher-advertising-privacy.

Other information

In addition to the above, our servers collect certain standard "log" information on each visit - the time of the visit, pages seen, type of Web browser, which site, if any, you came to our sites from and your IP address. We do not attempt to create individual user profiles from this information, but do use the data in the aggregate to help determine our audience's interests, popular pages and the like.

If you have any questions about our privacy and cookie polices, please contact Adam Gaffin at [email protected].