Login
Although you can access this site without having an Account (unique login), you will not be able to upload any files. If you wish to upload your own files or to be granted special access privileges to files that were uploaded by other users, you must register an Account or in other words, you must identify yourself. The method used by this site to identify users is to associate a unique but arbitrary set of characters chosen by yourself (a nickname or username), another arbitrary set of characters chosen by yourself (a password) and a valid email address where a confirmation letter will be sent, which must be acknowledged before you can login.
You may also enter your first and last name, which helps your friends to know to whom they are granting file access privileges since nicknames tend to be rather obtuse, but this is not required and you are free to make something up. Your nickname appears everywhere on the site and by clicking it, anyone can send you an email, although your email address is never shown, not even in the source code of the page. Your password is immediately encrypted and even the webmaster of this site does not know how to decrypt it, so only you know what it is.
However, any user with Administrative privileges can change any of your information at any time without prior notification, even to the point of completely blocking your access to the site. None of this information is ever stored in a cookie, but will be stored in a database until you contact us to remove it, or until you are no longer using the site, which is to be assumed if your last login was more than 12 months ago, at which time all of the folders and files created by you will also be deleted.
We consider all of this login information to be highly confidential and with the exceptions stated above, which describes the normal use of this web site, we will not willingly reveal it to anyone. If you think your email address has been leaked to spammers from this site, please contact us right away, because we went to a lot of trouble to prevent this from happening.
Cookies
You may also access this site with a browser that has cookies disabled or severely restricted, but as a consequence, there will be many features that will be unavailable to you, which will significantly degrade your enjoyment of the site. So we would like to create a cookie on your computer to temporarily manage your session and to record your preferences as to the layout and style of the information to be displayed in your browser.
By allowing us to use a cookie, you will also be able to sort report listings by clicking the column heading and to temporarily cache the results of your searches, which will significantly speed things up and lets you step through individual items from a result set by clicking next, previous, etc.
On the other hand, if you are a registered user and you want
to login in order to activate your special privileges, a cookie must be created because it allows you to use
the site without having to login every single time you click a link.
There is nothing confidential stored in the cookie; just the temporary session_id, the current dimensions of your browser window and the stylesheet that you prefer. Although this cookie will remain on your computer indefinately, you may delete it at any time, even while using the site.
Files
Whether to upload files or not is entirely your decision. The files that you upload are stored in a database and made available to other users, including the general public, according to the access privileges that you choose, dependent on the folder where the files are located as determined by you, which can be changed by you at any time. You may freely elect not to share your files at all or to allow only specific users to access them or rename them or copy them or move them or destroy them or redistribute them to other users.
But please keep in mind that whatever access privileges you assign, they will not apply to any user designated as an Administrator, who can always do anything they want to all the files and folders in their domain (workgroup, neighborhood, club, clan, etc) and who may arbitrarily delete or block access to your files and folders for any reason and without prior notification.
For example, you may have inadvertently uploaded a file that contains a computer virus that would wreak havoc on the other users of this site should
they download it, so we would need to block access to it or remove it entirely as quickly as possible.
This site takes no responsibility for the files that you upload, but will, in good faith, adhere to a regular backup schedule so that it may be restored in the event of a catastrophic database failure to the condition it was in at approximately 2:00am Pacific time on the day it crashed, unless you are using the Demonstration Version, when nothing you upload will be retained no longer than 24 hours.
This site also takes no responsibility for the files that you download
and is offering its services under the principle of "caveat emptor", where you are the sole judge as to the quality, correctness and safety of any file on this site.
Moreover, no warranties or indemnities should be implied and none are offered for the use of this web site. The operators of this web site take no responsibility for the actions of its users and that for the most part,we are completely unaware of the contents of the files uploaded by our users.
We consider your files and folders to be confidential, regardless of the access privileges you have granted, and will not willingly share the contents of your files and folders beyond the restrictions you have placed on them.
Logs
Like every other web site, a log is created of which pages you viewed at this site, when you viewed them, whether the page was displayed properly, what kind of browser you used and whether you are a registered user or not. These logs are important for monitoring the performance, health and security of this web site. Only the System Administrator (webmaster@benwillies.com) can view these logs, which grow so rapidly that only about two months of activity is stored.
Unless you are a registered user, when we would have your email address, the
only other way to tie individual log entries back to you personally is by the IP address, which in most cases, would require the cooperation of your Internet Service Provider, and is not something we are interested in doing, unless perhaps, you cause a lot of trouble for the other users.
We considered these logs to be highly confidential and will not willingly allow anyone else to see them.
Redress
We are relying on you to let us know if something is amiss with the site, so if you see anything that bothers you, or if you just want to chat, please do not hesitate to contact us at
webmaster@benwillies.com