We just thought it would be a good idea to explain in more detail and upfront any possible privacy concerns that may arise from use of the Pueblo/UE client software or website. Similar information has always been provided in the readme and in the About dialog. We respect your privacy -- and if you're paranoid and don't believe us, since Pueblo/UE is open source you can verify it for yourself! :-)

If you have any concerns, or desire further clarification, then please feel free to contact us using the feedback link to the left.

Website Privacy

Like all websites, the server automatically logs your IP address, browser identification string (not a unique id, just an indicator of the name and version of your browser software, and by extension what operating system you are running it on), which page you are visiting, and which page you just came from. This happens whenever you visit any page of the site, and is outside our control (meaning that we can't turn it off).

This information contains no "personal" information, with the possible exception of the IP address. Even that doesn't really count, since most people (especially home users) have a dynamic IP address, meaning that the next time you visit, it will probably be different, and therefore useless as a means of identification.

We do not use tracking cookies (or indeed any other sort of cookies), so your privacy while browsing our site is assured. What little information we do gather is used only to improve the site (for example, by discovering and correcting broken links).

Software Privacy

There are three potential areas of privacy concern in the Pueblo/UE client software itself:

Registration

Free registration is required to continue using the Pueblo/UE software. This involves filling in a little questionnaire provided within the client itself. Information entered here (with the single exception of the street address) is then sent to our website and stored in our database. This information is not publically accessible, and will never be intentionally disclosed to any third parties. (I use the word "intentionally" because someone might hack into our system and obtain the information. But it's unlikely.)

Since Pueblo/UE does not contain any kind of unique installation, user, or computer-specific id, there is no way for anyone to correlate a particular installation of Pueblo/UE with a registration entry in our database. At the time of writing this statement, the registration info itself has not been used for anything at all -- it's been collected merely for historical reasons (ie. Pueblo 2.01 did it too). Again, we will never willingly give ANY registration details to any third parties, nor use them to send spam. We hate spam. It is possible (although unlikely) that some information may be used (in aggregate form only) to show some statistics on the website; for example, the percentages of male and female users of Pueblo/UE. But again, however we use the information, there will be no way to "reverse-engineer" it back to individual details.

World and version tracking

At certain times, Pueblo/UE will contact its central server in order to perform a version check and collect usage data. The information provided by this is stored in our database, along with the time that it occurred. While the communication is in the form of an HTTP request (thereby meaning that we receive your IP address), neither the IP address nor any other personal or computer-identifying id is stored. Specifically:

• On startup, Pueblo/UE will contact our server in order to perform a version check. If you do not have the latest version of Pueblo/UE, it will then display a dialog box informing you that a later version is available, and giving you the option of visiting our website in order to download it. The only information (other than the time) sent on this event is the version of Pueblo/UE that you are currently using.
• When you connect to or disconnect from a world, Pueblo/UE notifies us of the version you are using, the hostname, and the port number of the world. It also notifies us if the world claims to be Pueblo-enhanced or not. It's important to note that it does NOT send your username and/or password, nor does it send us any commands you enter or content displayed by the world itself. Also, since we do not store any identifying information, there is no way for us to even associate a particular connection with a disconnection, so we cannot even tell how long you are connected for.

Currently, the world connection information is not used for anything, though we do intend sometime in the future to cross-check it against the Pueblo/UE World List, thereby allowing us to determine if a certain world is Pueblo-enhanced but not listed as such (or the reverse), or if a world is popular (connected to frequently), but not listed at all -- telling us that perhaps we should add it to the list.

It's also worth pointing out that just like the registration, this is nothing new -- Pueblo 2.01 did and does the exact same thing. All of this tracking information is only stored online for a very brief time before it is transferred to offline storage, so someone hacking into our system would see very little data -- and what little they could see wouldn't be of much use to a hacker anyway, since there's nothing personal there.

World-displayed or user-entered content

Pueblo/UE provides a means whereby you can connect to a world, send commands to it, and receive content back. As far as Pueblo is concerned, this is a closed loop -- it does not send any of this information either to us or to any third parties.

However, there are two important points you should bear in mind:

• The connection is not encrypted. This means that it is possible for someone else to intercept your communication in-transit, without the knowledge of you, Pueblo, or of the world. The Internet is not an inherently secure medium. However due to the size of the Internet, the chances of this happening to you are fairly remote.
• Most clients have a logging feature. And that includes Pueblo. This means that it's possible for your words or actions to "come back to haunt you," if some witness to the event happened to have their client performing logging at the time. (Or, for that matter, simply copy&pasted it into another application.)