The American Rails Privacy Policy

The American-Rails.com Privacy Policy is quite simple: Any and all personal information collected at the site is seen strictly by myself and no one else.

The personal information – First Name, E-mail Address, and Country - collected at the site via the Contact Forms is merely to aid in being able to respond to your requests and questions. I, in no way, use this information to be given to outside or third parties. Likewise, including your Street Address, City, State/Province, and Zip/Postal Code are purely optional if you do not feel comfortable submitting this information.

To tell you a little about the General Forms used on the site, they are used in place of the site’s e-mail address so as to protect myself from SPAM and any other online threats. Like you, I certainly do not want this garbage coming into my inbox and the forms are in place to prevent such from occurring. When you send me a message on the form the IP address is tracked and included with it. Your IP address may change each time you visit the site, or it may be the same, depending on whether you access the site through an always-on type of Internet connection or through a dial-up connection. Your IP address does not disclose or collect any personal information. All of this information is only entered into the site’s database where it is used to generate overall reports on the visitors who come to the site.

Via the Traffic Analysis Software on the site, a tiny file known as a "cookie" is placed on your computer's hard drive. A cookie simply allows me to see if you have visited American Rails and nothing more. Cookies contain no personally identifiable information that would allow me to track or identify you. Cookies also cannot be used for anything such as reading information off of your hard drive or retrieving such from any other cookies created by other sites. Cookies are used in this manner only to help me understand how visitors use the site as well as helping to continually improve American Rails. If you would like you are welcome to refuse to accept cookies by following the procedures specific to your web browser. Although, by doing so, you may find that your browser reacts a bit oddly when visiting not only American Rails, but other web sites as well.

Also of note regarding cookies is their use by Google, Inc. on the site. Some Google services are used on American-Rails.com and beginning April, 2009 the company is employing a new service called interest-based advertising. In a nutshell the new program simply places a cookie (specifically known as a "DoubleClick cookie") on your computer to determine your interests as you visit various websites and surf the web. Then, the Google advertisements you see here on American-Rails.com are meant to be more in tune with your interests, whatever they may be. I do understand that some may find such services invasive so if you would rather not have these cookies tracked on your computer please click here to visit Google's Ads Preferences page to opt out of the interest-based advertising program. Also, for more information about Google's use of the DoubleClick cookie and how ads appear on your computer please click here to visit the company's Advertising and Privacy page.

In regards to the Trackside newsletter, I will ask you for your First Name and E-mail Address. Again, collecting this information is only to be able to send the newsletter to you as well as greeting you on the newsletter, and subscribing to it is completely optional on your part. If you ever wish that you no longer want to receive the newsletter you can easily unsubscribe by following instructions on every issue of the newsletter. Rest assured that I will comply with your request and you will no longer receive the monthly newsletter.

As always your interest in American Rails is greatly appreciated and I hope that you will come back to visit often because there is always new stuff being added! Take care and best regards,

~ Adam Burns

American-Rails.com