Forbes is committed to safeguarding your privacy online. Please read the following statement to understand how your personal information will be treated as a subscriber to Forbes publications.

If you have any questions regarding our privacy statement, please feel free to contact us by e-mail at privacyadmin@forbes.com.

Gathering of Information

Voluntary Submission
Forbes does not collect personally identifying information about any individual Forbes subscriber except when knowingly provided by such individual. For example, we may ask you for information when you order a subscription online or access our customer service site. Certain information, however, is required to complete online customer service activities, but you always have the option not to provide the information we request.

Cookies
A cookie is a data file that certain Web sites write to your computer's hard drive when you visit such sites. A cookie file can contain information, such as a user identification code, that the site uses to track the pages you have visited. Forbes uses cookies solely to track user traffic patterns throughout the Forbes.com Web site. We use this data on an anonymous basis and we do not correlate this information with personal data of any user.

Most Web site browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually change your browser settings to display a warning before accepting a cookie, or to refuse all cookies. However, if you choose to disable the receipt of cookies from our Web site, you may not be able to use certain features of the site.

Browser Level Information
Forbes Web servers automatically collect information about a site user's IP address, browser type and referrer by reading this information from the user's browser (information provided by every user's browser). This information is collected in a database and used in an aggregated, anonymous manner in our internal analysis of traffic patterns within our Web site. This information is automatically logged by most Web sites.

Kids and Parents
Kids under 13: Do not send any information about yourself to us including information such as your name, address, or e-mail address. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. In the event that we learn we have collected any personal information from a child under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information from our database as quickly as possible.

E-mail
Forbes respects the privacy of its readers and shall not disclose or distribute its e-mail subscriber list to any third party, nor shall it permit anyone else to do so. However, Forbes does make available for rental its list of those subscribers who have expressly provided us with their permission to receive third party information and offers. Subscribers may change their communication preferences at any time by visiting our customer service site at: http://www.forbesinc.com/subservices.

How to Contact Us
If you have any questions regarding our privacy statement, please feel free to contact us by e-mail at privacyadmin@forbes.com.

This statement may change from time to time, so please check back periodically.

© 2005 Forbes Inc. All Rights Reserved.

DEFINITIONS:

IP address: Every computer connected to the Internet has a numeric address called an “IP address." This may or may not correspond uniquely to a particular computer. In some cases, IP addresses can be resolved to domain names, which may indicate a site visitor's Internet service provider, employer, university, etc. As part of its database analysis, Forbes.com resolves IP addresses to domain names.

Browser type: A user's browser is a software program running on a computer that allows users to access documents on the World Wide Web. Browsers can be either text or graphic. They read HTML coded pages that reside on a server and interpret the coding into what the user sees as Web pages. Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer are examples of Web browsers. Browser type typically discloses hardware platform, operating system, and browser software and version.

Referrer: The referrer is the URL of the Internet resource or page that causes a browser to request a page or image from Forbes.com servers.