Altær is committed to protecting your privacy.

• Personal user information and data provided will never be shared with any 3rd parties.
• All outside requests for member contact information or data will be denied both to members and non-members of the community.
• Data shared with Altær leadership and/or made public (only at a user's request) to the members of this community through this website will be stored in one of the most secure database applications available at the time of this website's creation (Microsoft SQL Server).
• Data shared (only at a user's request) in the member directory is protected by another level of privacy that allows only members attending Altær to access user information.
• Member passwords are stored as encrypted values. No webmaster or Altær member, leader, overseer of any kind will unencrypt a user's password without the user's expressed permission.
• No unsolicited emails will be sent to the email address specified in a user's Alter607.com account. For more information on what types of email a user will recieve, see section titled Email communications below.

Alter607.com is a website with the intended usage of enabling and enhancing communication between members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship's Altær community. For that reason, registration is required in order to use features such as the message boards, member directory, online audio, photo gallery, and other similar features.

The following data is required in order to register on Alter607.com: First Name, Last Name, Email address, Login name, and password. Any attempts to falsify or submit false informatin can result in disabling a user account and disallowing future registrations, and subjects a user to the possiblity of I.P. banishment from the Alter607.com website. By registering on Alter607.com a user therefore agrees to share any provided data with the Altær leadership team and overseers.

Alter607.com provides an online real-time member directory which includes the user's contact information. Participation in the directory is entirely optional. A user may specify in an account what data the user would like to allow others to see. (See following paragraph for details on how to do this)

In the registration process, or profile update page, the user may specify what information he/she would like to share with the community. The options include:

1. All provided information
2. Only email address
3. None (NOTE: "login name" will always be available to other users, even if "none" is chosen)

Please note that choosing the option to share "none" of a user's data may disallow access for a user to certain features of the site including but not limited to the Message Boards. The reason for this is so that "anonymous" posting is disallowed from the Message Boards.

Membership Verification
As an added level of security in protecting users' privacy, the member directory is only available to verified attending members of the Altær community, or those closely connected to the attending community. The definition of "verified attending member" is up to the sole discretion of the Altær and it's overseers and leaders. The process by which someone is "verified" as a member may include one of the following:

1. Attending Sunday worship services at which a password may be obtained through the community table. This password can then be entered on the member directory page. The password need only be entered one time to verify a user's membership.
2. Access may be granted or denied at the sole discretion of Altær's leader and overseers.

Membership verification is up to the sole discretion of Altær's leader and overseers and may be revoked at any time without cause. Typical actions which may result in such revocation might include but are not limited to falsifying information, attempting to manipulate the website in an inappropriate or illegal manner, using member information for purposes degrading to other members, attempting to inappropriately give away or sell member information, sending inappropriate, threating, or otherwise unwanted or unsolicited email or communication of any type to members within the community, whether registered or unregistered.

Email Communications
Altær will periodically send "mass" emails to the community members who, in their Alter607.com account profile, have agreed to receive email communications. A user may therefore, upon registration or subsequent to registration by updating an existing profile, "opt out" of any email communications. These emails are solely for the purpose of official Altær announcements. The definition of "official Altær announcements" is up to the sole discretion of the Altær leader and overseers.

Email notices sent from Alter607.com are, by default, sent as HTML emails. A user may specify at any time during registration or subsequent to the registration process via the "update profile" process to receive all email as text-only.

Without regard for a user's preference as to whether to receive email communications from Alter607.com, several processes will unconditionally generate and send an email to the email address specified in a user's account. All such email communications will be sent as HTML email unless specified in the user's account to send text-only email. These processes include, but are not limited to:

1. Registration
2. Forgotten password request
3. Account update

Cookie usage
No personal informatin is stored in cookies on Alter607.com.

Modern web applications typically leverage a technology called "cookies". Cookies are text files, or data stored in text files, that help a website retain information for return trips. Alter607.com utilizes this technology for the following list of features:

1. To tell the web application that this user has currently logged in, and indicate which user it is that has logged in.
2. To tell the web application when their "session" expires. Sessions are currently set to expire after one (1) hour of inactivity.
3. To tell the web application that a user has opted not be displayed in the "Who's Online" feature of the website (see section below "Who's Online" policy for more information).

Cookies are safe and secure. A cookie can only be read by the web application domain which set it. Therefore, when "www.Alter607.com" sets a cookie, other websites cannot access the data in that cookie. Cookies are specific only to requests by the same browser. (In effect, if a user has a cookie set using Netscape, Internet Explorer won't recognize the same cookie.).

There are two types of cookies: 1. Session cookies and 2. Persisting cookies. Session cookies "expire" (they are deleted) as soon as a user closes all instances of the web browser in use. ("An instance" means in this case is the browser that a user started with, and any new browser windows opened by pressing Ctrl+N in Internet Explorer and the equivalent in other browsers). The first features listed above are this type of cookie.

Persisiting cookies last until a user clears their cookies through the options menu in their browser, until the expiration date is reached, or until the application which set it clears it. The "Who's Online" cookie is a persistent cookie, so as to maintain the user's desire to not be shown in the "Who's Online" section in future visits to Alter607.com.

Data stored in cookies on this website does not include personal information, but does include the login name.

"Who's Online" policy
This website includes a feature for logged in users to see which users are currently online. Generally on the rightmost column displayed on the website, a list of "login name" values appear in this box, with an optional parenthetical describing a user's "idle time". "Idle time" is defined as the elapsed time since their last page request. After two hours of "idle time" a login name will be removed from this list.

Participation in this feature is optional. By default, the feature is turned on. To disable this feature, click the link below the box indicating to hide a user's name from the list. Clicking this link will remove the user from this box for all user page loads subsequent to the user choosing to hide his or her name from the list. He or she may re-enable the feature at any time by then clicking the link indicating to add the user to the list.

Disabling of this feature is achieved through the setting of a persistent cookie indicating that users of the computer terminal making the request wish not to display their user name. Therefore, the next time any user returns to the website from the same terminal making the request, the feature will be disabled automatically. This cookie will last until the user re-enables the feature, "clears" the cookies in his or her browser, or until January 1, 2049, whichever comes first. Re-enabling the feature phsically deletes the cookie from the computer terminal browser.

"Remember Me" policy
Upon login, a user may choose to click "remember me". Effectively, this allows a user to never need to login again.

In this case, the cookie values described above all become "persisting" cookies, and therefore will remain on your computer, for all current and future instances of the browser (IE, Firefox, Netscape, etc will not share the value, only the current browser "brand") for 365 days after your last page load, or until you click logout, at which time the entire cookie is destroyed.

Note: The entire cookie is always destroyed upon logout. The exception is the cookie for the "Who's Online" value, as displayed above.