To enable us to establish and maintain your account, and to transmit messages sent to you in conjunction with that account. Your handle and e-mail address, and the password that we provide to you, are also necessary to modify or delete an account. Your e-mail address will also be used to verify that your e-mail address is valid, and may be used to send important information about MySpamSponge.com to you, such as a notification of new services or tips to help maximize your use and enjoyment of this site or its services. We will never send spam to you, nor we will tolerate anyone else doing it.

A cookie is a text file stored on your computer's hard drive that can be used to identify your computer and enable us to remember you and what you previously entered in a form when you return to our site and move from page to page within it. Internet users are often very concerned about the privacy and security implications of cookies (*see below), so we use cookies only for technical reasons (explained in the section below on Session information) and as a convenience for you so that our server can recognize your computer to save you the bother of re-entering your handle, name, or e-mail address when you use our site in the future. If you do not want our server to automatically recognize your computer, do not check the box next to "Remember me." We do not use cookies to collect private information from any user. In summary, we use cookies only as a convenience to you to help save you time, and to give your browser the "memory" it needs to use this site. We do not use cookie data in any malicious way.

*According to an independent source (PC World magazine, April 2006, page 140), a cookie is generally not a threat to your privacy because it typically exchanges information only with the site that placed it.

Session information is somewhat similar to that in cookies, but it is stored on the server instead of your computer, which enhances its security (reference: PHP for the World Wide Web by Larry Ullman, Second Edition, page 261). However, the session number (which permits our server to differentiate your computer from others accessing our site as you and others move from page to page within it) is stored on your computer as a cookie, so you must enable cookies in your browser to use this site. Importantly, the session number contains no personal information about you.

Why are cookies and session information necessary? If you are familiar with web programming, you know that the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP, which you will likely recognize as the prefix http://) is a stateless technology that does not remember data as a user moves from page to page in a multi-page web site. Programmers routinely use session information to overcome this limitation and transmit data from page to page. In our site, for example, when you register, we collect information from you on separate pages. We first ask for your e-mail address, and then the password you want to use. Finally, we ask that you choose a handle (contact code). Our server needs to know all three of those things (your e-mail address, password, and handle) at once when it creates your account, so we use session data to do that. In summary, we use session data only to help our server remember what you entered. We do not use session data in any malicious way.