This page outlines how The British Sitcom Guide (BSG) uses and stores personally identifiable information and also provides some information related to HTTP cookies.
"I hate direct marketing, I hate being asked for details that are frankly no-one else's business, I hate it when websites secretly profile me - basically I really hate it when my personal data is used for evil purposes! Thankfully we at the BSG are not evil so rest assured your data is totally safe with us. We will never share it, sell it or reveal it without your express permission" Mark, Chief Editor
If you choose to use any interactive elements on our website (e.g. contribute to a message board discussion, enter a competition, write a review, etc) you will require a British Sitcom Guide user account. When you create a user account or get in touch with us through our contact form we ask for some personally identifiable information. We require the following...
Email Address: The primary reason for asking for this is to ensure that you are a legitimate user and not here to cause trouble. We also ask for your email in case we need to contact you (e.g. because you've won a competition) and so that some of our more advanced features (such as DVD email alerts) will work if you opt to use them - rest assured we won't email you unless there's a very good reason.
Additional Note: Our mailing lists (e.g. our monthly newsletter) require a separate sign up - we don't automatically add you to any of our email lists when you create an account so you won't receive our newsletter updates etc unless you want them (and, if you do choose to subscribe, bear in mind you can always completely unsubscribe at any time too).
Location: This field is used to help us get a high-level understanding where our visitors are coming from. In some cases we may use this data to tailor our emails and website interface so that you get information directly relevant to your location (e.g. eventually we're looking to provide local TV listings).
The form also has spaces for the collection of a "forename" and "surname" - these are not mandatory. Should you choose to fill them in they will be used to personalise our contact with you (so we don't have to call you Mr or Mrs X), nothing else. When you interact with our systems we also store your IP address (computer ID). This is standard practice - we will only ever refer to an IP address in the case of abuse of our system so as to ban that user from accessing our website again or, should it be really serious, use it to assist in legal proceedings.
Your details will never be revealed to our other visitors unless you choose to make such information public via the relevant options on your "edit account" screen. The display name field is the name that appears next to user generated content so if you don't want people to know your real name is "Bogart Bignose" you can always choose to use a display name like "Mrs Hot Stuff"!
Whilst using one of our features you may choose to fill in some of our additional fields so as to reveal more about yourself to other visitors (e.g. adding your phone number to our writers directory). This is totally at your discretion - we will treat this extra personal information in the same sensitive way as the rest of your data.
Here's the important part... no matter how much or little information you do enter we promise we'll only ever use it to help facilitate the running of our website functionality. We will never share, sell or rent your personal information without first seeking your express permission (unless we are ordered to by a court of law). This agreement includes your email address - we will never disclose this to any third parties without your consent.
One exception to the above is our competition entry data: Occasionally we may pass entry details on to a PR firm should we not be running the competition in house. Where this is the case the PR company would use the data we supply to randomly choose winners, send out prizes and verify we haven't been making up entries. Should a PR company ever wish to use competition data for anything other than allocating prizes you will be clearly informed on the entry page.
Your data is stored online in a secure database on the sitcom.co.uk server. We will hold your personal information on our system for as long as you require access to your BSG account. To terminate your account and thus delete all related information contained within our database please contact us.
Personal email correspondence is stored offline (we use Microsoft Outlook). It is not saved once we have finished conversing with you. We do however keep a record of all our outgoing emails.
A cookie is a very small data file (which normally includes an anonymous unique identifier) that is sent to your browser by a web server and subsequently stored on your computer's hard drive. Pretty much every website with a login system from Amazon through to ZDNet uses cookies. For a more detailed explanation of what a cookie is please see Wikipedia 
Like most websites The British Sitcom Guide uses a cookie to determine whether you are logged in and, if you are signed in, "remember" that you've logged in so that next time you visit you do not need to sign in again. The cookie we create contains no personal information about you.
Our login cookie is set to expire 1 year after it was set. If you are using a shared/public computer we advise un-checking the "remember me" box on the sign in screen so that the cookie automatically deletes itself when you close your browser and thus others cannot gain access to your BSG account if they use the computer after you. You can instantly delete our cookies at any time by signing out.
Our advertising vendor TradeDoubler may send one of more cookies to your browser. Rest assured their cookies contain no personal information about you and will not be used to "track you" either - TradeDoubler uses cookies to ensure that advertising impressions and leads are correctly reported.
This document was last revised on the 31st July 2006 to include reference to our new login system.
For more information on our data usage or to clarify something above you are more than welcome to contact us - we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.