Our site recognizes you by the cookie that is stored on your computer. If the cookie has been removed from your computer, or if you are using a different computer to access the site, it cannot recognize you because the cookie associated with your personal settings is not there.

We restore your personalized settings for you when you Sign In. You control when and how our web site server remembers you.

If you don't want the site server to remember you, there is an option when you Sign Out to clear the cookie from the computer that you are using at that time.

If you are using a public computer (such as those in schools, public libraries or cyber-cafes) to access the web, always Sign Out and make sure to check the button that says "Do Not Remember Me On This Computer". This will erase the personalization cookie from that computer.

Remember that you can always restore your personalized settings by Signing In again.

Since only our servers can understand what we write in the cookie that we place on your computer, it does not pose any security risk to you or your computer. Our cookie contains a random sequence of numbers that don't make sense to anyone but our web server. No person or computer can decipher the cookie, and even if they could it would not mean anything to them.

"Cookies" are small pieces of information stored by your browser on your computer. Our cookies contain a unique identifier that only we can recognize. They do not contain any personal identification information (such as e-mail address or password.)

When you visit our web site, our server looks for our cookie. If it finds a cookie it recognizes on your computer, the web site begins to display your personalized information. You know it's working when you see your name displayed on the home page. However, unless you explicitly Sign In to our web site, you cannot access your private information such as your personal profile.

We encourage you to Sign In when you visit our site and Sign Out every time you leave your computer unattended. Even without a cookie, you can still use most of the features on our site, but cookies enable us to provide features such as personalization and access to expanded functionality.

If you are interested in seeing what's in your cookie simply do a Find File on your computer for the word "cookie." You should see a number of cookie files depending on how your computer is configured and which browsers you have installed. Try opening up the file using Notepad, Word or SimpleText. Just be sure not to edit or change the cookie.