Why and how does this web site use cookies?

This site uses cookies to verify your identity after logging in and to manage your session while logged in.

For your convenience, cookies are also used to store filter and sort settings, so you don't have to re-select them each time you view the various pages, or each time you login.

To change or verify whether Internet Explorer 6.0 allows cookes:

1. From the Tools menu, select Internet Options.   2. Select the Privacy tab.   3. Click the Edit button.   4. Enter the following web site address:       http://www.enhancedstandard.com     5. Click the Allow button.   6. Click the OK button.   7. Click the Apply button.   8. Close Internet Explorer and open it again. Note: the changes do not take effect until you do this.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files stored on your computer by web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape. They are used to keep track of settings or data for a particular Web site.

Web sites have no other way of knowing who is viewing a web page, or what preferences or selections were previously made while browsing the web site.

Cookies facilitate a better user experience during a web browsing session by allowing the web browser and web site to communicate this type of information. Because your browser will only send the cookies to the web site that originally created them, cookies are very secure.

Cookies are currently the only way to save session information between visits to various web pages without requiring you to login before viewing each page.

Should you be concerned?

Although cookies can be disabled for your browser, this is only necessary for those few people with extreme security or privacy concerns. Doing so achieves only a small amount of perceived privacy, and sacrifices much of the possible convenience in web site browsing.

For example, a Web site can track the following information with or without cookies:

The address of the page containing the link you clicked to get to the web site. All the pages you visit while browsing the web site. Choices you make on forms. The browser you are using. Any extensions you have added to your browser. Your computer's operating system. The time on your computer's clock. The IP address of the computer, server or firewall that connects you to the Internet.

Cookies merely allow web sites to remember this information across multiple visits, thus enabling them to customize future sessions according to your preferences.

However, web sites do not have access to personal information such as your name or your e-mail address, unless you specifically give it to them. They have no way of matching you with any data gathered during a web browsing session.

The only information available to a web site which might help to identify you is the IP address of your computer.

However, most internet service provides frequently change the IP address assigned to you. In fact, most dial-up providers assign a new IP address each time you connect to the internet.

Also, most organizations hide the individual IP addresses of their computers and allow only one IP address for the entire organization to be visible to web sites.