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204 E. 2nd Avenue
San Mateo, CA 94401
Tel: + (650) 265-7473
Email: guid@guid.org |
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| FAQ |
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What exactly do you guys do?
We generate a Global Unique IDentifier for your browser. We then set a cookie that contains only that GUID and no additional information. When you browse other sites on the internet, they may ask us to supply that same GUID to them. We have no personally identifiable information about you, and we keep no record of your visits to GUID.org or any other site.
What exactly is a GUID?
A GUID is a nonsense string that is specifically designed to be different for each browser. We make sure the strings are different by using mod_uniqueid, which encodes the exact time, the server you hit, and the process ID of the web server into letters and numbers. For more details, see the GUID.org integration documentation..
What are cookies?
Wikipedia has a great explanation of cookies.
What's my GUID?
Your GUID can be seen at the bottom of this page.
How do I see my other cookies?
AboutCookies.org can help you learn to see and manage your cookies.
Are you collecting data on me?
No. We collect no data on you. We do NOT track what sites you visit, we do NOT even record your IP address. We only create a GUID for you if you do not already have one, and supply it to sites that request it. We don't even store the GUID we create, and have no way to re-generate it if you lose it.
Exactly what data do you keep?
In technical terms, we have turned off logging entirely except for storing your referring URL domain for tracking usage. We also count opt-outs, but again, without any other info except where they come from. In particular, we do NOT keep your GUID, IP address, browser "fingerprint", nor anything else about your visit. We are not able to provide any info about your surfing habits to anyone, even law enforcement, because we do not keep it.
C'mon, really, you guys are just enabling me to be tracked everywhere, aren't you?
Cookie-exchange is already happening all over the internet. We are doing two things: giving you an easy and permanent way to opt out of all the cookie exchanging that goes through GUID.org, and helping your pages load faster by only doing cookie exchange once instead of 5-50 times on each page. We do make the cookie exchange a little easier, but getting rid of GUID.org will not get rid of cookie exchanging.
Is a GUID personally identifiable, like a name and address, phone number, or an IP address?
No, a GUID stores no information about you, it is only a unique number that is used to identify your browser in an anonymous way. GUID.org stores no information about you at all, not even your GUID.
How can GUID.org enhance my privacy?
By providing a central opt-out, users who are particularly sensitive can opt out in one place for all the sites that are GUID enabled, saving substantial time and effort. There is also a more subtle privacy enhancement: with a common GUID, an ad network has the ability to buy specific impressions from a site. Before GUID, the ad network had to look at every impression to see they wanted it, thus potentially giving the ad network quite a bit of extra data about the site's users.
I'd like to opt out.
Sure, click here to opt out. Remember that unlike catalogs or email lists, opting out doesn't give you fewer ads, just less relevant ones. And you make it just a little harder to keep giving you all that great free content.
I opted out, but now I'd like to opt back in.
Great, welcome back! Click here to opt back in.
You could make a lot of money by collecting the data and selling it, why don't you?
That would defeat the purpose. All the big exchanges and ad technology companies would like to lock up the market by making their cookie the "one true" identifier, but everyone is afraid that one player will get too much power. By being a simple service, and keeping no data ourselves, we can be truly neutral.
How do you pay for your servers/storage/bandwidth/monitoring?GUID.org is free for less than 10 million requests per month. Above 10m we charge our larger customers a small fee based on traffic. This is why we log the referring domain, so we can keep track of who to charge.
I'm a publisher/agency/advertiser/ad network/data exchange/somebody else who wants to use this service - how do I get started? Learn more about GUID.org integration.
How do I know you can scale to my traffic?
GUID.org is designed to scale to handle the needs of the largest sites on the web. The service is built on the Amazon Web Services scalable infrastructure, with geographically distributed redundant data centers, and automatically grows to meet spikes in demand. Learn more about GUID.org integration.
What happens if you go down?
We are built on a scalable, redundant infrastructure, so it is highly unlikely we would go down for technical reasons. We know those are famous last words, though, so we also designed our GUID tag to be resilient to failure. GUID.org enjoys the support of many major web sites, and will stay around until we are rendered irrelevant by the next major technological advance, and cookies go back to meaning something people eat.
Who do I call for support?
Support is provided to paying users. Contact us, and we will respond as soon as we can. |
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