RealNav Privacy Policy
This policy covers how RealNavData.com
("RealNav") treats e-mail and spam, and the privacy of our
customers.
SPAM, as defined here will mean: The mass electronic
distribution of unsolicited e-mail to individual e-mail
accounts, aliases, or mailing lists and archives.
OUR POLICY
Our policy is quite simple: we don't send spam,
and we don't sell our customer contact information.
We do not send emails of any kind to anybody
unless it is a direct reply to a question sent to us, or to
communicate a specific business issue to one or more specific
individuals. We have not and
will not send emails of any kind to our contact list, nor will
we contract others to do so on our behalf.
THINGS WE CAN CONTROL
Although spammers typically have their own unscrupulous ISP's,
and their own servers, they do on occasion attempt to hijack a
legitimate company's resources to use as a launching platform
for their spam. To combat this, we employ the latest in
firewalls, security controls, user authentication, and other
security measures to prevent the abuse of our facilities and
services. As new technology emerges, we phase in those new
approaches to control any unauthorized use of our resources.
Some companies go so far as to eliminate email as a method for
customers to contact them, however, we will continue to make our
support email address known to the public so our customers can
contact us with questions.
THINGS WE CANNOT CONTROL
Unfortunately, protecting our servers and our networks is not
enough. Spammers can, with very little effort, send their
annoying spam emails from their own sites, using their own
computers, while affixing a "legitimate" email address in the
"From" line of the message. It's possible for someone to receive
an email that appears to have come from one of our published
support email addresses (as well as other legitimate email
addresses from other legitimate companies), and while the email
did not originate from our servers, and was not sent by any of
our personnel, the recipient only sees a "sender email address"
that references our help desk or one of our publicly known
addresses. Usually, spammers acquire these legitimate email
addresses the same way you do, by looking at our website for how
to contact us. Then they just "forge" their email to appear as
if it came from us. They didn't hack our server, they didn't
compromise any of our resources, they simply packaged their
email to appear as if it came from someone other than
themselves. (It's analogous to going to a print shop and
printing envelopes with a return address from the IRS or other
government entity, then sending out letters as if they came from
that entity). The easiest way to check if you have received a
forged email to you is to look at the email "headers". If you
use Microsoft Outlook, click on View > Options to see a
particular note's headers. Other email systems have similar
methods to see the header information for a note. The
originating internet IP address should be visible in those
headers, and will usually point to the true origin of the note,
most often from another country where United States law
enforcement has little jurisdiction.
Questions and Suggestions
We are always interested in reducing spam, and protecting our
facilities from abuse. If you have questions or suggestions,
please contact us.