Use of Cookies by Forward America
[Please Note: Your browser currently accepts cookies. The following information is intended to help people without cookies. Thus, you may find this of limited value.]Summary
Cookies are tiny text files that are stored on your computer and later recalled when you visit certain web pages so that settings or other information may be kept the same from one page to the next. For more background read the Cookie Central basics.Cookies are not required to access this web site. However, if your browser does accept cookies, Forward America will make limited use of them to improve the protection of your privacy and access to your account. Inappropriate use of cookies can impact your protection and Forward America takes this very seriously. Because of this, we have taken special measures to limit our use of cookies to that which will help you -- and only you -- when visiting our site. This use of cookies cannot harm your computer.
If your browser does not accept cookies and you want the best protection for your personal information (especially if you use a publicly accessible computer), then it is strongly recommend that you flush your browser cache and quit the browser after you leave any site where you enter personal information. This is described in more detail here. (This is also good practice when using browsers that accept cookies, but is not as important at the Forward America site.)
We agree with Cookie Central that the dangerous cookie use discussed in the Cookie Controversy is inappropriate and it is against our policy. Moreover, the Cookie Bug discussed does not apply to our site (we set our cookies in the conventional way and the bug only occurs when cookies are "set in a special way.")
Enabling Support For Cookies In Your Browser
Most popular browsers provide an option to accept cookies. Each browser provides its own way for you to access this option. Generally, you should look for a menu item for "Options," "Preferences," or "Settings" (possibly in the Edit, View, or Tools menu) and look for the option to "Accept Cookies." This might be in a category of settings such as "Advanced," "Security," "Protocols," or "Network." If you do not find this setting quickly, consult your documentation or online help for your browser.Discussion
Cookies provide the opportunity for Big Brother style tracking, which makes them controversial. To address these concerns, this page describes the use of cookies at ForwardAmerica.com. This entire site was constructed with the same level of concern for protecting privacy that motivated this detailed page on the subject.The Forward America site does not require cookies. However, if your browser supports them then we will use them in a very limited fashion to provide better security and a better browsing experience.
Forward America does employ other security methods that do not require cookies, but cookies provide a helpful supplement. Specifically, Forward America uses cookies to:
Most specifically, Forward America does not use cookies to track the path you travel through our site, the number of times you hit a page, or record information about your usage across visits or into and out of our site. Cookies are only used to provide you, with the best access to your account information.
- automatically sign you off after an idle period (and enforce the policy that no page can be refreshed after you sign off), and
- save payment information in your browser for a few minutes (or until you sign off) so you do not need to re-type it.
Technical
The world wide web provides no built-in facility to remember that you have signed on to a site, as you travel from page to page. This is because each page visited is a totally independent transaction with the web server. This makes it difficult to provide security without asking for your name and password each time you click to go to the next page and it makes it difficult to pre-fill certain form fields which might otherwise compromise security (such as credit card numbers). As a result, there are a number of methods employed to get around this limitation.The first method used at Forward America is to build security information into every link so that as you travel from page to page your authorization is carried along with the requests. This gets around authorization difficulties, but does not address pre filling fields. And, besides not filling in fields, it has some user verification limitations. While we avoid some of these limitations by strategically timing out pages and requiring you to re-enter information at key points (slightly painful for you), the rest of the limitations can be overcome if you flush your browser's cache and quit the browser when you are finished, as described here (this is good advice for cookie enabled browsers as well). However, this first method results in extra work for you. Cookies can make it better.
The more advanced cookie method, also used at Forward America, allows us to provide enhanced sign on/off functionality and pre fill some critical fields. The Cookie solution asks your browser to store unique information on your computer. Subsequent pages can ask for this information back or they can request that your browser use some of the information on its own.
By sharing with your computer certain cookie related information we are able to verify you are properly signed on/off and remember some non critical information you recently entered (such as the last email address you entered). In addition, we can employ your browser's use of local Cookies and JavaScript to have your local computer remember your payment info for a few minutes. Both of these uses help overcome some of the drawbacks of the first method (passing information form page to page), and end up in streamlined operation for you while maintaining your privacy.
Specifically, using cookies allows us to provide stronger protection while offering these features:
Thank you for your concern and interest, and thanks for using Forward America.You are better protected from subsequent users of your computer accessing your account. You will not get automatically signed off as frequently. You will not need to provide as much redundant information.