Our Web Site Policies

We do not seek or accept any advertisements or sponsorship of any type, and we do not benefit financially from any links or endorsements on our site.

This Web site should work in any graphical or non-graphical browser or user agent, including screen readers.  However, it will only look how it is supposed to in browsers that fully and accurately support current W3C Web Standards including XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1.  It also looks almost right in Internet Explorer 5.5, 6 and 7.  Current 'Gecko-based' browsers such as Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape (7+) are the most accurate, Opera (7+) and Safari are very close.

The only exception to this policy is our 'Horde' groupware facility, which we did not write ourselves and which is unlikely to work in non-graphical browsers.

We strongly recommend NOT using Internet Explorer.  For safety and efficiency we recommend Firefox for most users.  Web sites that only work in Internet Explorer are badly written, and fortunately are now rare and becoming rarer.

Client-side scripting and programming technologies such as JavaScript, Java, ActiveX, VBScript are not required.  All the Web page processing is carried out on our Web server.

The only exception to this policy is our 'Horde' groupware facility, which we did not write ourselves and which does require JavaScript.

The only proprietary technologies we use are Flash v6 for animations and PDF v1.4 (Portable Document Format, or 'Acrobat') for printable documents.  Free reader software is available for both of these formats and is installed on our school clients' computers as a matter of course.

This site contains no material which a parent is likely to consider unsuitable for children.  However, the content is specifically aimed at school teachers and other responsible adults rather than school-age children.  The site content rating is registered with ICRA and labelled using the ICRA PICS-based content rating system.

In general, this Web site does not use cookies since many people are wary of them and it is perfectly possible to do without for any legitimate purpose, including e-commerce.

The only exception to this policy is our 'Horde' groupware facility, which we did not write (it is Open Source) and which does require session cookies to be enabled.  The default settings for Internet Explorer 4, 5 and 6 allow session cookies, which are temporary and safe.

In general, the design and content of this Web site are copyright © 2004-8 by RS infotech.  Where any part is not, this is indicated in the content or the source code, as appropriate.

This Web site should work through any normally configured firewall since we use the standard ports.

The only exception to this is our 'Horde' groupware facility, which we did not write ourselves and which requires port 2095.  At the time of writing this is not a problem if you are using the LancsNGfL intranet for your Internet connection.  Please let us know if you have any firewall-related problems.

RS infotech does not have any objection to any Web site or publication linking to any root-level page or internal anchor within www.rs-infotech.com (deep-linking) for any non-malicious purpose, provided that you do not disguise the URL.  In fact we enthusiastically encourage you to link to us and tell all your colleagues about us too!  We do not permit 'hot-linking' to resources such as images or 'code-ripping' of content such as our Encyclopaedia.

All the site's pages are PHP scripts at the Web root level.  The page names are case-sensitive.  For example this page is http://www.rs-infotech.com/Policies.php.  Anchors within pages are shown in the markup as <id> tags and can be used in the normal way after the page script name.  e.g. to link to this section use: http://www.rs-infotech.com/Policies.php#Linking.

If you let us know that you are linking to our site (and which page/anchor), we will try to keep you updated with relevant changes such as if we move or delete the page/anchor.

We guarantee that we will safeguard the privacy of anyone who provides us with personal information such as their name or e-mail address.  This means that we will take all reasonable steps to store and transmit the information securely and we will not use the information for any purposes other than those for which it was explicitly provided.  In particular we will not sell or give the information to anyone else and we will not send unsolicited marketing e-mails.

We would hope that other people and organisations treat us the same way, but unfortunately that is not always the case.

Security on the Internet cannot be 100% guaranteed, even by filthy-rich banks, but at RS infotech we do our best to minimise the risks.  Client details such as e-mail addresses and passwords are not stored on clients' computers, they are stored encrypted in a secure central database and only transmitted using secure encryption methods such as PKI and SSL.

There isn't a lot we (or anyone) can do about the way you use a website, unless you infringe our copyright or hot-link to resources on our server.  So we haven't wasted our time devising complex terms of use.

Basically, as with everything else on the public Internet, you are free to use (but not steal) our site and its content for any non-tortious and non-commercial purposes but it is at your own risk.  Confidential information is covered under other headings.

We measure 'page hits' statistically so that we know which pages are popular and which aren't.  If you log in we record which pages and which documentation you access, for the same reason, and as a security audit trail for obvious reasons.

We do not track the use of any links to other sites.

School documentation is only made available on our website under the terms of a written contract between RS infotech and your school.  ICT Co-ordinators may Login on this site to view or download their contract in PDF format.