ShaleBlog.com

ShaleBlog.com provides information about natural gas from shale to visitors without charge. No log-in is required and we do not passively collect information from our visitors that would personally identify them in any way. Any information that would personally identify a visitor is typed into our website voluntarily by the visitor.

Visitor Information Logged

Our server logs each visit to our site and records the pages that have been viewed. We use this information to understand how visitors engage our website and to enable us to make informed decisions about developing new content. The logs do not contain personal information about any user and no attempt is made to identify individual users or their usage habits.

Information collected includes:

• URL web addresses that send traffic to our website (these are search engines and other websites that included a link to ShaleBlog.com)
• IP addresses (a unique number assigned to a computer when it connects to the Internet) of visitors that enter our website
• The types of browsers (e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox) used to access our site
• The operating system (Windows, Unix) used to access our site
• The date and time for each visitor's access
• The URLs of pages viewed by our visitors

We do not share the contents of our visitor log files with anyone outside of ShaleBlog.com. The only reason that we would release this information is if it is requested by a law enforcement or government agency for the purpose of an essential investigation.

Links to Other Websites

To assist our visitors in learning about natural gas from shale, we link out to other websites that have related content. When you click on one of these links you will be leaving our website. When we link to a website, we always review that site to be sure that it has quality content and to be sure that it is a site that we would recommend to our colleagues, friends, and members of our family. We do not control the content of these websites.

Advertisements

ShaleBlog.com displays the ads of companies that have directly contracted with us. All contracted ads are approved by us and the advertiser's website is inspected at the beginning of each advertising term. Each of these ads leads to a website that we would recommend to our colleagues, friends and members of our own family.

We also display ads that are sent to our website by Google.com and other ad networks. Some of these ads are selected by Google and the advertiser's subject matter is matched to the content of the page on which the ads are displayed or to the overall theme of our website. These advertisers are required to comply with the Google Ad Content Policy. We regularly inspect these ads and believe that Google does a very good job of delivering content that matches the topics of our website. In the few instances that we have seen an ad that contained questionable content we have installed manual filters to ban ads from that advertiser. Any ad sent to our website from an ad network was inspected by us prior to allowing that ad to appear. Display of an ad on this website does not imply a relationship or endorsement between ShaleBlog.com and the company other than acceptance of payment for display of the ad.

Some of our advertisers use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites). You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.

Interaction with Children

ShaleBlog.com complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). We make no attempt to passively or actively collect information from children. Children are able to write to us on their own initiative and we will reply to them on a one-time basis to provide educational information related to natural gas from shale. We will not recontact them for other reasons or share any details of their contact with anyone outside of ShaleBlog.com. Transactions in our store are not knowingly accepted from children.

Getting in Touch With ShaleBlog.com

ShaleBlog.com is owned by Hobart King, PhD. a licensed professional geologist registered in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He can be reached by mail at 115 Southwood Drive, Uniontown, PA 15401, phone at 570-439-0324. Dr. King holds degrees in geology from California University of Pennsylvania (B.S. 1975) and West Virginia University (M.S. 1978, Ph.D. 1982). From 1980 until 1994 he was a geologist at the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, holding positions as coal geologist, economic geologist and Head of the Economic Minerals and Geologic Hazard Section. He taught geology at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania from 1994 until 2008. He is retired and writes content for a number of websites and organizations.