Any/all e-mail addresses sent to News 8 Austin as the result of correspondence and the sharing of information in the Interactive Viewer Center will not be used or collected for the purposes of reselling to a third party and will not be added to a bulk e-mailing list.
Cookies
The News 8 Austin Web site collects no personally identifying information about users except when specifically and knowingly provided by such individuals via e-mail and the Interactive Viewer Center. This site may place a "cookie" in the browser files of a user's computer. The cookie itself contains no personal information. The information contained within it is intended to enhance the online experience of the user. By having this information, Web pages optimized for a particular visitor's computer are automatically made available to that visitor.
Cookies on news8austin.com perform four functions: remember the geographical preference of the user, remember the user’s browser type, permit voting in the poll and store selected video clips for viewing.
By using the Local News section of the site, cookies remember which geographic location the viewer selects. The next time you return to the Local News section the cookie will allow the site to present news most relevant to you on top.
Remembering the browser type, tells the site how to react to the user’s clicks on certain sections, primarily within the weather section.
In order to prevent people from voting multiple times in our online polls, we add an "I voted" element to our cookie. This hopefully prevents most attempts at skewing the results. If you do not permit cookies, or if you have spyware software that blocks our cookie, you won't be able to participate in the poll.
With cookies enabled while using the Build Your Own Newscast function, the viewer can queue up numerous video clips to watch in sequence. Without cookies, the viewer can only see one clip at a time.
Sometimes news8austin.com will serve ad banners from one of several national advertising agencies. These ad campaigns can plant an additional cookie on your computer to fit their needs. Typically cookies of this nature do the following:
 | | Consists only of a randomly-generated, unique ID number |
| | The number is used by their system to track any user's visit to their site and conversion (signing up) rate to their products |
| | They contain nothing about the person's computer, nor does it grab any information from any files in their computer |
| | This ID number is stored in their system for the generation of reports for their clients |
| | The reports that are turned over to the clients contain no ID numbers, they only contain the clicks and conversions and the referring site |
Software commonly known as spyware will flag cookies of this nature because they're generated instantly as the national ad banner is being displayed on the page.
Weather Buddy
Weather Buddy is made possible by News 8 Austin and Time Warner Cable of Austin. Users of this program are under no obligation to do so. News 8 Austin and Time Warner Cable of Austin make no warranty, expressed or implied with respect to this product. Users who download and install Weather Buddy will not hold News 8 Austin or Time Warner Cable of Austin liable for any personal computer problems directly or indirectly caused by this product.
Data submitted by viewers who use Weather Buddy is not retained or collected or used for the purposes of reselling to a third party and will not be added to a bulk e-mailing list.
Site statistics
We use LiveStats for our statistics information. LiveStats.NET uses page-embedded script and custom cookies to track the number of visits made by unique visitors to our web site. Gathering its statistics from web browsers, each visitor is remembered and tracked by LiveStats.NET using a unique anonymous ID.
