Privacy Policy

When I decided to create these calculators (1995 or 1996), privacy was just beginning to be an issue on the internet.  It was a big issue for me.  I didn't want any financial calculations being sent across the internet and executed by a server computer.  So, I decided to write the calculator code in JavaScript.  At that time, it was the only client-side internet language that would load and execute the calculations in a timely manner.

For those of you who don't know what client-side or server-side applications are:
Client-side means that the code is executed by your own browser on your own computer.  Information is not sent across the internet where it can be stored in a server's database and viewed by others.
Server-side means that all of the variables that you type in are sent across the internet to be executed by a computer somewhere else.  All this information could be viewed and stored by the creator -or anyone else with whom the creator wants to share the data.  Generally, the server-side applications are slower because you have to wait for your values to be sent to the server, executed and then sent back to your computer across the internet.

Although I would like to doubt that anyone would care about having this information, it was important to me to make sure that the data in the calculations remain private.  Most of the online internet calculators that I see are written in CGI scripts (including Perl, C, Java, or Visual Basic).  The nice thing about these is that they're compatible with most operating systems and browsers, and the code is easier for the creator to protect.  The bad thing, and for me the deal breaker, is that they're server-side applications.

To cut this long and, as I've been told, boring story short, all of these calculators have been written with your privacy and security in mind.