As a participant in this experiment, we will make all practical efforts to ensure that your information is kept completely confidential. The entire experiment will be conducted through our password protected server,which resides physically at Columbia University in New York. All data associated with the experiment will be located solely on the hard drive of this machine. A single backup copy will be maintained on a separate, external hard drive that will not be connected to any machine other than the original server. No-one except the research team has access to the physical machine and to the data itself.

Because all messages will be sent by our server, your name will only be available to the person whom you choose as the next link and this person must already be your own acquaintance. Thus, there is no possibility that two participants, who may well be unknown to each other, will have their names or any personal information revealed to each other. We will only publish statistics and data from which you, or any other participant in the experiment, cannot be identified.