I don't take personal information
All I do is check server logs to make sure I'm below my bandwidth limit in visitors per month and check the country codes of my visitors as provided by their hostname string out of general interest. It's possible to volunteer true information when registering for the forums, but it's just as easy to use a pseudonym and straw email address.

Use of cookies
Cookies — small text files stored on a visitor's computer — are set to a value of true or false for anyone who votes in the poll and are used to identify whether one is logged in to the forums.

In the case of the poll, this is done to prevent ballot stuffing, and the cookie neither reads nor stores any other info about the user's machine or identity. As for the forums, since participation in these requires a user to register, the site needs to remember if you're logged on in order to attribute the right posts to the right user name.

The news headline feed may try to deposit cookies on your machine beyond my control, however. My advice if you choose not to allow that is to adjust your browser settings so that cookies coming from a third-party cannot be set.

Why am I reassuring you?
I've seen some shady stuff go on when the aggregation of personal info gets into the wrong hands. I'm paranoid myself, so I thought my visitors would like to know that I don't track or sell or store that stuff.