Frequently Asked Questions:

• How can I best find information on diving Cozumel/Indonesia/Vanuatu/wherever?
•  I'm an Online Member and cannot login
• Can I get a printed/online copy of the current Chapbook.
• I no longer get any emails from Undercurrent, why?
• The pdf issues displays/prints incorrectly in Firefox
• I cannot download/read any of the back issues/latest Chapbook's (pdf files) -- why? 
• I'm an Online Member but can't find the back issues/Chapbooks -- where are they?
• I'm an Online Member and forgot my username &/or password -- how do I get in?
• I'm an Online Member and get an error when trying to read one (or some) articles but I can read others -- help
• PDF files have checkered background
• I need help with PDF files
• Why is my password sent in plain text?
• Is my credit card info safe with you?
• What is your Privacy Policy?

How can I best find information on diving Cozumel/Indonesia/Vanuatu/wherever?

The Undercurrent website is a very large website, with a large amount of information on diving virtually anywhere in the world, as well as other aspects of diving (e.g. dive gear, health and safety issues, books, news, ...) Here are some suggestions on how you can easily find information from our website on diving virtually anywhere:

-- Anytime you want to find some info on any given dive destination, e.g. Fiji or  Indonesia, start at the appropriate Dive Destination Guide (DD) page, those are our basic organizing page for local dive info..You can readily get to those pages from one or more pages listed on our nav bar under "Destination Guides", e.g World and Central & Western Pacific. From there, choose the dive destination of interest, e.g. Fiji & Tuvalu and Indonesia. There you'll find info and links to just about everything we have related to that dive destination: articles, reader reports, dive operators, ...

-- For more info on particular dive operators, best probably to then go to the associated reader reports (RR) pages (linked from the DD page), or perhaps select just the reports on a particular dive operator, e.g. Grand Komodo in Indonesia linked from the RR page. If the operator is not listed separately, you can sort page(s) by "Dive Op/Resort" and then find the one(s) of interest.

-- One powerful tool to use in many cases is the Mini Chapbook feature (mostly aimed at subscribers).  Here you can readily assemble a collection of reader reports (viewable onscreen, or downloadable as a pdf) for whatever criteria you want to select.  For example, you can quickly create a collection of all our reader reports dealing with liveaboards in Fiji by going to
Mini Chapbook (linked from the RR page and in the nav bar for subscribers) where you can specify only liveaboards, RR's for the past 4 years, and even restrict to those about certain areas (e.g. Kadavu, Bligh Waters, ...).  And organized how you want.  Viewable as html online or it will generate a pdf for you.

-- our site search is intended only as an additional means to find specific info that you couldn't find otherwise.  It's not intended to be used as the main interface to find what you want.

-- For virtually any public page of ours, e.g. article or reader report, there is a direct link to the corresponding subscribers version of the page ("Active subscribers go here"), and that's best for subscribers to use. A subscriber can get a login prompt anytime he/she goes to a subscribers-only page and has not yet logged in.  So you do not need to go to the login page first, just follow whatever link you want to go to, and when you complete the login info, you'll be there.  And your login will last throughout your session.  Note that
subscriber versions are the same URL as the public ones, but with "/members" immediately before the "/UCnow", e.g.
https://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/diveGuides/Indonesia.php becomes
https://www.undercurrent.org/members/UCnow/diveGuides/Indonesia.php

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I am an Online Member and cannot login

Note that you must use your username (NOT your email address) and password that you chose when you signed up for membership. If you can't remember your username or password, see here

Are you sure that your subscription hasn't expired? You can have your subscription information sent to you by email automatically here. If it has expired, you can renew easily by going to your My Account page.

Occasionally a browser (Chrome Firefox, Safari, ...) will not let you login no matter what you try -- either it just says "not authorized" immediately and/or never gives you the chance to enter your username and password. This can happen if the browser has somehow gotten confused about your username/password. There are a number of ways to overcome this:

• go to our Login page and try from there -- this will fix most problems..
• use another browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari)
• force the browser to erase its memory of these by clearing your temporary internet files/cache/logins. You might then have to shut down the browser, and restart it.
• if your browser allows you to open an incognito window or private browsing, try using that: go to our login page, and log in there
• Occasionally a reboot of your machine may be required.
• Try using another computer or smart phone. If that works, the problem is on your first computer/smart phone.

Any of these methods should work.

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Can I get a printed/online copy of the current Chapbook?

Active subscribers can get it for free either as a PDF file, or formatted for your Kindle (MOBI or AZW3 format) or other e-book reader (EPUB format) -- get that here. We are no longer offering a printed version of the Chapbook (as of the 2018 one). It's too work-intensive for very few sales.  But you can go to a printing shop, e.g. Kinko's, Office Depot, and get them to print the pdf version.

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I no longer get any emails from Undercurrent, why? May 14, 2014
There are a few reasons why you may not be getting any emails from us:

• Ensure you have maildist@undercurrent.org on your contacts list/whitelist. Better yet, allow all emails from undercurrent.org so any correspondence with us gets through.
• Check your spam folders first, as some may have been routed there, either by your ISP (e.g. gmail, yahoo) or your email client.
• If our email to you bounces back too many times, it automatically gets put on a do-not-email status. Contact us to fix this.
• If you report our emails as spam, we have to stop sending emails to you. Contact us to reinstate your email.

Contact us (webmaster) if you can't resolve the problem at your end or need further help

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The issues pdf file displays/prints incorrectly in Firefox April 7, 2013
Firefox Version 19.x has a well known problem in displaying pdf's correctly -- see here for the gory details. This is NOT a problem with our pdf files. There are large bits of blue around some photos/graphics and printing can appear unclear when using this viewer.. Plus Firefox has disabled using Adobe Acrobat Reader now, so you can't see the issue correctly in Firefox now.. For now the best solution is to download the pdf file and view it in Acrobat Reader or some other pdf viewer, not in Firefox. You can download instead of viewing a pdf by right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save Link As". Then open it with your pdf viewing program, e.g. Adobe Acrobat. Hopefully the Firefox people will fix this problem quickly.

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I cannot download/read any of the back issues/latest Chapbook's (PDF files) -- why?

First, you must be an Online Member before you can access these files You will need to enter your username (not your email address) and password -- you can retrieve those here if you can't remember. If you are not able to login, see some help here.

You will also need Adobe Acrobat Reader or equivalent to open and read all the PDF files. This is free software and you can install it from here. If you login successfully and still cannot read the issue (or part of it), the problem is most likely on your computer -- see below for your situation (Mac Safari users see the "Mac Users" section below)

If you already have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, see if you can download other Acrobat files, e.g. here or other sites such as the US IRS site. If these work and you still can't download pdf files from our site, you might need to reinstall it to overcome the problems. Some other things to try include:

Try clearing Temporary Internet Files (IE - Tool/Internet Options) or cache (Firefox -- Tools/Clear Recent History and then only select "Cache" ). Then try to retrieve the issue again.

go to the Online Member's home page and clicking on the link for the issue or from the Back Issues page

right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save Target As" or "Save Link As". This will try to download the file to your computer where you can then open the file with Acrobat Reader by double-clicking

try it on another machine

try it using another browser (Firefox, IE, Safari, ...)

try it at a different location, e.g. home, work, friends, ...

try reinstalling Acrobat Reader if nothing else works

Mac Users: We've recently had a number of readers complaining of problems when using Safari in reading PDF files. The cause is due to configuration problems between Acrobat and Safari on their machines, and not on our server. Doing a Google search for things like "Safari Acrobat problems" yields lots of complaints. Apparently if you are running Leopard, you should remove Acrobat if you have it installed -- Leopard has built-in support for pdf viewing. If the above suggestions do not cure you're problem, you can either right-click on the link to a pdf file and download the files for later viewing, or install some other browser, e.g. Firefox and use it for viewing our site -- the last solution apparently cures the problem for Mac users.

If you still cannot solve the issue, send all details of what you did and any messages you receive to the webmaster

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I'm an Online Member but can't find the back issues/Chapbooks -- where are they?

The best place to start is from the Online Members' Area. After you login, you will be on the Online Members' home page. From here, just follow the links and you can

jump to the Travel Index, Equipment Index, Health and Safety Index, or the Miscellaneous Index. Here you will find hyperlinks to articles in our back issues as well as the thousands of reader reports in the Chapbooks.

browse through our back issues, which are organized by month and year, with the articles listed as separate files.

search for any word or phrase to find the articles or Chapbook reports of interest. Then just click on the link and you will be taken there.

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I am an Online Member and forgot my username &/or password -- how do I get in?

We have an automated service that will email those to you. If you have problems (e.g. the email address you gave us no longer works), please contact us and we will get back with you shortly.

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I'm an Online Member and get an error when trying to read one (or some) articles but I can read others -- help?

Occasionally your browser, e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape, AOL, will get a corrupted download of a file and insist on trying to display this, which can either generate error messages or appear scrambled. This is sally only a problem with PDF files. Even when you select the file again, the same thing happens. This can come about due to network difficulties as well as bugs in browser software.

If this happens to you, you need to clear your browser's cache (i.e. temporary storage of internet files) and perhaps restart your browser. In IE, go to "Tools", select "Internet Options", then the "General" tab, then "Delete Files" under "Temporary Internet Files"; in Netscape go to "Edit", then select "Preferences", choose "Cache" under "Advanced", then select "Clear Memory Cache" and "Clear Disk Cache". After this shut down your browser and restart it, and try again. The files should appear normally. If they don't, please contact me and give me full details of what happened and what you did to try to fix it.

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PDF files have a checkered background

Probably your setting in Adobe Acrobat is incorrect. Edit the preferences by right-clicking on the file and selecting "Page Display Preferences". Uncheck the box for "Show Transparency Grid". Then OK out of there. The checkered boxes should have disappeared.

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I need help with PDF files

For some basic information, click here. For help with using Acrobat in reading/accessing PDF files, click here.

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Why is my password sent in plain text?

We send passwords in plain text and state that very clearly, with added emphasis and in big, red letters, when you choose your password. We strongly recommend that you do not use this password with other websites, especially any personal or sensitive ones. . Ours is an old system that is difficult to change, and our little non-profit does not presently have the resources to upgrade the system..

Note that we do NOT store your credit card info in our system at all -- only a few digits (e.g. 4123**67) so you can readily identify which credit card you used. . Credit card numbers are only stored with our ecommerce vendor, who complies with all the strictest security standards. So you can, and us too, feel safe about your credit card info. It's been that way since 1998 without any incidents of credit card abuse.

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Is my credit card info safe with you?

We do NOT store your credit card info in our system at all -- only the first 4 and last 2 digits (e.g. 4123**67).  Credit card numbers are only stored with our ecommerce vendor (www.PlugNPay.com), who complies with all the strictest security standards. So you can, and we too, feel safe about your credit card info.  It's been that way since 1998 without any incidents of credit card abuse.

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In accordance with the General Data Protection Requirements from the European Union, we have updated our privacy and cookie policies. Undercurrent values the privacy of all our users, whether a casual reader or subscriber/member. We will never disclose any personal details including your email address to any third parties. There is an exception to this for subscribers/online-members, we do pass on your relevant information to our ecommerce provider, PlugNPay, who requires such in order to charge your credit card and communicate directly with you about your credit card purchases. (Note that we never store your complete credit card number anywhere on our server, nor do we have access to it -- it is passed to PlugNPay only for authorizations and then garbled.) The information we store also includes your name, address, email you used for billing purposes.Your information is secure with us as well as them.

We want to keep you informed about what we're doing and we will contact you via email periodically (generally once or twice/month) with diving news and website updates.We may also contact you about your subscription,or any postings you make on our website (e.g. comments, reader reports, ...). You can unsubscribe from these at any time here, or simply follow the Unsubscribe link found in all our emails, or just contact us directly. And if you ever want us to delete your information, just contact us directly and we will do that.

For subscribers who submit/have submitted reader reports, we do store your report online along with the relevant review information you submitted with the report. If you file a reader report, optionally you can allow other subscribers to contact you about it (them). This is your choice each time you file one. Note that they can contact you only via a form -- we do not divulge your email to anyone.

Parts of our website do use cookies in order to make website navigation and content easier for you. If you have cookies disabled, these parts of the website will inform you of what is required for access.

Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our website. Google's use of these cookies enables them to serve ads to our users based on your visit to our sites and other sites on the Internet.  Users may opt out of the use of these cookie by visiting the Google ad and content privacy policy.

Other third-party vendors use cookies and record your visit, but do not have access to any other information from our site. You can opt out of them in your browser -- see your browsers settings for that and/or search for that information.

Your continued use of our site implies that you accept our cookie and privacy policies. If you have further questions, you may send them to us and we will get back with you.

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Become an Undercurrent Online Member

• for everyone, yearly or monthly

If you have more questions, you may contact us here.