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Our Privacy Policy
Nothing on the internet is 100% private. But to the extent it's feasible, we follow the policy below.
As a site dedicated to people with illnesses, MedNess is sensitive to the privacy of the information shared by you on our site and the information we collect from you.
The main site itself does not collect any personally identifiable information or medical information (eg. name, phone number, address, or diagnosis). We request that you do not disclose personally identifiable information to others, even the site owners, via the contact form, on our forum or chat.
Our forum and chat have moderators, who have been instructed to remove any such information when they come across them. However, a moderator may not always be present, so please exercise good judgment in information you provide on the site.
We do not track who views this site, what pages are viewed, and the links you used to enter or exit the site. We may gather statistical information that are available using web tools present on most sites. We may maintain a page counter on each page, to know which pages are more popular. This will help us order our pages based on popularity and need.
Google and search engine spiders regularly visit the site and collect information on content of various pages. This is helpful for us to increase visibility and gain in site rankings. Note that our forum topics on medications are accessible to everyone, and may be displayed on search engine and other links. If you do not wish your content to be picked up by search engines, please use a private forum, or another forum such as Mood Garden.
For our message board, we have some additional privacy notes:
- We require you to register with a valid email address; your membership is completed when you validate a link sent to your email address (the one you used to register on the forum). Your email address is stored on our database for this validation purpose only. We do not disclose your email address to other members or make it available to outsiders, unless it is required by law for some reason. Note that all our administrators can view your email address, and may contact you to provide information or other circulation items. You will always have the option to opt out of these. You have the option to hide or display your email address from other members of the forum, you can set this in your member profile. Your IP address is recorded at the time of registration and whenever you post; this information is visible only to the administrators of the forum. We use the IP address, if necessary, to ban disruptive members. We do not share or disclose your email address or IP address with anyone else.
- Our forum uses cookies to identify your log-in session, so that you can navigate within the forum in a logged-in status. You can block this cookie in your browser, and the forum will use a session id instead. We recommend allowing cookies from the forum to make it easier to participate on the forum. We do not use cookies to track usage of the forum or for collection of any personal information.
- We encourage you to ask on the forum about any privacy issue which may be of concern to you. Your confidentiality is important to us and to you, and we request that you do not reveal your real name or any personally identifiable information on our forum. Anonymous participation is important for all of us.
The password you enter during registration is stored in an encrypted form and cannot be retrieved by administrators. You may change your password on your profile, which will require you to revalidate your email. Administrators cannot retrieve your password if you lose it; however, you can request them to reset it to a temporary password; you may then change it in your profile when you log in to the forum.
The registration form has optional fields where you can enter your location, birthday, messenger information etc. Entering these enriches your forum experience, but you are not obligated to enter any of the optional fields. This information is for display on the forum only; it is not used for any other purposes and not disclosed to or shared with other entities.
For our chat room, you are not required to register. You may use any username and enter the chat room. Registration gives you additional features, please read the chat page. Your IP is visible to any moderator or administrator who is present in the room, but no record is maintained. We request you to follow the strict guidelines mentioned on our chat page, to ensure healthy participation for everyone involved. Our chat rooms are moderated; however, we cannot guarantee that a moderator will be present at all times. You agree to use the chat room at your own risk. You can always exit the chat room if participation is not helpful to you.
The chat room software allows the administrators to view your IP address, which may be used to ban members who disrupt or abuse the chat room in violation of our usage guidelines. The software has a feature for the chat sessions to be logged in a transcript that is accessible only to the owner of this site. The new hosting plan and software automatically logs chat room transcripts, as well as private messages. Please read that carefully: Administrators have access to everything that is said in chat, in public or in private. We strongly encourage you to use Messenger, Phone or Emaill for sharing personal communication, and limit private messaging in the chat room that you don't mind an administrator reading it. Administrators will not share transcripts with anyone else, and will not question you on the content you provided in public or pirvate in the chat room, unless it requires them to ban a member based on it. Administrators do not read these transcripts in general, there is way too much data in the logs and the logs are hard to read. But you should know what is available to them, nonetheless.
You can also save a transcript of private conversations you have with another member, but you cannot save a transcript of the chat rooms themselves.
Membership is not required for participation in the chat room. However, you may choose to register your username exclusively. You will have to provide a password for this, and this password is recorded in an unencrypted form, visible only to the administrators.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please do contact us.