Independent medical expert answers
on psychiatry and psychology

Privacy and Anonymity in Web4Health

Written by: Jacob Palme, professor of computer science.
First version: 22 Jul 2008. Latest version: 11 May 2013.

Abstract:

Privacy statement for the web4health web site.

Question:

How will Web4Health protect the privacy and anonymity of its users?

Answer:

If you only want to learn about or discuss your own problems or those of your friends or relatives, you can choose to participate in Web4Health by pseudonym (keeping your real name secret). Other users must register using their real names.

If you choose to participate with your name, Web4Health will give you a password, which you can use so that other people cannot participate using your name. The password is transmitted in encrypted format to ensure your protection.

If you check "Do not show my e-mail address to other users" below, then the e-mail address which you specify will not be shown to other Web4Health users. Instead, they will be shown an e-mail address which refers to your account in Web4Health.

If you choose to participate by pseudonym, you will be asked to select a secret name, a pseudonym. If you keep this name secret, other users will not know who you are. You will have a password, so that other people cannot participate using your pseudonym.

We will do our utmost to preserve the secrecy of your pseudonym, but we may have to break this secrecy if you write illegal things (like racial agitation), and the police or a court require us to identify you.

If you misuse your account, we may cancel your access to Web4Health, but still without identifying who you are. If we have cancelled your account, but you continue to misuse Web4Health, then we may have to find out who you really are in order to stop the misuse.

Web4Health may be used for research on how people use the Internet to find information. The researchers will, however, never know the real name behind your secret name (pseudonym) without your explicit permission.

Hur Web4Health använder cookies

Web4Health uses cookies for two purposes:

  1. If you choose to establish an account and log in to our forum system, cookies are used to keep track of your session. You can avoid such cookies by not using our forum system.
  2. We use Google analytics for visitor statistics, and Google analytics uses cookies. These cookies are not used for any other purpose than general visitor statistics (number of visitors per page, etc.).

Advertisements in Web4Health

Pages in Web4Health usually contain advertisements. These advertisement help to pay for the cost of keeping the web site. Most advertisements are provided by third party ad providers such as Google and Amazon books.

These third-party ad providers may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

Web4Health does not take any responsibility for content or offers or actions of sites providing advertisements in Web4Health. Advertisers may retain information about which page in Web4Health, where their ad was placed. Advertisers may set cookies to study the behaviour of people clicking on advertisments or links in advertisements. Web4Health does not take any responsibility for this.

Web4Health cannot help you in conflict with a fradulent advertiser, but tell us if you have problems with such an ad provider, so that we can stop ads from such advertisers in Web4Health.

Web4health will try to mark all advertisements with information that this is an advertisements, but we do not promise that such markings will always work.

More Information
Sources, references: http://web4health.info/en/answers/source/project-this-site-privacy.htm
http://web4health.info/en/answers/project-this-site-privacy.htm separator Copyright 2003-2015 Web4Health