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Privacy Statement


WhyQuit is deeply committed to protecting the privacy of all visitors to our sites and of all members of Freedom from Tobacco.  Below is a statement of our information gathering, protection, and disclosure policies.  Any future changes to these policy shall be promptly posted on:

 

Information Gathered


  • Visitor and Member Communications

    Although Freedom members are free to share their email address, quitting date, and other membership application information as part of their MSN Profile, on Freedom's Quit Date page, or in message board posts to other members, Freedom's staff shall treat application information, including e-mail addresses as confidential. All e-mails or other correspondence containing any information of a personal nature shall be treated as confidential. Please be advised that Freedom's managers have a long standing policy of not sharing any member personal information with any other member, including not disclosing member e-mail addresses.

  • Freedom Message Board Posts

    When posting messages please keep in mind that all Freedom message board posts are visible to all non-member site visitors as well as to members.  When posting messages take care and exercise sound judgment in disclosing personal identifying information as doing so immediately makes it public information.  The information on Freedom's message boards is permanently archived by MSN and becomes a public treasure chest that helps aid future arrivals in breaking nicotine's grip upon their life.  From time to time old member posts should be expected to be posted to again and brought to the top where they'll become the focus of the entire group. Archived posts may also be used as a research tool to aid us in evaluating past performance and in improving the site.

    Be advised that our information management policy allows all public forum resources to be used for worldwide smoking cessation and prevention purposes so long as there are no costs or charges ever associated with their use.  In theory this means that one or more of your thought provoking threads or posts could be used as a youth nicotine dependency prevention teaching tool in a Philippine classroom, as part of a free handout at an Africian smoking cessation seminar, or simply e-mailed and shared between Australian smoking friends.

  • Log Files

    WhyQuit.com's site host does collect IP address data that is made available to us, and allows us analyze trends, administer the site, track users' movement, and gather broad information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information. 

    Although MSN does not share its log file data with forum managers we have installed "Site Meter" links at the bottom of each of Freedom's non-message board pages that can be viewed by all members and provide us with general use rate information of those visiting any Freedom page other than our message boards. Site Meter indicates that it does not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable. "This means that a user's session on Site Meter or sites using the Site Meter service will be tracked, but the user will be anonymous."

  • Survey Information

    WhyQuit, Joel's Library and/or Freedom may from time to time provide members with links or pages that allow or invite members to participate in surveys, polls or other informal or formal research.  If a link is provided to a page on any site other than WhyQuit or Freedom please read that site's privacy policy before participating.  We or an independent research organization may from time to time conduct performance evaluations to determine nicotine cessation rates at Freedom using both archived member posts and if necessary direct e-mail communications with members.  Any independent research organization acting on our behalf shall be required to execute a privacy and non-disclosure agreement ensuring that identifying member information and email addresses shall be kept strictly confidential.

    Links

    WhyQuit and Freedom contain links to other sites.  Please be aware that we cannot be responsible for the privacy practices of any linked sites.  We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of every Web site that collects personally identifiable information.

    MSN's Privacy Statement

    MSN has it's own Privacy Statement and if you will be spending time at Freedom, our MSN support group, or are considering joining we enourage you to read MSN's privacy policies, as we can assume no responsibility for MSN's handling of information it gathers.

    Protection and Use of Information

    All visitors and members can rest assured that no identifying member information shall ever be sold, leased or otherwise disseminated and that all communications containing personally identifiable information shall be safeguarded and treated as confidential. If you have any questions please contact us.



    • Last Updated on August 23, 2003 by John R. Polito