Privacy Policy for non-benzodiazepines.org.uk

Last update 12 Oct 2007

This privacy policy covers the domains non-benzodiazepines.org.uk and thetrap.org.uk

We at non-benzodiazepines.org.uk and thetrap.org.uk are dedicated to respecting the privacy of our website and forum members. Below we lay out privacy issues and describe how we and our website software protect and respect your privacy.

Email

To interact with our website, users are required to provide a valid email address, when contacting us and when signing up to our support and information forum. Users can be assured that we do not sell, rent or disclose email addresses to anyone. We have set up our forum so that only a select few highly trustworthy administrators and moderators can view email addresses. This should totally eliminate any chance of email addresses slipping into spammers hands. Email addresses are not viewable publicly on our forum boards. Very occasionally (not usually more than once every 3 months) we send out emails to subscribers of our forums if an important event occurs eg sign a petition, support this or that etc.

Personal Details

We have made our forum as anonymous as possible. We do not require any personal details from you for you to join our support forum boards or to correspond with us via our contact email form. The only personal information that we require to join our forum boards is your date of birth. Users of this forum can hide their age and date of birth from public display during the sign up process of our forum.

IP Addresses

On the issue of internet protocol addresses, users of this web site and forum can be assured that your ip address cannot be viewed publicly by anyone except a small group of highly trusted forum and web site administrators and moderators. IP addresses will never be given out to third parties.

Forum Software

We use very secure and robust forum software made by vbulletin.com which allows for maximum security. Vbulletin are always quick to provide a security upgrade or patch should a security problem with their software be identified. We at non-benzodiazepines.org.uk apply any security updates, upgrades or patches as soon as they are released by vbulletin.com so that our forum can continue to be highly secure.

Passwords

Your password is completely anonymous, not even forum or website administrators can obtain your password as it is encrypted on an MySQL database server. If users forget their password they should use the forgot password link and fill in the details and an email will be dispatched with instructions on how to change the password.

Cookies

Vbulletin forum software uses cookies for login purposes. The cookies used by vbulletin are simple login session cookies and do not track or collect any data on you. There are no security or privacy concerns about the cookies used by vbulletin forum software.

Protection from Spammers and other malicious individuals

The forum is a private forum. We have set the forum up so that newly registered users must introduce themselves and make a few posts in the introduction forum so that we can get to know them before their accounts can be upgraded. They are then allowed access to our other forum users and main forum boards. This should eliminate or at least significantly reduce the chances of spammers or other malicious individuals from accessing our main support forums. Spam and inappropriate content is deleted on sight by our forum administrators and moderators.

Furthermore new registrants are required to type in letters in an image and to confirm their email address by following a link upon registration. This should stop any malicious programs such as spam bots joining the forum to post spammy links to sites such as pharmacy's, gambling or pornography etc. Our forum is a spam free forum.

Data

Data transfered in topic/thread posts is obviously "publicly" available, in the sense that other forum users can read other posts by other forum members. The author of this privacy policy recommends that users do not transmit personally identifying information in public forum posts such as name, address, email or personal phone numbers. Data transmitted on our forum is not viewable by search engines nor is it viewable by anyone except approved forum users.

We have enabled a private messaging service on our forum boards which allows our forum users to transmit data in private to individual users of our forum boards. Our private messaging service on our forum boards can be easily customised by the user to allow pms to only be accepted from people added to their buddy list. The buddy list feature provides security and privacy in this respect beyond what most email providers provide!

Browsing and logs

Logs of links visited and ip addresses are only available to the site administrator. Live forum browsing statistics are only viewable and available to a select few highly trusted moderators and administrators. We will not transmit or reveal this data to any third parties.

External Links

We cannot take any responsibility for links to external websites, as we have no control over them. Clicking on external links remains the responsibility of our website and forum users.

Limititations of this Privacy Policy

This privacy policy should not be seen as legally binding. The reason it is not legally binding is not that you can't trust us, but because we are a voluntary non-profit organisation made up of individuals striving to help those in need of support to come off of sedative hypnotic drugs. We are not paid for the work that we do and thus we cannot risk our financial status by entering into legally binding agreements.
Hackers, spammers or individuals intent on causing harm or distress to this organisation, website, forums or any users of our website services are NOT protected by this privacy policy. We feel that by denying hackers, spammers and malicious criminal individuals intent on causing harm to our website or web site users protection from our privacy policy, should significantly enhance the privacy and protection of our forum and website users. We reserve the right to use any information we have about such individuals in any way we like, including reporting such individuals to their ISP or law enforcement if we feel it is warrented. We recognise that many of our forum users are vulnerable individuals and their protection trumps the privacy or protection of hackers, spammers or malicious criminal individuals. We believe that denying hackers, spammers and malicious criminal individuals privacy protection should discourage them from interfering with our forum users and thus enhance the safe, supportive and relaxed environment our forum and web site provides.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We at non-benzodiazepines.org.uk reserve the right to change or add to this privacy policy at any time. Please recheck this privacy policy if in doubt. We will add a date at the top of this page to state the last update to this page.