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Changes To Community Constitution, Privacy, And Legal Policies, As Of August 2016

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joeylittle

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Members, and Guests:

I'd like to take a moment of your time, and advise you of updates to MyPTSD's Privacy Policy.

The changes are not substantive in nature. They reflect updates that are necessary in order to bring the policies more in line with Australian privacy laws (Australia being where the site is owned and primarily administered from), and to account for some practices that may become relevant in the future, regarding goods and services.

Australia’s privacy regulations are some of the strictest in the world. Meeting Australian Privacy Policy standards will typically meet the minimum legal standards in most English speaking jurisdictions such as New Zealand, UK, US, Canada, Singapore and most of the EU.

Please read the privacy policy. It's in your best interests to do so. If you have any questions, you may direct them to us by opening a support ticket - the link to support tickets can be found at the bottom of any staff-made post, or alongside the other menu options present at the top of the site, or under 'menu'.

Any threads that are opened to discuss or comment on the Privacy Policy will be immediately closed. Myself, @anthony, @Nicolette, and staff, are all happy to answer as many questions as you may have, and provide as many reassurances as are necessary; however, doing it in an open forum would be disingenuous, as it would create the sense that these policies are open for debate - when, in fact, they are not.

Thank you for reading this, and for staying current on what it means to be a member of MyPTSD.


New Privacy Policy

YOUR PRIVACY

At MyPTSD.com, we are committed to protecting your privacy as an online visitor to our website. We use the information we collect about you to maximize the services that we provide to you. We respect the privacy and confidentiality of the information provided by you and adhere to the Australian Privacy Principles. Please read our privacy policy below carefully.

You may change your details at any time by modifying your profile directly or advising us in writing via email (contact form). All information we receive from our customers is protected by secure servers. MyPTSD.com’s secure server software encrypts all customer information before it is sent to us. Furthermore, all customer data collected is secured against unauthorized use or access. Credit card information is not stored by us on our servers.

STORAGE AND SECURITY OF YOUR INFORMATION

We receive and store information you enter on our website, or give us in any other way, from time to time. You may provide basic contact information such as your name, phone number, address, and email address to enable us to send information or process your product order. We may also collect additional information at other times, including but not limited to, when you provide feedback, change your content or email preferences, respond to a survey, or communicate with our customer support.

We may use personal information collected from you for the purpose of providing you with direct marketing material, updates regarding our website and information in the form of a newsletter. This will only apply if you have registered or subscribed to such publications through us. If you wish to cease receiving any such information you may let us know, either by contact form or by unsubscribing at any time, and your request will be actioned.

Individual profile and company details are not used for any other purpose. Details are only supplied to a third party supplier when it is required by law, for goods or services which you have purchased or to protect our copyright, trademarks and other legal rights.

We respect the privacy of our online visitors. We may collect information on or through this website that can personally identify you. For example, we collect personally identifiable information which you volunteer to us to respond to visitor questions and comments about us and our products and services, and to mail e-newsletters (“Personal Data”).

We will use all reasonable means to protect the confidentiality of your Personal Data while in our possession or control. We will not knowingly share any of your Personal Data with any third party other than our service providers who assist us in providing the information and/or services we are providing to you. To the extent that we do share your personal information with a service provider, we would only do so if that party has agreed to comply with our privacy standards as described in this privacy policy. Some of our service providers may be overseas and may not be subject to Australian Privacy Laws. Please contact us if you require specific details.

Any non-personal information, communications and material you send to this website, to us by email, or which we obtain from third parties without promises of confidentiality, may be kept, used and disclosed by us on a non-confidential basis. We are free to use and reproduce any such information freely, and for any purpose whatsoever. Specifically, we will be free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques contained in such information for any purpose, including developing, manufacturing or marketing products.

COOKIES

A cookie is a small file placed in your web browser that collects information about your web browsing behaviour. Use of cookies allows a website to tailor its configuration to your needs and preferences. Cookies do not access information stored on your computer or any personal information (e.g. name, address, email address or telephone number). Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but you can choose to reject cookies by changing your browser settings. This may, however, prevent you from taking full advantage of our website.

Our website uses cookies to analyse website traffic and help us provide a better website visitor experience. In addition, cookies may be used to serve relevant ads to website visitors through third party services such as Google Adwords. These ads may appear on this website or other websites you visit.

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION

We may from time to time need to disclose certain information, which may include your Personal Data, to comply with a legal requirement, such as a law, regulation, court order, subpoena, warrant, in the course of a legal proceeding, or in response to a law enforcement agency request. Also, we may use your Personal Data to protect the rights, property or safety of MyPTSD.com, our customers or third parties.

If there is a change of control in one of our businesses (whether by merger, sale, transfer of assets or otherwise), customer information, which may include your Personal Data, could be disclosed to a potential purchaser under a confidentiality agreement. We would only disclose your information in good faith and where required by any of the above circumstances.

THIRD PARTIES

We do not and will not sell or deal in personal or customer information. We will never disclose your personal details to a third party except the necessary information required by providers of products or services you have purchased, or to protect the rights, property, and/or safety of MyPTSD.com, our customers or third parties, or if required by law.

We may however use in a general sense (without any reference to your name), your information to create marketing statistics, identify user demands and to assist generally in meeting customer needs. In addition, we may use the information that you provide to improve our website and services, but not for any other use.

SECURITY

We strive to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of personal information submitted to our website, and we periodically update our security measures in light of current technologies.

LINKS

This website may contain links to other websites. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage our users to be aware of when they leave our website, and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by this website.

CHANGE IN PRIVACY POLICY

As we plan to ensure our privacy policy remains current, this policy is subject to change. We may modify this policy at any time, in our sole discretion. All modifications will be effective immediately upon posting to this website. Please return periodically to review our privacy policy.

If you have any questions or concerns at any time about our privacy policy or the use of your personal information, please contact us at https://www.myptsd.com/misc/contact and we will respond within 48 hours.
 
Members, and Guests:

Yesterday, MyPTSD updated it's privacy policy. You can read about it here. I encourage you to do so, if you haven't already.

Today, MyPTSD updates it's Legal Policy

As with the changes to the Privacy Policy, the updates to the Legal Policy are not complex; however, they are substantial. I strongly encourage you to take the time to review the terms. It is in your best interest to do so. The majority of member complaints we handle can be traced back to a failure to have read these policies.

Everyone here is touched by PTSD in some way, and many of us are familiar with the feelings of hyper vigilance, paranoia, self-doubt, etc., that can arise from sharing some of the most vulnerable parts of yourself with others. I encourage you to empower yourself through knowledge. Know what it means to post here. MyPTSD is a very large community, and the rules cannot and will not be re-written for any one member, regardless of how much they may wish it so.

As with the announcement containing the Privacy Policy updates - any threads opened to discuss or comment on the updated policy will be closed; however, you are encouraged to ask any questions you may have via the support ticket system. We will be more than happy to help.

Also: you will see a new legal statement in the description of all non-public areas of the site, defining their content as confidential and private. It states: This content and any attachments are proprietary and confidential information (non-public) and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom is reading it. You may not, beyond this section, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message nor disclose its contents to anyone.

It's purpose is self-evident. I'm pointing it out simply to avoid any confusion.

Thanks for reading!

Legal Policy
 
Hi, all:

Along with the recent updates to our Legal and Privacy policies, we now have an updated Community constitution.

Nothing substantive was cut. Here are the additions:

Mission statement, which is on the forums landing page, was appropriate to reflect here as well.
A review of the four rules: These needed to be incorporated, as they were dropped from the Legal policy. To remind everyone, they are:
  • No personal attacks
  • No suicidal posting (suicidal ideation acceptable)
  • No self-promotion/advertising
  • No duplication of content - this is a reframing of what was, previously, 'no quoting full posts'. Quoting full posts is an issue because it is duplication of content. We also do not allow posting the same thread in multiple forums, but that wasn't ever quite spelled out - it's now covered under this rule. This rule also prohibits full copy-and-paste from web sources, which is already prohibited under the Legal terms (copyright), but now incorporated into something that staff can and will issue formal warnings for.
Individual responsibility clause: This is something that we have always said, but wasn't communicated as directly as it could be. With the Help Desk gone, some of these kinds of questions cannot be searched anymore. It was appropriate to address it here.

We believe individuals are responsible for their self-regulation. If an individual consistently demonstrates an inability to regulate, they will end up being removed - that can be a thread ban, temp ban, or permanent ban. This has always been the practice, here- it's just nice to have it spelled out for people.

Also under individual responsibility, is the statement that we do not use trigger warnings, and why.

Miscellany: There's a new bit about the ticket system, and what to do if you don't want to open a ticket; there's information about the trophy points, and membership levels, guidelines for image posting...I'd actually call it 'link central'.

You can go to that document and navigate to all the information you could need.

I hope people use it. I strongly suggest members go and read it again, and if you've never, it's really worth the short time it'll take. There's a link on the footer of every page, under MyPTSD Policies. You can't miss it.:)

We may need to open a dialogue thread about it in this forum, to address questions. What I'll ask is, look it over - and if you have a question about something, send in a support ticket. That will give me a good sense of where people have questions and how to best address them.

Thanks for reading -
JL
 
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