Privacy Policy

Lymph Notes is committed to protecting your privacy. Privacy is a shared responsibility and we cannot protect you from yourself. Please,

• Think before entering your full name or a well-known nickname as your user name. This is a public Internet site that is indexed by search engines and read by thousands of people every day.
• Protect your personal identifying information. Do not include your e-mail address, your mailing address, your telephone number, your date of birth, your employer, or any other personally identifying information in your profile, a post, or a message (e-mail or private message) to anyone that you do not know and trust.
• Protect your Forum Membership by choosing a good password. Good passwords are long, contain a mix of letters, numbers, and other characters, and are hard to guess.
• Turn off the ‘Automatically login when you return to the site’ option in the My User Options page if you are concerned about privacy. This option is only appropriate for people who never use public Internet terminals and who trust everyone that can access their computer.

The remainder of this privacy statement explains our policies on collecting, using, and sharing information.

Member Profiles

Users may browse the public areas of the site without disclosing any personally identifying information.

Users who wish to participate in Lymph Notes Forums, Lymphedema Stories, and certain other functions must register and create a Member Profile. Registration is free and open to anyone over the age of 13 who is willing to abide by our Guidelines and Terms of Service. Creating a Member Profile requires only a user-name and a valid e-mail address:

• You may provide a user name that is not personally identifying as long as the user name is not offensive or misleading. User-names are public and are displayed in user profiles, posts, stories, etc.
• E-mail addresses are private and are NOT displayed in user profiles or posts. The Hide Email Address option (see My User Options) allows you to control the ability of other forum members to send you e-mail via Lymph Notes.

Your user profile (see My User Profile) may include the following information that is public and optional, it should not contain personal information that you do not want published:

• Homepage: the address of your personal website.
• ICQ Number, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) Handle, or Yahoo Messenger Handle.
• Biography: general information about yourself.
• Location: general information about the area where you reside.
• Interests: info on hobbies, travel, etc.
• What is your interest in lymphedema? 

Members who request professional status to access the Medical Professionals Only forums, have their user name identified as a medical professional, or to be included in the Lymphedema Professionals list must provide documentation for their credentials as explained in My Pro Info or be associated with an organization that is a Lymph Notes sponsor.

Members requesting professional status are required to provide personal identifying information including name, address, and telephone number. This information is retained in a private administrative database.

Professional members may choose the information to be included in the Lymphedema Professionals list. Current options are:

• No listing.
• User name (as provided for the Forums) only.
• Full name.
• Full name and telephone number.

Professional members receive a title (sometimes called a Status) based on the medical licenses they hold. This information will appear in the Lymphedema Professionals list, in the user profile, and with the user's Forum posts. Professional members may optionally provide a description of their training. This information is displayed in their Lymphedema Professionals listing.

Professional members may be required to submit copies of their credential documentation with their request for professional status. This documentation will be shredded after processing and is not shared with other organizations. 

Browser information collection

Our servers record information about browsers (computers) that access our site. These logs do not contain personally identifiable information and are analyzed in order to improve the value of our service.

Use of cookies

This site will use cookies, if supported by your browser, to improve ease of use and the user experience. These cookies do not contain personally identifiable information.

Google Analytics and Google Custom Search

We use statistics from Google Analytics to improve our content. We do not receive personal information from Google Analytics. Privacy in Google Analytics is explained here: www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html. Search within our site uses Google Custom Search; Google’s privacy policy is here: www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.

Contact Us form

Use of the Contact Us form will be recorded so that we may respond to your message.

E-mail this page

Use of the 'e-mail this page' feature will be recorded for the purpose of detecting and investigating abuse of this feature. Members who abuse this feature may be denied access.

E-mail list privacy

Our e-mail lists are private, opt-in, and do not disclose other recipients addresses. There are several ways that you may receive e-mail from LymphNotes.com:

• LymphNotes.com team members may send e-mail to Forum members occasionally. Our ability e-mail Forum members is controlled by the Allow Bulletin Board Administrators and Moderators to Send You Email Notices option on page My User Options; we strongly suggest that you leave this option set to Yes.
• When someone posts a Reply to a Thread you have participated in and the option Use 'Email Notification' by default? on the My User Options is set to yes or you have subscribed to the Thread.
• Threads or messages are posted in a Forum to which you Subscribe. The My Control Panel shows your subscriptions and provides the ability to Unsubscribe; you may subscribe to a Forum by clicking a link that appears on each page in that Forum.
• If you receive a Private Message and you have the Send you an email when you receive a Private Message? option set to Yes on the My User Options page.

Transfer of e-mail addresses or other contact information from this Web site for the purpose of sending unsolicited commercial e-mail (Spam) or any other solicitation is expressly prohibited.

Resale or disclosure to third parties

LymphNotes.com does not sell, rent, loan, or trade any personal information collected on our site. We will, however, disclose information to law enforcement agencies in response to a written subpoena, search warrant, or court order, and we are not responsible for notifying users of such requests.

Data security

This site has security measures in place to protect against the unauthorized disclosure or modification of information under our control. Your Member Profile is only as secure as your choice of User Name and Password. We recommend that you choose values that cannot be easily guessed by others.

Viewing and correcting your information

Our policy is to give users the ability to view and correct information about themselves:

• Forum Members may view and update or correct the information in their Member Profile using the My User Profile page. You may not change your username.
• Medical Professionals may view and update their information using the My Pro Info page. Changes to credentials must go through the credential documentation process.
• Sponsors should Contact Us to update their information.

Other websites

This site may contain links to other websites that are outside of the www.lymphnotes.com domain; we are not responsible for the privacy policies or contents of these sites.

Policy changes

This policy may subject to change without notice. Registered Members may be notified by e-mail of significant changes to this policy and changes will be announced on the site.

COPPA Compliance

In accordance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, this site is not designed for children and does not accept information from children.

Privacy contact

If you have any questions about our privacy policies or your dealings with this service you may Contact Us or write to:

Lymph Notes
2929 Webster Street
San Francisco, CA 94123 USA

Updated: 2012-10-25