Drug Abuse Help - Honest Drug Abuse Information Privacy Policy

Drug Abuse Help Privacy Policy
Privacy policy last updated June-10-2008

Drug Abuse Help understands that privacy is important to our visitors. While we can never guarantee 100% privacy, we take numerous measures on our services to better protect visitor privacy. Some of these privacy measures include limited logging of activity and asking visitors for minimal personal information only when necessary. Please be sure to view this policy from time to time for updates. We value your privacy.

Service NameLocation (URL)Information Voluntarily Collected from Visitors
Personal InfoEmail AddressComments
Drug Abuse Help (main site)www.drugabusehelp.comOptionalOptionalGuestbook feature.
Drug Abuse Help Message Boardsforums.drugabusehelp.comOptionalOptional** Required to post.


Important explainations regarding privacy and the above table:

First off, we do not know who you are unless you tell us. However, when one visits any of our services, their remote IP address is revealed to the respective server(s) along with other various information, such as browser type and referrer. This information may be stored in various logs on our servers and/or on third-party servers/devices, such as ad providers, routers, for an extended period of time; often upwards of 30 days. Such information does not directly reveal a visitor's real identity to us, since IP addresses are often dynamically allocated so one gets a different one each time they login to their ISP or in some instaces their IP address is shared with numerous other on-line users.

In regards to advertisements, we and/or various third-party services maintain click-through logs of visitors who click on advertisements, such as ad banners. Click-through logs often contain the remote IP address the visitor came from along with the browser type and referrer as reported by their web browser, among other details.

Sales transactions, completed or not, made through our on-line merchants and/or various third-parties are extensively logged, and such data is often retained for extended periods of time, such as many years. Credit card transactions are processed via gateways by various credit card processors. The credit card gateway, credit card processors, credit card issuers, and other associated parties retain various records regarding credit card transactions done through our merchants and/or third-party merchants.

Registration is required for posting messages on our various message board services. We require a valid and working email address during the registration process. This email address is kept on-file. The content of the message entered by the poster remains the property of the poster and thus we are not responsible for their message content.

Some of our services use cookies in order to give the visitor a better experience. Cookies are special headers that are embedded within some of our webpages, which a visitor's web browser may store locally on the visitor's computer for a period of time ranging from seconds to many years. The cookies we set (send) contain little to no personal information and thus they alone pose little threat to one's privacy. However, visitors may choose to limit or even disable cookies in their web browser, but note that some features may not function properly.

Email sent to any Drug Abuse Help service or associated entity is retained for an indefinite period. Email shall not be construed as confidential, since such communications may be intercepted or altered by outside parties. In addition, we do not consider email privileged (we reserve the right to reveal email content to outside parties solely at our option), unless both the sender and the respective Drug Abuse Help services and associated entities to whom the email is addressed have all agreed in writing, prior to the respective email communication(s), that such email communication(s) is to be considered privileged. In summary, we retain email for an indefinite period and we may generally do whatever we wish with email we receive, including email received in error.

To better protect your privacy one may find various anonymizer services such The Anonymizer useful. By accessing through an anonymizer service, we get their remote IP address and other information such as browser type instead of yours.

A few points to keep in mind regarding privacy and the internet:

  1. Legal jurisdiction in many instances is determined by the physical location of the visitor as opposed to where the server is located. Please check your local laws governing content, etc before accessing any website or related service - this is most applicable to persons accessing from locations where freedom of speech and expression are not protected.

  2. Many ISPs maintain logs including the URLs their users visit, which includes URLs to SSL encrypted webpages, their dial-in port, and some also log the phone number users dial in from among other things.

  3. Using email, or PM (personal message) services, or IRC and related chat systems will often reveal one's IP address to others. The use of remailers for email, use of anonymizer proxies for the web, use of special proxies for IRC, and encryption are all great preventative measures, but none of these measures are perfect.

    On a related topic, even if a website or related resource one visits does not maintain logs or is in another jurisdiction, one's privacy may still be at risk, since most ISPs log similar information. In essance the information logged by a person's ISP will often tend to mirror the logs of the websites and other services the person accessed. So persons who are extra concerned about their privacy may wish to consider an anonymous dial-up account or similar in addition to using anonymizer services.

  4. A fair amount of internet traffic is monitored through NAPs (network access points) as well as in transit by various governments and intellegence gathering agencies. They are primarily scanning for military and terrorist information.

  5. With a lot of effort most PGP encoded messages can be decrypted but likely not in real time which is primarily why many governments want to control encryption. PGP is still a good idea, but is not foolproof and requires some effort on part of the persons using it to keep it secure or otherwise risk key infiltration among other things.

  6. One should be careful with whom they correspond with and what information they reveal to them. No computer security in the world will protect one from poor judgement. A good defense is to talk in generalities in regards to one's identity and intentions.
Bottom line, it is ultimately up to visitors to protect their privacy and understand that there is no such thing as 100% privacy on the internet nor in the real world for that matter. It all comes down to managing risk and how much one is willing to accept.

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This web page and related elements are for informative purposes only and thus the use of any of this information is at your risk! Copyright 1999 - 2008 Domagon, Inc. All Rights Reserved. "Drug Abuse Help" and the slogan "Honest Drug Abuse Information" are service marks used by Domagon, Inc. Any other trademarks, trade names, service marks, or service names used on this site are the property of their respective owners. Page updated on June-10-2008 05:18 ET