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Privacy Statement

FertileThoughts.com is an online community site for people who are dealing with family building issues. Our mission is to provide timely, comprehensive, and accessible medical information on infertility treatments, adoption, surrogacy, and any family building matters, and to give people a place to share their experiences with others dealing with similar situations. We are independent of any drug company, HMO, medical practice, or other health care organization in order to ensure unbiased, objective, credible information. We keep the right to choose who will advertise with us, in order to make sure that no harmful or offensive products or services are offered on our site. We respect our users’ privacy by limiting the gathering of personal and identifying information, using this information only to ensure that online activities within FertileThoughts are appropriate, and share this information with affiliates and partners only at the aggregate or anonymous level. Confidentiality and privacy are important not only to you but also to your fellow members. We highly encourage the following practices: What is said in one post should not be taken to another post by a different member. Avoid mentioning your personal information publicly. This includes but not limited to full real names, employment and phone numbers of the employees in their own buildings, address, email addresses, etc. Similarly to the above please don't expose fellow members' (or any other person's - even if not a member of this site) personal information in your posts. Please don't discuss other members' (or any other person's - even if not a member of this site) personal affairs in your posts. This includes any item from their private life and health condition. Even if you believe they wouldn't mind and/or its for their benefit. After all, you probably wouldn't like someone else discussing your private affairs in public. We hope that you adopt our privacy policy as your own when it comes to discussions. Following is our complete privacy policy. Privacy Statement for FertileThoughts FertileThoughts has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. The following discloses the information gathering and dissemination practices for FertileThoughts: Information Automatically Logged We use your computer's IP (Internet Protocol) address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our Web site. Your IP address is used to help identify you and your time spent at our sites, and to gather broad demographic information. This allows us to see which parts of our sites users are visiting. We do not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable. This means, for instance, that a user's session will be tracked, but the user will remain anonymous. Since the subject matter of FertileThoughts is of a sensitive nature we have a very strict user's policy. In order to keep this a safe and friendly environment for our users we use the person's IP address to contact their Internet Service Provider if they are abusive. That would be the only instance in which we will link an IP address to a person. Cookies FertileThoughts uses cookies to save your password so you don't have to re-enter it each time you visit our site. This is done only when you enter one of the sections that require you to have a user name and a password such as the Java chatrooms. In no case are cookies used to track down users for any purpose. If you dont like usage of cookies you can easily disable it by going to "my settings". When cookies are not used the forums will be using a method called "session ID" to keep track of you during each visit. Once you leave the site no information is kept on the server or your computer. This may require you to log on manually for each visit. Advertisers We sometimes use an outside ad agency to display ads on our site. These ads may contain cookies. While we use cookies in other parts of our web site, cookies received with banner ads are collected by our ad agency, and we may not have access to this information. E-mail list FertileThoughts' e-mail list requires users to give us contact information (like their name and email address). Contact information from the registration forms is used to send information about our company. The member's contact information is also used to send promotional material from some of our partners to our members. Users can opt-out of receiving future mailings; see the choice/opt-out section below. Order Forms FertileThoughts uses an order form for customers to request products and services. We collect contact information (like email and postal address), financial information (like account or credit card numbers), and demographic information (like zip code). Contact information from the order forms is used for shipping purposes only, or to contact the user in case a problem arises with the product /service. (For example, user’s choice is out of stock). Financial information that is collected is only used to bill the user for products and services purchased, and is not shared with third parties. Surveys Our online surveys ask visitors for demographic information (like zip code, age, or income level). This information is shared with advertisers on an aggregate basis. This means no identifiable information will be shared at any time - only statistical information of our members as a group. We also use this data to tailor our visitors' experience at our site, showing them content that we think they might be interested in, and displaying the content according to their preferences. External Links FertileThoughts contains links to other sites. FertileThoughts is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Web sites. Special Relationships We have business relationships that can be viewed under our Partners and Affiliates section. We would like to emphasize that these companies do not influence our site content in any way, and that we closely monitor what is offered by these businesses on FertileThoughts. Any user information that is shared with these companies is only done so on an aggregate basis. This means that all information is anonymous and cannot be linked to an individual user. Public Forums FertileThoughts makes chat rooms, forums, message boards, and news groups available to its users. Please remember that any information disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information. Children's Guidelines FertileThoughts is intended for users 18 years of age and older who are interested in exploring family building issues. FertileThoughts is not a site directed at children. However, to comply with privacy regulations, we will not allow anyone under the age of 13 to engage in any activities on FertileThoughts. Specifically, no information shall be gathered from a person under the age of 13. If for some reason, a child under the age of 13 tries to share information with the webmasters, FertileThoughts reserves the right to block that user. Choice/Opt-Out FertileThoughts provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving promotional/marketing information from us and our partners. You can do so by clicking on the "Remove" link in your e-mail, by sending email to Dave@FertileThoughts.com, or simply by logging on HERE, filling your e-mail address and choosing "unsubscribe". Data Quality/Access FertileThoughts gives users the option to change and modify information previously provided. - To edit or change your entry in Personal Histories, go to that section, locate your entry and use the "edit" feature. - To change or remove a chat you have scheduled on the Calendar, please write to Dave@FertileThoughts.com. Please write Feedback in the subject line of the email sent otherwise it will not be addresses. - To have your picture removed from the Picture Album, or your entry removed from the Guest Book, please write to Dave@FertileThoughts.com. Please write Feedback in the subject line of the email sent otherwise it will not be addresses. - To have your Java Chat Room registration removed from our records, please write to Dave@FertileThoughts.com. Please write Feedback in the subject line of the email sent otherwise it will not be addresses. Membership Upgrade (Boards Subscription) Billing Information FertileThoughts does not collect ANY of your financial information (e.g. credit card number etc.). When you submit payment the information is passed in real time to a processing gateway (provided by Authorize.net). We just get a confirmation from them if payment was approved and change your membership status accordingly. Authorize.net is a reputable company who is a leader in the area of online transactions processing. You can learn more about them at their site: http://www.authorizenet.com Contacting FertileThoughts If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of FertileThoughts, or if you ever feel uncertain about whether FertileThoughts is following the privacy policy we have described here, please notify us by e-mail to privacy@fertilethoughts.com. We will make every reasonable effort to find and correct the problem promptly.