TOS Suggestion

[VaBreeze]

The following constitutes a breach of MedHelp's TOS:

Posting names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers or any other confidential or personally identifiable information of yourself or any person(s) or entities.

Posting links to other websites or individuals, without prior written permission from MedHelp.

I can certainly understand not posting your personal information in a forum, however if one wants to share a friendship with someone outside of this site, I don't see anything wrong with being able to place their personal information in a message to another member.  Aren't the messages between members secure?  Of course, placing personal info. that does not apply to oneself would be totally unacceptable under any circumstance.  

Regarding the second paragraph, if someone is seeking physicians in their area that treat a specific illness, one can not place the web address that shows a listing of physicians (because it's identifiable info. about an entity).  Were it to be their home address I could understand the concern.  Now, there are members that i've seen who sign up and place a post saying "this product, therapy, manipulation (or otherwise) healed me."  Then you review thier profile and they have placed no personal information; no journals, tracking, personal comments to assist others or anything else...and when you use the links they leave it will take you to some huge merchant selling over the counter remedies, or something of that nature.  They are not here to support or help.  They are here trying to push sales.  

People come to places like this seeking help, friendship, understanding and support.  Often they are frustrated, confused, overwhelmed and do not know where else to turn.  As long as the information (links) are not promoting advertisement, are not retail or wholesale merchandisers or any other market scheme for "the cure", are not against copywrites and are those which could be found by a web search, I feel they should be allowed.  It's very difficult to help others with sound advice and information when you have to say:  " First you go to this place, then you click the right button and it will take you here, then you have to sign up and log in, then wait for an email, then you go to the email link to get to the website, then click..."  I think you get the idea.  

If I am asked about a Support Group and I know where one is and they could help another member, I see nothing wrong with putting the name, address and phone number of that group on a forum post.  They group itself has placed it on the web for the whold world to see.

I'd suggest that there be a little more focus on the content of links that are posted to see if they are legitimately helpful before deleting them and a little lee-way in the posting of someone's own personal information.  I feel that more attention is warranted by bogus members who are simply here to promote their sales pitch for themselves for someone elses product or company.

Thank you for reading and in no way is it my intent to debase MedHelp, as there are good forums here and good people as well.

[VaBreeze]

Thank you for your reponse.  I do understand the concern about spam.  I also understand that you would not have the power to ban someone who may be contacting me personally, because I have given them my email address (that would be of my own consequences).

Regarding the URL's, perhaps i've seen something misinterpreted by another.  I will do as you a have suggested.

I did not realize this was only a 'product' suggestions forum.  I had previously written something to Contact Us and was told to use this suggestion forum so I thought this was where any suggestion was placed.  I'm sorry for the confusion.

You were both prompt and thorough.  Thank you for your help.  

[Med Help]

Thanks for your feedback. We do not want members to post their own or other people's information on the site as it helps protect our members from spam. If you post your email address in a public space, spammers will pick up that email address and start spamming it. This is a precautionary measure.

However, you are free to share your personal and contact information in private messages, although we advise you not to. Using the private message system rather than your personal email protects your anonymity. If you choose to engage in a relationship outside of MedHelp, you are of course entitled to do so. But if the communications get out of hand, we will not have the power to ban someone from contacting you or to intervene in any way.

You can actually include information on other sites and support groups on MedHelp. These URLs are reviewed by our moderators to ensure that they are appropriate. We do not allow people to spam or solicit our members. So if you are genuinely helping others by including that information, it will probably be reviewed and accepted. If you have more devious intentions, then the moderators will likely remove the URLs. All of these are handled on a case-by-case basis. If you feel that one of your URLs have been wrongly removed, you should submit those requests through Contact Us. This is a product suggestions forum and we cannot handle those types of requests here.

Thanks,
MedHelp