Last amended: 26 January 2012
Contents
- Introduction
- General site
- Is my use of the site confidential?
- I gave you my email address – am I on a mailing list?
- What third-party tools are used on this site?
- Online support services
- Email support service
- Online support groups
- Financial transactions
Introduction
These Terms of Service cover your use of the Aware.ie website. By using the site, you are accepting these terms; if you are not happy with them, you should not use this website. We want you to understand how the site works so we’ve tried to keep the language as clear as possible. If you’ve got a more technical query, contact us and we’ll answer as best we can.
This policy covers pages on the Aware.ie domain only and may change from time to time to take account of new services or alternative wording/spelling. The date of the most recent change(s) should always be displayed on the page. Any major changes to the terms of service for services like our online support groups will be communicated to existing users. Other sites that we link to (e.g. Facebook) have their own terms of service which will be displayed on their websites. You can find more information on the third-party tools used on Aware.ie below.
If you can’t find the information you want here, it might be covered in our Privacy Policy. Otherwise, feel free to get in touch. Lastly, please let us know if anything isn’t working correctly for you around the site and we’ll try to figure out what the problem might be.
General site
You’re free to use most sections of the site as you please – this includes sharing links with others, printing off pages, saving copies of any PDFs we’ve provided, etc. Please remember that the copyright belongs to us though (or, in some cases, has been cleared by us and credited appropriately). This means that you should not pass any of this work off as your own. The site is provided free of charge and we have no plans to change this.
We do have a few restrictions, though. When using the site, do not break any laws or add misleading comments or posts. This means that spam, traffic-bombing, hacking, the spreading of viruses, trojans or any other malicious code, and trying to harvest information from the site for any of these purposes are all forbidden.
We welcome your thoughts and feedback. We accept comments on some sections of the site and contributions from our attendees are vital to our online support groups. These posts and comments are subject to moderation by Aware staff and/or volunteers, and we reserve the right to remove them (or choose not to publish them at all) as we see fit.
Is my use of Aware.ie confidential?
While our Privacy Policy explains what data we might collect about you more fully, we have designed the site to be as confidential as possible. You don’t have to register to find information on depression or fundraising, for instance, and we only ask for personal details like your email address where necessary, e.g. to register for additional services or sign up for events. If you are giving us personal details, please make sure they’re correct or you may not be able to do what you’d planned. Lastly, please note that comments on the site are intended for public viewing.
I gave you my email address – am I on a mailing list?
Not unless you asked to be. You will only receive the Aware email newsletter if that’s why you gave us your address. We don’t display email addresses publicly as part of comments/forum posts and we will never sell any email addresses that we have been given to a third party.
Depending on how and why you gave us your email address, it might be used to send you automatic notifications about site comments or forum posts, to reply to a message you sent us, to thank you for a donation, to confirm orders from our online store, to send you fundraising/event information or to update you on site services like our online support groups. If we make a mistake at any point, just let us know and we’ll correct it.
What third-party tools are used on this site?
Some parts of Aware.ie are powered by applications or widgets designed by third parties. These include the Facebook ‘like’ button, the Twitter follow button, the sign-up forms for our online newsletter, the My Mood Monitor tool, our laser/credit card processing system, media hosting sites like Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo, the ShareThis widget and Google Maps embeds. For free events, we occasionally use online registration software.
Our online sponsorship mini-site and our online support group service both run off software provided and hosted by UPR. Google/Gmail servers are used to deliver automatic notifications about site activity. Statistics packages used to log site trends do not record personal information like email addresses.
We have chosen these tools for their trustworthiness – for more information, including their terms of service, follow the links above. Access to these services is carefully controlled within Aware and all administrator accounts are protected by secure passwords.
Online support services
Note: As well as the specific terms below, all of the general points above also apply to our online support services.
Email support service
You can access our email support service by emailing wecanhelp@aware.ie or by filling out the form on that page of our website. Filling out the contact form is the equivalent of sending an email – the service is confidential but we need to know your email address to be able to reply to your message. This email address is for depression support only. For general queries about volunteering, fundraising, etc., please use the details on our Contact Us page.
Emails to the support service are handled by Aware staff and/or volunteers. We do not give medical advice and it is not a diagnostic service. Always see your doctor about any symptoms or side effects that you are concerned about. While we aim to reply to each email within one working day, this is not always possible and the service is not intended for emergencies. If you need help urgently, please call our loCall helpline on 1890 303 302 (opening hours and details). Please be polite to our volunteers as we do not guarantee a reply if you are abusive.
The service is confidential and your email address is used only to reply to your message. We will never add addresses from the email support service to our email newsletter subscriber list (although you are free to sign up yourself using the same address). While the person replying to your email may see your email address, our staff/volunteer policies on confidentiality are very clear. We may gather statistics on the use of the service (e.g. number of emails received, whether queries are from sufferers or family members, etc.) but these will not involve personal data.
Remember too that you do not have to use your primary email account to contact us – it is entirely up to you what email address you use and you will receive our reply as long as you have access to the inbox for that account. You should not enter an email address into any of our online contact forms if you do not have access to that account. If your email address has been submitted, accidentally or otherwise, just let us know when we ‘reply’ to you that there has been a mistake.
Online support groups
Note: This is the same Terms of Service agreement that will be shown on the online support groups page. If you have registered for the service, we will have notified you about any significant changes that we have made to these terms since you signed up.
The Aware online support group service allows people to receive confidential, non-directive depression support from trained Aware facilitators and others who are going through similar experiences. Neither other users nor group facilitators see your email address and you will be identified to them only by a screen name of your own choosing. The online support group service is completely separate to our email support service and our online discussion forums. We will never add addresses from the online support group service to our email newsletter subscriber list (although you are free to sign up yourself using the same address).
The service is free to use and by registering, you accept these terms of service. While we have no plans at the moment to do so, we may suspend new registrations temporarily or permanently if necessary. The service is confidential but you will have to provide a valid, working email address so that we can let you know about upcoming meetings. To confirm the email address you give us, we will send you a confirmation email containing a link – once you have clicked the link, you will be able to use the service.
Your email address cannot be seen by other users, or even group facilitators. The administration account is password-protected and access is tightly controlled. The screen name you choose for the service does not have to reflect your real name but to make things easy, please don’t use celebrity or business names that are not your own. We recommend that you only share personal details like your location where necessary within support groups. Remember too that you do not have to use your primary email account to sign up – it is entirely up to you what email address you use and you will receive our updates as long as you have access to the inbox for that account.
We understand that things can be misunderstood when typed online and that depression can have a wide range of effects on people’s mood and actions. However, your right to participate in online support groups is subject to good behaviour and group facilitators will be able to remove you from a session if you are disrupting the group for other sufferers or breaking the site’s general Terms of Service in any way. Facilitators can also log incident reports for the Aware administrators and further action can be taken after a group has ended if needed.
Groups are intended to support, not to advise. You do not need to contribute if you do not want to and you should only share as much or as little of your story as you are comfortable doing. One person’s experience may differ from another’s and nobody’s experiences should not be taken as advice or medical diagnosis. Always see your doctor about any symptoms or side effects that you are concerned about. Remember also to support the privacy of others – if someone is not yet ready to share something with the group, you should accept their decision.
Details of support groups should only be discussed in the password-protected support.aware.ie section of the website. Facilitators may discuss some group details with other facilitators where necessary (e.g. when handing over groups to each other, or for training) but your use of the service is always confidential. Groups will never be used for research purposes unless you have agreed in advance.
Financial transactions
Our credit/laser card processing service is provided by Realex, a reputable Irish company. This means that while event registration forms, our online store, our online donations form and the Aware online sponsorship mini-site are all hosted on the Aware.ie domain, final payment pages (where you enter your card details) are actually hosted on Realex’s servers. Your credit card details are not entered on Aware.ie and you will instead see https://epage.payandshop.com/epage.cgi in your browser’s address window when completing any online transaction with Aware.
Any website accepting payments online must meet PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) requirements. This is an industry standard supported by major credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard. PCI compliance means that these companies are satisfied that their customers’ details are safe. Realex meets these standards fully on behalf of its clients, including Aware.
Aware’s Realex administration account is password-protected and access to it is carefully controlled. Only your cardholder details are submitted to Realex’s servers (your email address, for instance, is only submitted to Aware.ie). To see Realex’s security policy, follow this link.
As with other areas of the site, we only ask for personal details where necessary. For any transaction you make through an event registration form, our online store or our online donation/sponsorship facilities, we use your email address to confirm the success of your payment, thank you for your support and notify you with any updates that may be necessary (e.g. changes to event details, shipping dates for shop orders, etc.) If you make a donation on behalf of someone else and choose to notify them, we will use your name in the email our system sends them.
In the case of our online sponsorship mini-site, you will be given the choice of whether or not to display your donation and message of support publicly. We will never display your email address here.
Lastly, please note that we may occasionally need to cancel orders in our online store (in full or in part) after they have been placed. If this happens, you will receive a refund. Prices everywhere on the site are displayed and charged in Euro.