Privacy Policy for ChewFree.com
This Privacy Statement is effective from the inception of ChewFree.com on May 3, 2004, and was last updated on January 28, 2005.
The ChewFree project at Oregon Research Institute is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to enable individuals and organizations to establish trusting relationships based on respect for personal identity and information by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the site www.chewfree.com. Because this Web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to our users' privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact the coordinator of the ChewFree.com research study, Laura Akers, at chewfree@ori.org, or c/o Oregon Research Institute, 1715 Franklin Blvd., Eugene, OR 97403; phone 541-484-2123. If you do not receive acknowledgment of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should then contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php. TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with the Web site to resolve your concerns.
The privacy practices of this site have also been reviewed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Oregon Research Institute in compliance with the regulations on protection of human subjects established by the Office of Human Research Protections of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
If you have questions or comments about this privacy policy, please e-mail chewfree@ori.org.
What kind of information do we collect?
This site is a research project conducted by Oregon Research Institute and funded by the National Cancer Institute (grant #1-RO1-CA84225). We are located at 1715 Franklin Blvd., Eugene, Oregon, 97403. The principal investigator of this project is Herbert H. Severson, Ph.D., and the project coordinator is Laura Akers.
We collect the same type of information at this site that we collect in all of our other research projects. This includes participant name, address, phone number, demographic information, tobacco use history, and other information typically collected in research projects related to quitting tobacco. We also collect information that is unique to projects conducted on the Internet, such as e-mail address and data on movement within the web site. Each person is assigned a participant number that is attached to all of that person's data, and no one outside the project's staff has access to identifying data about any participant.
We collect data from participants at several points: during eligibility screening, during new user registration, in an enrollment survey, and in three follow-up surveys. The questions that we ask during screening and registration are required for use of the site. The questions in the enrollment and follow-up surveys are optional but very important to the evaluation of how well the tobacco cessation program works.
We also collect data on participants "passively" without asking questions. This type of data includes information on your movement within the site and the choices you make within the program. For example, we keep track of which links you click on and your use of the forum. This will help us learn which parts of the program are visited most often and which are most useful in quitting and staying quit. Your movement within the ChewFree.com program is tracked in log files linked to your participant number, which lets us analyze your use of the program and link it with your baseline characteristics (for example, your years of education) and your tobacco use outcomes (for example, whether you quit). We also collect the type of information that is normally collected by many websites, such as IP address, browser type, and the site you come to us from.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user's computer for record-keeping purposes. We use session ID cookies on this site, which help the ChewFree server associate a particular client machine with a particular session stored on the server. These cookies expire when you close your browser. We do not link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information you submit while on our site. If you reject cookies, you will not be able to use the site.
Who has access to the information?
The information is collected by Oregon Research Institute, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to behavioral research in the public interest. Click
In the unlikely event that we receive a subpoena or court order to share information about a participant with law enforcement officials, we anticipate that we would comply.
Participants using the bulletin boards should also note that the research staff has an ethical responsibility to notify officials if necessary to protect participants or others from harm. For example, if a participant makes a bulletin board post threatening to harm himself or another person, it is our responsibility to notify the appropriate authorities.
How do we use the information?
The information we collect in this study is used to further scientific knowledge about tobacco cessation. For example, we may learn that people who use this site are older (or younger) than people who have participated in our previous studies, and that people who were able to quit successfully using this site used more (or less) tobacco at the beginning than people who were not able to quit. The findings of this study will be reported to our sponsor, the National Cancer Institute, and to the scientific community, through professional journals and presentations at conferences. All information is presented in summary form, and no individuals are ever identified.
Project staff may also contact you as part of the quitting program (by sending you e-mails) and to collect information about the success of the program. We conduct follow-up surveys six weeks, three months, and six months after each person signs up with the program. Because the information we request at these times is vitally important to learning about the usefulness of the quitting program, we make every effort to collect it. We will contact participants first by e-mail, and then by phone if participants don't respond to the e-mails. We also pay participants for completion of the follow-up surveys and use their postal mailing addresses to send the payment checks.
This is not a commercial site, and information about you is never used to try to sell you any products or services. Your e-mail address, and other information about you, will never be shared with any vendor.
How is the information protected?
All data we collect is available only to Oregon Research Institute and InterVision staff to have signed strict confidentiality agreements and who must use a password to access the data. Our web security is maintained by regular maintenance of server software (installing all upgrades, patches, and service packs to the relevant software). The file systems on our machines are restricted to administrators (designated Oregon Research Institute staff) and developers (InterVision). The machines are also protected by a firewall that allows only very specific types of access to each machine from the outside.
How can users correct inaccuracies in the information?
When participants visit the site, we ask them if their e-mail address, mailing address, or phone number has changed. If they need to notify us of other changes, such as name changes, they can contact us by e-mail.
What if this privacy policy changes?
We do not expect to make any changes in this privacy policy, but if we do, we will notify users on the study's home page. We assure all participants that at no time will we ever relax our confidentiality procedures, nor will we ever use any of their personal information for any commercial purpose.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at chewfree@ori.org.
© 2005 Oregon Research Institute. All Rights Reserved.