WellCommons.com is a new form of community Web site; it's part journalism and part social networking.

As such, a variety of types of personal information can be collected while you use this site. WellCommons Forum for Community Health Solutions, owned and operated by The World Company in collaboration with its communities, takes the protection and proper use of your private information very seriously and, accordingly, provides the following code of rights and responsibilities for all users of WellCommons.com.

• WellCommons.com collects IP addresses, information about the device and software you are using to access our Web site and geographical location from all users. We may also use cookies to track your use of advertising or to make certain features on our Web site work better. We don't use any of this data to identify individuals' identities, but rather to analyze those who are visiting our site and give them the most relevant content and advertising.

• WellCommons.com may also collect other, more personally identifiable information from users who choose to register with the site. That information may include: e-mail addresses, names, cell phone numbers and other demographic data. All of this information is collected on a strictly voluntary basis. WellCommons.com may share demographic data with business partners and vendors in an aggregate form. No personally identifiable information that you provide WellCommons.com will be sold or given away for commercial use.

• WellCommons.com allows users to interact with businesses and other users. In the course of this interaction, you may divulge personally identifiable information. We have no control over this information and urge you to be cognizant of the risks and rewards for revealing any personal information.

• Users and busineses are free to use any profile data on WellCommons.com to enhance their use of the site. By using our Web site, however, you agree not to use profile information found on the Web site for offline or outside-WellCommons.com commerical or personal purposes without the express, written consent of the business or the user. Your online use of profile data is governed by our site Terms of Service and may also be governed by other relationships you have entered into with WellCommons.com.

• Should you wish to remove private information from our Web site, such as your user profile, we provide tools to do so. Any changes take place almost instantly. Should you wish to remove your name from your profile or if you are unable to remove the profile information yourself, you may contact us with your request. We will attempt to respond to all requests within 72 hours. We reserve the right to maintain certain bits of your profile, such as a username, your comments or posts, in order to preserve the historical and archival nature of our community.

• In certain, rare circumstance, WellCommons.com may reveal profile information about an individual user. Those circumstances can be grouped in the following categories: (1) Compliance with the law or with the legal process; (2) Protection of our physical and intellectual property; (3) Preventing misuse of this Web site; (4) Preventing the harm of and protecting the personal safety of our users, our staff and members of our community.