Terms of use – Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media
Use of the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre website (“website”), mobile application (“mobile application”) or community forum including discussion board(s) (“Community Forum”) by you (“you”, with references to and “your” as applicable) is subject to acceptance of the following Terms of Use.
We will refer to the website, mobile application, and Community Forum together as the “Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media.” The Community Forum is designed and intended for people who currently reside in the Canadian province of Ontario. The information may not be relevant to, or accurate for, people residing outside this province.
Appropriateness of participation
As a condition of your participation in the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media programs and activities, you agree to support the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre’s goals of civility and privacy.
Postings on the Community Forum are governed by the Community Forum Etiquette Statement and must be appropriate. The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre’s moderator reserves the right, in his or her sole discretion, to remove any posting that demonstrates the following elements:
- Crude, profane or salacious language.
- Discrimination on any basis, including physical or mental disability, race, creed, color, sex, country of origin.
- Is abusive or insulting to others.
- Is harassing, hateful or disrespectful.
- Is obscene or offensive.
- Does not reflect the purpose of the Community Forum set out above or the theme of the specific forum to which you are posting.
- Advertises websites, products, or services without prior written approval from the staff of the Community Forum.
- Discloses the identity or personal information (including personal health information) of any person without their express consent.
- Might cause harm to someone’s computer or communication system.
- Solicits for the purpose of research or publication without the prior written approval of the staff of the Community Forum.
- Is protected by copyright, unless you have received the written consent of the author and/or publisher and prior written approval of the staff of the Forum.
The posting of objectionable material may be grounds for revocation of your access to the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media.
Views expressed are those of users
The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media provides various tools, and, in the case of the Community Forum, provides a venue for communication for immigrants, refugees, their sponsors, interested members of the public, and health-service providers.
The purpose of the Community Forum is to create and sustain an online community dedicated to providing an opportunity for users to exchange ideas, provide information, and facilitate general dialogue and opinions. As such, the content appearing in a Community Forum does not necessarily reflect the views of the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre, and the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre assumes no responsibility nor liability for the materials found in the Community Forum nor for any claims, damages, or losses resulting from any use of this service or the materials contained therein.
Abusive expressions or inadvertent disclosure by others
The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre is not responsible for the content of any postings by its users within the Community Forum. You specifically acknowledge that the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre is not liable for the defamatory, negligent, inaccurate, offensive, or illegal conduct of users, links, or third parties, and the risk of harm or injury from the foregoing rests entirely with you.
Links
Links from the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre Media to other sites, where available, do not constitute an endorsement of these sites by the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre. These links are provided as an information service only. It is your responsibility to evaluate the content and usefulness of information obtained from such other sites.
Not medical advice
The content of the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre Media, including postings, messages, text, graphics, images, and other material contained on the website and Community Forum (“Content”) are for informational purposes only. By registering as an Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media user, you are not a client of the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre for clinical purposes and are not being offered direct clinical care by the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre.
The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should always seek the immediate or timely advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. You should never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read or seen in the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media, including the content described above.
Not emergency or crisis care
The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media is not for emergency or crisis help. If you require emergency help, contact your local emergency services: In Ontario, you can call 9-1-1 or go to your local hospital emergency room.
You can also call Telehealth Ontario, a free and confidential phone number where you can get health advice or information: 1-866-797-0000.
You agree that while the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre does not monitor its media content and activities 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre may use your IP address and contact police in situations where it determines, in its sole discretion, that a posting in the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media constitutes a significant risk of serious bodily harm to you or others.
The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre may also contact you by email for administrative purposes related to your use of the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media.
Server log information that the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre gathers
The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre web servers generate logs that may contain information about computers or devices used to access the website or about general activity on the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media, such as the following:
- Internet address of computer or device
- Type of browser or other application used
- The operating system of the computer or device
- Web pages requested by users
- Referring Web pages
- Time spent on the site
The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre web server administrators may produce summary reports from these logs and share that information with the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media content managers who typically use this information in aggregate to understand what pages are popular, how users are navigating to and within their site, and when their sites are used most frequently.
While the information in server logs generally cannot be used to identify individuals, you should be aware that such information inadvertently could be captured. The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre web server administrators also use logs for error identification and tracking as well as audit purposes.
Cookies and login security
Cookies are small pieces of data stored by a web browser on a user’s computer. Cookies are often used to retain information about preferences and pages a user has visited. For example, when a user visits some sites on the web, you might see a “Welcome Back” message. The first time you visited the site a cookie was probably stored on your computer. Upon your return, the cookie is read again. You can refuse to accept cookies, disable cookies and remove cookies from your hard drive. Cookies are used so you will not have to repeatedly enter user names and passwords when you go to different parts of the website.
Some sites require the use of cookies in order to access the site, such as website locations requiring “bluestem” authentication. The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre web servers sometimes use cookies with websites that require online community members to log in with their self-provided username and password. The user is required to enter his/her username and password in order to access certain content on the website.
Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre retention of data
The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre will indefinitely store all data contained on the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media for internal purposes. For greater certainty, you understand that the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre will store all postings by users to the Community Forum, including any posts which have been deleted from public view, either by the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre, or as requested by the user.
Continuity of data provided
As a result of the dynamic nature of the Internet, resources that are free and publicly available one day may require a fee or restricted access the next, and the location of items may change as menus, pages, and files are reorganized. You expressly agree that the use of the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media is at your sole risk. The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre does not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free. The documents and related graphics published via the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media could contain technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. The Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre may make improvements and/or changes in the Ottawa Newcomer Health Centre media or programs described herein at any time.
