Advertising Policy

Healthopedia.com has business relationships with companies who pay us to place advertisements or product and service offers on our Web site. We use the revenue from these relationships to help offset the costs of developing quality consumer health information.

Healthopedia.com requires advertisers to provide ads that are accurate, in good taste, and otherwise comply with our advertising policy. Read about our editorial integrity, endorsement policies, and the details of our advertising policy.

• Advertisements Clearly Identified
• No Pop-Up or Pop-Under Advertisements
• Clicking On Advertisements
• Editorial Independence
• Healthopedia.com Does Not Endorse Products
• Types Of Advertisements Not Accepted
• Advertisements Are Not Targeted To You
• No Advertorials
• Cookies
• Sharing Aggregate User Information

Advertisements Clearly Identified

We believe it is important for you to be able to distinguish advertisements and offers from Healthopedia.com's consumer health information. For this reason, all advertisements and sponsorship acknowledgments are separated from our consumer health information. Each is clearly labeled, for example, with the word "Advertisement" or "From Sponsors" running along the top, bottom, or the side of the box in which the advertisement or sponsorship acknowledgment appears.

Information marked "Advertisement" or "From Sponsors" on Healthopedia.com may include advertisements and offers from third parties as well as "in-house" advertisements that will link you to consumer health information we wish to highlight.

No Pop-Up or Pop-Under Advertisements

We do not present our users with pop-up ads of any kind on our site. We find them annoying. If you see or receive one of these items, it is coming from an outside source, either as a result of something you have previously downloaded or as an "exit" pop-up from the site you just visited. It is not coming from our site.

Here are a few possible explanations of why they occasionally appear when you browse our site,

• One possibility is that you visited some other site while surfing, and that site launched pop-up windows in the background. These ads are known in the advertising industry as "pop-unders." Other web pages trigger pop-ups when a user leaves that site. When you came to Healthopedia.com, the windows may have become visible. Again, we do not condone this practice and do not allow it on Healthopedia.com.

• If you have installed some free programs, especially music-sharing programs such as BearShare or AudioGalaxy, you may have installed other programs as well. These tiny "time bombs" can show pop-ups at random intervals or based on anything you type on a web page. A brief description of these programs can be found in these articles:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-257592.html
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,49960,00.html

If you are experiencing pop-ups generated by one of these malicious programs, you may want to remove the pop-up program from your computer. One program that attempts to detect and to uninstall pop-up programs is available at http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10106-108-63806.html. We have no relationship with the individuals who created this software and cannot vouch for it ourselves.

If you feel you were deceived when you installed a program that creates pop-ups, you may want to take action. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click on "File a Complaint Online", call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:

Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
Washington, D.C. 20580

If your complaint is against a company in another country, please file it at http://www.econsumer.gov/.

If you follow all these suggestions and still have a "pop-up problem" on Healthopedia.com, feel free to write to us. It will help us if you can right-click on the pop-up window and select "Properties" from the drop down menu. If you write us, include the url address that you see, so we can investigate the source of the pop-ups.

Clicking On Advertisements

If you click on a third-party advertisement, you will be leaving Healthopedia.com and will be directed to the advertiser's site. Be aware that Healthopedia.com has no control over the practices of other Web sites. Your computer may receive cookies from other sites and you will not be protected by Healthopedia.com's security and privacy policies.

At times, when you click on an advertisement, a box will pop up asking you to respond to a survey or poll or answer a question. These boxes are controlled by the advertiser; information you enter into these boxes is submitted to the advertiser, not to Healthopedia.com.

Editorial Independence

Healthopedia.com maintains absolute editorial independence. Like most other commercial Web sites, Healthopedia.com receives funding from third parties who pay for the right to advertise their companies and products on our site. This funding supports Healthopedia.com's efforts to develop comprehensive and credible consumer health information.

Neither advertising nor sponsorship will influence this Web site's news, information content, or editorial positions. Healthopedia.com maintains complete editorial independence and does not permit advertisers or third-party sponsors to change content, influence, or to introduce biased content into Healthopedia.com sections.

Our editorial independence and reliance on credible companies in the health-care industry for our content is our single most important asset.

Healthopedia.com presents all information in accordance with the editorial policy and practices; sponsors have no editorial input or influence on the information itself.

Healthopedia.com Does Not Endorse Products

The appearance of third-party advertisements or sponsorship acknowledgements on Healthopedia.com is not a guarantee or an endorsement by Healthopedia.com or any of our content partners of the organization, product or service or the claims made for the product or service in such advertisement or sponsorship acknowledgement.

Types Of Advertisements Not Accepted

• Healthopedia.com does not accept advertising that we know either contains false or misleading claims or promotes ineffective or dangerous products.
• Healthopedia.com does not accept advertising for alcohol, tobacco, firearms or pornography.
• Healthopedia.com does not accept pop-up or pop-under advertisements of any kind. We find them annoying.

Advertisements Are Not Targeted To You

Advertisers and sponsors may target their messages to specific health information categories within our site, but Healthopedia.com does not target advertisements to individual users on our site. In other words, we do not use personal information about you to determine which advertisements you will see when you visit our site.

No Advertorials

Healthopedia.com does not accept "advertorial" articles. In other words, our site does not display consumer health articles provided by companies who advertise on our site. More information is available about how our consumer health articles are developed.

Cookies

Read more about Healthopedia.com's use of cookies and clicking on advertisements.

Sharing Aggregate User Information

Healthopedia.com may share aggregated, anonymous statistical information regarding site usage and traffic patterns with our advertisers and sponsors. Information in these aggregated summary reports cannot be linked to you individually. Any information provided by you to the advertiser is not controlled by Healthopedia.com.