Privacy Statement
Erowid Center is a strong supporter of individual privacy and we will do everything we can to safeguard information about our visitors, contributors, and members. Erowid does not, and will not in the future, sell, rent, loan, trade, or lease any personal information collected at our site, including membership forms or email lists.
Visitors
Many people ask whether simply visiting Erowid can be cause for concerns about privacy and security. Erowid Center is an IRS approved non-profit educational organization. One of the primary things to know is that we get more than 50,000 visitors a day (more than a million each month). There is safety in numbers. Our visitors span the spectrum from users of psychoactives to law enforcement, educators, chemists, physicians, poison control center workers, and parents. Visiting Erowid does not imply anything in particular about the visitor.
As with almost all websites, temporary log files are kept which identify some information about our visitors, including the I.P. addresses of machines that access the site. Our web logs are not available to the public. These logs allow website administrators to see how many people visit the site, how many pages have been accessed, which pages are accessed most frequently, and what links are leading people to the site.
Standard logs (including ours) also track which pages are visited by each I.P. address. This information is important for us to have because it allows us to catch denial of service attacks (for example, individual computers accessing hundreds of thousands of pages per day). This is obviously an area which concerns people and we take great care to make sure this information can not be used to compromise the privacy and security of our visitors.
Submissions
Because standard web logs track which pages are visited by each I.P. address, we have created several systems by which submissions (experience reports, images, etc) are considerably more difficult to track to a specific individual. For instance, when an image is submitted, the file write time is automatically changed so it will not be possible to determine who the submittor is by comparing the submission time to the web logs.
All submissions can be made pseudononymously and contact information is not publicly displayed unless specifically requested by the submittor.
Members / Contributors / Credit Card Info #
Information collected about members (such as name, email address, physical address, and credit card information) will never be shared with anyone. We do not share mailing lists with any other organizations. Additionally, there are a number of ways to make anonymous contributions.
As required by VISA and MASTERCARD, all credit card information is encrypted and deleted soon after your card is charged. For recurring charges, the credit card info is saved by our merchant bank First Data.
Use of Cookies
Erowid uses cookies in a few areas to allow visitors to set personal viewing preferences, store logins, and to save whether the visitor has accepted Terms of Use of this or other sites we run.. For instance, when viewing experience reports, each visitor can set how many results they would like to view per page. If set, this information is stored in a cookie. Erowid uses no external software and does not allow cross-site cookie storage, except between Erowid's own servers and domains.
Removal of Indentifying Information
If you have previously submitted information to Erowid and would like to have your name or contact information removed from the submission, please let us know. Over the past six years we have incorporated several independent collections of information into our archives. Some of these archives may display names or contact information without the permission of the author. We are happy to anonymize submissions, though we will need to be able to verify that you are the original submittor.
Android Navigator App #
Erowid has released two versions of an Erowid-specific Android App. The second one, written from scratch by a single volunteer, has released the source code on Github.
The 2014 Android Erowid Navigator application does not store or save any information other than pages a user chooses to save. No location information stored, no advertisers getting user information. Its pretty much the same as browsing the site through a web browser. Android does get data that you downloaded an Erowid application. When the Navigator contacts the Erowid website, Erowid records logs of pages visited and downloaded we do everything we legally can to keep our logs as private as possible. We have never had to turn over our logs to any third party, including no warrants. Online privacy is EXTREMELY complicated.
Visitors
Many people ask whether simply visiting Erowid can be cause for concerns about privacy and security. Erowid Center is an IRS approved non-profit educational organization. One of the primary things to know is that we get more than 50,000 visitors a day (more than a million each month). There is safety in numbers. Our visitors span the spectrum from users of psychoactives to law enforcement, educators, chemists, physicians, poison control center workers, and parents. Visiting Erowid does not imply anything in particular about the visitor.
As with almost all websites, temporary log files are kept which identify some information about our visitors, including the I.P. addresses of machines that access the site. Our web logs are not available to the public. These logs allow website administrators to see how many people visit the site, how many pages have been accessed, which pages are accessed most frequently, and what links are leading people to the site.
Standard logs (including ours) also track which pages are visited by each I.P. address. This information is important for us to have because it allows us to catch denial of service attacks (for example, individual computers accessing hundreds of thousands of pages per day). This is obviously an area which concerns people and we take great care to make sure this information can not be used to compromise the privacy and security of our visitors.
Submissions
Because standard web logs track which pages are visited by each I.P. address, we have created several systems by which submissions (experience reports, images, etc) are considerably more difficult to track to a specific individual. For instance, when an image is submitted, the file write time is automatically changed so it will not be possible to determine who the submittor is by comparing the submission time to the web logs.
All submissions can be made pseudononymously and contact information is not publicly displayed unless specifically requested by the submittor.
Members / Contributors / Credit Card Info #
Information collected about members (such as name, email address, physical address, and credit card information) will never be shared with anyone. We do not share mailing lists with any other organizations. Additionally, there are a number of ways to make anonymous contributions.
As required by VISA and MASTERCARD, all credit card information is encrypted and deleted soon after your card is charged. For recurring charges, the credit card info is saved by our merchant bank First Data.
Use of Cookies
Erowid uses cookies in a few areas to allow visitors to set personal viewing preferences, store logins, and to save whether the visitor has accepted Terms of Use of this or other sites we run.. For instance, when viewing experience reports, each visitor can set how many results they would like to view per page. If set, this information is stored in a cookie. Erowid uses no external software and does not allow cross-site cookie storage, except between Erowid's own servers and domains.
Removal of Indentifying Information
If you have previously submitted information to Erowid and would like to have your name or contact information removed from the submission, please let us know. Over the past six years we have incorporated several independent collections of information into our archives. Some of these archives may display names or contact information without the permission of the author. We are happy to anonymize submissions, though we will need to be able to verify that you are the original submittor.
Android Navigator App #
Erowid has released two versions of an Erowid-specific Android App. The second one, written from scratch by a single volunteer, has released the source code on Github.
The 2014 Android Erowid Navigator application does not store or save any information other than pages a user chooses to save. No location information stored, no advertisers getting user information. Its pretty much the same as browsing the site through a web browser. Android does get data that you downloaded an Erowid application. When the Navigator contacts the Erowid website, Erowid records logs of pages visited and downloaded we do everything we legally can to keep our logs as private as possible. We have never had to turn over our logs to any third party, including no warrants. Online privacy is EXTREMELY complicated.