Terms & Conditions

The Times Health Club House Rules

These House Rules form part of the Times Health Club terms and conditions. Our full terms and conditions can be accessed here

You must be 18 or over to register for The Times Health Club. If you are under 18, please stop using The Times Health Club and notify us right away.

The Times Health Club respects its users and would ask that they respect each other. In areas of our site where you can express yourself or interact with others, we ask that you stick to what is legal, tasteful and civil.

The Times Health Club is about its members. If you see something on the Health Club that has been posted by another reader and that you think is inappropriate, please let us know right away via the "Report inappropriate content" link. Our dedicated team of moderators works 24 hours a day to read your complaints and act if necessary. For more details about our moderation, see the relevant section below.

We ask that you do not post any content (including for example, in your Profile) that breaches The Times Health Club's terms of use agreement for the Website (the "Agreement"), including by way of example content that:

  • Is racist, homophobic, sexist, or demeaning to either sex, abusive, sexually explicit, pornographic, of a disturbing nature or that preaches, encourages or incites religious or ethnic hatred, or links to websites that promote the same;
  • Breaks the law, or encourages other to break it;
  • Makes defamatory comments about others;
  • Infringes copyright or other intellectual property rights;
  • Reveals another user's personal details, such as their surname, address, contact numbers, email address or other identifying information;
  • Uses swear words in order to offend others, or may be deemed rude or mean spirited or attempts to circumvent profanity filters in order to use swear words.
  • Promotes commercial products or enterprises or repeatedly posts links to promote other sites and/or services; or
  • Is an image of a child under 18 (for further detail please see below);

In addition, we ask that you do not use the Website to carry out any activity prohibited by the Agreement including by way of example to:

  1. harass, threaten or attack anyone or otherwise behave in any way that would cause annoyance or distress to other users;
  2. transmit or knowingly receive content and/or language that is in any way unlawful, threatening, offensive, or in breach of any obligations of confidence. This includes the use of swear words and the use of offensive nicknames;
  3. flood or "spam" the Website or any user who posts content on the Website;
  4. provide instructions for illegal or otherwise harmful activities;
  5. transmit or knowingly receive information relating to (or include links to) pornography, pirated software and/or computer games or other counterfeit goods;
  6. collect and/or distribute personal data concerning other users;
  7. impersonate another person, whether a friend, family member, celebrity, moderator, another user or an employee of News International Newspapers Limited or any of its affiliates;
  8. attempt to commercially gain from use of the Website. This includes the transmission of advertisements and any other attempts to generate business from other users of the Website;
  9. post chain letters or pyramid schemes;

In addition the following is prohibited:

  1. use of multiple logins for the purpose of disrupting the community or annoying other users;
  2. dissemination of "spoilers" such as material which contains plot developments which have not been transmitted on UK analogue or digital television (whether free-to air, cable or satellite). Such content will be deleted unless submitted in a designated "spoilers area";
  3. Content containing languages other than English;
  4. Use of offensive or inappropriate user names;
  5. Deliberate misuse or spamming of the complaints facility;
  6. Use of swear words or other language likely to offend;
  7. Posting of content which breaks the law, condones or encourages unlawful activity.

We reserve the right to remove from the Website, without notice and at our sole discretion, any content that we consider inappropriate for the Website. We may also ban, block or delete any user accounts if, according to our sole judgement, their owners or users have infringed the Agreement, any relevant House Rules or are using our service in a manner that we consider inappropriate.

HOW WE MODERATE

We have a dedicated team of trained moderators working around the clock. If you want to reach them to report offensive contributions, always use the inappropriate content reporting link, which can be found next to any entry created by our users. We ask that you always log in to file these reports. This ensures that we know the exact location of the content complained about, and it helps us prevent campaigns that target individuals anonymously.

When reporting about another user's contribution, make sure you state why you think it breached our Agreement or House Rules. Disagreement with someone's views is not a reason to report them.

When we receive your complaint, we will evaluate it and decide on the most suitable action. We will not normally confirm the steps we take to the complainant, as this may breach the rights and privacy of others, but rest assured that all complaints will be checked promptly and professionally.

In some cases, we may have to remove an entire segment of content, including messages that do not breach our terms, if they were part of a topic that was in breach of our Agreement or House Rules, or where the context is lost or does not make sense once we removed offensive content. For example, if we remove a racist comment, the responses to it will no longer be relevant.

Images of children are strictly regulated on our service. We allow them but must ensure that they comply with strict guidelines, including that they should not be sexualised in any way, and that they are posted by the child's immediate family. In many cases we find that parents or relatives upload pictures of their children in good faith, unaware that these might be copied and misused, or that there are privacy issues around their use on the Internet. We remove them in the best interest of the child, and to protect the parents. Unfortunately, we can't always tell for sure if a picture is that of a minor and, when in doubt, we'd rather err on the side of caution.