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Abstract
Internet has become one of the most used communication media. This and the fact that
no constraining information publishing policy exists have created an urgent need to
control the quality of information circulating through this media. To this purpose,
the Health On the Net Foundation has initiated the Code of Conduct (HONcode) for the
health/medical domain. This initiative proposes guidelines to information providers,
with the aim, on the one hand, of raising the quality of data available on the Net
and, on the other hand, of helping to identify Internet sites that are maintained
by qualified people and contain reliable data. The HONcode mainly includes the following
ethical aspects: the author's credentials, the date of the last modification with
respect to clinical documents, confidentiality of data, source data reference, funding
and the advertising policy. This article presents the HONcode and its evolution since
it was launched in 1996.