An ancient precept in the field of medicine says,
"Primum non nocere", or "First of all, do no harm."
Med Help is dedicated to protecting the privacy of our
visitors and to ensuring that our information is accurate, complete, and
up-to-date. To be useful we must gain and earn the trust and confidence of our
members and visitors. Therefore, with the help of the Med Help membership, we
strive to maintain the highest possible level of integrity. Our principals are
based on the best codes of practice and ethical standards. We invite suggestions
on how we can do better.
We understand that health is a very personal subject and
we want our Members and Visitors to be as comfortable as possible while visiting
our website and using our services. This policy tells you, among other things,
what information we gather from you, how we may use or disclose that information
and our efforts to protect it. Please read this policy carefully, and feel free
to
contact us if you have any questions regarding its contents.
Types of
Information Collected
In connection with your use of our site, we ask for and
may collect a variety of information from and about you in different ways. For
example, when you register to use our site, we ask for and store your name,
address, email address and other identifying contact data. We may also collect
the information you disclose in any of our chat rooms, discussion groups and
bulletin boards, or that you voluntarily provide to us through responses to
surveys, questionnaires and the like and through your use of information storage
facilities on our sites.
Cookies
Cookies were originally designed to help a website
distinguish a user's browser as a previous visitor and thus save and remember
any preferences that may have been set while the user was browsing the site.
Currently, websites use cookies to enhance the user's visit; in general, cookies
can securely store a user's ID and password, personalize home pages, or identify
which parts of a site have been visited.
You may set your web browser to notify you of cookie
placement requests or decline cookies completely. In addition, you can delete
the files that contain cookies; those files are stored as part of your Internet
browser, however, if you delete cookies that have been sent from our site, this
will cause you to reenter data (e.g. login again).
Use of
Information
Med Help uses your information to better understand your
needs and provide you with better service. We use your personally identifying
information to identify and register you as a user of the site. We also
use your information to help you complete a transaction, to communicate back to
you, to update you on our services and benefits, and to personalize our web
sites for you. For example, we may also associate your personally identifying
information with information we collect about your preferences and activities at
the site, such as the particular pages you request at the site and purchases or
other transactions you effect through the site. We may vary the content you
receive in future visits to the site based on your preferences and activities.
Credit card numbers are used only for payment processing
and are not retained on our system without your permission.
From time to time, we may also use your information to
contact you to provide you with medical information we think would be of
particular interest. At a minimum, we always give you the opportunity to
opt out of receiving such information in the future by sending a blank
email to
unsubscribe@medhelp.org.
Disclosure of
Information
Except as set forth in this policy, Med Help and its
subsidiaries will not disclose to unaffiliated companies any information it
gathers from you which could be used to identify or contact you. Any personal
information provided to entities affiliated with the Med Help website will be
treated in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy, unless you are
otherwise notified.
Aggregate Information
We may provide to third parties information about you
that does not allow you to be identified or contacted ("Aggregate Information").
Aggregate Information might include collective profiles of our user groups and
their activities and preferences. Such Aggregate Information may also be
disclosed in describing our site and services to prospective partners,
advertisers and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes. For
example, we might inform third parties regarding the number of Member or
Visitors of our site and the activities they conduct while on our site. We might
also inform a pharmaceutical company (that may or may not be a sponsor) of the
total number of page views in a particular forum.
Successor Entities
In the event that our business related to this site is
sold, we may transfer the information we collect to a successor entity provided
that such successor agrees to protect the information in the manner described in
this policy.
Legally Required Disclosures
Finally, we may disclose information to fulfill certain
legal and regulatory requirements or if we believe, in good faith, that such
disclosure is legally required or necessary to protect others' rights or to
prevent harm.
Accessing and
Changing Your Information
You may change the personal information contained in your
profile. Once confirmed, any new item of information will replace the
corresponding information previously provided.
You may not change the following types of information:
- Material that the Member or Visitor has posted in a Public Forum
and any other material that the Member or Visitor similarly has caused to be
made available to other Site Members or to Site visitors.
- Material that the Member or Visitor has posted in a Chat Area.
- Material that the Member or Visitor has posted or otherwise sent
to Med Help staff members or representatives. While confidentiality rules may
apply to such material, the Member or Visitor does not own the data. This
includes e-mail and all other written correspondence.
Children
Med Help conforms to the Children's Online Privacy
Protection Act [COPPA]. We will never knowingly request personally identifiable
information from anyone under the age of 13 without parental consent. When we do
receive information (with parental consent) from users under the age of 13, we
will never voluntarily share their personally identifiable information with
third parties, regardless of their stated preference given at registration
Your Privacy
Choices
Participation on our site is purely voluntary and you may
opt-out at any time by notifying us via an email message to
unsubscribe@medhelp.org. Upon receipt of your request to "opt-out", we will
remove you from all future mailings and not contact you. In addition, we will
not send unsolicited messages to users of our site who indicate that they do not
wish to receive such messages. If you do not wish to receive unsolicited email
messages from us, please
contact us.
We have structured our websites so that, in general, you
can visit Med Help on the Web without identifying yourself or revealing any
personal information if you so choose. Your access may be limited to browsing
and searching our medical libraries.
Please remember that any information (including personal
and medical information) that you reveal in a public forum (such as a medical
forum, bulletin board, mail list, chat room/event) is not subject to this
Privacy Policy and will be seen by third parties not related to Med Help and our
subsidiaries and may be used by them to contact you or for unauthorized
purposes. Also, if you leave our site via a link to a third party site, any
information you reveal on that site is not subject to this Privacy Policy -- you
should consult the privacy policies of each site you visit.
Security
Security is a matter of protecting data from unintended
use, loss, misuse, counterfeit, and accidental or unauthorized alteration. It
extends from data collection through storage, retrieval and processing through
transmission. It includes backup and recovery procedures. We have installed a
number of security measures to protect the confidentiality of your personal
information. These include:
- Your personal information lives in a separate database that is not
available on the Internet.
- We use industry-standard encryption methods when transmitting
credit card information over the Internet.
- You are identified on our website by your Member or Nickname
and Password only.
However, please remember that you play an important part
in security as well. Your password should never be shared with anyone and should
be changed frequently. Remember that any information you voluntarily disclose
on-line in any news or message postings, discussion groups or chat rooms may be
collected and used by others without your permission. Furthermore, if you
provide any information to parties who operate Web sites that are linked to or
from our site, different rules may apply to their collection, use or disclosure
of your personal information. We encourage you to review these sites' policies
before revealing any sensitive or personal information.
Regardless of the precautions taken by you or by us,
"perfect security" does not exist on the Internet. We cannot ensure or warrant
the security of any information you transmit to us, and you transmit such
information at your own risk.
IP Addresses
An IP address is a number automatically assigned to your computer whenever you
access the Internet. All computer identification on the Internet is conducted
with IP addresses, which allow computers and servers to recognize and
communicate with each other. We collect IP addresses in order to conduct system
administration, report aggregate information to sponsors and advertisers, and to
conduct site analysis. If a visitor requests pages from Med Help, the Med Help
servers enter the visitor's IP address into a log. To maintain visitor
anonymity, we do not associate IP addresses with records containing personal
information.
Third Party Advertising
Sponsors, partners or advertisers on our site may also
use their own cookies when you click on their advertisement or link to their
site or service, or even if the advertisement simply appears on a page that you
are viewing. Third party advertisers are used to serve their ads on our site and
these companies ("Ad Servers") may also collect non-personal information through
the use of cookies. We do not control these third parties' use of cookies, or
how they manage the non-personal information they gather through them. You
should review the privacy policy of other sites you visit or link to from our
site to understand how these other sites use cookies and how they use the
information they collect through the use of cookies on their own sites. Med Help
explicitly identifies sponsors and advertisers on our site as much as is
possible.
We use third-party advertising
companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use
information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone
number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide
advertisements on this site and other sites about goods and services that may be
of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and
to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies,
please
contact us
Changes to
this Privacy Policy
It may be necessary from time to time for us to modify
this policy to reflect changes in the way we collect and use information or
changes in privacy-related laws, regulations, and industry standards.
Accordingly, we reserve the right to change this policy at any time by posting
the revised policy on this web site. Please visit this site frequently in order
to be informed of any such changes. This policy was posted on November 8, 2006.
Data will be handled in accordance with the policy in effect at the time the
data is collected.
Contact Us
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any
questions about our Privacy Policy or our Website in general. You can reach us
via our
contact page.
Again, your privacy and its protection is paramount to us!
MedHelp's Commitment to Privacy