Website Privacy Policy

 

 

As a user of this site, you take on certain risks and responsibilities. You also have the right to know how we protect your privacy and ensure your confidentiality and what you should expect from us. Dr. Christopher Scheno OD, PLLC is responsible for the editorial content, products and services offered on this site.

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What you should expect from us

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• We will strive to maintain your privacy, confidentiality and security at all times.

• It is our goal to ensure your trust and confidence by providing you with as much information as we can about data collection procedures and information when needed.

• We will not sell or share any information you provide, nor will we intentionally use your data without your permission, unless for purposes of maintaining the site or for reviewing the site's use.

• We will make every effort to notify you accordingly of all data collection practices.

• It is our intention to clearly inform you when your risks or privacy may change during the course of using this site.

• We will make every attempt to tell you when our privacy policy is no longer in effect and another one is, such as when you use an integrated program that is being operated on another website with a different privacy policy.

• It is our goal to make you aware when you leave our site for another.

• We want you to know that this system operates on a secure server and your personal and professional information and health-related personal information is encrypted before it is transmitted. Encryption is a form of scrambling and de-scrambling that ensures that no unauthorized person can see your information.

• We will separate health information content from advertising and sponsorship programs so you can distinguish between the two.

• Where health professionals may interact with consumers, we will make every effort to tell you if this establishes a patient-provider relationship and make available the credentials and qualifications of professionals.

• We will not accept or show you health information content, advertising, sponsored programs or services that we know to contain false or misleading information or that promote ineffective or dangerous products.

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Your role, responsibilities and risks

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• You need to be an informed user of this site. Please read all our policies in full so you know how our site works and how you interact with the site.

• Pay special attention to your risks as a user. Website users open themselves up to certain risks, such as data collection.

• Understand how we collect data and how it is used. It is our goal to protect your personal information from misuse. We do, however, offer programs that collect data for special reasons, such as research, scientific studies, and statistics, in which case you may be interested in participating.

• Be aware that use of this site, its services, programs and the health information on it cannot replace nor is it intended to serve as a health care provider-patient relationship. You must always consult with a professional for diagnosis and treatment for specific health problems.

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Our security measures

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We want your personal information to remain as secure as possible; our business depends on it. We use encryption practices to help ensure the integrity and privacy of the personal information and/or health-related personal information you provide to us.

As an added security precaution, all personal information and/or health-related personal information are kept on servers with firewalls that meet or exceed industry standards to prevent intruders from gaining access.

Although we make every reasonable effort to protect personal information and health-related personal information from loss, misuse or alteration by third parties, you should be aware that there is always some risk involved in transmitting information via the Internet and that hackers or thieves do find ways to thwart security systems.

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Changes in our Privacy Policy

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It is our goal to use personal information and health-related personal information in the manner described in the privacy policy that is in effect when your information is collected. We do, however, reserve the right to change the terms of this privacy policy at any time and will post revisions to our site. If at any point, personal information or health-related information is to be used differently from those practices stated in the privacy policy in effect when your data was collected, we will notify you. You will be given the choice to opt-in to any additional uses or disclosures of your personal information.

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About the information we collect

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We understand that the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Personally Identifiable Health Information (PIHI) you provide during your visit to our site is highly sensitive and you may have concerns about sharing such information with us. It is our goal to protect your privacy and we strive to develop practices and policies to safeguard your personal and health-related personal information.

At different places on our site, you may be asked to volunteer your name, e-mail, address and telephone number. We refer to this type of information as Personally Identifiable Information (PII) because it can be used to identify or contact you. When this information is combined with any information on your health or medical status, we refer to this information as Personally Identifiable Health Information (PIHI). We often collect information on site use that has nothing to do with you as an individual, only as an anonymous user of the site. We call this information "aggregate information." We intend to use the personal information, health-related personal information and aggregate information only for the purposes for which it was provided.

Some personal information and health-related personal information is needed to use this site, and we ask that you provide it with the knowledge that it will be used to enhance your experience. This information is kept confidential. We do offer special data collection programs that you can "opt-in" to use, in some cases to receive e-mail on health topics or to participate in a new service. For opt-in programs we provide you, when applicable, with detailed information on:

• Who is collecting the data

• What data are collected

• Why and how the data are transferred to a third party

• How the data are being used

• How long the data are being collected

• Who has access to the data

• What revenue is generated from data use in relation to advertisers and sponsors

• How to opt-out of data collection.

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Where this information is collected

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We collect information about you at several places throughout the site. You will be informed on how this information is collected at that time. You will also have the ability to opt-in to information collection when you enter the site or use a service. Most information is collected in the following instances:

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• Registration

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In order to have access to all of the services and content available on our site, you are required to complete a registration form that requests certain information, such as name, telephone number and e-mail address. In addition, you are asked during registration to tell us about health topics that you are interested in. We offer specialized registration for certain programs, events and classes that may request some or all of the above information.
We may use your registration information to send you an e-mail confirming your registration with our site, to respond to questions from you, or to notify you if there is a problem with any order for goods or services that you placed. We may also, from time to time, send e-mails, with your permission, on special promotions or newsletters we think may be of interest to you.

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Our site uses cookies

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In addition to collecting information that you submit to us, we also rely on "cookies." A cookie is a text file that a website transfers to your hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Every computer is assigned a different cookie, but our cookie does not contain or collect your name or other personal identifying information. When you revisit our site, the cookie allows us to recognize you, your interests and your preferences. We also use cookies to help track the level of interest in different features on our site and to compile data that can help us improve our content.

Your browser software can be set to reject all cookies, including cookies from our site. Most browsers offer instructions on how to reset the browser to reject cookies in the help section of the toolbar. If you reject our cookie, certain functions and conveniences of the site may not work properly. You do not have to accept our cookie in order to productively use our site. If you accept our cookie, we will never link the cookie to personal information and/or health-related personal information you provide to us. We will not allow other sites or third parties to use our cookies.

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How we use your personal information

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We continually seek new ways to maintain your trust as a user and improve our offerings. To provide new and better services, we tend to monitor user traffic patterns and try to analyze what our users like and do not like about our current offerings so we can design better services for you. We may also use certain information for testing purposes, site development and planning, and during the normal course of maintaining the site. When you use our site, you automatically allow us to collect this information. In these cases, researchers, business analysts, system designers and others may have access to the data we collect.

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We do not intend to use or disclose any personal information or health-related personal information you provide on our site to an unrelated third party without your express permission, except as explained in this section. You should know that there are circumstances when, in the ordinary course of business, we will share some information about you with a related third party.

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• We have relationships with different vendors and suppliers that ship products ordered on our site directly to our customers. In these cases, we provide to the vendor the information necessary to fulfill your order, such as the items ordered, your name and shipping address. We require these partners to adhere to our privacy policy and have discussed with them that they are not to use our customer information for any other purpose.

• We may also share aggregate statistical information on our users, sales, traffic patterns and site usage with our business partners and sponsors. There is nothing in this information that could be used to identify or contact you.

• We may, from time to time, contract with vendors to provide specific services, such as data analysis, data storage, e-mail processing, customer service, sweepstakes or special promotions. We ask vendors to adhere to our confidentiality standards and do not permit a vendor to use our customer information for any other purpose. In many of these instances, you will be given the opportunity to opt-in to this collection of information and can opt-out at any time.

• In certain limited circumstances, we may be legally compelled to release your personal information in response to a court order, subpoena, search warrant, law or regulation. In the event that we are compelled to disclose personal information and/or health-related personal information to a third party, we will notify you unless doing so would violate the law or court order. We also reserve the right to cooperate with law enforcement authorities investigating and prosecuting users that violate our rules or engage in behavior that is harmful (or illegal) to other users.

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Where third parties such as sponsors, information providers and health assessment software tools providers have access to health-related personally identifiable information from this website, our agreements with these third parties will follow these privacy principles in giving you notice and choice with respect to their access and use. Where we have relationships with third parties, we will adopt procedures to tell you if third parties have access to personally identifiable information about you from our site. We will take appropriate precautions to prevent inadvertent disclosures of personally identifiable information to third parties and will take immediate steps to eliminate such disclosures, if they occur, once they have come to our attention.

Additionally, we work with several types of third-party vendors, including those that provide products and services that we integrate to our site, sponsors that provide us revenue through logo and link placement on our site, advertising companies that serve up advertisement programs for the site and organizations that maintain this site. We request that third-party vendors supply us with information on their security procedures, and we evaluate them periodically to ensure that they are using data in the agreed upon way.

You should know that our relationship with some third party vendors provide us with revenues based on the number of users who view an advertisement or use a sponsored or co-branded program. These revenues are based on the use of a site and not on you as an individual. In some cases we also receive revenue from the use of external services and may get a commission on specific purchases made online. In addition, we may allow third-party vendors to buy aggregate data collected on our site but that data cannot be used to identify you.