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Updated: January 12, 2007
Introduction to TMT Privacy
Policy
In order to provide our services, we
may from time to time ask you to provide us with information
about yourself. This Privacy Policy explains why we ask for
information, how we will use the information, how we will
not use the information, and how we will safeguard the
confidentiality of any Personally Identifying Information
you choose to provide.
- Any Personally Identifying
Information will not be shared with anyone without your
prior permission and only to those parties for whom you
provide this permission.
- We will use any Personally
Identifying Information only for the purposes that we
state to you when requesting this information.
- We will keep your Personally
Identifying Information confidential to the extent
permissible by law. Where appropriate, we will obtain
Confidentiality Certificates (CC) from the US Government
to provide the maximum protection against disclosure of
such information in legal proceedings.
- We adhere to the HONcode
principles of the Health On the Net Foundation.
If you have any questions regarding the
details or implementation of our Privacy Policy, please
contact us by email (info@masterdocs.com,
Subject: TMT Privacy Policy) or by regular mail (Privacy
Officer, TMT Inc., 196 E 75th Street, New York,
NY 10021).
We make extensive efforts to protect
your personally identifying information but cannot
absolutely guarantee such protection. Accordingly, you
should carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of
providing personal information. We do not sell, lend or
otherwise provide this information to third parties without
your prior permission. All information that you transmit to
us across the Internet (other than email information) uses
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology, an Internet standard
that works by using a private key to encrypt data that is
transferred over the SSL connection. SSL is commonly used
for transmitting credit card numbers safely over the
Internet. However, it is conceivable (although highly
unlikely) that unauthorized persons could access your
information in other ways through illegal methods. It is
also possible that we might be legally obligated to provide
information to the United States Government (e.g., under a
court order). Some, but not all, TMT's questionnaires are
protected under a Confidentiality Certificate (CC) issued by
the National Institutes of Health which certificate prevents
United States court-mandated release of private information
under most circumstances. Personally Identifying Information
collected from people in the European Union is transferred
to TMT in the United States in compliance with the United
States Department of Commerce Safe Harbor Certification
standards. As far as we are aware, TMT’s Privacy Policy and
data security practices meet all legal requirements of
countries outside the United States but we do not guarantee
that this is the case.
Changes to the Policy
We regularly review our Privacy Policy
to ensure maintenance of privacy and conformity with
industry standards. We will post the date of the most recent
version of our Privacy Policy on this web page. Please
understand that your use of our website means that you
accept our Privacy Policy.
Information Protected under
this Policy
This Privacy Policy applies to what we
call "Personally Identifying Information" which is any
information that could identify you or could be used to
contact or locate you. Examples include (but are not
confined to) your name or your address. This Privacy Policy
does NOT apply to information that is collected anonymously
(i.e., that does not identify you) or information about
groups (rather than an individual), which we sometimes use
to show group patterns, trends or geographic groupings.
Information Collected
At various locations on our site, we
may ask you for information. You are never REQUIRED to
provide Personally Identifying Information. However, you may
sometimes wish to provide such information in order to make
full use of some of the services that we provide. For
example, if you want to be considered for enrollment in a
particular clinical trial, you may elect to have contact
information sent to the personnel responsible for subject
enrollment in the trial. The information we request allows
us to provide you (whether you are a patient, physician, or
caregiver) with appropriate services and information.
Technology Available for Privacy Protection
All information that you transmit to
our server computer (other than email information) uses SSL
(Secure Sockets Layer) technology, an Internet standard that
works by using a private
key
to
encrypt data that is transferred over the SSL
connection. SSL is commonly used for transmitting credit
card numbers safely over the Internet.
Normal email transmissions are not
secure. This applies to email between you and us, or other
email that you may send or receive. Although unlikely, any
normal email may be intercepted by unauthorized persons.
Accordingly, you should always be careful when deciding what
information to send in an email. When sending personal
medical information to you based on data you have provided
to us (for example, our Personal Pain Report or our Personal
Medical Report), we first send an email to the address you
have provided to us. This email contains a link to our web
server (with a unique URL created specially for you; you
also have the option of specifying a password for access to
the URL). By
clicking on this link, you may download your personal report
under full SSL protection.
For many of our services, we need you
to provide an email address for contact purposes (the email
address is not shared with other parties without your specific permission and no unsolicited emails will
be sent). However, it is not necessary for you to provide
the same private email address that you use for your
correspondence with friends and relatives. Several free
anonymous web-based email services are available (e.g.,
www.hotmail.com,
www.yahoo.com or
www.hotpop.com) and may be used for anonymous emailing.
Just make sure you check regularly for mail at this email
address or have
email at this address forwarded to your private email account.
We protect against hackers entering our
server environment by using a firewall. Data contained on our
servers is visible only to proprietary middleware
applications. Sign-on passwords are required by internal
staff and TMT personnel and are changed on a periodic basis.
All internal activity is logged. Our servers are maintained
in a secure, locked, environmentally controlled environment.
We regularly backup our databases and these backups are
similarly stored in a secure environment.
We also protect Personally Identifying
Information (as well as other information) off-line. Any
information we receive, whether defined as personal
information or not, is restricted in our offices. Only
employees who need the information to perform a specific
task (for example, our database administrators) are granted
access to your Personally Identifying Information. Our
employees and consultants are kept up-to-date on our Privacy
Policy. Any time our Privacy Policy is revised, all
employees and consultants are so informed and reminded of
their confidentiality obligations.
TMT will
take all reasonable steps to protect your privacy but cannot
absolutely guarantee freedom from the risk that your
personal data could fall into the hands of unauthorized
persons.
Data Sharing and Transfer
Policy
Advertisements
We will not give, lend, sell or
otherwise provide your Personally Identifying Information to
any advertiser. We do not sell any products or services of
other parties on
our website and do not accept advertisements. Therefore, no
intermediaries such as advertisers will be provided with
your Personally Identifying Information.
Links to TMT Partners
We do not provide your Personal
Information to any of our partners without your prior
permission. However, from our site we may provide links to
some of our partners. When you click on one of these links,
you are moving to another Web site maintained by another
entity. Although we believe our partners to be trustworthy,
you should review their privacy policies before giving them
your Personally Identifying Information. We do not
control our partners’ privacy policies or the actions our
partners may take with any Personally Identifying
Information you might provide them.
Use of Intermediaries for
Information Transmission or Analysis
We may use the services of the U.S.
Postal Service or other outside organizations to provide you
with information that you have requested. The U.S. Postal
Service has strict policies for proper handling of mail. We
are careful that any other outside organization used to
provide information to you is obligated to use your
Personally Identifying Information only for the purpose of
facilitating transmission of this information to you. We may
send our databases or portions of our databases to third
parties to process and analyze our data on our behalf for
elimination of duplicate records, or other data cleaning
services. All such third-party processors are contractually
bound to maintain the confidentiality of your Personally
Identifying Information.
Data Protection Policy for
Non-USA Users
Personally Identifying Information
collected from users from the European Union will be
transferred to TMT, Inc. in the USA only with your proper
permission, and in compliance with the USA Department of
Commerce Safe Harbor Certification standards. TMT’s data security
practices are believed to comply with all European laws on
data protection. As far as we are aware, TMT’s Privacy
Policy meets all legal requirements of countries
outside the USA.
Sale or Transfer of Corporate
Assets
TMT expressly reserves the right to
transfer its database in part or as a whole to another legal
entity as part of a sale or merger of all or part of TMT
Inc. with a separate legal entity. Any entity acquiring any
data assets of TMT will be required to provide an express,
written commitment to use the data only for the purposes for
which it was provided to TMT and in accordance with the TMT
Privacy Policy. Data assets will be transferred only after
TMT is satisfied that the acquiring entity can and will
provide at least as much protection for Personally
Identifying Information as TMT does.
When TMT Will Contact You
We may make a follow-up contact with
you for reasons pertaining to your initial contact with us.
For example, if you provide your email address in our
Chronic Pain Survey or one of our other questionnaires we
may send you a maximum of four emails per year informing you of
new medical literature, of clinical trials in which you might care to
participate, or other health-related information. All
contacts will be by email unless
you ask us to contact you in other ways.
If you contact us with a question,
comment or request for information, we will make every
effort to give you a timely response.
At any time, you may indicate to TMT
that you wish to receive no further communications from TMT.
If you so indicate, TMT will not contact you under any
circumstances except to respond to a later communication
initiated by you.
HIPAA Compliance and
Compliance with State Privacy Laws
The USA Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act ("HIPAA") controls the collection,
use, and distribution of individually identifiable health
information by certain health care providers, called
"covered entities" under the statute. TMT is not a covered
entity as that term is defined under HIPAA. As a result, and
because you (rather than a third party) have willingly and
knowingly provided the information we collect, HIPAA does
not apply to TMT services. All TMT's services are compliant,
as far as we are aware, with all relevant laws and
regulations.
Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on
your computer's hard drive when you visit many websites. TMT only uses cookies to track the stage of completion
of one of our surveys or questionnaires if you do not
complete it during a particular Internet session. It allows
us to return you to the correct place in the partially
completed questionnaire. TMT does not use cookies to analyze
the movements of the users on our site, and does not use cookies to gather demographic or other data on our
users.
Opting Out of the Database
You have the right at any time to
instruct us to delete any of your Personally Identifying
Information from our records and databases. If you wish to
do so, send an email (from the same email on record with us) to
info@masterdocs.com. Put the word "Unsubscribe"
in the Subject field.
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