LightBridge Healthcare Research, Inc., a Texas corporation (“LightBridge”), has created this Privacy Policy (“Policy”) in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to the privacy of your personal information. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this website (the “Site”).
This Policy tells you, among other things, what information we gather from you through our Site, how we may use or disclose that information, and our efforts to protect it.
1. Notice of Information Collected and Disclosed 2. Protected Health Information 3. Your Disclosure Choices 4. Collection and Use of IP Addresses 5. Cookies 6. Confidentiality of Transmissions 7. Abuse of Terms of Use 8. Choice/Opt Out 9. Onward Transfer (Transfers to Third Parties) 10. Security 11. Linked Sites 12. Age Restrictions; Children’s Privacy 13. Changes to Privacy Policy 14. Correct/Update 15. Contact Information 16. Acceptance of Privacy Statement 17. Updates to Terms of Use
In connection with your use of our Site, we may collect the following information:
To process an order for educational materials and other items offered on our site, we may require your name, billing address, phone number, email address, and credit card information. These transactions are processed by Applied Merchant. You can review their Privacy Policy by clicking here.
Providing the voluntary data described above is at your sole discretion. If you submit personally identifiable information to us through the Site, then we use your personal information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the Site. Any personal information or content that you voluntarily disclose on the Caregiver Forum becomes available to other users of the Site and can be collected by them. We use both your personally identifiable information and certain non-personally-identifiable information (such as anonymous User usage data, cookies, IP addresses, browser type, clickstream data, etc.) to improve the quality and design of the Site and to create new features, functionality, and services by storing, tracking, and analyzing user preferences and trends.
LightBridge is the owner of the information collected on this Site. Except as provided in this Policy, we do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about you to anyone except as permitted by law, however, we may choose to disclose all of the information we collect, as described above, to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf or to other similar companies with whom we have joint marketing agreements. Your information may be disclosed to companies that provide support services to us in relation to those services, such as data processors, technical systems consultants and programmers. Additionally, this information may be shared with some LightBridge partners.
LightBridge may share aggregate information about our users with advertisers, sponsors and other third parties, though such summary information will not identify any specifics directly related to your identity. We may also provide analysis based on the information we collect, to our strategic alliance partners and other risk sharing partners. We may use the personal identifying information you provide to administer Site usage and monitor traffic-levels, and to contact you regarding improvements we can make to our Site and our services, if necessary. We also may use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the Site, track user movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
As we develop our business, we may buy or sell assets and, depending on the transaction, your personally identifiable information may be one of the transferred assets. In the event that we are acquired by another company, your personal information may be part of the assets transferred to the acquiring party. Similarly, if LightBridge should ever file for bankruptcy or merge with or be acquired by another company, we may sell the information you provide to us to a third party or share your personal information with any entity resulting from such transaction. We may use your e-mail address to contact you directly regarding services, products or information that we believe might interest you. Only LightBridge (or agents working on behalf of LightBridge and under confidentiality agreements) will send you these direct mailings. If you do not want to receive such mailings, simply tell us when you give us your personal information. Or, at any time you can easily opt-out of receiving further marketing from LightBridge by contacting us and requesting to have your name removed from our lists.
You authorize us to disclose any information about you to law enforcement or other government officials as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringements, or other illegal activity. We utilize Applied Merchant to process our credit card transactions. Their Privacy Policy is available at http://www.appliedmerchant.com/privacy.asp. Your contact information and herd information are only released to another user if you register to use that aspect of our site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement.
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Users of this Site may post self-reported Personal Health Information (as defined in The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) in public portions of our Site such as the Caregiver Forum. By posting any information, you consent to it becoming publicly available. If the information is not about your personal health, but about someone else’s health, you also agree that you will not posted Personal Health Information unless you have the legal authorization to do so.
We may also release Personally Identifiable or Personal Health Information to third parties: (1) to comply with valid legal requirements such as a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena or court order; or (2) in special cases, such as in response to a physical threat to you or others, to protect property or defend or assert legal rights. In the event that we are legally compelled to disclose Personal Health Information submitted on our Site to a third party, we will attempt to notify you unless doing so would violate the law or court order.
There are certain limits on your ability to update your Personal Health Information as once posted, Caregiver Forum postings may not be further editable. If you desire for an entry to be deleted, please let us know by mailing or emailing Lightbridge, your name, address, and email address, to the address below authorizing LightBridge to remove the particular information from our active databases (and where feasible from our back-up media) and other readily searchable media. Upon receiving your request, your personal health identifiers stored in active databases and other readily searchable media will be removed so that you cannot be identified or associated with any Personal Health Information you previously provided. Mail your requests to: LightBridge Healthcare Research, Inc., P.O. Box 201001, San Antonio, TX 78220; or email .
You should be aware that it is not technologically possible to remove each and every record of the information you have provided to LightBridge from our servers. Additionally, please note that, while LightBridge will take the above-noted steps to protect our Personal Health Information, LightBridge is not a “covered entity” under HIPAA and therefore is not subject to the Privacy and Security requirements of HIPAA. Furthermore, the Caregiver Forum is not designed to be, and is not intended to be, a full-fledged “electronic health record” or “electronic medical record,” and as such is not designed with the electronic security measures that might otherwise be expected. The Caregiver Forum is not a replacement for medical records held by your regular physician(s) and other health professionals.
You may, of course, decline to submit personally identifiable information through the Site, in which case LightBridge may not be able to provide certain services to you. To protect your privacy and security, we take reasonable steps (such as requesting a unique password) to verify your identity before creating your user account. The user that created the account for a user is responsible for maintaining the secrecy of a users unique password and account information at all times.
We may use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the Site, track user’s movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.
We use cookies (a small data file that certain Web sites write to your hard drive when you visit them), log files, clear gifs or web beacons (known as action tags or single pixel gifs) information to: (a) remember information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Site; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information such as the services you subscribe to; and (c) to assess the popularity and effectiveness of the material posted on the Site. We may also use web beacons in connection with e-mails sent to users, to let us know whether and when the e-mail was opened. No personal information is transmitted through web beacons.
When you register at the Site, LightBridge uses a cookie to store a unique, random user ID. We do not store passwords or any personal information about you. We may use this ID to identify you anonymously in our database and to track information while you are on our Site. Cookies also enable you to enter the Site as a registered user without having to log on each time. You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use the Site. However, if you turn off cookies, then you may not be able to utilize certain features of the Site.
Please remember that transmissions on the Internet are not always confidential. You are transmitting this information at your own risk.
We have the right to share your name and contact information with our attorneys and law enforcement officials, if needed, in the event we believe you have breached our Terms of Use Agreement or our Ordering Policies.
If you prefer that we not disclose nonpublic personal information about you to nonaffiliated third parties, you may opt out of those disclosures; that is, you may direct us not to make those disclosures (other than disclosures permitted by law). If you receive communications from us that you do not want to receive, you can opt out from receiving these communications, by specifically telling us to stop sending them to you. We will generally be able to give effect to your withdrawal on 30 days’ notice. If you wish to opt out of disclosures to nonaffiliated third parties, you may fax your request to LightBridge at the following number: 210.822.8220.
We will apply the Notice and Opt-out policies discussed above in the event we propose to disclose your information to a third party.
This website takes every reasonable precaution to protect our users’ information. When you submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line. For your security, our credit card processing vendor encrypts sensitive information (such as credit card number) on our order forms using secure socket layer technology (SSL). In order for SSL to work, though, you must have a browser that supports SSL technology. While on a secure page, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers, such as Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just ‘surfing’.
To learn more about SSL, follow this link: http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2005/ssl.asp.
It should be noted that e-mails and other information you send to us, except that which you send us on a secure page, are not encrypted and such transmissions cannot be considered a secure means of transmitting sensitive information. LightBridge will never ask you to submit your financial data, such as your credit card account numbers, via e-mail. IF YOU RECEIVE AN EMAIL REQUESTING THAT YOU FORWARD INFORMATION OF THIS NATURE BY EMAIL, PLEASE CONTACT US DIRECTLY AT 877.572.0670. DO NOT REPLY DIRECTLY TO THE EMAIL. Please click here to find out more information regarding internet scams of this nature often referred to as phishing. You should be aware of the limitations of security, authentication, encryption, and privacy measures used in connection with the Internet and that any information you transmit through the Site may be damaged, corrupted, "sniffed" and/or accessed by another person without your permission. Finally, the servers on which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment, with access restricted. Regardless of the precautions taken by you or by us, “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet. We cannot ensure or warrant the ultimate security of any information you transmit.
The Site may contain links to other sites. Please be aware that LightBridge may not be responsible for content or the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our Site and recommend that they read the privacy statements of each and every website they visit. This Policy applies solely to information collected by this Site.
This Site is not directed at children under the age of 18 and does not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 18. If LightBridge obtains actual knowledge that it has obtained personal information about a child under the age of 18, that information is immediately and permanently deleted from our records.
We may occasionally change this Privacy Policy. If we do, we will post the changes on the Site. The changes will take effect as soon as posted.
LightBridge provides users the following options for changing and modifying information previously submitted.
If you have a comment, question or request, or if you need to contact LightBridge for any other reason, there are four easy ways to do so:
Your use of our website, including any dispute concerning privacy, is subject to this Policy, the Terms of Use Agreement and our Ordering Policies. BY USING OUR SITE, YOU ARE ACCEPTING THE PRACTICES SET OUT IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY, OUR TERMS OF USE AGREEMENT AND OUR ORDERING POLICIES. We reserve the right to modify this Policy at any time by posting the changes on this page. Your continued use of any portion of our Site following posting of the updated privacy statement will constitute your acceptance of the changes.
This Policy updated October 20, 2008