This policy describes what information may be collected about you when you use the services made available through the WebMD Health Professional Network (as defined below), how this information may be used, how you can control how your information is used and what precautions are taken against unauthorized access or use of your information. The services made available through the WebMD Health Professional Network may be provided in a variety of mediums and devices now known or hereinafter developed including mobile applications, and include without limitation news, reference tools and applications, sponsored programming, personalized content, continuing medical education, communication tools and discussion boards (collectively, the "Services"). You should read the privacy policy of each website that you visit after you leave any of the WebMD Health Professional Network websites. We are not responsible for how other websites treat your privacy once you leave one of our websites.
The WebMD Health Professional Network is comprised of several websites: medscape.com, medscape.org and theheart.org (referred to collectively as the "Professional Sites"), including any mobile optimized versions of the Professional Sites and the Medscape Mobile Device Application ("Medscape Mobile"). These properties are owned and operated by our affiliated companies. For example, WebMD LLC owns and operates medscape.com and Medscape Mobile, and Medscape, LLC owns and operates medscape.org and theheart.org. References to "WebMD" in this Privacy Policy mean WebMD LLC, including any company that WebMD controls (for example a subsidiary that it owns) and references to "Medscape" mean Medscape, LLC, including any company that Medscape controls. We refer to the Professional Sites that WebMD operates as the "WebMD Sites" and the Professional Sites that Medscape operates as the "Medscape Sites." Reference to "we" or "our" means WebMD and Medscape. We may share information among the subsidiaries of WebMD Health Corp. (our parent company) and the respective Professional Sites that we each own or control, but it is always protected under the terms of this Privacy Policy.
You can visit our corporate site at www.wbmd.com to learn more about WebMD and Medscape, obtain investor information, and obtain contact information.
As this Privacy Policy changes in significant ways, we will take steps to inform you of the changes. Minor changes to this Privacy Policy may occur that will not significantly affect the ways in which we each use your personally identifiable information. In these instances, we may not inform you of such minor changes. When this Privacy Policy changes in a way that significantly affects the way we handle personal information, we will not apply the new Policy to information we have previously collected from you without giving you a choice as to whether or not we can apply the new Policy to your information going forward.
In this section of our Privacy Policy, we discuss the different types of information that we may collect about you, and the ways in which such information may be collected.
You must register to access all of the Services, however, you may be able to access certain limited areas of the Services without disclosing any personally identifiable information. We collect non-personally identifiable information (i.e., information that is not traced back to any individual and is not used on its own to identify an individual) about your use of the Services through the use of cookies, even if you have not registered, including the referring website, if applicable, the type of browser you use, and the time and date that you accessed the Services. The section of this Privacy Policy entitled "Cookies and Web Beacons," below, further describes how we use cookies and how you can limit our use of cookies.
When you register for the Services, you are asked to provide identifying information such as your name, e-mail address, zip code, and other professional information (e.g., specialty). You will also be given a choice about whether or not you want to receive newsletters and other information sent to registered users from time to time. If you are required to provide additional personally identifiable information to access a particular component of the Services, or if we would like to use personally identifiable information that you have previously provided in a manner not otherwise permitted under this Privacy Policy, we will explain how we intend to use such personally identifiable information at the time of collection and will require your consent at that time to any such collection and use.
When you participate in a Continuing Medical Education (CME) or a Continuing Education (CE) activity through the Services, you may be asked to provide personally identifiable information such as your name and mailing address. In addition to personally identifiable information, aggregated non-personally identifiable information about the activities undertaken by CME/CE participants is recorded. Information that you provide in connection with your participation in CME/CE activities, either when registering or requesting credit, may be used in several ways:
The Medscape editorial staff has access to files containing personally identifiable information, including evaluation forms and aggregated CME /CE participant information. These files can be accessed in order to respond to your questions or comments. Medscape may also use personally identifiable information, including registration information and evaluation data, in assessing educational needs and evaluating its education activities.
We may collect additional information about registered users from third party sources to assist us in providing the Services. For example, we use such information to verify and update registration information and confirm licensure status.
We collect non-personally identifiable information about your use of the Services through the use of cookies. A cookie is a small data file that your browser allows us to place on your hard drive so we can associate you with the device you are using. We may assign cookies to devices that accesses the Services to: (i) track usage across the Professional Sites and Services; (ii) help us dynamically generate advertising and content to users of the Services; and (iii) assess which Professional Site pages and Services you access. If you are a registered user of the WebMD Health Professional Network, we may elect to associate your registration information with our cookies. Associating a cookie with your registration data allows us to provide more customized content, including advertisements, and enhance personalization and functionality of the Services. As discussed below, when you download and install Medscape Mobile onto your mobile device, we assign a random number to your installation, and that random number is used in a manner similar to our use of cookies.
Most browser software can be set to reject all cookies. If your browser is set to reject cookies, websites that are cookie-enabled will not recognize you when you return to the website, and some website functionality may be lost. The Help section of your browser will tell you about your options for managing your cookies.
We may use web beacons and cookies to serve you targeted advertisements when you visit other websites owned and operated by WebMD. We may also use web beacons to track who has opened our emails. Web beacons are tiny graphic image files, embedded in a website page that notify the home server (which can belong to the host website, a network advertiser, or some other third party) on a non-personally identifiable basis that some interaction has taken place. This notice may also result in a cookie being set on your device, as described above.
WebMD contracts with third parties whose web beacons may be placed on the WebMD Sites to assist WebMD in targeting its advertising that is served to you on websites that are not owned and operated by WebMD. These web beacons place cookies on your browser in order to enable these third parties to collect non-personally identifiable information about you. These third parties have agreed not to use any non-personally identifiable information that they may collect through their use of these cookies except to deliver advertisements on our behalf. If your browser is set to reject cookies, this non-personally identifiable information will not be sent to these third parties. Also, in connection with its sale of advertising, WebMD may allow a third party to place a cookie on your browser to enable advertisers to recognize your browser on a non-personally identifiable basis in order to deliver an advertisement to you when you visit a WebMD Site. These advertisers are not permitted to collect any information based on your visits to a WebMD Site.
Sponsors or advertisers that market to you through our Services may use their own cookies, web beacons or other online tracking technologies in the banner advertisements served to you. Some advertisers use companies other than WebMD to serve these ads and to monitor users' responses to ads, and these companies ("Ad Servers") may also collect non-personally identifiable information through the use of cookies or web beacons. We do not control these third parties' use of cookies or web beacons, or how they manage the non-personally identifiable information they gather through them. However, we do require sponsors, advertisers and Ad Servers who we authorize to collect cookie or web beacon information through the Services to agree that they will not collect any personally identifiable information about you from your use of the Services through these means. Further, they have agreed that they will not link any non-personal cookie or web beacon information that they collect from your use of the Services to personally identifiable information that they or others collect in other ways or from other websites except as may be described in connection with a particular program or except as you may have agreed with the third party placing the cookie or web beacon.
Certain Ad Servers and third party firms that facilitate the serving of advertisements based on your browsing activities on the Internet allow you to prevent them from collecting data or serving advertisements through the use of their cookies. In order to do so, you must opt-out of such data collection with each individual website. Currently, you can opt-out of Cookies for several Ad Servers and marketing analytics firms by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative gateway opt-out website. This website will also allow you to review the privacy policies of these Ad Servers and marketing analytics firms.
When you download and install Medscape Mobile onto your mobile device, we assign a random number to your installation. We cannot use this number to identify you personally, and we cannot identify you personally unless you choose to become a registered user of Medscape Mobile. We use this random number in a manner similar to our use of cookies as described in this Privacy Policy. Unlike cookies, the random number is assigned to your installation of Medscape Mobile itself and not a browser, because Medscape Mobile does not work through your browser. Therefore the random number cannot be removed through your device settings. If you do not want us to use the random number for purposes similar to the purposes for which we use cookies, as described in this Privacy Policy, please do not use Medscape Mobile. Also, if you do become a registered user of Medscape Mobile, we will use your registration information as described in this Privacy Policy to provide the Services to you through Medscape Mobile. We do not obtain any information about your mobile device (through the random number, your registration information or otherwise) other than its brand, make and model and the type of operating software that it uses.
We are committed to protecting the privacy of children. The Professional Sites and Services are designed and intended for use by adults, and are not intended for, nor designed to be used by children under the age of 18. We do not collect personally identifiable information from any person we know is under the age of 18.
In this section of our Privacy Policy, we identify the ways we may use information about you that we have collected. In general, the personally identifiable information that you provide in connection with the Services will be used to provide the services you have requested or authorized.
We create aggregate data about users of our Services for product development and improvement activities. We also use it for market analysis. We may provide information about users of our Services in aggregate form to third parties. For example, WebMD may tell a client what percentage of registered users of the WebMD Health Professional Network reside in a particular geographical area or specialize in a particular clinical area, or what percentage of participants in a market research survey selected a particular response to a survey question. When aggregated information is provided to a third party, it is pooled with many individual records and stripped of any data that could be used to identify an individual. Any third party that receives aggregated information must agree not to attempt to re-identify the people it belongs to. Depending on our agreement with the third party, we may or may not charge for this information.
WebMD may target its advertising and marketing (e.g., through e-mail and on-site communications) based on information that you provide when you register for the Services and information that it receives from third party sources. For example, a user that WebMD knows is a cardiologist may be served cardiology-related advertisements on both WebMD-owned and third party websites that a neurologist will not see, or a user that WebMD knows is a healthcare professional who treats diabetes may be served advertisements for new diabetes therapies that other users would not see (although in neither case will the advertiser have access to any personally identifiable information about you). WebMD serves these ads through the use of cookies and web beacons, as described above. Additionally, WebMD may geographically target its advertising to registered and unregistered users based on IP address.
WebMD may also personalize the Services and the advertising that registered users see on the WebMD Sites based on their interests. For example, you may see different articles and advertisements in different places on medscape.com based on information you have shared with WebMD such as your specialty, information that WebMD has obtained by observing your previous activity within the WebMD Professional Network, or information that WebMD has received from third party sources, as described in this Privacy Policy.
In addition to aggregate information (discussed previously), we each may each share some kinds of personally identifiable information with third parties as described below.
If we discover that a third party inadvertently disclosed personally identifiable information about any of our users, we will take immediate action to prevent further occurrences.
In this section of our Privacy Policy, we discuss the security measures we take to protect information that we have collected about you.
We have implemented technology and security policies, rules and other measures to protect the personal data that we have under our control from unauthorized access, improper use, alteration, unlawful or accidental destruction, and accidental loss. We also protect your information by requiring that all our employees and others who have access to or are associated with the processing of your data respect your confidentiality.
We use security methods to determine the identity of registered users, so that appropriate rights and restrictions can be enforced for that user. Reliable verification of user identity is called authentication. We use both passwords and usernames to authenticate users. Users are responsible for maintaining their own passwords.
Employees are required to keep your information private, as a condition of their employment with us. Only selected, authorized employees are permitted to access health information.
All employees and contractors must abide by our Privacy Policy, and those who violate that policy are subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of their employment and legal action.
In this section of this Privacy Policy, we tell you how to obtain and correct information we have about you, and how to choose what types of information you may share with us.
If you believe that there are errors in the registration information associated with your account, you may edit your personal profile any time that you like. You can directly edit your user profile on the Professional Site on which you initially registered. Requests for deletion of your record may result in your removal from the registry, but we may keep certain demographic information about you for product improvement purposes. You may contact Customer Support and ask for the changes that you would like to make.
WebMD and Medscape are located in the United States. We will collect, store, and process information about your use of the Services in countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) as necessary for our legitimate business purposes. By using the Services, you consent to such collection, storage and processing outside of the EEA. We will take reasonable steps to ensure your information is adequately protected.
For privacy questions or concerns about one of our Web sites or Services, please contact MedscapePrivacy@webmd.net.
Our terms of use agreements can be found here.
Effective date: February 14, 2013