Dr. Groopman understands how important the privacy of personal information is to his readers. This Privacy Policy will tell you the minimal information that is collected through your use of this website. It will explain the choices you have about how your personal information is used and how we protect that information.
JeromeGroopman.com contains links to other sites. Once you enter another website, please be aware that JeromeGroopman.com is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. The only information we normally collect will be non-personal information through the use of cookies or web beacons (explained below). Non-personal information is defined as data that is not traceable back to any individual and cannot be used to identify an individual, e.g. the keyword phrase you searched on to find this website. However, if you choose to contact us, then you will be submitting personally identifiable information in the form of your name and email address along with anything else you volunteer.
What is a cookie? A cookie is a small data file that is stored on the hard drive of the computer you use to view a website. Cookies placed by JeromeGroopman.com can only be read by JeromeGroopman.com and any network or maintenance contractors working on our behalf (as described below). Our cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information.
We collect non-personal information about your use of our website. Every computer that accesses JeromeGroopman.com is assigned a different cookie that allows us to statistically monitor how many people are using the website. We also may use cookie information to determine the popularity of certain content. Most web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Apple Safari can be set to reject all cookies and offer instructions on how to do so in the "Help" section of the toolbar. Rejecting cookies will not impede your use of JeromeGroopman.com in any way.
Web beacons are tiny graphic image files, imbedded in a webpage in GIF, PNG, JPEG or HTML format, that provide a presence on the webpage and send back to its home server (which can belong to the JeromeGroopman.com or a website contractor) information from the Users' browser, such as the IP address, the URL of the page on which the beacon is located, the type browser that is accessing the site and the ID number of any cookies on the users' computer previously placed by that server. Web beacons can also be used to place a cookie on the users' browser. Web beacons may also be known as clear GIFs, web bugs, 1-by-1 GIFs, single-pixel GIFs, 1x1 pixels, or clear pixels.
We may use web beacons to collect non-personal information about your use of our website and any subsequent newsletters to which you willingly subscribe. The information collected by web beacons (1) allows us to statistically monitor how many people are using our website and (2) how many people open our newsletters. Our web beacons are not used to track your activity outside of JeromeGroopman.com. We do not link non-personal information from web beacons to personally identifiable information you have volunteered without your permission.
When you contact JeromeGroopman.com, you are providing us with your name and email address. You will not be added to mailing lists unless you ask us to do so. This Privacy Policy does not apply to content, business information, ideas, concepts or inventions that you send to JeromeGroopman.com by email. If you want to keep content or business information, ideas, concepts or inventions private or proprietary, do not send them in an email to us.
If you have volunteered personally identifiable information or personal health information to us via email, we may only release it 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 this information to a third party, we will attempt to notify you unless doing so would violate the law or court order. In addition, we may disclose personal information as described below.
If you voluntarily contact us, people working on our behalf to maintain the website may sometimes have limited access to your name and email address in the course of providing products or services to JeromeGroopman.com. These contractors include vendors and suppliers that provide us with technology, services, and/or content for the operation and maintenance of our website or sending newsletters on our behalf. Unless you notify us otherwise, these contractors also may have access to your email address to send any news that you request from JeromeGroopman.com. The only personally identifiable information you may have volunteered that is accessible to these contractors is your email address and name, the minimum necessary for the contractor to perform their limited functions for JeromeGroopman.com. We also contractually require that our operations and maintenance contractors (1) protect the privacy of your email address consistent with this Privacy Policy, and (2) not use or disclose it for any purpose other than providing us with products and services as required by law.
JeromeGroopman.com may provide aggregate information to third parties. For example, we might inform third parties regarding the number of users of our website and the content that interested them. Aggregate information may combine similar non-personally identifiable data from the users of the website into one batch so that, for example, we can compare the total number of website visitors that searched for a particular topic in January to the ones that searched on the same topic in February.
This sort of statistical information is called aggregate data because it reflects the habits and characteristics of a large group of anonymous people. Websites may use aggregate data or share it with their business partners so that the information and services they provide best meet the needs of the users. We require parties with whom we share aggregate information to agree that they will not attempt to make this information personally identifiable in any way, such as by combining it with other databases.
Despite JeromeGroopman.com's best efforts to protect your information while using our website, there is always some risk that an unauthorized third party may find a way around our security systems or that transmissions of your information over the Internet may be intercepted.
We are committed to protecting the privacy of children. JeromeGroopman.com is not designed for or intended to attract children under the age of 13. We do not collect personally identifiable information from any person we actually know is under the age of 13. Children's parents or guardians are solely responsible for providing supervision of any of their children's use of this website.
Since JeromeGroopman.com does not collect any personally identifiable information that you do not voluntarily submit to us, we will not be able to send an update of this policy to the anonymous users of this website. However, we will keep the most up-to-date policy on this page accessible at http://www.jeromegroopman.com/privacy.html. Please exit the site immediately if you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy or any future revised policy.
© Copyright 2000-2007 Jerome Groopman, M.D.