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This Privacy Policy applies to the websites www.medscape.com and www.medscape.org, which are operated by WebMD LLC ("WebMD") and Medscape LLC ("Medscape"), respectively, and including the mobile optimized versions of these websites (collectively, the "Sites"). Except where otherwise noted, statements in this Privacy Policy with respect to the Sites also apply to the Medscape Device Applications (or "Apps") for iPhone, iPad and Android devices which include Medscape Mobile, Medscape Medpulse and Medscape Business of Medicine. The Sites and Apps are referred to as the "Medscape Network." References to "we," "us" or "our" refer to WebMD and Medscape.
This Privacy Policy describes how we may collect, use and disclose information about users of the Services. The "Services" for purposes of this Privacy Policy means the Sites, the Apps and all information and services provided to you in connection with your use of the Sites and Apps including, without limitation, news, reference content, tools, applications, sponsored programs, advertising, email communications, continuing medical education and discussion boards. We may share information collected under this Privacy Policy among the respective Sites and Apps that we each own or control, but information collected under this Privacy Policy is always protected under the terms of this Privacy Policy.
In this section of our Privacy Policy, we discuss the information we may collect about you in connection with your use the Services, which can include "Personal Information" (i.e., information that we can use to identify you, such as your name or email address) and "Non-Personal Information" (i.e., information that we do not use to identify you). As described below, we may associate Non-Personal Information with Personal Information and upon doing so such information will become Personal Information.
Registration. When you register to become a member of the Medscape Network, we request certain Personal Information from you such as your name and e-mail address, zip code, profession, occupation and specialty. You may choose to update and/or supplement the Personal Information that you provided at registration at any time through your account settings.
Public Forums: When you post a comment on a discussion board or other public forum, by default your username, specialty and degree will be displayed along with your comment. You may choose to display additional information in your public forum profile by adjusting your discussion profile settings, and in some instances you may be able to customize your username specifically for commenting purposes. Information that you post within a public forum is public information and may be used by us and third parties, as further described in the Medscape Terms of Use.
Sponsored Programs: When you use the Services you may be presented with advertisements and opportunities to engage in industry-sponsored informational programs consisting of sponsor-selected materials ("Sponsored Programs"). All advertisements and Sponsored Programs (including any links to Sponsored Programs) will be identified to you by the label Advertisement, Information from Industry, Sponsored, WebMD Professional or some similar designation indicating that the content has been selected by a third-party sponsor. Examples of Sponsored Programs include information resources featuring branded or unbranded commercial content, interactive programs that provide information about medical conditions, treatments and products, and multi-media presentations including videos featuring key opinion leaders. We may make Sponsored Programs available to you through email or on-site or in-App media units, all of which will be identified as described above. When you choose to engage in a Sponsored Program, you may be asked to provide Personal Information which may be provided directly to the third-party sponsor and also used by us as described in this Privacy Policy. In addition, you may be presented with polling questions from the sponsor. We also collect Non-Personal Information about your use of Sponsored Programs through cookies and web beacons, as described below.
Market Research: From time to time, we may invite you to participate in market research surveys for WebMD and market research surveys conducted on behalf of third party sponsors either by WebMD or a third party ("Sponsored Surveys"), where in this context "sponsor" means the provider of products and services who commissioned the survey. WebMD surveys may be administered by one of our companies or by a third party acting on our behalf. For some surveys, you may be asked to provide contact information for honoraria fulfillment.
Continuing Medical Education. When you participate in a Continuing Medical Education (CME) or a Continuing Education (CE) activity made available to you through the Medscape Network, you may be asked to provide Personal Information as required by that particular activity.
Tools: Clinical tools may be available through the Services. These tools may require you to provide Personal Information for the tools to operate.
Additional Forms: From time to time we may offer you the opportunity to receive additional information or services from us or from third parties (e.g., sample request, sales rep visit, etc.). If you wish to receive such information, you may be asked to provide additional Personal Information to fulfill the request. We may use such information as described in this Privacy Policy and the third party, if applicable, will use such Personal Information as described at the point of collection.
Cookies and Web Beacons. We collect Non-Personal Information about your use of the Sites and the Apps, as further described in the Mobile Device Application section, below, through the use of cookies and web beacons. "Cookies" are small data files that we assign to your computer's hard drive when you visit a Site, an App, or open an email. "Web beacons" are graphic image files imbedded in a web page typically used to monitor activity on a web page and send back to its home server (which can belong to the host site, a network advertiser or some other third party) information from your browser, such as the IP address, the URL of the page on which the beacon is located and the content viewed, the type of browser that is accessing the site and the ID number of any cookies on your computer previously placed by that server. Most browser software can be set to reject all cookies, however, if you choose to reject cookies then you will not be able to access the Sites or your use of the Sites may be limited.
We use web beacons and cookies to: (i) track usage of the Services; (ii) help us deliver more relevant advertising and content to users of the Services; (iii) assess which Services our users access; and (iv) track who has opened our emails. If you are a member of the Medscape Network, we may elect to associate our cookies and the information collected by our cookies with your registration information, thereby making the cookie information Personal Information.
Third parties under contract with WebMD may use cookies or web beacons to help WebMD deliver advertising to you on properties within the Medscape Network and on properties outside of the Medscape Network that are not owned and operated by WebMD. Advertisers that market to you through the 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 on their behalf and to monitor users' responses to ads, and these companies ("Ad Servers") may also collect Non-Personal 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-Personal Information they gather through them. However, our Advertising Policy prohibits advertisers and their Ad Servers from collecting Personal Information from our users based on their use of the Services. Our Advertising Policy also prohibits advertisers from linking any Non-Personal Information that they collect from our users' use of the Services to Personal Information about our users that they or others collect in other ways or from other sources.
Mobile Device Application. You must register with the Medscape Network to access the Apps which means that all information that we collect about your use of the Apps is Personal Information that we may use in the same manner as information about your use of the Sites as described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not want us to collect Personal Information about your use of our Apps, then please do not use our Apps. We do not obtain any information about your mobile device other than its brand, make and model and the type of operating software that it uses.
Non-registered Users. You must register with the Medscape Network to access all of the Services, however, you may be able to access certain limited Services without registering. Even if you have not registered, we collect Non-Personal Information about your use of the Services through the use of cookies. The Non-Personal Information we collect includes the referring website, if applicable, the type of browser you use, the material viewed, and the time and date that you accessed the Services.
Emails You Send to Us. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information, content, business information, ideas, concepts or inventions that you send to us by email or other non-Site communication. If you want to keep content or business information, ideas, concepts or inventions private or proprietary, do not send them to us in an email or other non-Site communication such as regular mail.
Information from Third Party Sources. We may also collect additional information about members of the Medscape Network from third party sources to assist us in providing the Services. For example, we may use third party information to verify and update your registration information and to personalize the Services provided to you, including advertising.
In this section of our Privacy Policy, we discuss how we may use the Personal Information and Non-Personal Information that we collect about you.
Communications. By registering for the Services, you are consenting to receive certain communications. Specifically, we may use your registration information to send you communications about our products and services and the products and services of our third party sponsors through pop-ups, banners and e-mails. You may also subscribe to receive certain e-mail newsletters sent to registered users from time to time which you may manage through the newsletter subscriptions area within your account settings.
Marketing and Advertising. In connect with advertising and marketing activities, WebMD may:
Target advertising and marketing communications based on information that we collect about your use of the Services and information about you that we obtain from third party sources. For example, a user that WebMD believes is a cardiologist may be served cardiology-related advertisements on both WebMD-owned and third party websites that a user that WebMD believes is a neurologist will not see. Similarly, a user that WebMD believes is a healthcare professional that treats diabetes may be served advertisements for new diabetes therapies that other users would not see. WebMD serves these ads through the use of cookies and web beacons, as described above. WebMD may also geographically target advertising and marketing communications based on your Internet Protocol ("IP") address.
Personalize the Services, including the content and advertising that registered users see within the Medscape Network, on third party sites and through other communications such as e-mail, based on their interests. For example, you may see different articles and advertisements in different places on www.medscape.com and in e-mails that we send to you based on (i) information you have shared with WebMD such as your specialty; (ii) information that WebMD has obtained by observing your previous activity within the Medscape Network; or (iii) information that WebMD has received from third party sources, as described in this Privacy Policy.
Work with third parties to allow advertisers to serve you ads within the Medscape Network using information that such advertisers have collected from third party sources. For example, if you looked at an advertisement for an automobile on a third party website you may receive an advertisement for that automobile on a Site through the use of cookies.
Member Profiles. As described above, we use web beacons and cookies to track your use of the Services, including content consumption, and may associate this information with other information that we have about you, including Personal Information, thereby creating a profile of you that we may update from time to time ("Member Profile").
Research, Development and Evaluation Activities. We use information that we collect about users of our Services, including Personal Information, to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of the Services (including advertising and Sponsored Programs), to develop new Services and for market analysis. We may combine this information with information that we obtain from third parties.
Account Management. We may use your account information to administer your account, respond to your inquiries you send to us and to send you administrative communications about the Services.
Companies and People Who Work for Us: We each contract with other companies and individuals to help us provide our respective services. For example, we may host one of our Sites on another company's computers, hire technical consultants to maintain our clinical tools, work with companies to analyze data, provide marketing assistance (including assisting us in targeting our advertisements as described herein) or to provide customer service or fulfillment services. In addition, if you are a healthcare professional, we may request that a third party validate your licensure status and other information against available databases of healthcare professionals. In order to provide these services, we may provide these other companies with Personal Information we maintain about users of our Services. We require that all such companies agree that they will limit their use of your Personal Information to fulfilling their responsibilities to us.
Aggregated Information. We may provide aggregated information about users of our Services to third parties as we deem appropriate in our sole discretion. For example, WebMD may tell a customer what percentage of registered users of the Medscape 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. We may also use Personal Information to evaluate the performance of an advertising campaign and may provide aggregate outcomes information to the advertiser.
Advertising and Sponsored Programs: We may provide your Personal Information to third party sponsors of advertisements and Sponsored Programs. Specifically, when you are exposed to an advertisement through the Services, whether on a Site, in a newsletter or through some other means, or when you engage in a Sponsored Program, e.g., access a sponsored information resource or open a Sponsored Program e-mail from WebMD Professional, WebMD may provide your Personal Information, such as your name and specialty, but not your contact information such as email address and postal address, to the sponsor of the advertisement or Sponsored Program and/or its agents on the sponsor's behalf. We may also provide such third parties with details about your engagement with the advertisement or Sponsored Program (e.g., whether you viewed or otherwise interacted with certain content), your answers to any polling questions contained in the Sponsored Program that you have chosen to provide and information about you that we have received from third parties. Additionally, when you register as a member of the Medscape Network, we may provide your Personal Information, excluding contact information, to potential sponsors of advertisements and Sponsored Programs that may be offered or provided to you through the Services. We are not responsible for how these third parties use your information and manage your privacy.
Member Profiles. WebMD may provide Member Profiles (excluding contact information, such as email address and postal address, and information about your participation in specific CME and CE activities) to third parties, including our pharmaceutical manufacturer customers, which they may use for their business purposes including marketing. We require these third parties to agree that they will use Member Profiles in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. By registering as a member of the Medscape Network and using the Services, you consent to WebMD's disclosure of your Member Profiles to third parties as described herein.
Market Research Surveys: If you receive remuneration for participating in a Sponsored Survey, we may be required to provide the sponsor (or the market research company acting on its behalf) with your Personal Information for the sponsor's recordkeeping and/or regulatory reporting purposes. If you chose to access a Sponsored Survey that is conducted by a third party market research company, we may identify you to this company through the survey link. Sometimes market research companies send us lists of individuals they wish to reach with particular Sponsored Surveys, and we may inform these companies which of these individuals are members of the Medscape Network so that they can manage their survey recruitment needs accordingly. Also, certain market research survey opportunities made available to you through the Services require the market research company to contact you directly to conduct the Sponsored Survey. We will inform you in the associated survey invitation that we intend to provide your contact information to the market research company that is conducting the Sponsored Survey so that you can decide at such time if you wish to proceed with the opportunity. We do not disclose your Sponsored Survey responses to the associated sponsor in a manner identifiable to you.
Continuing Medical Education: We may share your Personal Information with the accreditors of our continuing education programs. Medscape is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the American Nurses Credentialing Center and the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education to provide continuing education to physicians, nurses and pharmacists, respectively (collectively, "CME/CE"). As an accredited entity, Medscape is required to periodically submit Personal Information about CME/CE participants and the CME/ CE activities that Medscape certifies, as requested by the applicable accrediting entity. Medscape and WebMD Global LLC ("WebMD Global"), an affiliated company that also provides continuing medical education activities through the Medscape Network, may provide your Personal Information to other accredited providers who certify CME/CE offered through the Services as required by these other providers to process the credits that that you earn by completing the applicable CME/CE activity, to fulfill their reporting obligations to the ACCME and other accrediting bodies and as required for their internal recordkeeping purposes. Supporters of Medscape and WebMD Global's continuing medical education activities will receive only aggregated data about CME/CE activities that they support including participation and outcomes measurement.
Logging in to Another Website Using Your Medscape Credentials: Certain third party websites permit you to log in using your Medscape username and password. If you choose to log in to one of these websites using your Medscape log in credentials, we may give this website information included in your registration profile including Personal Information such as your name, specialty, occupation and email address, (but not your Medscape username and password), which the operator of the website has agreed to use in accordance with its website's privacy policy. You should review the third party website's privacy policy before logging in. If the privacy policy of the third party site permits, we may receive information about your use of this third party site, which we may use in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Consent: We may disclose your Personal Information to a third party in a manner not addressed by this Privacy Policy subject to your consent.
Business Transfers: If one of us transfers a business unit (such as a subsidiary) or an asset (such as a website) to another company, that company will be required to treat any Personal Information collected under this Privacy Policy consistent with the applicable terms of this Privacy Policy.
Legal Requirements: We may release account and other Personal Information when we believe release (1) is required to comply with valid legal requirements such as a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena or court order; or (2) is reasonable in response to a physical threat to you or others, to protect property or defend or assert legal rights of us or others.
We have implemented technology and security policies 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 require that all of 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 the security of their Medscape login credentials.
Account Information. You may update your registration information at any time through the Account Management feature available on each of the Sites and Apps. You may also contact Customer Support at MedscapeCustomerSupport@webmd.net and request that your registration information be updated or deleted. Upon your request, we will delete your registration information from our active databases and where feasible, from our backup media. Note that if we delete your account, we may maintain certain demographic information about you for product improvement purposes.
Cookies. Most browser software can be set to reject Cookies. Most browsers offer instructions on how to reset the browser to reject Cookies in the "Help" section of the toolbar. However, if you reject our cookies, you will not be able to access the Sites. Certain Ad Servers allow you to prevent them from collecting data through the use of cookies. In order to do so, you must opt-out of such data collection with each individual site. Currently, you can opt out of cookies for several Ad Servers by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative gateway opt-out site. This website will also allow you to review the Ad Server's privacy policies. The Sites do not respond to web browser "do not track" signals.
WebMD, Medscape and WebMD Global are located in the United States. We will collect, store, and process information about your use of the Services in the United States and these activities shall be governed by applicable United States laws and regulations and this Privacy Policy. By using the Services, you consent to such collection, storage and processing in the United States, though the United States may not afford the same level of data protection as considered adequate in your own country. We will take reasonable steps to protect your information.
The Medscape Network and the 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 Personal Information from any person we know is under the age of 18.
We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time and any changes will be effective upon posting of the modified Policy unless we advise otherwise. If we make any material changes to this Policy we will notify you by email (sent to the email address included in your account profile) and/or by means of a notice on the Medscape Network at the time that the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy for the latest information on our privacy practices. If you do not accept the terms of this Privacy Policy, we ask that you do not register with us and that you do not use the Services. By continuing to use the Services after changes are made to this Privacy Policy, you are consenting to such changes.
For privacy questions or concerns about one of our Web sites or Services, please contact MedscapePrivacy@webmd.net.
The Medscape Terms of Use can be found at http://www.medscape.com/public/termsofuse.
Effective date: March 9, 2015