Privacy Policy

THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY.

Last modified: July 16, 2012

CaringGuidance™ is an educational site intended to provide support and general guidance, but not treatment or other health care services for persons having serious medical conditions. CaringGuidance™ does not provide health care services, and is not intended to replace or supplement the care provided by health care providers. Persons who operate, manage and curate information on CaringGuidance™ include non-health care professionals, and therefore cannot render health care services. You should not treat information received from CaringGuidance™ as derived from a health care provider, and you should not rely on any information or advice provided or which appears to be presented on CaringGuidance™. You should also not provide information to CaringGuidance™ that you consider confidential or protectable health care information. CaringGuidance™ does not have access to your medical records, and any information you provide will be treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy and not restricted in accordance with any other policy of CaringGuidance™ or another entity.

CaringGuidance™ is an educational program of the State University of New York. This site is continuously under development. As part of our activities, we may consider targeted messages (advertising) based on information you provide. In these cases, information you provide may be released to third parties, to provide their services in accordance with their respective privacy policies in effect at that time. We may use such third parties to present relevant information, and to help support our activities.

CaringGuidance™ considers privacy a part of its mission. In order to fulfill its educational mission not only to the user, but also students and the public, some information may be made available to web site developers, instructors, students, medical professionals, and others who do not have a need to know that information. CaringGuidance™ will take steps to ensure that those with access understand the sensitive nature of the information, and treat CaringGuidance™’s users with dignity and respect. However the circumstances do not permit guaranties of confidentiality, information security, or privacy.

CaringGuidance™ does not require that you provide any information, nor that information provided be accurate and correct. However, as part of its service, CaringGuidance™ may solicit personal information, and you understand that there may be circumstances where that information is used for research and educational purposes of others. In any such case, CaringGuidance™ will seek to remove all personally identifiable information, and generally seek to aggregate the information so that the particular information you provide will not be personally identifiable.

Information We Collect

We collect information based on use of and inputs to our website. We collect information in two ways: (1) Information you give us. For example, permits you to set up an account, and log in using your username and password. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information; and (2) Information we get from your use of our services. We may collect information about your use of the service.
This information includes:

Device information

We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account.

Log information

When you use our services or view content provided by CaringGuidance™, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This may include:

• details of how you used our service, such as any inputs and selection of hyperlinks.
• Internet protocol address.
• device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL.
• cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your CaringGuidance™Account.

Location Information

We may also use various technologies to determine your location.

Unique Application Numbers

Certain services include a unique application number. This number and information about your installation (for example, the operating system type and application version number) may be sent to CaringGuidance™.

Local Storage

We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.

Cookies and Anonymous Identifiers

We use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit CaringGuidance™, and this may include sending one or more cookies or anonymous identifiers to your device, and use of pixel tags. We may also use cookies and anonymous identifiers when you interact with services we offer to third parties, such as advertising services or features that may appear on other sites.

How We Use Information We Collect

We use the information we collect from our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect CaringGuidance™ and our users. We may also use this information to offer you tailored content, which may include ads.

We may use the name you provide for your CaringGuidance™ across all of the services we offer or may in the future offer. In addition, we may associate various identities that you use together. While we will not publicly show your profile information, third parties we work with may acquire profile information about you, and use that information.

When you contact CaringGuidance™, we may keep a record of your communication to help solve any issues you might be facing. We may use your email address to inform you about our services, such as letting you know about upcoming changes or improvements.

We use information collected from cookies and other technologies, like pixel tags, to improve your user experience and the overall quality of our services.
We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy.

You may also set your browser to block all cookies, including cookies associated with our services, or to indicate when a cookie is being set by us. However, it’s important to remember that many of our services might not function properly if your cookies are disabled.

Information You Share

Our services may let you share information with others. Remember that when you share information publicly, it may be indexable by search engines.

Information We Share

We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of CaringGuidance™, the State University of New York, The Research Foundation of the State University of New York and its related organizations, unless one of the following circumstances apply:

With your consent

We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of CaringGuidance™ when we have your consent to do so. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.

For external processing

We may provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

For legal reasons

We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of CaringGuidance™ if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:

• meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
• enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
• detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
• protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of CaringGuidance™, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.

We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with third parties – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services.

If CaringGuidance™ is involved in a license, acquisition or asset sale, we will continue to ensure the confidentiality of any personal information and give affected users notice before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Philanthropy

CaringGuidance™ may contact you to raise funds to sustain the CaringGuidance™ mission. For example, you may receive letters or other publications asking you to consider making a tax-deductible contribution to CaringGuidance™. When conducting fundraising activities, CaringGuidance™ may access only your basic demographic information (such as name and contact information). CaringGuidance™ does not sell or rent user’s names or addresses to any organization outside of CaringGuidance™.

Medical Research

Medical research is vital to the advancement of medical science. Federal regulations permit use of your personal information in medical research, either with your authorization or when the research study at CaringGuidance™ is reviewed and approved by an Institutional Review Board before any medical research study begins. In some situations, limited information may be used before approval of the research study to allow a researcher to determine whether enough patients exist to make a study scientifically valid.

To Avert a Serious Threat of Harm CaringGuidance™ may use and disclose protected health information to alert those able to prevent or lessen a serious and immediate threat to the health or safety of a patient, another person or the public.

Information Security

We work hard to protect CaringGuidance™ and our users from unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of information we hold. However, CaringGuidance™ is under development, and is part of an education mission not only for users, but also for students, and therefore we cannot be liable for unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of information. Please do not store unique copies of information important to you on CaringGuidance™.

Application

Our Privacy Policy applies to the services of CaringGuidance™ and its affiliates, but excludes services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy.

Our Privacy Policy does not apply to services offered by other companies or individuals, including ads or other sites linked from our services. Our Privacy Policy does not cover the information practices of other companies and organizations who may be referenced on our site, or who may reference our site, and who may use cookies, pixel tags and other technologies to serve and offer relevant ads.

Changes

Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. We will post any privacy policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of privacy policy changes).

Terms of Service

The CaringGuidance™ Web site (the “Web Site”) is made up of various Web pages operated by CaringGuidance™ and its affiliated entities (“CaringGuidance™”). For your convenience, CaringGuidance™ may make available on the Web Site or elsewhere products, mobile applications, tools and utilities for use and/or download (the “Tools”). The Web Site and Tools are offered to you conditional on your acceptance without modification of the terms, conditions and notices contained herein (the “Terms of Use”). Your use of the Web Site and/or Tools constitutes your agreement to comply with these Terms of Use.