This HSSC Privacy Policy is effective as of July 1, 2010
Privacy Policy
General Statement
HSSC is committed to not disclosing your Member Information to third parties without your consent, subject to the limited circumstances described below. “Member Information” is defined in Section 5 of the Terms of Use and includes information about you that is personally identifiable to you, like your name, address, email address or phone number, educational and employment history, and professional certifications, history of your use of this Web site, as well as other non-public information that is associated with the foregoing. We do not intentionally gather Member Information about visitors who are under the age of 13.
Please read the following Policy to understand how we collect Member Information from you, use the information, and protect the information. This Policy does not extend to anything that is inherent in the operation of the Internet and therefore beyond our control, and is not to be applied in any manner contrary to applicable law or governmental regulation.
Periodic Changes to This Policy. We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make substantial changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the updated Policy on this page and we will post notice that this Privacy Policy has changed on the HSSC homepage. The notification of revised terms will appear on this Web site 30 days prior to the changes taking place. Once any changes that we make to this Privacy Policy become effective, your continued use of this Web site after such time will signify your acceptance of the new terms. We therefore recommend that you refer to this Policy regularly. If the effective date has changed since your last review, please review the Policy in full for any changes. Such changes will be effective upon posting on this Web site.
Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the practices of this Site, you may contact our Customer Service at our general mailing address at 1320 Main Street, Suite 625, Columbia, SC 29201, or by e-mail to [email protected].
Your Acceptance Of These Terms. By visiting or otherwise using any HSSC Site, you signify your agreement to and acceptance of this HSSC Privacy Policy and the Terms Of Use and any posted changes to either of them, and you expressly consent to the processing of your Member Information according to this Privacy Policy. Your Member Information may be processed in states where laws regarding the processing of Member Information may be less stringent than the laws in your own state. If you do not agree with this Policy and these Terms, please do not use this Web site.
Terminating Your Account. If at any time you object to our use of your Member Information, you may discontinue your account with HSSC by submitting a written request to your local HSSC administrator who will in turn remove all user access to information in the restricted account databases maintained within the various HSSC applications. Upon such discontinuation, your Member Information may remain on our archived database and records; however, none of your Member Information will thereafter be provided to you or to third parties, except in accordance with the provisions under the headings “Information that we automatically gather through your use of our site,” “Aggregate and anonymous information,” and “When We May Be Forced To Disclose,” below.
Correcting and Updating Your Information. We encourage you to correct and update Member Information by updating your profiles on a regular basis. This Site gives the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided:
You may update your information at any time by logging into your account and clicking on the tab “Edit My Profile” in the researcher profile application and updating the appropriate information accordingly.
For all other requests, please contact your local administrator for assistance.
Links To Other Sites. HSSC is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other Web sites to which any HSSC Site links or which link to any HSSC Site. By clicking on a link, logo or other item, please note that you may no longer be on a HSSC Site. Any link to a page that displays a URL (that is, a Web site address) of a non-HSSC Website in the address window of your browser or that indicates that it is “powered by” an entity other than HSSC, is a link to a site outside of our service and outside of our control. These other sites may send their own cookies to you, collect data or solicit Member Information. We urge you to review carefully the Privacy Policy of any such third party provider prior to using its Web site or providing any Member Information through its Web site to determine how your Member Information will be used. Your correspondence or business dealings through such third party sites with any third party providers, including payment for and delivery of goods or services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties or representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and such providers. Please note that we do not guarantee and are not responsible for the content of outside sites.
What Information We Know About You And How We Use It
In your use of any HSSC Site, you will be asked to provide certain Member Information. Some of the requested Member Information will be required and some will be optional. Other information will be generated automatically as you use the Site, for example, a history of postings, messages, and pages visited. We will not disclose any of this Member Information unless you authorize us to do so, except in connection with the services provided through any HSSC Site or as otherwise explained in this Policy.
Member Information that you give us
- When we collect – HSSC collects Member Information from members when you create an HSSC profile or account or when you use certain services provided by HSSC on any HSSC Site. Member Information is collected by specifically requesting it from you. We use this Member Information only for the specific purpose specified at the time you input such information. For example, by using various features of any HSSC Site we may need to collect your name, address, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, licensure, certifications, IP addresses, publications, grant awards, job title, employment affiliations (both current and former), number of times accessing any HSSC Ssite and its associated applications, and any comments related to this data.
- Your options – There are two processes employed by HSSC to create, edit, and then use your Member profile for its various applications. Both methods require the initial submission of an online request to HSSC, via the Site, for security access to the HSSC applications through the creation of a Shibboleth authentication account. Once this security access has been approved by your local HSSC administrator, then inside the specific applications, you can register for access by filling out the registration form presented to you by the application and then upon review by your local administrator be granted permission to access the application based upon your role in the use of the application (i.e. account holder or proxy for an account holder.
- Removal of your Member Information – You may remove your profile from our database at any time. HSSC is not responsible, however, for the retention, use, or privacy of Member Information retained by third parties.
- Other data and changes to this Privacy Policy – We may also require other information for tracking or verifying compliance with our policies, abiding by federal, state and local laws and for editorial and feedback solicitation purposes. In addition, from time to time, we may use your information for new, unanticipated uses, such as notification of new services, announcements and general communications. If our information practices materially change at some time in the future, we will post such change to the Web site before we use your data for these new purposes, in accordance with the paragraph captioned “Periodic Changes to This Policy” above.
- Third-party use – We do not rent or sell our Members’ Member Information or visitor information to third parties; nor do we send any of your Member Information or visitor information to our advertisers.
Information that we automatically gather through your use of our site
Aside from any information you may actively disclose to us, there is other, less obvious, information which we might obtain from you. We may use such information for internal purposes such as to improve the content of our Web pages or to customize the layout of our pages for each individual according to their preferences or browser platform. In addition, we may track your account history regarding your participation on the Web site. As an automatic process, our Web server software records a log file of IP addresses that access the Web site, but we do not ordinarily link IP addresses to Members’ Member Information. We can and will, however, use IP addresses to identify a Member when we, in our sole discretion, determine that it is necessary to enforce compliance with our Terms of Use or to protect our service, Web site, customers or others.
Aggregate or anonymous information
Our system automatically collects information about the areas visitors frequent on our Web site. We may use this aggregate information to understand how our visitors and members as a group use the services we provide so that we can improve our Web site. In addition, we may create Anonymous Information records from Member Information by excluding information (such as names) that makes the information personally identifiable to you. We may use this Anonymous Information to analyze inquiry, request and usage patterns so that we may enhance services and the Web site. We reserve the right to use and disclose Anonymous Information to third parties in our discretion. “Anonymous Information” means information that is not associated with or linked to your Member Information. Anonymous Information does not permit the identification of individual persons.
Some examples of how we collect or aggregate such information are as follows:
- Cookies: A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to and stored on your computer by a Web site that you visit. Cookies enable Member registration, login, and personalization, among other things. A cookie cannot identify you directly, but it can identify your computer. Your computer’s Internet browser is most likely set up to accept cookies automatically. If you would like to disable this feature you may do so by adjusting the options or preferences in your browser. However, by doing so, you will lose some of the conveniences of the HSSC Web pages.
- IP Addresses: An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer. HSSC collects IP addresses for the purposes of system administration and to audit the use of our site. Each time you log onto our site and each time you request one of our pages, our server logs your IP address. Although we log your session with us, we will not normally link your IP address to anything that can enable us to identify you. However, we can and will use IP addresses to identify a Member when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our rules or terms of service or to protect our service, site, Members or others.
- Computer Information: The HSSC Web site will automatically gather information about the computer or operating system you are using such as the error messages you may have received. This information allows HSSC to better fit our services to your individual needs and to diagnose problems you may be having with our Web site. We use unique identifiers such as member I-D’s to give you access to special areas of our Web site intended for registered members.
- Geographic Location: We may gather information about your geographical location by determining where your computer is located. We do this in order to provide either localized service or to provide faster service by sending your server localized content.
Uses of Visitor and Member Information
- We use visitor information for our own internal purposes including recording and analyzing, and to advise you of updates to our services and information relating to your use of this Web site.
- We also provide you with the opportunity to receive (or to opt out of receiving) email communications of information, including newsletters, that we think may be of interest to you.
- To the extent necessary to provide you with the services on the Web site, we may provide your Member Information to third party contractors who work on behalf of or with HSSC to provide you with such services, to help us communicate with you or to maintain the Web site. However, these contractors do not have any independent right to share this information.
- We share the HSSC Member names with authorized designees of the account holder’s home/affiliate organization and with the software designers of our appropriate application.
- We may share some or all of your Member Information with any parent company, subsidiary, joint venture participant, support organization, supported organization or member institution of HSSC (collectively, the “Affiliates”) in which case we will require our Affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy.
- If our company or our assets related to the Web site are acquired by another company, we will attempt to notify you so that you may make an informed decision about this new use of your Member Information. See the “Periodic Changes to This Policy” section above to find out how we will notify you.
When We May Be Forced To Disclose
We may disclose Member Information or visitor information in special cases when we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property or the rights or property of our members or others. We also may disclose Member Information or visitor information when we believe in good faith that the law, legal process or a lawful investigation requires it.
Security
The importance of security is a top priority for us. We exercise great care in providing secure transmission of your information from your Internet connection to our servers. We also take great care to protect Member-information off-line. All of your data is handled only by authorized personnel and our database servers have a backup system to prevent loss of data. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, and we will not be held liable should a third party illegally obtain your Member Information. While we have made a great effort to protect your Member Information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk.