HealthLinks Privacy Policy

Your privacy is important to us. We have created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. The following document discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this Web site: http://healthlinks.washington.edu.

Only under unusual circumstances will information be revealed in violation of the policy. Release of confidential information would take place to comply with any legal process, protect or defend the University of Washington or other individuals or organizations involved with this project (including protecting the property of said parties), or to enforce University of Washington policies. Be aware that UW is an agency of the state of Washington and as such has obligations to maintain public records under RCW 42.17.250 et seq, which potentially requires us to provide Web site records if requested by anyone through the proper legal process. Disclosure might also occur by a break-in to the site's computers, either physical or electronic, and/or a UW employee, UW student, or other contractual partner who violates UW privacy rules.

This privacy policy does not apply to the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice website (http://healthlinks.washington.edu/nwcphp/), the Research Funding Service website (http://healthlinks.washington.edu/rfs/), Ethnomed (http://www.ethnomed.org), or PrimeAnswers (http://primeanswers.org).

This notice applies to all information collected by or submitted to this Web site. We collect information about you in the following areas of our site:

The information we request from you may include personal and/or demographic information, as explained below.

In the case of a Health Sciences Libraries request form, we may use your contact information to verify your eligibility for a service or to contact you about the fulfillment of a service.

In the case of a software registration, we will use your email to send detailed instructions on how to download, install, or access software and connect to networked licenses. We will also add your email address to the UWHSLBIORESEARCHER mailing list, if it is not already on it. This list is used periodically to make UW BioCommons announcements, and will never be shared with third parties. In the event of technical difficulties we may use your phone number to assist with troubleshooting.

Your personal information will never be given to any third parties, unless required of us by law. The information we request may include these items: credit card number, UW budget number, deposit account number, first name, last name, phone number, UW box, email address, and UW Net ID.

We will use the required data and any of the optional data you choose to provide to generate aggregate usage numbers.

The demographic required and optional information we collect during software registration will only be used to generate aggregate usage data. This aggregate data is then used: 1) to judge the effectiveness over time of software services; and, 2) to aid in budgetary decisions. It may be provided to third parties as anonymous research data as well, but will never be provided along with personal information that would allow you to be identified. The demographic information we collect or request may include these items: department, UW affiliation, citation information, comments, choice of format, and choice of software and version.

We also keep a minimum set of system logs that allow us to tune and protect the service and determine general usage patterns. We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, and to administer the site. We do not link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information. We do not keep such information any longer than necessary to meet these objectives. The system log information we collect or request may include these items: remote IP Address, remote userid, date/time of request, request made by remote user, status code generated by request, size of object returned, referrer, and browser type.

An Internet Protocol (IP) address does not identify you personally, but rather identifies the location you are computing from. We do collect IP addresses from those visiting our Web site. These addresses are used to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our site.

If you want to change your preferences for the UWHSLBIORESEARCHER mailing list, or to unsubscribe from the list, you can visit: https://mailman.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/uwhslbioresearcher or follow the link in the footer of any message sent to the list.

This Web site does use cookies. "Cookies" are pieces of information that a Web site transfers to your computer's hard disk for record-keeping purposes. The use of cookies is an industry standard and many Web sites use them. Cookies themselves do not personally identify users, although they do identify a user's computer. We use cookies as part of the UW Net ID authentication process.

If you do not wish to have cookies placed on your computer, you can modify your own Internet browser preferences for how it accepts or rejects cookies. Check your browser help file for more information on modifying cookie preferences.

This Web site contains links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by http://healthlinks.washington.edu. Please be aware that http://healthlinks.washington.edu is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites.

We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information.

This privacy statement applies only to information collected by this Web site.

This policy shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Washington. If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from the other provisions and shall not affect the validity of the other provisions.

http://healthlinks.washington.edu takes every precaution to protect our users' information. When users submit registration data via the Web site, their information is protected both online and off-line.

When a software registration form or a Health Sciences Libraries request form asks users to enter and submit information, that information is encrypted and protected before being sent across the network using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the most secure standard encryption software on the Internet. While on a secure page, the URL will start with https:// and the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when users are just 'surfing'.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. The servers that store personally identifiable information are in a secure environment, in a locked facility. Physical and remote access to the personally identifiable information on these servers is restricted only to employees who need the information to perform a specific job.

Our authentication/authorization service (Pubcookie) is managed centrally by the University of Washington Computing and Communications, as such we do not need to store any username or password.

Users with any questions about the security at our Web site can contact HSL/BioCommons using any of the methods below.

Information Access or Correction. If your personally identifiable information changes you can contact us to correct, update, or delete it using any of the contact methods below.

How to Contact Us.

Notification of Changes with the Privacy Policy. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post the changes to this statement, and send a notice to the UWHSLBIORESEARCHER and HSL-NEWS mailing lists. We want our users to be aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.Please periodically check this privacy statement for changes. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by way of e-mail (if we have their e-mail address).

This privacy statement supersedes all prior http://healthlinks.washington.edu privacy statements and is effective: January 12, 2005.