Prostate Cancer Institute - Privacy Statement

A. Information Collected by Prostate Cancer Institute (PCI) or on PCI's Behalf

1. In GeneralPersonally Identifiable Information (PII or Personal Information) is information that can be used to identify or contact you. When you visit our Website, PCI collects only the Personal Information you provide to us. We collect the Personal Information that you provide to us in two general and distinct ways: (1) When you send a Webform and (2) When you choose to send PCI an e-mail or participate in surveys. We also collect non-personal information from you and about your use of our Website, emails, special promotions and newsletters that we send to you, and Websites of selected sponsors and advertisers. For example, PCI may use "cookies" to collect non-personal information about your use of our site, selected sponsors' sites, or emails we send to you. PCI does not store any Personal Information in any cookies on your computer. All of these are described in more detail below.

2. Registration and Personal InformationYou may use our Website without registering or submitting any Personal Information. In that case, the only information we collect will be non-personal information collected through the use of cookies. However, in order to have access to certain services and content (e.g., using the nurse-chat feature), you may provide certain Personal Information. We use the Personal Information that you provide to respond to questions from you and/or inform you of significant changes to this Privacy Policy. We may also use this information to send you emails with special promotions or newsletters with content that we think may be of interest to you. You can always opt-out of receiving such emails or unsubscribe to newsletters at the time you register or at any time.

3. Cookies We also collect anonymous, non-personal information about your use of our site or your use of emails, special promotions or newsletters that we send to you. For example, we collect non-personal information about your use of our site and your use of the sites of selected sponsors and advertisers through the use of "Cookies". Cookies are small computer files that we transfer to your computer's hard drive that allow us to know how often someone visits a site and the activities they conduct while on that site (such as which pages you visited and the length of time you spent on each of those pages). Every computer is assigned a different cookie by PCI. The information collected by cookies helps us improve the content on web pages or in emails specifically designed for you and also allows us to statistically monitor how many people are using our site, or opening our emails, and for what purposes. We may use cookie information to target certain messages to your browser or to determine the popularity of certain content.Your browser software can be set to reject all cookies. Most browsers offer instructions on how to reset the browser to reject cookies in the "Help" section of the toolbar. If you reject our cookie, certain of the functions and conveniences of our site may not work properly but you do not have to accept our cookie in order to productively use our site. While it may be possible to link non-personal cookie information to Personal Information collected in other ways, please be assured that if you accept our cookie we will not, without your consent, link the cookie information we collect to Personal Information you provide to us on our site.

4. E-mails and NewslettersAs noted in the discussion of cookies (see above), we collect anonymous, non-personal information about your use of e-mails and newsletters that we may send to you. In some cases, when you click on a link in an e-mail or newsletter, your browser may be momentarily directed to the site of a third party which, acting on PCI's behalf (see Disclosure to Website Service and Content Contractors, below), notes or "counts" your response to the e-mail or newsletter before re-directing your browser to its proper destination; this re-direction process will not be apparent to you. When you use PCI's "Email a Friend" application, if present, PCI emails the article or other content you designate to your friend's email address and lists your email address as the sender. PCI uses the friend's email address only for the purpose of sending your friend the email you requested and for no other purpose unless otherwise disclosed to you at the time you send the email.

B. ChildrenWe are committed to protecting the privacy of children. This Website is not designed or intended to attract children under the age of 18. We do not collect Personal Information from any person we actually know is under the age of 18.

C. Emails to PCIThis Privacy Policy does not protect you when you send questions, business information, ideas, concepts or inventions to PCI by email to the various PCI departments listed on the "Contact Us" link (or other link) on our Website. If you want to keep business information, ideas, concepts or inventions private or proprietary, do not send them in an email to PCI. We try to answer every email in a timely manner, but are not always able to do so.

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION
Except as set forth in this policy or as specifically agreed to by you, PCI will not disclose any Personal Information it gathers from you on our Website. We may release Personal Information 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 a physical threat to you or others. In the event that we are legally compelled to disclose your Personal Information to a third party, we will notify you unless doing so would violate the law or court order.

A. Disclosure to PCI Subsidiaries and DivisionsPCI may disclose Personal Information to its corporate subsidiaries or other divisions of the organization. Any Personal Information provided to subsidiaries or divisions of PCI will be treated by those entities in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.

B. Disclosure to PCI Operations and Maintenance ContractorsPCI operations and maintenance contractors sometimes have limited access to your Personal Information in the course of providing products or services to PCI. These contractors include vendors and suppliers that provide us with technology, services, and/or content related to better operation and maintenance of our Website. Unless you have opted out of receiving emails and newsletters from PCI, these contractors also may have access to your email address to send newsletters or special promotions to you on our behalf or to send emails to you for purposes such as conducting market research on our behalf. Access to your Personal Information by these contractors is limited to the information reasonably necessary in order for the contractor to perform its limited function for PCI. We also contractually require that our operations and maintenance contractors 1) protect the privacy of your Personal Information consistent with this Privacy Policy, and 2) not use or disclose your Personal Information for any purpose other than providing us with products and services.

C. Disclosure to Advertising PartnersPCI does not sell advertising to or accept advertising from other parties for display on the Website; consequently, PCI makes no disclosure of any Personal Information to such entities.

D. Disclosure of Information for Physician Appointment Scheduling PCI provides Personal Information to physicians and/or the physician practice employees with which PCI has scheduled an appointment for you through the PCI Website. This information disclosure is communicated to the Physician in an encrypted format (as described in “How PCI Handles Privacy and Security Internally) and is necessary for the physician to be prepared with information about you for your appointment. PCI may also disclose the date of your appointment and physician name to third parties, in which case no personally identifying information about you will be disclosed.

E. Disclosure of Aggregate Information
PCI may provide to third parties non-personal information about you that does not allow you to be identified or contacted and that is combined with the non-personal information of other users ("Aggregate Information"). For example, we might inform third parties regarding the number of users of our site and the activities they conduct while on our site. We also may not limit the third parties' use of the Aggregate Information, except that we do require third parties to whom we disclose Aggregate Information to agree that they will not attempt to make this information personally identifiable by combining it with other databases or otherwise.

HOW PCI HANDLES PRIVACY AND SECURITY INTERNALLY
PCI wants your Personal Information to remain as secure as possible. That is why we have a two-tier security system at PCI that combines leading technical safeguards and a code of conduct for those employees who are permitted to access your Personal Information. On the technical side, PCI uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption technology in transmitting your Personal Information to physicians to help ensure the integrity and privacy of the Personal Information you provide to us via the Internet. Encryption involves systematically scrambling numbers and letters, so that even if someone managed to intercept the information, they would not be able to make sense of it. In order to take advantage of this encryption technology, you need to have an Internet browser that will support 128-bit encryption, such as Netscape or Microsoft Explorer. On the employee side, only a limited number of PCI employees are authorized to access your Personal Information. All PCI employees must abide by our Privacy Policy and those who violate our Privacy Policy are subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination. Although we will make every reasonable effort to protect your Personal Information from loss, misuse, or alteration by third parties, you should be aware that there is always some risk involved in transmitting information over the Internet. There is also some risk that thieves could find a way to thwart our security systems.

YOUR PRIVACY CHOICESFrom time to time on the PCI Website, you may be given the option of receiving recurring information or newsletters via email from PCI and/or directly from third parties.

If you wish to subscribe to such newsletters via email, we ask for contact information, such as name and email address. You can unsubscribe from the newsletters by simply clicking on the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of any email newsletter. An email to our automated unsubscribe service will be created on your machine. Click the "send" button. You will then be unsubscribed from that newsletter within two to three business days. If you are experiencing difficulties with our automated unsubscribe service, you can email us at SiteAdministrator. The Site Administrator will unsubscribe you from that newsletter in two to three business days.

This privacy statement applies only to the PCI Website. The PCI Website does contain links to other sites. Once you enter another Website (whether through an advertisement, service, or content link), be aware that PCI is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage you to look for and review the privacy statements of each and every Website that you visit through a link or advertisement on PCI's site or any site that collects Personal Information from you.

UPDATING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION AND CONTACTING PCIYou can always contact us in order to (1) delete your Personal Information from our systems, (2) update the Personal Information that you have provided to us, and (3) change your preferences with respect to marketing contacts or other activities, by emailing us at SiteAdministrator@prostate-cancer-institute.org. Such changes will not have any effect on other information that PCI maintains. If you have a complaint or problem you may email us at SiteAdministrator and your complaint will be forwarded to the appropriate internal PCI department for a response or resolution. We try to answer every email in a timely manner but are not always able to do so. If you do not receive adequate resolution of a privacy related problem, you may write to PCI's Privacy Help Desk at:

Prostate Cancer Institute
Privacy Help Desk
10250 Valley View Road, Suite 145
Eden Prairie, MN 55344

You should be aware that it is not technologically possible to remove each and every record of the information you have provided to PCI from our servers. The need to back-up our systems to protect information from inadvertent loss means that a copy of your Personal Information may exist in a non-erasable form that will be difficult or impossible for us to locate. Nevertheless, we promise that upon receiving your request, all Personal Information stored in the databases we actively use for research and daily business activities, and other readily searchable media, will be deleted.

Privacy as it applies to the Internet is a dynamic, rapidly developing area. In the future, we may make significant changes to our privacy policy affecting the use of the Personal Information we collect. We will notify you by email of any significant changes concerning our use of your Personal Information and obtain your "opt-in" consent to any significant new uses of your Personal Information if it was collected from you prior to a significant change in this policy. We may also make non-significant changes to our Privacy Policy that generally will not affect our use of your Personal Information and we generally will not notify you of these non-significant changes. You should check this posted Privacy Policy for any non-significant changes. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy or any revised policy, please exit the site immediately.