Privacy Policy

At fertilityforumonline.com we are firmly committed to protecting your privacy.

To better protect your privacy, we provide you with our Privacy Policy so that you will understand our commitment to you and to your privacy. We understand that personal information is highly sensitive and that you may have concerns about sharing some of your personal information with us. For this reason, we believe that you should be free to disclose as much or as little personal information as you feel comfortable with.

This Privacy Policy describes what information we will collect about you, how we use and disclose your information, how we protect it, and what choices you have on how that information is used.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this policy, you should first contact the website administrator. As our Privacy Policy changes in significant ways, we will make every effort to notify you of the changes. Minor changes to the policy may occur that will not affect our use of individually identifiable information. When the Privacy Policy changes in a way that significantly affects the way we handle personal information, we will not use the information we have previously gathered without first providing notice or obtaining your consent when appropriate. We will post privacy policy changes on our websites in a timely manner. See section below on changes to this Privacy Policy.

When we refer to ourselves as "we" or "CME Scholar Europe", we mean our entire company, including any company that we control (for example, a subsidiary that we own) but does not include the supporter of the website. We will share information among companies that we own or control, and we will share information with our co-promotion partners, and companies working with CME Scholar Europe but all information we share will always be protected under the terms of this Privacy Policy.

You should read the Privacy Policy at each website that you visit after you leave one of our sites. CME Scholar Europe is not responsible for how other websites treat your personal data once you leave a CME Scholar Europe website.

The following items constitute our Privacy Policy. We hope that reading them gives you a clear idea of how we manage your information.

  1. Personal information that we collect.

    Information we collect from visitors. Visitors to fertilityforumonline.com can access the website's home page, and browse some areas of the site, without disclosing any personally identifiable information. We do track information provided to us by your browser, including the website you came from (known as the referring URL), the type of browser you use, the time and date of access, and other information that does not personally identify you.

    In addition, we gather information about you that is automatically collected by our webserver, such as your IP address and domain name. CME Scholar Europe may use webserver and browser information to individually customize its offerings and presentations if you submit your personal information.

    Information we collect when you register. Visitors registering for services on our websites are asked to provide identifying information, such as name and contact information. On the registration screen, we clearly label which information is required for registration and will be given at your discretion. CME Scholar Europe websites obtain visitors' consent before collecting personally identifiable information.

    Information from outside sources. We will also collect information about physicians or other health-care professionals who register on our websites from other sources in order to verify their licensure status and identity.

    From time to time we will augment our existing user databases with legally obtained information from third parties. Some of this information is personally identifiable, such as national change of address information.

    Other information. We also collect information that you voluntarily provide to us through responses to surveys, search functions, questionnaires, feedback and the like.

    We will also ask you to provide additional information such as your e-mail address if you want to obtain additional services or information or to resolve complaints or concerns.

  2. Use of cookies and other tracking systems

    Cookies, log files, and pixel-tags (Web beacons) are technologies used by CME Scholar websites to identify a user as the user moves through our websites. Your browser allows us to place some information (session based IDs and/or persistent cookies) on your computer's hard drive that identifies the computer you are using. We use cookies to personalize our websites and to track your usage across the website.

    Your web browser can be set to allow you to control whether you will accept cookies, reject cookies, or to notify you each time a cookie is sent to you. If your browser is set to reject cookies, websites that are cookie-enabled will not recognize you when you return to the website, and some website functionality may be lost. The Help section of your browser will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting cookies.

    Although cookies do not normally contain personally identifiable information, if you have provided us with information about you, we will associate your registration information with cookies or other tracking utilities that our website places on your computer's hard drive. Associating a cookie with your registration data allows us to offer increased personalization and functionality. Without cookies, this functionality would not be possible.

    In addition, we use other tracking systems, such as pixel-tags. Pixel-tags, sometimes called web beacons, are similar in function to a cookie. But because of their insignificant size, they are not visible; but, they are used to pass certain information to our servers, in order to personalize our websites and to track your usage through them. In addition, we may also use pixel-tags in our HTML based e-mails.

  3. How we use the information

    Aggregate data. We gather aggregate data about visitors to our websites for product and service development and improvement activities. We also use it for market analysis. We provide information from our websites in aggregate form, with identifying information removed, to third parties. When aggregate health information is provided, we pool it from many individual records and strip it of any data that could be used to identify an individual before it is used.

  4. Recommend a colleague

    If you choose to use our referral function to tell a colleague about our website, our website will ask you for your colleague’s name and e-mail address as well as your information. The form automatically sends your friend a one-time e-mail inviting him or her to visit the site. We do not access or store this information, except to send this invitation.

  5. Protection of information

    Our commitment to security. We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and to correctly use the information we collect online.

    General policies. We have implemented technology and security policies, rules, 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 protect your information by requiring that all our employees and others who have access to or are associated with the processing of your data respect your confidentiality.

    CME Scholar Europe uses security methods to determine the identity of each registered user, so that appropriate rights and restrictions can be enforced for that user. Reliable verification of user identity is called authentication. CME Scholar Europe uses both passwords and usernames to authenticate users. Users are responsible for maintaining their own passwords.

  6. Storage of information

    Personally identifiable information you share with us is stored on our database servers at CME Scholar Europe data centers (in whatever country they may be located) or hosted by third parties who have entered into agreements with us that require them to observe our Privacy Policy. We have a firewall and other technology to prevent individuals from accessing information without authorization. Data centers are designed to be physically secure and are protected from access by unauthorized persons.

    Information in our data centers is backed up routinely, in order to aid in the recovery of information in the event of accidental damage of information or due to a natural disaster. The backup media are stored in a physically secure storage facility.

    Information you provide to register for this website and/or your attendance at events will be retained as long as the website remains live. After the website is discontinued, all registration data will be retained for a period of one year from the date of discontinuation of the website and then destroyed.

  7. Third parties

    In addition to aggregate information (discussed previously), we may share some kinds of information with third parties as described below.

    Companies and people who work for us: We contract with other companies and individuals to help us provide services. For example, we host some of our websites on another company's computers, hire technical consultants to maintain our web-based sites, or work with companies to remove repetitive information from customer lists, analyze data and provide customer service. In addition, if you are a health-care professional, we will validate your licensure status and other information against available databases that list licensed healthcare professionals. In order to perform their jobs, these other companies have limited access to some of the personal information we maintain about our users. Other companies collect information on our behalf through their sites. This occasionally incorporates the use of frames on the site that will not show the URL you are visiting in the browser address window. We require such companies to comply with the terms of our Privacy Policy, to limit their access to any personal information to the minimum necessary to perform their obligations, and not to use the information they have access for purposes other than fulfilling their responsibilities to us. We use our best efforts to limit other companies use of personally identifiable or healthcare information.

    Legal requirements: We will release account and other personal information when we believe release is required to comply with law. We will release personal information if, in our judgment after review by an attorney, the release is compelled by law or regulation.

  8. Your privacy choices

    On completion of registration of your member profile, you will be eligible to receive informational/educational e-mail from www.fertilityforumonline.com (e.g. to invite you to attend a Fertility Forum educational event). You may opt-out from receiving this e-mail when you provide the information, or by following the instructions given in the e-mail we send to you. Customer Service will unsubscribe you from that newsletter or other programs within 10 business days.

    Updating your personal information and contacting CME Scholar Europe
    You can always contact us in order to (i) remove the personal information that you have provided to us from our systems, (ii) update the personal information that you have provided to us, or (iii) change your preferences with respect to contacts by e-mailing us at fertilityforumonline@cmescholar.eu or if available by logging into your account to update your information.

  9. Your consent

    By registering for www.fertilityforumonline.com and by using its services provided, you consent to the collection and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy, and to the conditions we state in our Terms of Use agreement.

    Changes to this Privacy Policy. From time to time it will be necessary for CME Scholar Europe to change the Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to change the terms stated in this Privacy Policy at any time, but we will not do so without posting the revised policy on www.fertilityforumonline.com, including the date when this policy has been changed.

Updated August 2008