bmj.com Privacy Policy
Protecting your privacy is
important to us. Please take a few moments to review this Policy.
Introduction
bmj.com and its online
renewals website are websites of the BMJ Publishing Group Limited, which is a
UK based international medical publishing house. bmj.com is currently hosted in
the US by HighWire Press which is a division of Stanford University Libraries ("HighWire").
Our online renewals site is currently hosted within the UK. We take privacy
issues seriously and are committed to protecting your personal information.
This privacy policy
explains what information has been collected about you, how personal information
is being used, to whom personal information is being disclosed and how this
personal information is stored and protected. This privacy policy has been
developed in accordance with our legal obligations and may be updated from time
to time.
If you have any queries
concerning your personal information or any questions on our use of the
information, please contact us.
The information we collect and how we use it:
- What information is
being collected and how is it used?
For online renewals, data
is collected within the UK and certain data may then be transferred to Highwire
our hosting provider of bmj.com. When you visit bmj.com, any data collected will
be initially collected by HighWire within the US. This may then be transferred
to and from the US as necessary. As certain parts of bmj.com are subscription only, you will either
be a registered or non registered user depending on what information you wish to
access. There are various sections of the website, for which we collect
different information. What we collect and how this is used is as follows:
- 1.1 Non Registered
Users of bmj.com
If you access parts of
bmj.com without a subscription, as you browse the website, we collect
information about your use of the site. Essentially this will be which pages you
have visited and how long you stay online. We will not be able to identify who
you are from the information we store, but we will be able to identify where you
are located - (see point 1.3 below).
- 1.2 Registered Users
bmj.com
You will be asked to
submit details including a personal email address as well as your name and
contact details, including your address. All mandatory information is indicated
and is so to understand our users and so we can fulfil our obligations to you.
Renewals information will be as indicated. We then use this information to set
up a customer number and user name or to renew your subscription and generally fulfil our obligations to you. You will be asked if you wish to receive general email updates and further product information from us and if you do you can 'opt out' to receiving these. You will be given an opportunity to 'opt out' of this on each occasion we contact you thereafter. Additionally you can 'opt in' to us passing on your details to the BMA or other third parties.
Apart from bmj.com
subscription customers, other parts of bmj.com also require you to register
(such as Rapid Responses and Email Alerts). You will be
advised what information is required and what can be seen by us and third
parties when you register.
- 1.3 What else do we
collect when you use our website
Each time you use the
internet, an IP address is assigned to your computer via the internet service
provider. This number may either be the same or different each time. Each time
your computer requests information from our website, we log your IP address on
our server. We may use this in order to gather information about the website
traffic and usage.
Whether you are a
registered user or not, our web server collects certain information such as (a)
IP address; (b) host names (c) domain name (d) time and date information as
requested (e) the browser version and platform when it is requested, (f) a
record of which pages have been requested.
-
1.4 What else do we use
personal information for?
Other than for fulfilling
our obligations to you (where these exist), on some occasions we use the
information provided to produce aggregate statistics in relation to pages being
accessed. We may also use it to monitor usage patterns on the website in order
to improve navigation and design features to help you get information more
easily. This information is provided to us as daily logged files. In order to
help us develop the website and our services, we may provide such aggregate
information to third parties. The statistics however will not include any
information that can be used to identify any individual.
- To whom will personal information be
disclosed?
Unless you have agreed otherwise, we will not disclose your personal data to any third party other than our contractors who must keep this
date secure and confidential. Corporate location information however may be
shared.
- How long do we keep the information
we collect?
We keep your personal
information for as long as necessary to fulfil our obligations to you and
protect our legal interests. This will never be longer than six years from the
end of your subscription period.
- Can you change information we hold
about you?
Where you have provided us
with an email address or any information which becomes outdated, you should
inform us by using the contact form on the website or updating your details
using the "my account link" link at the top of the site. You must be logged in
to access the "my account page".
- How is personal information stored
and protected
Your personal data is
stored by us in electronic and paper-based form. Website usage information is
stored electronically.
- Security
The information we collect
about site visitors the site, is stored in secure environments and we do not
share any data that identifies any individual, to any other individual or party.
We have mechanisms in place to protect data. One such mechanism is called a
"firewall". A firewall is a barrier that allows only authorised traffic through.
It safeguards our computer systems and your information. We also use system and
application logs to track all access. We review these logs periodically and
investigate any anomalies or discrepancies.
We understand that the
security of your information is important to you. We also understand that our
continued success as a publisher on the web, relies on our ability to
communicate with you in a secure manner. We adhere to the highest standards of
decency, fairness, and integrity in our operations. We use several measures to
authenticate your identity when you visit our site. We also take steps to
protect your information as it travels the internet, and to make sure all
information is as secure as possible against unauthorised access and use (for
example, by hackers). We review our security measures regularly.
Despite our best efforts,
and the best efforts of other firms, "perfect security" does not exist on the
internet, or anywhere else. As a result, whilst we strive to protect your
personal information, we cannot warrant the security of the information you
transmit to us online. You therefore do so at your own risk.
Once we receive your
transmission, we make our best efforts to ensure its security on our system.
- Authentication
You should not share your
user name and password with other people. If you think you might lose or forget
these identifiers, write them down and keep each in a separate place.
-
Email
Any email between you and
BMJ Publishing Group Limited is not encrypted. It will be stored securely within
our corporate firewall (see above ).
- Cookies
Access to our website is
dependent upon the use of session cookies. Most browsers allow the users to
control the cookies including whether or not to accept them and how to remove
them. If users disable cookies on their computers some of the more sophisticated
features on our website will be unavailable to you.
Session Cookies are
stored, in memory, by your browser. Session cookies have a life of 30 minutes
from the time you last accessed a page on our site. If you have not used our
site for more than 30 minutes the cookie will be destroyed by your browser and
you will have to login again to view certain areas.
More information about
cookies, including how to block them and/or delete them, can be found at
www.AboutCookies.org.
- Contact Us
If you have any concerns
or queries about the information we hold about you or wish to provide feedback
about this site, please contact us
- Linking to external sites
You will encounter links
to other sites that are not those which we control (e.g non English versions of
bmj.com). Please be aware that once you click to one of these sites, you are
subject to that site’s privacy policy and not to ours. You may wish to review
the privacy policy for each site you visit.
- Your Consent
By using this website you
consent to the use of any data we collect as set out in this policy. You should
review this privacy policy regularly, to note any changes relating to how we
collect and use your information.
[View privacy policy as PDF]
Date of document: January 2007