The PsychiatryOnline Privacy Policy

American Psychiatric Publishing (APP), a division of American Psychiatric Association (APA) and publisher of PsychiatryOnline, appreciates that you provide us with your personal data. By sharing this information with us, you allow us to make the process of purchasing and managing your subscription more convenient, reliable, and seamless.

Except as stated in this Privacy Policy, we will not disclose, share, sell, or rent your personal information to any third party.

What Personal Information Does PsychiatryOnline Collect?

We collect personal information such as your name, address, and demographics, which allows our systems to recognize you and complete your transactions. Some of this information is necessary to successfully complete a transaction; other, nonessential information is voluntary. Below you’ll find details about the personal information we collect from you and a brief description of how that information is used.

• Continuing Medical Education (CME) Reporting
  Personal information, including the name of the individual user, is private to PsychiatryOnline CME faculty and the American Psychiatric Association. We collect registration information, CME scores, and credits awarded and information volunteered by the user such as demographics and course evaluation responses to facilitate the peer-review analysis of our content and to understand the utilization of our programs. The resulting information is used only in the aggregate and only for internal program decisions. Registration records for participants in CME activities are maintained for 6 years to fulfill Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) requirements. Only aggregate numbers are provided to ACCME. This information is not shared with any other organizations for commercial purposes.

• Alerts, Promotions & Newsletters
  All PsychiatryOnline alert e-mail lists are "opt in," meaning that users proactively register to receive such communications from us. All e-mail alerts offer clear instructions for opting out of future e-mail communications. Learn more about available alerts here.
  
  APP sometimes shares personal information (but never your e-mail address) with selected outside companies whose products or services we feel may be of interest to you. You may opt out at any time by contacting Customer Service at 1-800-368-5777.

• Usage Tracking
  Our servers collect software client information, such as IP addresses, browser versions, operating systems, and pages accessed during user sessions. This information is used only in aggregated form (e.g., number of pages accessed) to view site usage patterns and to provide institutional usage reports.

• Cookies
  PsychiatryOnline makes use of "cookies." Cookies are small bits of data that we send to your computer for later retrieval by our application. We use them to keep track of the fact that you have signed in so that you don't have to continually enter your username and password as you move around the site. Cookies are used in the following ways on the site:

  • Returning Users:
    The system will track your login credentials through a cookie so that it is unnecessary to sign back in when you return to the site in the future (assuming you use the same browser to access the site). Sign-in persists until you sign out or clear your browser cookies. This feature applies to all account types that require sign-in via username/password.

  • Athens:
    If you have cookies turned off and attempt to log in from link on the site, you can sign in to Athens, but on return to the site, you will see a message indicating that cookies must be enabled to use the site. You cannot sign in directly to Athens without cookies enabled, so this scenario will not affect you if you log in via MyAthens.

  • Anonymous User Tracking and Conversion:
    So that SCM6 can more accurately anticipate users' wants and needs and also serve content that is tailored to the users' profile, it will be necessary to track usage, profile information, and statistics through browser cookies. This tracking will occur on non-authenticated users as well as authenticated users. Non-authenticated users will be tracked as anonymous users, but if that user converts to an authentic account, their usage when they were anonymous will carry over. Non-authenticated users will be prompted to name their anonymous account if they choose not to sign up for a subscription.

Links
PsychiatryOnline contain links to third-party websites outside our control. These links do not imply an endorsement of any kind by APP or the American Psychiatric Association. We are not responsible for the services, content, or handling of confidential material offered by linked third-party websites.

Modification of Policy
We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at any time with no advance notice. The current version of the policy is always available at http://psychiatryonline.org/public/privacypolicy.aspx

If you feel PsychiatryOnline is not following this policy, or for further information, please contact us:

American Psychiatric Publishing
A Division of American Psychiatric Association
1000 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 1825
Attn: Director of Publishing
Arlington, VA 22209
Phone: (800) 368-5777 or (703) 907-7322
Fax: (703) 907-1091
appi@psych.org

This privacy policy was last updated on 24 June 2011.