Privacy Policy
Effective Date: December 30, 2008
At Ranty, we understand that your health is a very personal matter, and we appreciate the trust you place in us to treat your information carefully and sensibly. As part of our commitment to honoring your privacy, we provide this policy (“Privacy policy”) to make you aware of the choices you have about the way your information is used and to explain how we guard your information. We hope this policy will help you make informed decisions about sharing information with us. We respect your privacy rights. Any information you share will only be used or shared in ways in which you have specifically consented. We will place great care in safeguarding the privacy and security of your information.
We may collect personal and non-personal information to customize the content and advertising you see, fulfill your requests for products or services, improve our services, and contact you. We may also use your information to pre-fill fields to save you from entering the same information over and over again. By knowing about you, we can deliver more helpful information, programs and tools, and offer you the most relevant services.
There are many aspects of our site that can be enjoyed as a visitor, but you may need to register in order to take advantage of certain free services on the site. In addition, premium services maybe available for purchase through our site.
We collect personal information when you voluntarily provide it to us or authorize us to collect it on your behalf.
Registration: When you register for the site, we collect personal information from you such as your email address, password, and birth date. Registering allows you to use personalized features, health tools and content whenever you come to our site; build a public profile; create and join groups; participate in online discussions; and rate or review authors.
Opinions and polls: Occasionally, you may be asked to give your opinion when you visit our site. We use information from opinion polls to better understand the needs of our users and to gather information about health care trends and issues. Questions and answers are stored, but they are not linked to identifying information about you and will not be shared with third parties.
Search: When you search on our site, we store the search terms and the site(s) visited so that we can continuously improve the quality of our search results. As an easy reference for you, the “Recent searches” feature shows you the last 6 terms you looked up.
Special note for parents: This site is a general audience site and not designed or intended to attract children younger than 13. We do not collect personal information from any person we actually know is younger than 13.
Log information: When you visit our site, our servers will automatically collect log information. This information may include your Web page request, Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request, and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. We collect log information so that we can properly administer our system and gather aggregate information about how our site is being used, including the pages visitors are viewing.
Cookies: We and our advertisers collect anonymous information about your use of our site through cookies. The cookie does not tell us who you are. Only you can tell us that.
The information collected by cookies helps us generate customized content and also allows us to statistically monitor how many people are using our site and for what purpose. For polls, we may use cookies to help ensure that an individual can’t vote more than once on a particular question or issue. We do not store any identifying information in any cookies on your computer.
When we associate information that we obtain from third parties with personal information that we have collected under this policy, we will treat the acquired information like the information that we collected ourselves. We will not share information we obtain from third parties in personally identifiable form. However, we may share aggregated, non-personal information, as described in this policy - that may include information we obtained from third parties in a form that does not permit you to be identified. We will only obtain and use this kind of information from third parties if you give us permission to do so, for example by selecting “Maximum personalization” in your Account. If, at a later time, you decide that you no longer wish us to obtain or use information from third parties, you can go to your Account and reset your Personalization preferences to a lower Personalization setting.
We know how important it is to keep the information you’ve entrusted to us confidential. We will not rent, sell or share personal information about you with third parties except to provide you with a product or service you request or under certain circumstances as described below. In all other cases, we will ask for your permission before we disclose your personal information.
Disclosure for legal reasons: 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, a threat to government security, a threat to our system or network, or cases in which we believe it is reasonably necessary to investigate or prevent harm, fraud, abuse, or illegal conduct. In the event that we are legally compelled to disclose your personal information to a third party, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you unless doing so would violate the law or court order.
Agents and contractors: Contractors sometimes have access to your personal information in the course of assisting in operating our business and providing products or services to you. These contractors include vendors and suppliers that provide us with technology, services, and/or content for the operation and maintenance of our site.
Aggregated, non-personal information: We may share aggregated information about you with third parties. This is information that is combined with the non-personal information of other users and does not allow you to be identified or contacted. Depending on the circumstances, we may or may not charge third parties for this aggregated information. We also may not limit the third parties’ use of the aggregated information.
Changes in our corporate structure: If all or part of our company is sold, merged or otherwise transferred to another entity, the personal information you have provided at this site may be transferred as part of that transaction.
Email communications: Email communication that you send to us via the email links on our site may be shared with a Customer Care representative, employee, or the medical expert that is most likely to be able to address your inquiry. If you provide personal health information in your email, it will be used only for the purposes of answering your email. From time to time, we may send you service-related emails, such as a welcome email when you register with our site.
Newsletters and alerts: At various places on the site, you will be given the option to receive recurring informational newsletters and to set alerts and reminders. You can unsubscribe from newsletters by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any newsletter. You can manage your alerts in the your Account.
Private messages: Private messaging enables you to send emails to other site users without revealing your email address. Only your handle name (the nickname you select for yourself when you register) will be visible to recipients of the email. We will not share your email address with other users unless you choose to make it viewable by others. If you do not want others to send you private messages or know when you’re signed into the site, you can manage these capabilities in your Account.
We may update this Policy at anytime. We may also make nonmaterial changes to our Policy that generally will not affect our use of your personal information. If you don’t agree with the new policy, you always have the option of closing your account. Our current policy, identified by its effective date, will be posted on the Site, and you should check it frequently.
If you have any questions or concerns about our policy or its implementation, you may contact us at this email address: info (at) ranty (dot) com.
Copyright © 2008 Ranty. All Rights Reserved