Your privacy

Protecting your privacy is one of our top priorities. Please take a few minutes to review this policy.

Introduction

Our privacy commitment

This document sets out the basis on which the BMJ Publishing Group Limited (“BMJ Group”, “We” or “Us”) will process any personal data we collect from you on this doc2doc website (“the Website”). The Website is designed for doctors to share information and views with other doctors. Who can see which parts of the Website and which parts are open and have varying degrees of controls, are set out below.

We will make every effort to protect your privacy from those you do not wish to share information with, by informing you as to how your data will be used, adopting a consistently high level of site security and adhering to strict company policies on how we store and use personal information. This privacy policy has been developed in accordance with our legal obligations and may be updated from time to time. If we make any changes to our privacy policy, we will post the revisions on the Website.

1. What information is being collected and how is it used?

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 Registered Users & Verified Registered Users

We have two types of registered users on this Website. Registered Users are users who are registered with us but we have not obtained evidence that they are medically qualified and registered with with their medical regulatory body ("Registered Users"). Such doctors may register to simply contribute to the discussion forum without setting up a full profile, but cannot contribute to clinical discussion forums. The information we collect is included on our registration form and as otherwise set out herein.

The second type of registered user is a "Verified Registered User" who is a user who states they are a doctor and who has also supplied us with details of their registration with their medical regulatory body and any other information we request. ("Verified Registered Users").

To become a Verified Registered User we try to verify that you are a doctor by either requesting your GMC number (where applicable) or proof of registration from an alternative country's medical regulatory body. We may at any time seek additional verification information from you.

The information that we will collect from you is set out on the registration form which includes your email address, your GMC membership number (if you are a UK doctor), your profession, your specialty, your legal name and your current work address.

For Registered Users and Verified Registered Users, when you post any content on this Website, you do so at your own risk and you also must be aware that some parts of the site can be accessed by anyone including non Registered Users. You however set your privacy options that limit access to various forums and pages in many cases. We cannot however control the actions of other users who may chose to allow access to this information.

Whenever you create content on the Website, other users ( including non Registered Users for open parts), will see your screen name, ( the name that you chose), and not your real name unless you chose otherwise. Other details such as your specialty, grade and country registration may be displayed next to your screen name if so selected by you when setting up your profile.

Different parts of the Website can be seen by different users, and in some cases are open to anyone who looks on the open parts of the Website. Some specific detail around access and use of data on the relevant parts of the Website is set out below:

Clinical forums

Access to clinical forums is restricted to Verified Registered Users. Once posted, we reserve the right to use any data and comments with your screen name and other contact details removed, for BMJ Group's use or use by selected third parties. On the website your screen name will be displayed next to the title and first line of your posts in the Latest Blog Posts, Recent Discussions and Recommended Discussions content feeds. Post publication removal of any such content is at our discretion.

BMJ forums, off duty forums & blogs

Unregistered users are able to view content on BMJ forums, off duty forums and blogs. Only Registered Users can post comments, start discussions or add any form of content within these areas. Once posted, we reserve the right to use data and comments with your username/name and other contact details removed, posted on the Website, for BMJ Group's use or use by selected third parties. Post publication removal of any such content is at our discretion.

Community forums

Any Registered User or Verified Registered User can create a forum. When doing so, you can choose whether the group is open to any Registered User to join or closed to all but for those users who are specifically invited or approved. This setting however cannot be changed after the forum has been created. Content within any open forums will be visible to unregistered users. Content on closed forums is only visible to their chosen members. Once posted we reserve the right to use data and comments with your username/name and other contact details removed, posted on the Website for BMJ Group's use or use by selected third parties. Post publication removal of any such content, is at our discretion.

Your profile

All Registered Users and Verified Registered Users have the option of creating a profile for themselves and to tell other users about themselves. Some fields within your profile, such as job title, will be pre-populated on your profile from the information you give us when you register and additional information may be added such as your telephone number, your gender and other information that you wish to supply including a photograph, and as otherwise indicated. You will be able to select which information you wish to set up and any mandatory information will be indicated. You can select to display your profile to nobody, your friends, or anyone. You can do this on your "edit profile page", available through the "My Profile" tab. We may use information in your profile without your user name/name and contact details with third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many registered people on the Website are for example cardiologists or junior doctors so that we can improve the Website. This will also make the Website more interesting and relevant to you, by, for example, showing you job vacancies that are in your area and specialty and we will use the data you supply to do this also.

Searching for other users

Any user whether registered or not, can use the people search function to search for Registered Users or Verified Registered Users. The search provides the full name, country, specialty and grade of doc2doc Registered Users or Verified Registered Users. Registered Users or Verified Registered Users will have the option of sending these users a message and requesting their friendship or to contact them as colleagues via an email to the recipients stated email address generated through our web mail system. The recipient will receive one email. This email will contain the message sent, the sender's email address and also a link to login to doc2doc where the recipient can accept or decline the friend request. The requesting party will not see the email address or other contact details of the receiving party. If the friend request is accepted both users will then see information as set by the users in their profile. People who see your name in searches will not be able to access any other profile information or view your screen name unless they are already your friend or approved contact.

Additional uses we will make of Registered Users and Verified Registered Users data

We will also use your data to respond and or monitor (as we determine) for any unauthorised use of our Website or any content within. If you post any content in breach of our User Terms & Conditions which involves any indication of violence or threats of violence or any similar act, we may at our absolute discretion inform any relevant third parties including without limitation the police and other law enforcement agencies about the content, your behaviour and any of your contact and/or profile details as we determine appropriate.

Should we receive a request to disclose your name (and /or contact details) by a claimant who alleges you have breached their rights, we will either inform the police or other law enforcement agencies as referred to above (if we consider this appropriate) or we will provide such information, if required to by virtue of a court order or any other requirements imposed by law. We may of course disclose any of your details to our advisors should we require advice around any disclosures.

You will be given an opportunity to opt in or out (as applicable) from receiving marketing emails from the BMJ Group and third parties when you register.

1.2 Non Registered Users

As you browse the website as a non registered user, we collect information about your use of the site including but not limited to traffic data and location data. Essentially this will normally be which pages you have visited, how long you stay online and where you are located. 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).

1.3 What else do we collect when you use the 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 and may log operating systems and browser types for system administration and to report aggregate information. 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.

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence and use it to contact you in response and/or to update our records.

In addition to responding to complaints or claims received or discovered referred to above or any breaches of our User Terms and Conditions, we may use all information supplied or collected on this Website to enforce our legal rights and protect against unauthorised access, use, activity and/or copying, either personally or via third party contractors and advisors. This may involve using any details supplied by you including your name and contact details.

1.4 What else do we use personal information for?

We try and understand our users and so do collate information about what our users subscribe to from the BMJ Group and their profile internally. In addition to ensuring you can use this site properly, 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. We may contact you to notify you about changes to our service. We also may send you non marketing emails for the purpose of inviting you to partake in surveys which we conduct or which third parties are conducting.

2. 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 to protect our legal interests.

3. Use of cookies

Once you have accessed the websites, we may store a temporary "cookie" on your computer, indicating that you are authorised to use the site. Cookies are small text files that are saved by your web browser and enable you to move throughout the site without having to sign in each time you look at a different page. We cannot identify you from these cookies. They simply tell us whether pages have been requested by the same person or two different people. In addtion we also have non expiring cookies which will identify when the same user (or user from the same terminal) returns to the site. We do this to assist with the user experience and so we can restore the last used screen when new pages are loaded. If you wish to delete such cookies, please refer to the instructions for your file management software to locate the file or directory that stores cookies.

We may from time to time use cookies to identify the nationality of our users which enables us to present users with appropriate corporate branding and to conduct surveys as mentioned above.

More information about Cookies, including how to block them and/or delete them, can be found at http://www.aboutcookies.org. Please note that by deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site.

4. How personal information is stored and protected

Your personal data is stored in our databases or those of our contractors which other than as expressly set out herein, is only available to the web administrators of us and our contractors and selected authorised people on a password protected basis (except where referred to in the final paragraph of Clause 1.3 herein). The data that we collect from you may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside of the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by staff operating outside of the EEA who work for us or are of our suppliers including within the United States. Such staff may be engaged in among other things, hosting the fulfilment of your order, processing of your payment details and the provision of support services by submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or process. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely by us and our contractors and in accordance with this privacy policy. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. Please do not share your password(s) with anyone.

4.1 Security

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. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

4.2 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.

4.3 Email

Any email between you and the BMJ Group is not encrypted. It will be stored securely within our corporate firewall (see below).

4.4 Data within our walls

The information we collect about people visiting the site is stored in secure environments that are not available 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.

5. Contact us

Please contact us if any of the data we hold about you becomes inaccurate and if you have any queries or concerns about the data we are holding about you. Also we welcome your feedback about what you like or don't like about the Website . Your feedback (unless posted on the Website) is stored on a secure internal system that allows the appropriate person to respond to you, but this may be used by as set out in our User Terms and Conditions. Please contact us through our Contact Us section.

6. Linking to external sites

You will encounter links to other sites from this Website that are not related to the BMJ Group. 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 should review the privacy policy for each site you visit and this includes other BMJ Group sites.

7. Your consent

By submitting your information, you consent to the use of that information as set out in this policy. You should review this policy regularly, to note any changes as to how we collect and use personal information. Thank you for reviewing this information.

If you have any questions, please send us an e-mail through our Contact Us section.

View Policy as a PDF

Last updated November 2008