This Privacy Policy sets forth the current privacy policies of the Oculiance.com website and associated web applications. Its purpose is to notify you of how we use your personal and other data, our data protection procedures, and other details that affect your privacy in using the Oculiance.com site.
The effective date of this Privacy Policy is November 10, 2023. These Privacy Practices may be changed without notice. You, the user of the Oculiance.com site and its associated web applications, are responsible for reviewing and accepting the current version of these policies prior to using the site. If they are not acceptable to you, please do not use Oculiance.com. The current version of these Privacy Policies is available at https://www.oculiance.com/nopp.php, or by navigating from https://www.oculiance.com to the relevant web page by following the navigation links.
Oculiance.com is an online, internet based service that offers information, data processing, web services, communications, and other services to professionals in the eye care industry in the United States of America. It is owned by Tardigrade LLC, a limited liability company based in Norwich, Connecticut.
Oculiance.com supports itself through revenue from several sources. These include sales to users and third-parties of advertising, and subscriptions for certain digital services.
To become a member and use Oculiance.com, you provide us with your name, email address, professional role, zip code, and other information. We collect information on your use of the site, such as login and logout times, pages visited, advertisements clicked on, and other user activity.
Oculiance.com collects information on transactions made on the site, such as when the transaction occurred, what happened for the transaction, the monetary amount of the transaction, the user who made the transaction, and other information. This information is generally available for users to view, in order to reconcile their purchases. Oculiance.com does not collect credit card data, and is not a credit card processor. We use third-party processors for credit card transactions, such as Stripe. Privacy practices for those third-parties are available on their respective websites. You must agree to their privacy practices and terms of use before using their services.
We use personal and financial data to:
Conduct our business operations
Comply with federal, state, and local laws and regulations
Provide users with records of their purchases
Provide generic or targeted advertisements to users
Aggregate data to analyze site performance
Provide reports to advertisers of ad performance
Show the origin of posts on forums and on classified ads
We use standard web service protections for your data. Data are housed on a HIPAA-compliant server with regular off-site backups. The server is housed in a secure data facility that is monitored by third-party companies that implement digital and physical security protections. Data transmission uses TLS/https encrypted communications. Passwords are hashed using secure hashes designed for this purpose. Users should understand that while we work hard to implement data security, no entity can guarantee complete security. Users should ensure they use strong passwords to secure their account, never re-use passwords, change their passwords frequently, and never reveal their passwords to others.
We share user data with:
Governmental authorities in order to comply with laws and regulations
Other users
Industry representatives
Advertisers
No. At this time we have not implemented functionality to allow users to limit sharing of their data.
We will send you emails regarding administrative issues with your account, such as for password resets. Any advertising we send you through email is normally on an “opt-in” basis, such as when you elect for us to send you information on upcoming online conferences and talks, or notifications of forum posts. We normally do not allow third-party advertisers to send you advertising information by email. Third party advertising that you may see is normally shown exclusively when you are logged into the Oculiance.com website.
Protected Health Information consists generally of patient data, and is defined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Public posting of PHI on Oculiance.com would make patient data visible to unauthorized parties, and is forbidden. If we offer web services that allow the retention, storage, transmission, or viewing of PHI, you or an authorized representative of your organization must sign a Business Associate Agreement with Tardigrade LLC, and restrict your use of PHI to areas of Oculiance.com where PHI is permitted and protected.
We are all responsible for keeping PHI private. If you encounter PHI that you believe is inappropriately posted in a public place on the site, you must report it. We have some built in functionality for this, but if you are unable to report it through this functionality, you can report it by contacting support@oculiance.com.
Tardigrade LLC endeavors to maintain strict compliance with all HIPAA rules, and other government laws and regulations, regarding physical and digital safeguards for PHI.
No. Use of Oculiance.com is currently limited to users in the United States of America and its territories. The site is not compliant with European or other countries’ privacy standards at this time.
No. Use of Oculiance.com is limited to persons 18 years or older. Use of Oculiance.com is not permitted for children.
You may inactivate your account with Oculiance.com if you no longer wish to use it. However, we will generally not delete your user data, as doing so may disrupt forums and other parts of the Oculiance.com website in which your have participated. Similarly, if you have belonged to an organization in Oculiance, that organization may be required to maintain your data to comply with govermnent laws and regulations.
Because Oculiance.com is a members-only site, we do not usually need to use cookies to track user activity. User activity is normally tracked with session variables, which are set by logging into the website. In selected circumstances, we may use cookies, such as saving configuration data for a particular computer to display a video eye chart. We will not normally notify you when we use cookies. By using the site, you consent to the use of cookies.
Yes. By using Oculiance.com, you must agree to use your real name. Oculiance.com is a community of eye care professional in practice and in industry. Trust between users is essential to maintaining this community and to providing useful information and services to all users. If you do not feel comfortable providing your real name, you must not use the site.
We will attempt to answer questions about privacy on the Oculiance.com if you email us at support@oculiance.com.