Who we are
Our website address is: https://thyroidpatients.ca.
As of December 2019, we are in the process of registering as a Canadian nonprofit organization under the name Thyroid Patients Canada.
This policy does not cover personal information you give to social media companies or online payment providers
When you interact with us through social media, for example on our Facebook page, you give information to social media companies and not to us. This information is covered by their own privacy policy. Keep in mind that information you publish on social media can be made public.
When you pay online for our services, you give your payment information to an online payment provider. This information is processed by the online payment provider and it is covered by its own privacy policy.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
We embed Facebook Comments plugin to allow you to leave comment at our website using your Facebook account. This plugin may collect your IP address, your web browser User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with the commenting interface, including correlating your Facebook account with whatever action you take within the interface (such as “liking” someone’s comment, replying to other comments), if you are logged into Facebook. For more information about how this data may be used, please see Facebook’s data privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update
Likes and shares
We embed a Facebook widget to allow you to see number of likes/shares/recommends and “like/share/recommend” our webpages. This widget may collect your IP address, your web browser User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking, and monitor your interaction with the widget, including correlating your Facebook account with whatever action you take within the widget (such as “liking/sharing/recommending” our webpage), if you are logged in to Facebook. For more information about how this data may be used, please see Facebook’s data privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update
We use a Twitter Tweet widget at our website. As a result, our website makes requests to Twitter’s servers for you to be able to tweet our webpages using your Twitter account. These requests make your IP address visible to Twitter, who may use it in accordance with their data privacy policy: https://twitter.com/en/privacy#update
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included.
Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms
You may also provide us information when you fill out a contact form, respond to surveys, sign up for an event, communicate with our group about a support question, post a question in our public forums, or sign up for a newsletter.
When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, Facebook message, WordPress.com comment, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics to track social shares made at our website. Google automatically collect and store certain information in their server logs which includes device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL, cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account, in accordance with their data privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
We collect information about how you use our website. Even though this information is not linked to your identity, it can be in certain circumstances by using cookies. This is why we consider this data to be personal information as well when linked to your identity. The data we collect includes:
- The pages of our website viewed
- The date and time when those pages were viewed
- The region where you are connecting from (geolocation)
- How long each page was viewed
- The web browser used (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.), browser settings and the type of device used (Mac or PC, mobile or desktop, etc.), AdWords used and references from which websites, applications or social media you come from before your visit
Who we share your data with
We do not sell our users’ private personal information.
We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:
Our board members, volunteers, or representatives may view your personal information on a need-to-know basis
They may view your personal information for their work or for the reasons why we collected this information in the first place.
They will not view your personal information for any other reason.
In exceptional cases, we may communicate your personal information to others without your consent if we are legally required to do so. For example, if we receive a court order to communicate your personal information.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment or upload media, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile.
All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Your personal information can be stored outside Canada because we use third-party service providers to store and process your personal information.
Additional information
How we protect your data
Because protecting your personal information is important to us,
- We don’t sell your personal information to anyone.
- We tell you why we use your personal information, and we don’t use it for anything else.
- We limit how much personal information we collect, use, communicate and store to what is necessary for our purposes.
- We may communicate your personal information to the authorities without your consent where permitted or required by law.
What data breach procedures we have in place
We take stringent measures to ensure that your personal information is protected and handled properly. Our website’s security is managed by WordPress.com through a personal business plan.
While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
We obtain the following services from our service providers:
- Conducting web analytics
- Advertising our products and services
- Manage email delivery
- Distribute useful content
Industry regulatory disclosure requirements
We may change this policy at any time
Because privacy concerns, business and legal requirements continually evolve, we may need to change this policy in the future. We will provide notice of material changes to this policy, for example, by posting a notice on our website explaining that the privacy policy has been updated.
What if the policy has changed since your last visit?
If you visit our website or use our online services after our privacy policy has changed, you will be governed by the updated version of the privacy policy.
How to read and interpret this Privacy Policy
This policy is governed by the laws of Quebec and Canada. This policy complies with the Privacy Act of Canada.