ACA Privacy Statement
This site is owned and operated by the Association for Continence Advice (ACA). Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At the ACA, we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe.
Because we gather certain types of information about our users, we feel you should fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we gather and how we use it.
Definition of the information the Association for Continence Advice gathers and keeps track of
The ACA gathers two types of information about users:
• information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to receive our electronic newsletters, to participate in our message boards or forums, to email a friend, and from participation in polls and surveys:
• information the ACA gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers' needs. Under no circumstances does the ACA divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.
The ACA gathers user information in the following processes:
Optional Voluntary Information
We offer the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:
1. Electronic newsletters (Dispatches)
We may in the future provide an electronic newsletter to users. The ACA gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by following the link provided in every newsletter that points users to the subscription management page. Users can also subscribe to the newsletters at the time of registration.
2. Polling
We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues. Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable to any particular user. The ACA may use a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.
3. Surveys & Questionnaires
The ACA may occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience. We sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our sponsors, advertisers and partners. We never share any of this information about specific individuals with any third party.
USAGE TRACKING
The ACA tracks user traffic patterns throughout our site. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. The ACA does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser).
We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you.
COOKIES
We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. The cookie itself does not contain personal information although it will enable us to relate your use of this site to information that you have specifically and knowingly provided. But the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. The ACA uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above).
You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, polling and surveys.
USE OF INFORMATION
The ACA uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.
As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to send out electronic newsletters and to enable users to participate in polls, surveys, message boards, and forums. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regular schedule (depending on the newsletter), and occasionally send out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in something we are doing. The ACA may share newsletter mailing lists with appointed newsletter and mailing service providers for the purpose of sending Association mailings. The ACA will never share mailing lists with any other outside third parties that are not part of the Association.
When we use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you. We track search terms entered in Search function as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a particular user enters.
SHARING OF THE INFORMATION
The ACA uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help us better understand our audience's demographics. This is essential to keep improving our service. We will not share information about individual users with any third party, except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.
SECURITY
The ACA operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our customers.
YOUR CONSENT
By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by the ACA. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.