This web site is owned and operated by the BEST Collaborative. Visitors to this site may be concerned about the information provided, and treatment of that information. This policy addresses privacy concerns. BEST Collaborative respects the privacy and security of its users. Our goal is to provide you with an Internet experience that delivers the information and resources that are most relevant and helpful to you. Our policies are described below. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, contact the BEST collaborative at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Department of Pathology, One Medical Center Drive, Lebanon, NH 03756, or email at chair@bestcollaborative.org

Web site Privacy
BEST Collaborative uses reasonable efforts to respect and protect the privacy of its online visitors. BEST Collaborative does not collect personal information from individuals unless they provide it voluntarily and knowingly. The BEST Collaborative does not require a registration or any information in order to view the public area of this site. Areas requiring a registration to access are clearly designated as such with a user ID and password.

BEST Collaborative only gathers personally identifiable data, such as names, addresses, zip/postal codes, email addresses, etc. when voluntarily submitted by a visitor. This information is used solely by the BEST Collaborative or other entities that are involved in the operation of this site for internal purposes. Unless you give BEST Collaborative permission, the personally identifiable information you provide will be known only to you and to BEST Collaborative. BEST Collaborative will always ask you before providing this information to anyone else. If others want this information, including your name or your email address, BEST Collaborative will provide it only if you give us permission to do so. You should remember that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online, at this or any other site, such as on message boards, through email, discussion groups or in chat areas, your information can be collected and used by others.

Although BEST Collaborative tries to protect your personal information, we cannot absolutely guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us. However, once we receive your transmission, we make reasonable effort to ensure its security on our systems. We strive to maintain appropriate security measures on our server and in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that are under our control. You are also solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any passwords you set up and/or any account information.

From time to time, BEST Collaborative may introduce new services to its users. To the extent these new services affect this policy, this policy will be updated and you will be informed of these updates and any privacy conditions related to these services.

"Cookies"
Visitors should be aware that non-personal information and data is currently collected by the BEST Collaborative web site through the use of "cookies." Cookies are small text files a website uses to recognize repeat visitors. We use cookies to record session information, such as record user-specific information on what pages users access or visit, record past activity at a site in order to provide better service when visitors return to our site, customize web page content based on visitors' browser type or other information that the visitor sends, and to enable access to password-restricted areas on the web site. If a visitor does not want information collected by other web sites through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows the visitor to deny or accept the cookie feature. It should be noted however, that cookies must be accepted to achieve full functionality of certain website features.

Gathering and Use of Anonymous Information
Each time a visitor accesses the BEST Collaborative web site, we collect some information to improve the overall quality of the online experience. At the BEST Collaborative web site, we collect the visitor's domain name (e.g. whether the user is logged on from dartmouth.edu or fda.gov), referral data (e.g., we record the address of the last URL a user visited prior to clicking through to our site), IP address, and browser and platform type (e.g., a Firefox browser on a Macintosh platform).

Team Surveys
Surveys conducted by BEST Collaborative teams are currently hosted with SurveyMonkey.com. SurveyMonkey maintains its own privacy policy. SurveyMonkey agrees not to use the information collected from surveys in any way, shape, or form. In addition, any other material provided on a survey (including images, email addresses, etc.) will be held in the strictest confidence.

SurveyMonkey.com reserves the right to perform statistical analyses of user behavior and characteristics. SurveyMonkey.com does this in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the website.

SurveyMonkey.com collects IP addresses for system administration and record keeping. Your IP address is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the World Wide Web. SurveyMonkey.com servers record incoming IP addresses. The IP addresses are analyzed only in aggregate; no connection is made between individual users and their computer's IP address.

SurveyMonkey.com requires a user's browser to have cookies enabled for proper survey function.

Emails
Upon request, BEST Collaborative will allow any user to opt out of our survey email invitations Also, upon your request, BEST Collaborative will delete you and your personal information from our database; however, it may be impossible to delete all of your information without some residual data because of backups and records of deletions.

Changes to E-mail List Privacy Policy
From time to time, we may utilize user information for new, unanticipated functions not previously disclosed in this Privacy Policy notice. If our information practices change at some time in the future, we will post the policy changes to this Privacy Policy page to notify you of these changes and provide you with the ability to opt out of our list. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check back at this Privacy Policy page periodically.