Windy City Publishers ("WCP" or "we") understands how important the privacy of personal information is to our customers. WCP is committed to honoring your privacy. The document you are reading is our Privacy Policy for our web site that is accessible by authors and writers, and it describes what information we may collect about you, what uses we may make of it, how you can tell us what to do with your information, and what precautions we take against unauthorized access or use of your information.

About This Privacy Policy

Web Sites Covered

This Privacy Policy applies to WCP's web site. The WCP website may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such other websites. You should read the privacy policy at each web site that you visit after you leave one of our sites.

Privacy Policy Changes

We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, so please review it frequently. As our Privacy Policy changes in significant ways, we will make every effort to notify you of the changes. Minor changes to the policy may occur that will not affect our use of individually identifiable information. For these instances, WCP may not notify you of such minor changes. When the Privacy Policy changes in a way that significantly affects the way we handle personal information, we will not apply the new policy to information we have previously gathered without obtaining consent from the appropriate individual. We will post Privacy Policy changes on our web sites in a timely manner. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.

Information We Collect

In this section of our Privacy Policy, we discuss the different types of information we may collect about you, and the ways in which we collect them.

Information We Collect from Unregistered Visitors

Visitors to each of our web sites can access the web site's home page and browse some areas of the site without disclosing any personally identifiable information. We do track information provided to us by your browser, including the web site you came from (known as the "referring URL"), the type of browser you use, the time and date of access, and other information that does not personally identify you. You must register with us to use the entire site.


Information We Collect When You Register

Customers registering for services on our web site are asked to provide us with identifying information, such as name, contact information, and other personal information. On our registration screens, we clearly label which information is required for registration, and which information is optional and may be given at your discretion. You will also be given a choice about whether or not you want to receive information that we distribute from time to time. You can choose not to provide us with certain information, but then you may not be able to take advantage of many of our features.

Information from Outside Sources

We may also collect information about persons who register on our web site from other sources in order to verify their licensure status and identity. In some cases we may ask customers for information after they register, such as credit card information, when necessary to process an order for purchase. Our web site may contact financial or credit organizations to confirm customer credit cards.

Other Information

We also gather information about you that is automatically collected by our web server, such as your IP address and domain name. We will use this information to personalize its offerings and presentations to you, facilitate your movements throughout our web site, provide personalized services, and to communicate to you individually.

Information from Children

You must be __ years and older to register to use the WCP website. As a result, we do not specifically collect information about children.

Use of Cookies and Web Beacons

Cookies are a technology we use to keep track of users as they move through our web sites. Your browser allows us to place some information on your computer's hard drive that is associated with the computer you are using. We use cookies to personalize our web site and to track your usage across all of our web site's pages.

Your web browser can be set to allow you to control whether you will accept cookies, reject cookies, or to notify you each time a cookie is sent to you. If your browser is set to reject cookies, web sites that are cookie-enabled will not recognize you when you return to the web site, and some web site functionality may be lost. The Help section of your browser will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting cookies.

Although cookies do not normally contain personally identifiable information, if you are a registered user, we may elect to associate your registration information with cookies that our web site places on your computer's hard drive. Associating a cookie with your registration data allows us to offer increased personalization and functionality. For example, you can elect to have our web sites "remember" your user name and password and bypass the sign-in process on each visit to the site. Without cookies, this functionality would not be possible.

We also may use Web beacons to collect non-personally identifiable information about your use of our web site as well as your use of special promotions or newsletters. Web beacons are tiny graphic image files, embedded in a web page in GIF, JPG, or HTML format, that provide a presence on the web page and send back to its home server (which can belong to the host site, a network advertiser, or some other third party) information from a user's browser, such as the IP address, the URL of the page on which the beacon is located, the type of browser that is accessing the site, and the ID number of any cookies on the user's computer that were previously placed by that server. Web beacons can also be used to place a cookie on the user's browser. The information collected by Web beacons allows us to statistically monitor (i) how many people are using our web site (ii) how many people open our emails, and (iii) for what purposes these actions are being taken. Our web beacons are not used to track your activity outside of our web site. We do not link non-personally identifiable information from web beacons to personally identifiable information without your permission.

Some of our business partners (for example, advertisers) may use cookies on our website. However, we have no access to or control over these cookies.

Uses We Make of Information

In this section of our Privacy Policy, we identify the ways we may use information about you that we have collected.

Aggregate Data

We create aggregate date about visitors to our web sites for product development and improvement activities. We also use it for market analysis. We may provide information from our web site in aggregate form, with identifying information removed, to third parties. For example, we may tell a medical association partner what percentage of our registered users reside in a particular geographical area. Any third party that receives aggregated data must agree not to attempt to re-identify the people it belongs to. For example, we may provide information to a potential advertiser of a product that would appeal to a diabetes patient about what percentage of our users treat diabetes. Depending on our agreement with the third parties, we may or may not charge for this information.

Personalization

We may also personalize our web site based on your interests. For example, you may see different articles in different places on our web site based on information you have shared with us, or information we have gained by observing your previous behavior, or information we may have gained from your interactions with a third party that shares information with us. We use information for our own internal marketing, research, and related purposes.


Third Party Access to Information

In this section of our Privacy Policy, we describe what third parties may obtain access to personal information, and for what reasons.

Types of Third Party Disclosure

In addition to aggregate information (discussed previously), we may share some kinds of personally identifiable information with third parties as described below.

• Companies and People Who Work for Us: Occasionally we contract other companies and individuals to help us provide services. For example, we may host our web site on another company's computers, hire technical consultants to maintain our web-based tools or work with companies to remove repetitive information from customer lists, analyze data, provide marketing assistance, and provide customer service. In addition, if you are a healthcare professional, we may validate your licensure status and other information against available databases that list licensed health care professionals. In order to perform their jobs, these other companies may have limited access to some of the personal information we maintain about out users. We require all such companies to comply with the terms of our Privacy Policy, to limit their access to any personal information to the minimum extent necessary to perform their obligations, and not to use the information they may access for purposes other than fulfilling their responsibilities to us.
• Legal Requirements: We may release account and other personal information when we believe release is required to comply with law.
• Consent: We may release personally identifiable information to a third party in accordance with your consent, subject to the purposes and limits that we disclose when we request your consent.
• Acquisition: If we become part of another organization (for example, through an acquisition or merger), that organization will possess the personal information collected by us and it will assume the rights and obligations regarding your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Protection of Information

In this section of our Privacy Policy, we discuss the security measures we take to protect information that we have collected about you.

General Policies

We have implemented technology and security policies, rules and other measures to protect the personal data that we have under our control from unauthorized access, improper use, alteration, unlawful or accidental destruction, and accidental loss. We also protect your information by requiring that all our employees and others who have access to or as associated with the processing of your data respect your confidentiality.

We use security methods to determine the identity of our web site's registered users, so that appropriate rights and restrictions can be enforced for that user. Reliable verification of user identity is called authentication. We use both passwords and usernames to authenticate users. Users are responsible for maintaining their own passwords.

WCP Employees and Contractors

Our employees are required to keep customer information private, as a condition of their employment with the company.

All employees and contractors must abide by our Privacy Policy, and those who violate that policy are subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of their employment and legal action.

Third Parties

When we share information with third parties, we ask that they agree in writing to abide by our Privacy Policy.

If we discover that a third party inadvertently disclosed personal information about any of our customers, we will take immediate action to prevent further occurrences.

No Guaranty of Non-Disclosure

We cannot fully ensure that your personal information will not be disclosed to third parties. Third parties may circumvent our security measures to unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications.

Access to Information and Choices

In this section of our Privacy Policy, we tell you how to obtain and correct information we have about you, and how to choose what types of information you may share with us.

Correction of Information We Have About You

If you believe that registration information collected by our web site is in error, you may edit your personal profile any time that you like. You can directly edit your user profile on our web site on which you initially registered. Requests for deletion of you record may result in your removal from the registry, but we may keep certain demographic information about you for product improvement purposes. You may contact web customer support and ask for the changes that you would like to make.

Privacy Questions or Concerns about our web sites

For privacy questions or concerns about on of our web sites, please contact us.

Terms of Use

If you decide to visit the WCP website, your visit and any possible dispute over privacy is subject to this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use, including limitations on damages, arbitration of disputes, and application of Illinois law. Our Terms of Use agreements can be found by following the link located at the bottom of every page on our web site.

Effective date: March 9, 2009