Privacy Policy:

Merritt Based Medicine operates https://www.meritbasedmedicine.com and may operate other websites. It is Merritt Based Medicine's’ policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.

 

Website Visitors

Like most website operators, Merritt Based Medicine collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, the date and time of each visitor request, among others. Merritt Based Medicine’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Merritt Based Medicine's visitors use its website. From time to time, Merritt Based Medicine may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.

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Merritt Based Medicine also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on meritbasedmedicine.com blogs/websites. Merritt Based Medicine only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that commenter IP addresses and email addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog/site where the comment was left.

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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.

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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.

 

Sharing Data with Third Parties

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Necessary personal, billing, and financial information may be relayed to necessary third parties to complete purchases and transactions. Your sensitive financial information is never stored by Merritt Based Medicine.

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Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to Merritt Based Medicine's websites choose to interact with Merritt Based Medicine in ways that require Merritt Based Medicine to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Merritt Based Medicine gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up at meritbasedmedicine.com to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with Merritt Based Medicine are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, Merritt Based Medicine collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Merritt Based Medicine. Merritt Based Medicine does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

 

Aggregated Statistics

Merritt Based Medicine may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. Merritt Based Medicine may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Merritt Based Medicine does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

 

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

Merritt Based Medicine discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its managers, employees, contractors and affiliated entities that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Merritt Based Medicine's behalf or to provide services available at Merritt Based Medicine's website(s), and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those managers, employees, contractors and affiliated entities may be located outside of your home country; by using Merritt Based Medicine's websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Merritt Based Medicine will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, Merritt Based Medicine discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Merritt Based Medicine believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Merritt Based Medicine, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an Merritt Based Medicine website and have supplied your email address, Merritt Based Medicine may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with Merritt Based Medicine and our products, resources, and/or services. If you send us a request (for example via email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Merritt Based Medicine takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

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If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. 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.

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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.

 

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 have an account and you log in to this site, 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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

 

Business Transfers

If Merritt Based Medicine, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that Merritt Based Medicine goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Merritt Based Medicine may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.

 

Ads

Ads appearing on any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Merritt Based Medicine and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

 

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Merritt Based Medicine may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, at any time, and in Merritt Based Medicine's sole discretion. Merritt Based Medicine encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

 

Disclosure

This website contains links and references to products and services that may include affiliates, sponsorships, or other business relationships in which Merritt Based Medicine may receive compensation from referrals or sales actions. Merritt Based Medicine is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. MCAT is a registered trademark of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which does not endorse Merritt Based Medicine or its methodology. Merritt Based Medicine is not endorsed by or affiliated with the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) or Federal State Medical Boards. “USMLE” is a trademark of the NBME and is used pursuant to the Fair Use Doctrine.

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Visitor Analytics

Visitor Analytics is a simple website analytics service which measures the traffic on our website and website visitors' general details. We collect statistics like which pages visitors visit and when, where they are approximately located, where they land first or if they are coming from a specific referral, to make our website visitors' experience better.

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As a website operator using Visitor Analytics, we process information about our visitors' device type and screen size/resolution, approximate location, browser, OS, IPs, page visits, bounce rate, conversions, conversion funnels, average sessions per visitor, average pages per session, average session duration, time spent on the website and preferably visited content on the website. All this data is pseudonymized and Visitor Analytics will not use the collected data to identify individual users or to match the data with additional information on an individual user.

We do not use cookies to collect this data. Instead, we use the so-called fingerprinting technology that does not require placing any cookies, files or technology on your device. Fingerprinting relies on your device’s technical attributes and combines them to identify your device as a unique device and allow for reliable analytics.
 

Visitor Recordings

Visitor Recordings is an additional feature to Visitor Analytics (described above) in the form of a simple website replay tool that records in statistics where our website visitors scrolled to and what they clicked on our website. We can see this information in playbacks and so called “heatmaps”. Collecting these statistics helps us to make our website more user-friendly as well as to reproduce and fix technical errors.

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Basically, as a website operator using Visitor Recordings, we are using a snippet of tracking code to collect data about our visitors’ journey on our websites, which subpages they visit, what they clicked on, where they moved their mouse cursor to and where they scrolled. All this data is pseudonymized and Visitor Analytics will not use the collected data to identify individual users or to match it with additional information on an individual user.

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