Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy
Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States, Inc. (the "Company") strongly believes in maintaining the privacy of nonpublic personal information we collect through the various online services available on our website. We want you to understand when, how and why we collect, use and disclose the personal information about you on our web site. This Web Site Privacy Statement provides you with information concerning the Company's practices and procedures as they relate to information we collect at this web site.

Personal Information We Collect and Use at this Website
We do not collect any personal information about you at our web sites unless you choose to provide it to us voluntarily. The "personal information" we may request is information that is unique to you and might include your name, address, and social security number, and other information regarding your education, background, medical credentials and related matters. If you do provide us with personal information, we will only use it for the purposes described where it is collected, and we will not sell, license, transmit or disclose this information outside of the Company unless (1) you expressly authorize us to do so in connection with disclosure of information to specific State Medical Boards, verification or credentials on the FCVS system, or otherwise, (2) it is necessary to allow our contractors or agents to provide services for us, (3) in order to provide our services to you, (4) it is disclosed to entities that perform marketing services on our behalf or to other entities with whom we have joint marketing agreements, or (5) otherwise as we are required or permitted by law. We may also use the information you choose to provide to us to improve the content of our web site or to (contact you for marketing purposes).

While the FSMB will only use collected personal information for the purposes described on our website and in the FCVS application materials, the FSMB has no control over the entities to which an applicant authorizes the release of FCVS materials. Such entities may include state medical boards, state osteopathic boards, and other entities that may be subject to state and federal public information or open records laws, which might require the release of certain FCVS packet information to the public upon request.

Information Collected from Children
We are strongly committed to preserving online privacy for all of our website visitors, including children. We are a general audience site, and we do not knowingly collect information about children or sell products to children. Consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, we will not knowingly collect any information from children under the age of 13. If you are under the age of 13, you are not permitted to submit information to our site.

Email
We appreciate your questions and comments about our web site, products and services and welcome your email messages to mailboxes listed on our web sites. We will share your messages with those within our organization who are most capable of addressing the issues contained in your message. We will keep a copy of your message until we have had an opportunity to address your concerns. We may archive your message for a certain period of time or discard it, but your email address will not be used for any other purpose.

Confidentiality and Security
When you submit sensitive information to our website, your information is protected both online and offline. We restrict access to personal information collected about you at our websites to our employees, our affiliates' employees, or others who need to know that information to provide services to you or in the course of conducting our normal business operations. We maintain appropriate physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect personal information.

Links to other Sites
For your convenience, we may provide links to other web sites and web pages that we do not control. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of any web sites or pages not under our control and we do not endorse any of these web sites or pages, the services or products described or offered on such sites or pages, or any of the content contained on those sites or pages.

Use of "Cookies" or other Data Collection Tools
A cookie is a piece of information that a web server may place on your computer when you visit a web site. Cookies are commonly used by web sites to improve the user experience and have not been known to transmit computer viruses or otherwise harm your computer. Many cookies last only through a single web site session or visit. Others may have an expiration date, or may remain on your computer until you delete them. We may use cookies for a number of purposes - for example, to maintain continuity during a user session, to gather data about the usage of our web site for research and other purposes, to store your preferences for certain kinds of information and marketing offers, or to store a user name or encrypted identification number so that you do not have to provide this information every time you return to our web site. Our cookies will track only your activity relating to your online activity on this web site, and will not track your other Internet activity. Our cookies do not gather personally identifiable information. You can decide if and how your computer will accept a cookie by configuring your preferences or options in your browser. However, if you choose to reject cookies, you may not be able to use certain of our online products and services or site features. We may occasionally use other companies to set cookies on our web sites and gather cookie information for us. In some cases, we may also use another company to operate web servers for our web site. We use the cookie information gathered by these companies in the same manner as stated above. In addition to the information we collect from cookies, we also obtain information which you provide to us online. In some cases, we retain both the cookie information and/or the information you provide to us online - for example, to complete a transaction you requested or to keep historical records of your past transactions. In other cases we only retain the cookie and/or online information you give us if you request us to do so for your use in subsequent sessions.

Changes to our Web site Privacy Statement
We may change this privacy statement at any time and from time to time. The most recent version of the privacy statement is reflected by the version date located at the bottom of this Statement. This statement is not intended to and does not create any contractual or other legal right in or on behalf of any party.