UT Physicians Website Privacy & Security Policy

UT Physicians, a part of UTHealth Houston, is committed to ensuring the privacy and accuracy of your confidential information. We do not actively share personal information gathered from our Web servers.

As part of our commitment to maintain the privacy of general public who utilize our Web sites, UT Physicians and UTHealth Houston has developed this privacy statement. The statement has two purposes:

  • To educate the general public about privacy issues
  • To inform the general public about specific privacy policies and guidelines employed at UTHealth Houston.

UT Physicians and UTHealth Houston web consists of hundreds of web servers. Some servers hosted by the university may adopt more restrictive privacy statements as their specific needs require. If another UT Physicians and UTHealth Houston web server has a privacy statement that is different from this statement, that policy must be approved by the Information Technology Security Core Team and then must be posted on that department’s site. However, those sites cannot adopt a privacy statement that in any way supersedes federal or state regulations.

UT Physicians and UTHealth Houston websites contain links to hundreds of external websites. UT Physicians is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of external websites we link to (See Linking Policy.)

UT Physicians also complies with state and federal regulations protecting personal health information of patients, employees and general website visitors.

Information we gather

Our web servers generate temporary logs that contain the following information:

  • Internet address of computer being used
  • Web pages requested
  • Referring web page
  • Browser used
  • Date and time
  • Unique person identifier

The data is used in aggregate by system administrators and Web content coordinators to tune the Web site for its efficiency and is not ordinarily associated with specific individuals. Summary reports produced from the logs help web publishers determine what Web browsers and pages are most popular.

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of data stored by the web browser. Cookies are often used to remember information about preferences and pages you have visited. For example, when you visit some sites on the web you might see a “Welcome Back” message. The first time you visited the site a cookie was probably set on your computer; when you return, the cookie is read again. You can refuse to accept cookies, can disable cookies, and remove cookies from your hard drive.

UT Physicians and UTHealth Houston web servers use cookies in the centralized authentication system called LDAP. These cookies are used so you will not have to repeatedly enter user names and passwords when you go to different parts of the website. You are normally required to authenticate against the LDAP when you request data about yourself or to ensure that you are a member of the university community. This login process uses Secure Sockets Layer(SSL) so the user name and password are encrypted between the web browser and our web server.

Some web servers within UT Physicians and UTHealth Houston may also use cookies to retain user preference information. It is against university policy to share this information with external third parties.

Security and accuracy of confidential information

The university does its best to ensure that the personal information we have about you is accurate. Although no computer system is 100% secure, UT Physicians and UTHealth Houston have deployed extensive security measures to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of the information under our control.

E-commerce

Some sites within UT Physicians and UTHealth Houston enable you to pay for products or services online with a credit card. Unless otherwise noted, these transactions are encrypted. It is university policy that confidential information you enter in the transaction is used only for the purposes described in that transaction, unless an additional use is specifically stated on that site.

Questions

If you have questions about this privacy statement or you believe that your personal information has been released without your consent, send an email to legal@uth.tmc.edu.