Privacy
This website offered by the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Partnership (MBHP) is designed to help you learn more about getting help with life issues that are sensitive, emotional and often private. We respect your personal privacy and provide this informational statement so that you may better understand how we may collect and use aggregate and personal information about you. This Privacy Statement describes MBHP’s privacy and security practices for this website. Except where noted, statements in this Privacy Policy with respect to the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site also apply to the MBHP Mobile Device Applications (or “App”) available for mobile devices, including, but not limited to iPhones, iPads, Androids, and/or other smart devices.
Your Acceptance of These Terms
By using this site, you signify your acceptance of the terms of the MBHP Privacy Statement. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Statement, please do not use the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site and exit the site immediately. Your continued use of the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site following the posting of changes to these terms will mean that you accept those changes.
Your IP Address
For each visitor to the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site, information is automatically collected about which pages are visited and the IP address or domain name of visitors. We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website. Your IP address is used to help identify you and to gather general demographic information.
Cookies
MBHP may place a “cookie” on the browser of your computer. Cookies are pieces of information that a web site transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record-keeping purposes. The use of cookies is common in the Internet industry, and many major web sites use them to provide useful features to their customers. The cookie itself does not contain any personally identifying information, but may be used to tell when your computer has contacted the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site. Such information is used for editorial purposes and for other purposes, such as delivery of features and advertisements, so that delivery of information can be customized specific to your interests without compromising privacy. For example, we may use cookies to save your password so you don’t have to re-enter it each time you visit our site.
Disclosing Information
MBHP is the sole owner of the information collected from you on the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site. We will not sell, share, rent, lease, trade, or otherwise provide this information to independent third parties in ways different from what is disclosed in this Privacy Statement.
Your personally identifiable information will not be disclosed to independent third parties other than those who help us operate the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site. We may also share aggregated demographic and profile information (information that does not allow you to be identified or contacted) with our business partners for marketing and promotional purposes. The aggregate information we share with our business partners is not linked to any of your personally identifiable information. For example, information may be provided to third parties about how many people use our website, what features of the website they use and how many users of the website live in certain zip codes.
Account information may be disclosed in special cases (i) to comply with valid legal requirements, such as a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena or court order; or (ii) when there is reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who, intentionally or unintentionally, may be causing injury or harm to MA Behavioral Health Help Line users or other persons or violating the Terms and Conditions of this site.
In the event that MBHP, or any component of MBHPs operations, is merged with, or is acquired by, another entity, then any such successor or acquiring entity may become the successor to our obligations with respect to the personal information that you have provided to MBHP, which would be necessary for the entity to effectively continue MBHP’s business. By using the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site, you consent to any such use of your personal information by such an entity assuming control of MBHP’s operations as a result of a merger, purchase of MBHP assets, or liquidation of MBHP in bankruptcy or insolvency.
Links
This site contains links to other sites. MBHP is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites, including any sites that may indicate a special relationship or partnership with any third parties (such as co-branded pages and “powered by” relationships). MBHP does not disclose unique identifiers to those responsible for the linked sites. The linked sites, however, may collect personal information from you that is not subject to MBHP’s control. To ensure protection of your privacy, always review the privacy policies of the sites you visit by linking from our website.
Our Partner Sites
Some of the services accessible to you from the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site are actually performed by our partners. You can tell whether you are on the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site or a partner site by checking the Internet address (URL) in your browser window. When you are on our partner sites, you are governed by our partner’s privacy policy.
Security
This site has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control.
Mobile Device Applications
When you download and install one of our Apps onto your mobile device we assign a random number to your App installation. This number cannot be used to identify you personally, and we cannot identify you personally unless you choose to become a registered user of the App. We use this random number in a manner similar to our use of Cookies as described in this Privacy Policy. Unlike Cookies, the random number is assigned to your installation of the App itself and not a browser, because the App does not work through your browser. Therefore the random number cannot be removed through settings. If you do not want us to use the random number for the purposes for which we use Cookies, please do not use the App, and please use your mobile device browser to access the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site or our mobile optimized sites. We do not obtain any information about your mobile device, other than the brand, make and model and type of operating software your device uses. Please note that certain Apps require registration either to use the App or to use certain functionality in the App.
Such Apps will obtain your consent (via an opt-in) before using information from pin-pointing technology like GPS or cell tower information. You can withdraw your consent (opt-out) for the use of “location” at any time by changing your location services in the “Settings” function on your mobile device.
Children’s Privacy
We are committed to protecting the privacy of children. You should be aware that the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site is not intended or designed to attract children under the age of 13. We do not collect personally identifiable information from any person we actually know is a child under the age of 13.
Your Role in Protecting Your Privacy
If you share a terminal with others, you may want to consider establishing an anonymous email account. In this way, emails that you receive from MBHP, which may reflect behavioral health issues of interest to you, cannot be linked to you. If you access the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site through an email account or Internet access system maintained by your employer, please note that it is possible that your employer may monitor your email communications and Internet use.
Notification of Changes
This Privacy Statement may be revised over time as new features are added to the website or as Internet security and privacy standards evolve. We will post those changes prominently so that you will always know what information we gather, how we might use that information and whether we will disclose it to anyone. We do, however, recommend that you read this Privacy Statement each time you use the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site, in case you missed our notice of changes to the Privacy Statement.
Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement or the practices of the MA Behavioral Health Help Line site, you can contact us at:
MassHelpLine@beaconhealthoptions.com
If you are in crisis and need immediate assistance, do not email the MA Behavioral Health Help Line. Please call, text, or chat with us right away. For the Deaf or hard of hearing, please call MassRelay at 711.
