MYsmile, Your Privacy
At MYsmile, we believe in giving you easy, straight answers. That’s true whether you’re asking about dental procedures or your online privacy. Being a dental office and deal with confidential medical records means that your privacy is something we hold in the utmost regard.
Our privacy policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, and how we use it—as well as the steps we take to protect it.
Why MYsmile collects information
MYsmile collects personal information from you only with your knowledge and informed consent. We use this to provide better access to our offices, services, and staff, as well as improve your experience on our website.
That includes using online methods to book or follow up on your appointments, get appointment reminders and notifications, get information on how to care for your MYsmile treatments and other newsletters and email updates that may be of interest to you, as well as access to our MYsmile knowledge base and the ability to submit your questions directly to our website.
What information MYsmile collects
The information we collect might include:
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your mailing address
- Your phone number
- Your insurance provider
- Your insurance account number
- May include other information we might need to fulfill specific requests
If you register with us, we’ll also request you create a username and password.
All of that information falls into six broad usage categories:
- Online account information: Provides you with access to your MYsmile account and gives us a way to get a hold of you for reminders, verifications, and gives you easy access to your other information.
- Personal information: This tells us who you are and how to get a hold of you if we can’t reach you by email. This can include your mailing address and phone number. This also helps us verify your identity, to make sure your account stays secure, and you’re the only one who can change it.
- Patient feedback and support: We’re committed to answering your questions and providing you with a wealth of knowledge, as well as listening to your reviews and thoughts on our services. Our feedback and support system uses your information to help us listen to you and meet your dental needs.
- Correspondence: We love to stay in touch with reminders, updates, and things that might interest you, like new treatments your dental history suggests you could benefit from. Your personal information helps us correspond with you to make sure you have access to everything from regular cleanings to oral screenings and more.
- Transactions & insurance: We try to make transactions and insurance forms as easy as possible, which is why we’ve added an online component, to help you pay at your convenience, go paperless, and update your insurance info so your claims can be filed quickly and easily. We will never disclose any banking, credit card, or insurance information, except where we’re required to by law.
- Non-personally identifiable information: When you connect to our site (or any other site), some information is automatically collected to make that possible. That includes your Internet Protocol address (or IP address), the address your computer uses to access the Internet, as well as cookies. This information is logged with those of other visitors. MYsmile can’t identify any visitors with this information. We also collect click-through data, time spent on pages, time spent on site, page views, and unique visitors, to see what information is most valuable to users and make improvements to our content.
How MYsmile protects your personal information
All personally identifying and sensitive information collected by MYsmile is protected with Transport Layer Security, or TLS. You may be familiar with this technology under its old name, Secure Socket Layer or SSL.
TLS is used to encrypt sensitive traffic and information during transmission, so that only your computer and our servers can understand and see the information.
When you’re on a section of our site that uses TLS encryption, you’ll see https:// in front of the address (instead of the usual http://) and a padlock icon in your address bar (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer) or in the upper right corner (Safari).
Our servers are also protected with firewalls, standard commercial-grade access points that allow only preauthorized types of connections and data through, making sure intruders stay out of our systems.
When MYsmile has to disclose personal information
Other than the uses we’ve listed above, your personal information will only be disclosed where required by law. For example, MYsmile might use website traffic information to stop an unauthorized intrusion (a “hacking attempt”) to protect our site and our users from malware.
We may also, with your consent, share information you’ve securely submitted to us with your insurance company to make processing your claims easier for you.
What your privacy choices are
You can remove your MYsmile online account at any time. You can also have your name removed from our email marketing lists at any time.
You are not required to submit personal information online, all of our services that require it are for your convenience and personal experience online, and aren’t required to make an appointment with Dr. Kamel or MYsmile.
How you can access your personal information
If you have an account with MYsmile.ca, you can log into your account online and see your personal information.
If you’re having trouble remembering your account details, you can use our account retrieval tools to recover access to your account.
How you can protect your information
Your personal information is yours. The first step in keeping your information safe is not volunteering it if you don’t feel comfortable doing so.
Malware regularly appears on the Internet. Your computer is as vulnerable to infection from malware online as you are to a virus in real life. As such, we ask you to take reasonable and responsible precautions when sending and receiving files on the Internet, including at MYsmile.ca, as you’d take such precautions offline.
If you don’t have antivirus, you can protect yourself, MYsmile.ca, and your browsing experience in general with free antivirus software. MYsmile cannot recommend or guarantee the safety of using any antivirus program, and we recommend you conduct your own research and make your own decision regarding how best to protect your computer.
Children’s personal information
Although some of our patients are minors, MYsmile does not knowingly collect the personal information of minors without the consent of a parent or other legal guardian.
Medical information
As a dental office, MYsmile collects medical information from our patients. If you’re our patient, your medical information is confidential and secure under Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act 2004 (PHIPA).
On top of our privacy policy for online communications and site use, all of our interactions with patient information are also governed by PHIPA.
This includes, but isn’t limited to, your right to the confidentiality of your medical files, your right to access your own files, your right to correct medical information you believe is inaccurate, your absolute right to grant consent for the disclosure of any medical information, and your right to withdraw consent any time before that disclosure is made.
On top of our disclosure policy for online communications and site use, MYsmile, as a health information custodian under PHIPA, may disclose your information in strict circumstances such as contacting a relative, substitute decision-maker, or other emergency contact if required by medical necessity, for processing payments and claims, to verify our patient’s eligibility for programs from the federal, provincial, or municipal governments, and as and if required by law.
PHIPA also requires the strong encryption methods MYsmile uses to protect all personal information we store electronically, as outlined above.
For more information on PHIPA, including the full text of the law as well as fact sheets, please see the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario’s PHIPA page.
Offsite links
MYsmile might occasionally provide links which we believe might be useful or interesting to you, such as information on the technology we use. While we take every measure to make sure that the links on our site are to reputable companies and sites, we are not responsible for the privacy or safety of those sites, nor can we guarantee it. We encourage you to become familiar with any other website and their privacy policies, as well as how to protect yourself, before you volunteer any personal information on other sites, or download any files.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about MYsmile’s Online Privacy Policy, please contact us using this website or at our head office:
525 Legget Dr.
Suite 120
Ottawa, ON
K2K 2W2
613-599-2222