MOODS Privacy Notice
Last updated and effective as of May 18, 2021.
The Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge at the University of Memphis (MD2K, we, us, or our) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of the information we collect, use, share, and otherwise process. We also believe in transparency and are committed to informing you about how we collect, use, share, and otherwise process your information when you use our Platform.
PLEASE READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY. IF THERE ARE TERMS IN THIS POLICY THAT YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH, YOU ARE EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED FROM USING THE PLATFORM AND YOU MUST DISCONTINUE USE IMMEDIATELY. IN THE EVENT OF A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, PLEASE CALL EMERGENCY SERVICES. THE PLATFORM IS INTENDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT DESIGNED OR INTENDED FOR USE IN THE DIAGNOSIS OR TREATMENT OF DISEASES OR OTHER CONDITIONS. WE DO NOT AND CANNOT PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE. NO CONTENT PROVIDED IS INTENDED TO SERVE AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL ADVICE. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER PRIOR TO MAKING ANY DECISIONS RELATED TO YOUR HEALTH. THE PLATFORM IS INTENDED FOR USERS 18 AND OVER AND RESIDING IN THE UNITED STATES. THE PLATFORM IS NOT TO BE USED BY RESIDENTS OF OTHER LOCATIONS, INCLUDING THE EUROPEAN UNION OR THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA.
This Privacy Policy applies only when you use the Platform. It does not apply to other interactions with MD2K or the University of Memphis.
We may make changes to this Privacy Policy. We will alert you about changes by updating the “Last updated and effective as of” date and by displaying on the Website, for 30 days after changes are made, a notice stating that the Privacy Policy has been updated. You will not receive specific notice of each change. It is your responsibility to periodically review the Website and this Privacy Policy. You are subject to the changes by continued use of the Platform.
ABOUT THE PLATFORM
The Platform is the online service and mobile application offered by MD2K. It includes the MOODS study applications for smartphone and smartwatch (Study Apps) and associated websites (moods.md2k.org) (Website), together with any associated software applications, database structures and queries, interfaces, tools, and the like, together with any and all revisions, modifications, and updates thereof as made available by MD2K.
The Platform was developed by MD2K as part of an ongoing research study.
How does the MOODS applications work? When you download and launch the Mobile App onto your smartphone, the Mobile App will ask you for a code before you can proceed to the consent process within the app. This code will be provided to you upon completing the study screening form and being selected to participate in the study. Additional information about the screening process is located here https://moods.md2k.org/pdfs/MOODS_consent.pdf. Once you are enrolled in the study, a Study ID will be generated to identify you in the study without using your identifiable contact information. Once you receive the study smartwatch, you will load a separate Smartwatch Application onto the smartwatch and pair it to the Study app on the phone to begin collecting data about your stress and physiology. This information will be assigned to your Study ID and will connect with the Mobile App (e.g., so you can annotate stress episodes) for the study’s data collection. Information from the Study Apps will sync with our servers periodically throughout the day. Additional information about the data collected by the smartwatch is located in the study’s informed consent document.
Throughout the day, the Study Apps will periodically track your device’s movements and record time-stamped GPS data about your device’s location when stress events are detected, even when the Mobile App is not open. The location and time data will be assigned to your Study ID. We will keep this information separate from your contact information when sharing these data for research, though the internal study team may use your contact information to contact you for study support or operations purposes. For example, we may ask if you are still participating in the study if we do not hear from you and stop receiving study data from you.
The information collected from you for the MOODS study will be collected on our servers, and we will use this information to send you weekly visualizations to the email address you have provided to us. You can then review the visualizations of your stress data to determine what is useful information to you. Feedback may be provided to us via email, weekly surveys sent to your Study Apps, or optional third-party tools (e.g., forums). Any use of third-party services will be governed by their own Terms of Use and Privacy Policies. Additional information about these mechanisms is located in the informed consent document.
You should only use the Study Apps on one respective device (i.e., your smartphone and study-provided smartwatch), and you should not manipulate or falsify your location data. Please do not permit another individual to use your devices.
Can the MOODS application be used by anyone? No. The Study Apps may only be used by residents of the United States who are at least 18 years old and who are enrolled in our MOODS study.
How can the Platform help the community? The Mobile App allows users to share valuable information about their physical proximity to other Mobile App users so that we can help identify areas of social crowding (i.e., areas in which multiple people are gathered in a single location at one time). Information about social crowding will be shared as anonymous, deidentified, or aggregated data (i.e., no one person is identified) via the Website to help determine ways to slow down or prevent the spread of COVID-19. Social crowding maps that show user density by time of day will be accessible via the Mobile App and the Website.
How can the Study Applications help users? The Study Apps provide users with information about system-detected stress events and allows users to describe the context around which those stress events take place. Weekly visualizations provided from these data may help users better understand their patterns of stress. This information is being used for research purposes to help answer research questions as described in the informed consent document. This information is not intended to be used for health, wellness, lifestyle, or any other decision-making purposes. We cannot and do not warrant the accuracy of stress events or any other collected or derived data from this study.
Notifications will occur once daily via the Mobile App to annotate stress events with the context of that stress event, i.e., what caused the stress event (what was the stressor?). Notifications will also occur once weekly to assess the impact of visualizations and collect feedback on the visualizations.
COLLECTION OF INFORMATION
We collect and process the following information:
| Category | Description of Data and Purposes |
|---|---|
| Study ID | Each account has a random Study ID generated upon the first time it registers with our systems. The Study ID is not based on your name or contact information, and we do not use this ID to try to identify you individually. We can use this Study ID to share your study data (as described in the informed consent document). |
| Time Stamp and Location Data | Throughout each day, the Study Apps will track your device’s movements and record time-stamped GPS data about your device’s location when stress events are detected by the Smartwatch Application, even if the Mobile App is not open. The location and time data will be assigned to your Study ID and the location data may reveal the places that a particular Study ID spends time (e.g., home or work address), but MD2K will use this information for research – not to make any efforts to identify the user. |
| Mobile Application | Additionally, the Mobile Application will be collecting your annotations of the stress events, your responses to weekly surveys, and your interactions within the Mobile App. |
| Smartwatch Application | The Smartwatch Application (loaded onto your study-provided smartwatch) will be collecting information about your wrist movements, location, and heart rate via its onboard sensors. This information will be used to derive system-detected stress events. |
| Usage Information | When you use the Website, we collect information from your device, which includes the date and time of your access, your location, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your device type, and your device identifier. |
| Device Permissions | The Study Apps use the following device permissions: • Location. When you use the Study Apps, you may grant us permission to collect real-time information about the location of your mobile devices. Location services are needed to effectively use the Study Apps. Location services will be enabled even when you are not actively using the Study Apps unless you disable Location permissions. • Storage. Study data will be stored on your device’s internal storage until it is synchronized with our data collection servers. Some information may be pruned to minimize the amount of space the Smartwatch App uses on your smartwatch. • Push Notifications. When you use the Mobile App, you may grant us permission to send you push notifications on your device. We may send a push notification to alert you of a notification in the Mobile App. Device permission requests are limited to those that are necessary to effectively implement the Mobile App. You may change your preferences by changing the settings on your device but changing permissions may cause the associated features to be disabled in the Mobile App, thus reducing or eliminating its usefulness. This would affect your eligibility to remain in the study, as explained in the informed consent document. |
USE OF YOUR INFORMATION
We may use the information described above in order to:
- operate, support, and improve the Study Apps and Website, including evaluations of functionality and features,
- provide you with the services, content, and functionality you request,
- honor our contracts and grants,
- recognize your device and remember your interactions,
- analyze use of our Study Apps and Website and prepare aggregate traffic information,
- comply with a civil, criminal, or regulatory inquiry, investigation, subpoena, or summons by federal, state, or local authorities,
- cooperate with law enforcement agencies,
- comply with federal, state, or local laws,
- exercise or defend legal claims, and
- create anonymous, de-identified, or aggregate data for our research purposes.
DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION
We may disclose your information as follows; further information about study-specific disclosures is in the informed consent document:
| Category | Description of Data and Purposes |
|---|---|
| Via the Mobile and Smartwatch Apps | We will share, via the Website and other means, non-individually identifiable data collected via the study. |
| Via the Website | We will share, via the Website, aggregated data collected via the Mobile App regarding social crowding. The Website will include a publicly available map identifying population aggregates and showing trends in social distancing and crowding. |
| Public and Government Officials | As described in the informed consent document, information about you may be shared with individuals responsible for upholding the rights and welfare of human research subjects. This includes individuals at The University of Memphis, or the study sponsors such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. |
| Transfer of Data to Successor Entities | In the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other transfer of The University of Memphis, your information will be transferred to the successor entity. |
| Legal Obligations and Rights (Subpoenas, Court Orders, and Warrants) | We may disclose your information in response to subpoenas, warrants, court orders or other legal process, or to comply with relevant laws. We may also share your information to establish or exercise our legal rights, to defend against a legal claim, to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding possible illegal activities, suspected fraud, safety of person or property, or a violation of our Terms of Use. |
| Service Providers | We may share information with our service providers that need access to the information to provide operational or other support services on our behalf. Among other things, service providers help us to administer the Mobile App and Website, support our provision of services requested by you, provide technical support, and assist with other legitimate purposes permitted by law. |
| Professional Advisors | We may share information with our insurers and other professional advisors, including attorneys and accountants, that need access to your information to provide operational or other support services on our behalf. |
| Anonymous, Deidentified or Aggregated Data | We may disclose anonymous, de-identified or aggregated information, i.e., information that does not identify any specific individual, at our discretion and as described in the informed consent document. |
RETENTION OF INFORMATION
We will retain and use data collected in connection with the Study Apps and Website for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, to comply with our business/research requirements and legal obligations, to resolve disputes, to protect our assets, to provide our services, and to enforce our agreements. As described in the informed consent document, the richness of the dataset collected from this study may be useful and kept indefinitely. Also, as described in the informed consent document, we may publicly share components of this study’s dataset, which may be copied and shared by others. We will not be responsible for future (i.e., downstream) sharing of copies of this dataset.
In the future, information collected from the Study Apps will be archived. The archived data will be used for continued research purposes, to evaluate the Study Apps, and for other, unforeseen purposes.
We may delete information if we believe it is incomplete, inaccurate, or that our continued storage of it is contrary to our objectives or legal obligations. When we delete data, it will be removed from our active servers and databases; however, it may remain in our archives when it is not practical or possible to delete it. Also, any shared copies of our data will be outside of our purview, custody, or responsibility.
To the extent permitted by law, we may retain and use anonymous, de-identified, or aggregated information for performance reporting, benchmarking, and analytic purposes and for product and service improvement.
TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES
When you use the Website, we utilize Google Analytics to collect information from your device, which includes the date and time of your access, your location, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your device type, and your device identifier. This information could be used for research and evaluation purposes, e.g., to aid in demography analyses. Any potentially identifying information would be removed before this information would be included in any disseminated research or evaluation products
However, we do not utilize online tracking technologies (such as cookies). Therefore, we do not currently recognize or respond to browser settings or signals of tracking preferences, which may include “Do Not Track” instructions. “Do Not Track” is a web browser setting that seeks to disable the tracking of individual users’ browsing activities.
The visualizations that are delivered weekly include tracking technologies (Motomo) that let us monitor how you interact with the web pages including the date and time of your access, your location, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your device type, your device identifier, clicks, mouse movements, scrolls, and form interactions. For example, we track how many visualizations are engaged with and for how long. This service is completely hosted on our servers and will solely be used to gain knowledge about participant interactions with the visualizations for the purposes of improving the study and the research products of this project.
THIRD PARTY CONTENT
The Study Apps and Website contain links to, and media or other content from, third parties. These links are to external resources and third parties that have their own privacy policies. Because of the dynamic media capabilities of the Study Apps and Website, it may not be clear to you which links are to external, third-party resources. If you click on an embedded third-party link, you will be redirected away from the Study Apps or Website to the external third-party resource. You can check the URL to confirm that you have left our Study Apps or Website.
Some third parties may use automated data collection technologies to collect information about you when you browse the Internet. The information they collect about your online browsing activities over time and across different websites and other online services may be associated with your personal information and used to provide you with targeted content. We do not control these third parties’ technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about targeted content, you should contact the responsible party directly or consult their privacy policies.
We cannot and do not (1) guarantee the adequacy of the privacy or security practices employed by, or the content and media provided by, any third parties or their websites, (2) control third parties’ independent collection or use or your information, or (3) endorse any third-party information, products, services or websites that may be reached through embedded links in the Mobile App or the Website.
Any personal information provided by you or automatically collected from you by a third party will be governed by that party’s privacy policy and terms of use. If you are unsure whether a website is controlled, affiliated, or managed by us, you should review the privacy policy and practices applicable to each linked website.
SECURITY OF YOUR INFORMATION
We have put reasonable security measures in place to protect the information that you share with us from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed in an unauthorized manner. We provide physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect the information that we process and maintain. For example, information is encrypted while in transit and at rest on our systems. We periodically review our security procedures to consider appropriate new technologies and methods.
While our security measures seek to protect the data in our possession, no security system is perfect, and no data transmission is 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to or from the Study Apps or the Website. Your use of the Study Apps and/or the Website are at your own risk. We cannot guarantee that data will remain secure in all circumstances.
In the event of a breach of your data, as defined by your state law, we will notify you per applicable state law.
OPTIONS REGARDING YOUR INFORMATION
Please use the “Contact Us” details provided at the end of this Privacy Policy to exercise your options.
Accuracy and Updating Your Information./span> We are not capable of correcting inaccurate location data.
Stopping Data Collection. To stop data collection, uninstall the Study Apps from your device(s) and cease accessing the Website. At that point, the Study App will no longer be able to collect information from your device(s). We will, however, retain all information previously collected in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
POLICY FOR CHILDREN
We do not knowingly solicit any information from or market this study or Study Applications to individuals under the age of 18 years old. If you become aware of any information we have collected from children, especially those under the age of 13 years (or any other unauthorized use of the Study Apps by children), please contact us.
CONTACT US
You may contact us at:
Office of Legal Counsel
University of Memphis
201 Administration Bldg,
Memphis, TN 38152
901-678-2155
Unless necessary, please do not provide us with your name, contact information, any other identifying codes, or any health information.