Doctors Without Borders Canada website terms, conditions and cookies

The content on this website is maintained by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Canada, 551 Adelaide Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 0N8 If you’d like to provide feedback regarding the website, please email us.

Security of private information

No data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100 percent secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, Médecins Sans Frontières Canada cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems and we take reasonable steps to protect the information you provide us from theft, alteration or unauthorised inspection. You can read our can read our privacy notice here.

Links to other sites

Our site contains links to other sites that are not under our control, even though they may use the Médecins Sans Frontières Canada name or logo on their site through an agreement with us. Such other sites do not necessarily follow our privacy policies, and we recommend that you read their privacy policies carefully.

Parents and guardians and users under 18

Parents/Guardians: We encourage you to get involved with your children’s online usage and to be aware of the activities in which they are participating. You should be aware that if your children voluntarily disclose their names, email addresses or other information on bulletin boards or chat areas of other websites, such disclosures may result in unsolicited messages from other parties. We suggest that you discourage your child from providing such information on this site or elsewhere unless you are confident that the information will not be misused.

Users under 18: If you are under 18, please make sure that you obtain your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide personal information to Médecins Sans Frontières Canada’s website. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information. Also, if you do use this site for information about fundraising or supporting the work of Médecins Sans Frontières Canada please let an adult know.

Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of information. 

Websites store cookies on your internet browser (eg Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer) when you visit.

Every time you return to the site and navigate around it picks up these bits of information.

Sometimes other companies working on our behalf can access the information stored in certain types of cookies. They might use it when deciding which adverts to show you as you browse the internet, for example.

Why do websites use cookies?

There are different types of cookies that do different things. Some cookies can be really helpful and most websites rely on them in order to work properly and to understand what their users do when they visit.

For example, when you donate online to MSF Canada a cookie helps the site ‘remember’ which kind of donation you have chosen as you move through the process. Cookies are also crucial for understanding how people use a website and which articles or sections are popular. This helps make websites more engaging and ensures they’re developed in the right places.

Cookies are also used by advertising companies to direct adverts at people who might have shown an interest in the company, product or service before when using the web.

Are there different types of cookies?

 As defined by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada there are 4 types of cookies.

Cookies

A cookie is a small piece of text that is placed on your computer when you visit a website.  Cookies were created so that information could be saved between visits to a website.  They collect and store information about you based on your browsing patterns and information you provide.  Cookies record language preferences, for example, or let users avoid logging in each time they visit a site.  Almost all of the most popular websites use them.  Cookies can be very useful because, without them, you would have to enter certain bits of your personal information each time you visit your favourite site.

Third-party cookies

When you visit a website that has advertisement on it, a cookie may be passed from the advertising company (the third party) to your computer.  Later, when you revisit that same website, or another site that uses the same advertising company, the third-party cookie can be read by the advertising company.  If the cookie contains a unique identifier, then information about your visits to different websites can be linked together.  In this way, a detailed profile can be built about you (or other people who also use the same computer as you) and your browsing habits.  It can then be used to target advertising to you.

Flash cookies

Flash cookies were created by Adobe’s Flash browser add-on for multimedia.  Flash cookies can be used to save information between sessions and they are also used to track the websites you visit. 

Super cookies

Super cookies use new storage locations built into browsers to save information about you.  The storage mechanisms are larger and more flexible than traditional cookies, so more information can be stored.

What cookies do you use?

We use all four kinds of cookies on our websites and we only use them when we feel they’re useful and can benefit our visitors. For more information on what type of cookies are used, what they do, and how long until their expiry, please select “Cookies Settings” in the cookies banner of our website. 

How do you control your cookies?

You can control and/or delete cookies at any time, as well as customize your cookies preferences in “Cookie Settings”, in the cookies banner.  

You can also get rid of all the cookies already on your computer. 

Check out the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada for information and advice.

If you tell your browser to stop allowing cookies, some websites may not work as well.