Last Updated: April 29, 2014
BY USING OR ACCESSING OUR WEBSITES OR BY PROVIDING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO US ON OR THROUGH OUR WEBSITES, YOU CONSENT TO THE COLLECTION, USE AND DISCLOSURE OF THAT INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY.
General
This Privacy Policy sets forth the privacy practices and policies of the American Thoracic Society and all of its affiliates (“ATS,” “us,” or “we”). ATS is committed to respecting and protecting your privacy and helping you make the most of your time on the Internet within a trusted environment. This ATS Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) governs our data collection, usage and services and applies to the following websites: www.thoracic.org and www.atsjournals.org (collectively, “Website” or “Websites”). This Privacy Policy discloses how we collect, protect, use and share information gathered about you on our Websites. If you use a Website you explicitly agree to the terms and conditions of the Privacy Policy in effect at the time of your use. We hope that this disclosure will help increase your confidence in our Websites and enhance your experience on the Internet.
Please read our Privacy Policy to understand:
Information We Collect
Site Use Information
Use of Cookies
Information You Provide to Us
Social Networking Activities
Financial Transactions
Opting Out of Communications
Disclosing Information to Third Parties
Security
Links to Other Websites
Child Privacy
Access from Outside the United States
Governing Law
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Contact
The following describes the types of personal and other information we may collect about you, and how we use and maintain that information:
Our web servers may collect the IP address of visitors to our Websites. This information may be aggregated to measure the number of visits, average time spent on a Website, pages viewed, etc. We may use this information to measure the use of our Websites and to improve the content we offer. We may share with third parties this experiential information or other data on an aggregated basis without the use of any information that personally identifies you.
Like most websites, we employ “cookies” or similar technologies on certain pages of our Websites. Cookies make the use of our Websites easier by, among other things, saving your preferences. We may also use cookies to deliver content tailored to your interests. Our cookies may enable us to relate your use of our Websites to personally identifying information that you previously submitted. The information that we collect with cookies allows us to statistically analyze usage of our Websites, and to improve and customize our content and other offerings. However, we only disclose information collected with cookies to third parties on an aggregated basis without the use of any information that personally identifies you.
The cookies we use on our Websites may include:
- Session cookies: These temporary cookies expire and are automatically erased whenever you close your browser window. We use session cookies to grant our users access to content and to enable actions such as remembering items in your shopping cart when you shop on our Websites.
- Persistent cookies: These usually have an expiration date in the distant future and remain in your browser until they expire or you manually delete them. We use persistent cookies to better understand usage patterns so we can improve the Websites for our users. For example, we may use a persistent cookie to associate you with your user account or to remember your choices on the Websites.
- Third party cookies: We permit limited third parties to place cookies through our Websites to provide us with better insights into the use of the Websites or user demographics or to provide relevant promotions to you. These third parties may collect information about a user’s online activities over time and across different websites when he or she uses our Websites. For example, we may use a third party tool to analyze usage patterns of the Websites. Such a tool may generate a cookie to capture information about your use of the Websites which the third party provider uses to compile reports on website activity for us and to provide other related services. The third party provider may use a portion of your IP address to identify its cookie, but this will not be associated with any other data held by the third party provider.
- We may also permit third party service providers to place cookies through our Websites, as indicated above, to perform analytic or marketing functions where you are notified of them and you have consented to the usage. We do not control the use of such third party cookies or the resulting information and we are not responsible for any actions or policies of such third parties.]
We do not use technology that recognizes a “do-not-track” signal from your web browser.
Your use of our Websites will be deemed to be your consent to the placement of cookies on your computer or other devices. If you prefer not to receive cookies through our Websites, you can set your browser to either reject all cookies, to allow only “trusted” websites to set them, or to accept only those cookies from those sites you are currently on. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system may issue cookies when you log on to our Websites and use them. If your browser is set to reject cookies, or if your browser notifies you that you are about to receive a cookie and you reject it, then your use of the Websites may not be as efficient or as enjoyable as it would be if the cookie were enabled, and some parts of the Websites may not work at all.
By providing personal information through our Websites you explicitly agree to our collection and use of that information as described in this Privacy Policy. If you choose to interact with the Website in ways including but not limited to renewing your ATS membership, participating in online surveys, registering for meetings, participating in conference programs, and submitting information, including on any ATS web-based forms, we will retain the information you submit to respond to your inquiry and consider your request. You also agree that we may use any information that you provide for our general purposes, and may share it with our affiliates and third parties as described in this Privacy Policy.
Before you can utilize some portions of our Websites, we may require that you register and provide us with your contact information and generate a password. This registration information may be used, for example, for identification purposes, to communicate with you regarding your account with us or to facilitate the functioning of our Websites. If you provide us with a telephone number, you expressly agree that we, or our authorized agents, can use that number to contact your about your account, or about ATS and its associated activities. If you provide us with your email address, you agree that we, or our authorized agents, can send you emails about your account, or about ATS and its associated activities.
We may keep any information that you provide to us indefinitely.
Our Websites include the ability for you and other users to link to social networking websites. As a result, we receive information about you when you choose to post or otherwise share information about our Websites on these social networking websites. We may use such information about you in a variety of ways, including to administer a Website and enhance your experience with a Website, and to communicate with you about a Website and new offerings or activities associated with the Website. We may keep all of this information indefinitely.
When you engage in any financial transaction through our Websites, you will be asked to provide certain of your financial information, such as your credit card and billing address. Unless you register with the Website, we will only keep this information as long as necessary to complete the transaction or series of recurring transactions authorized by you.
If you no longer want to receive emails from ATS on a going-forward basis, you may opt out of receiving emails by clicking the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of those email you receive. If you are having difficulty unsubscribing using the above methods, please contact us directly at the email or phone number listed below under Contact.
Please allow ample time for us to process your request. However, please note that even if you opt out from receiving emails, we will send you service-related communications and may need to keep information we have collected about you for record-keeping, research and other purposes.
Disclosing Information to Third Parties
We will not share, rent, sell or otherwise disclose any of the personally identifiable information that we collect about you through our Websites, except in any of the following situations:
- You request or authorize the release of your personal information.
- We may use the information we collect from you to fulfill your requests, manage the Websites, communicate with you about membership, registrations, products, services, events and education, and conduct research and analysis.
- We may disclose information that we collect about you to our third-party contractors and payment processors who perform services for us in connection with the Websites, or to complete or confirm a transaction or series of transactions that you conduct with us. We may also disclose information to service providers or suppliers if the disclosure will enable that party to perform business, professional or technical support for us.
- We may provide your information to our partners and sponsors, so as to provide access to benefits and communicate important information about them. We may also provide such information to other select third parties approved by ATS as offering products or services relevant and useful to you. For example, we may give exhibitors the names and mailing addresses of pre-registrants to our International Conference, and we may sell the names and mailing addresses of subscribers to our journals (the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM), the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology (AJRCMB) and the Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society (PATS)). The use by and/or content of communications from any third party will be pre-approved by ATS.
- We may disclose information about you as part of a merger, acquisition or other sale or transfer of the assets or business of ATS. We do not guarantee that any entity receiving such information in connection with one of these transactions will comply with all terms of this Privacy Policy.
- We may disclose information about you to comply with the law, applicable regulations, governmental and quasi-governmental requests, court orders or subpoenas, to enforce our Terms of Use or other agreements, or to protect our rights, property or safety or the rights, property or safety of our users or others (e.g., to a consumer reporting agency for fraud protection). We reserve the right to release information that we collect to law enforcement or other government officials, as we, in our sole and absolute discretion, deem necessary or appropriate.
- We may share aggregated or anonymous information that cannot identify you with third parties. For example, we may disclose the number of visitors to our Websites or the number of people who have downloaded a particular document.
To help protect the privacy of data you transmit through our Websites, where personally identifiable information is requested, we use technology designed to encrypt the information that you input before it is sent to us. In addition, we take steps to protect the user data we collect against unauthorized access. However, you should keep in mind that the Websites are run on software, hardware and networks, any component of which may, from time to time, require maintenance or experience problems or breaches of security beyond our control.
Please also be aware that despite our best intentions and the guidelines outlined in this Privacy Policy, no data transmission over the Internet or encryption method can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.
While we take steps to protect your personal information and keep it secure, you also play a role in protecting your information. You can help to maintain the security of your online transactions by not sharing your account information and password with anyone. ATS cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us or from our Websites, and therefore you use our Websites at your own risk.
Our Websites may contain links to other websites, however this Privacy Policy only addresses ATS’s use and disclosure of your information collected on our Websites, if any. While we try to link only to websites that share our standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the privacy practices of any third parties or the content of linked websites. We encourage you to read the applicable privacy policies and terms and conditions of such parties or websites.
If you are under the age of 18, please do not use or access the Website in any way. We will not knowingly collect or use any personal information from any child under the age of 18. It is not our intention to collect personal information from anyone under 18 years of age. [If we become aware that we have collected any personal information from children under the age of 18, we will promptly delete such information from our databases.
Access from Outside the United States
If you access the Website from outside of the United States, information that we collect about you will be transferred to servers inside the United States and maintained indefinitely, which may involve the transfer of information out of countries located in the European Economic Area. By allowing us to collect information about you, you consent to such transfer and processing of your data.
By choosing to visit our Websites or provide information to us, you agree that any dispute over privacy or the terms contained in this Privacy Policy will be governed by the law of the State of New York. You also agree to abide by any limitation on damages contained in our Terms of Use, or other agreement that we have with you.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may occasionally amend this Privacy Policy to reflect company and customer feedback and we reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy at any time. The use of your information is subject to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use in effect at the time of use. The provisions contained in this Privacy Policy supersede all previous notices or policies regarding our privacy practices with respect to our Websites. Please check the “Last Updated” legend at the top of this page to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised. We encourage you to check frequently to see the current Privacy Policy to be informed of how ATS is committed to protecting your information and providing you with improved content on our Websites in order to enhance your experience.
If you have any questions or comments regarding our Privacy Policy or our Websites, please contact us at: privacy@thoracic.org, by phone at 212-315-8600 or send a letter to:
American Thoracic Society
25 Broadway, 18th Floor
New York, NY 10004
This Privacy Policy may be changed at any time without notice. By using our website, you acknowledge acceptance of this Privacy Statement in effect at the time of use.