PRIVACY AND USER CONSENT POLICY

Last Updated: 01/01/2023

The American Academy / Association of Orthopedic Medicine (AAOM) is serious about safeguarding your personal information. This privacy policy ("Policy") describes how AAOM collects, uses, and shares personal information of consumer users of our website located at https://www.aaomed.org.

Who We Are

For the purpose of applicable data protection legislation, the data controller of your personal information is AAOM, 2424 American Lane, Madison, WI 53704 USA.

Changes to this Policy

We will post any modifications or changes to the Policy on our website. We reserve the right to modify the Policy at any time, so we encourage you to review it frequently. The "Last Updated" legend above indicates when this Policy was last changed. If we make any material changes to the Policy, we will post a notice on our Site prior to those changes taking effect. For AAOM members, we will notify you of any changes to our privacy policy or the way we use or share your information via email notification prior to making those changes.

INFORMATION COLLECTED

We collect personal information. Personal information is that information you give us, such as your name, postal address, telephone number, or email address. AAOM collects and stores the personal information in a secured database. Personal information includes name, institution, address, telephone number, fax number, and email address collected when you join AAOM as a member, register for an event, or purchase a product.

Email address may be collected if you contact us with a question. Other information that may be collected can be technical information such as the IP address, session activity, and web browser used.

AAOM website uses cookies to improve functionality and usability. This information is used to improve the website, track use of information, and improve functionality.

 

HOW AAOM USES THIS INFORMATION

We use the information we collect in the following ways:

  • To establish your membership record when you join or renew your membership;

  • To register you for a conference or educational event;

  • To deliver services, such as educational programs;

  • To provide you with information about the society

  • To deliver information via the society newsletter;

  • To alert you to special offers or upcoming events;

  • To process your order, and if necessary, to contact you about your order, membership, or registration;

  • To help us create and publish content most relevant to you;

  • To share limited personal information such as your email address with a third-party provider in order to display information about AAOM member services on sites other than AAOM.org or AAOM-u.org;

  • To contact you regarding additional services or features;

  • To request your feedback about your experience with AAOM;

  • To send you promotional communications. You may opt-out of receiving such information at any time. Such marketing emails tell you how to “opt-out”;

  • To send you administrative communications. These may include administrative emails, confirmations, technical notices, updates, and security alerts;

  • To respond to your comments and questions and provide you with user support; and

  • To allow you access to members-only areas of the website.

  • To communicate with credentialing organizations and abstract reviewers during the abstract submission process.

HOW WE SHARE THIS INFORMATION

AAOM membership directories are available only to members in a members-only section of the website. Participation in our member directory is optional, and you must give us consent to include your information in our member directory. Personal information will not be released to third parties except to further member benefits and to comply with the law, for example:

  • To third-party service providers who maintain the association website. We require third-party vendors to verify that they do not use the personal information for any other purpose than to provide the administrative services outlined in their service contract.

  • To complete a purchase for any product offered by a third-party provider.

  • To protect against potential fraud, personal and credit card information is verified through a third-party credit card processor.

  • To comply with applicable laws or to comply with lawful requests or court orders and legal process, including responding to requests from public and government authorities to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

  • To enforce our Privacy Policy, and to protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property, and/or that of you or others.

 

ANONYMOUS DATA

When we use the term “anonymous data,” we are referring to data and information that doesn’t permit you to be individually identified, either alone or when combined with any other information available to a third party.

We may create anonymous data from the personal data we receive about you and other individuals whose personal data we collect. Anonymous data might include analytics information and information collected by us using cookies. We make personal data into anonymous data by excluding information, such as your name, that makes the data personally identifiable to you. We use this anonymous data to analyze usage patterns to make improvements to our website and service offerings.

COOKIES AND WEB BEACONS

In order to help enhance the performance and functionality of the Site, we utilize session, persistent and third-party “cookies” that store a small piece of data on a users’ computers and collect certain information about the users’ visit to our Site. We also use cookies to understand users’ browsing and buying activities so that we can measure the success of online advertising campaigns we run on the Site. Our Site also uses web beacons (either directly or from our partners), along with cookies, to determine if a user has visited a particular website. These beacons aid in providing more relevant advertising to the user, as well measuring the success of an advertising campaign, but provide no personally identifiable information.

Cookies are small text files that web servers typically send to users’ computers when they visit a website. Cookies are stored as text files on users’ hard drives, and can be accessed by web servers when the user visits a website or views an advertisement. A session cookie is a cookie that stores information as a user is using the Site but is deleted once the browser session is finished. A persistent cookie is a cookie that stores information as a user utilizes the Site and stores and uses that information in connection with future visits of the user to the Site. Third party cookies and/or web beacons are cookies or web beacons provided by our technology and/or advertising partners. Any third-party cookie or web beacon that we authorize for use on the Site only collects that information described below for the same stated purposes as if we were directly collecting the information. For a third-party cookie or web beacon, the third-party will have access to the collected information in order to provide us with information or services to enhance the performance and functionality of the Site.

The cookies and web beacons we use collect non-personally identifiable information about users of the Site, including: browser used to access the site, date and time, the URL of the page being loaded, users who have visited a particular website(s), any previously assigned cookie identification (a unique identifier assigned to a user to identify repeat visitors), browser window size, the geographic location of the user, device and operating system used to access the Site. The information we collect from these cookies and web beacons is used to determine information about a user’s visit to our Site, including the number of visits, average time spent, pages viewed, navigation history through the website, and other statistics. This information is used to enhance the users experience while visiting our Site and to improve the performance of our Site by, among other things, allowing us to monitor Site performance, making the Site easier to use, measuring the effectiveness of promotional placements, and tailoring the Site (including the ads and offers a user receives) to better match a user’s interests and preferences.

Users who prefer not to accept cookies can set their Internet browser to notify them when they receive a cookie or to prevent cookies from being placed on their hard drive. If you consent to our collection of cookies and you subsequently wish to withdraw your consent, you will need to manage the settings on your web browser to delete all cookies and disallow further acceptance of cookies. Please note that disabling cookies on your browser will prevent us from tracking your activities in relations to our Site, however, it may also disable some of the functions and features of the Site and the Site may not work properly.

If you would like to determine your consent status, please contact us at info@AAOM.org.

By continuing to use our Site, you are agreeing to our placing cookies and/or web beacons on your computer in order to analyze the way you use our Site. Please read this cookie policy carefully for more details about the information we collect when you use the Site.

If you do not wish to accept cookies or web beacons in connection with your use of this Site, please discontinue use of the Site.

FORUMS AND PUBLIC POSTING AREAS

Please note that any information you include in a message posted in a forum or other public posting area is available to anyone who visits the website. Please be very careful when deciding to post publicly identifiable information, such as email address in any public forums.

WEBSITE SECURITY

AAOM uses website security measures consistent with current best practices to protect its website, email, and mailing lists. These measures include technical, procedural, monitoring, and tracking intended to safeguard data from unauthorized access, loss, or misuse.

Credit card information is transmitted using secure socket layer (SSL) encryption. No credit card information is stored with the membership record or on the association website.

Should any indication of misuse occur, the association will move quickly to isolate the problem and restore functionality. The association will notify the relevant authorities of any incident of misuse. In the event of a data breach, we will notify affected subjects in accordance with law and best practices.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

AAOM uses Google Analytics, a service that collects information anonymously and reports website trends without identifying individual visitors. Google Analytics uses its own cookie to track visitor interactions. To learn more about the information collected by Google Analytics, please visit https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

INFORMATION CHOICES AND CHANGES

Opt-out. We communicate with our members regularly through email. We confirm payments via email and send information about membership dues or conference registration payments. We limit the use of these types of email to ensure clear lines of communications.

However, we also will update members and recent members about new products and services, upcoming events, abstract submission deadlines, newsletters, and other general information about the association and its annual business. Each of these emails will include an “unsubscribe” link that will allow you to opt-out of any promotional email. We caution that once you have unsubscribed, you no longer will receive promotional email from the association. You can’t opt-out of receiving administrative communications such as membership renewals, elections, and annual meeting notices.

Access. You can access the information we hold about you at any time by viewing your membership record on the website or by contacting us directly.

Amend. You are able to correct any inaccuracies in your membership record through the members-only section of the website. Or you can contact us to update or correct any inaccuracies in your personal information.

Move. Your personal information is portable. You have the flexibility to move your data to other service providers as you wish.

Erase and forget. In certain situations, for example when the information we hold about you no longer is relevant or is incorrect, you can request that we erase your data.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at info@ooamed.org, or 608-268-4718. In your request, please make clear what personal information you would like removed, or whether you would like to exercise your right to have your record completely deleted. For your protection, we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as possible.

Please note that we may need to retain certain information for record-keeping purposes and/or to complete any transactions you began prior to requesting the change or deletion unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (for example, for regulatory purposes).

CONTACT INFORMATION

Thank you for reviewing our Privacy Policy. We welcome your comments or questions about this Privacy Policy. If you have any feedback, we encourage you to contact us at AAOM, 2424 American Lane, Madison, WI 53704, info@AAOM.org, or 608-268-4718.