North American Spine Society
Privacy Policy
Last Updated: 6 January 2021
Your privacy is important to the North American Spine Society ("NASS", "we", or " us"). We developed this Privacy Policy to
describe how we collect, use, disclose, and otherwise process Personal
Information about you, including through https://www.spine.org/ and any other
NASS websites or applications that link to this Privacy Policy
(collectively, the “Site”). If you have any
questions or comments regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact us at info@spine.org.
1. Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may revise and update this Privacy Policy from time to time and will
post the updated Privacy Policy to the Site. If these changes are material
(i.e., changes we believe you will find important), we will
provide notice of changes by e-mail or by posting notice of the changes on
our Site. Where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent.
2. What is Personal Information?
“Personal Information” is information that,
either alone or in combination with other information, identifies you. When
we combine other information (i.e., information that does not, on
its own, identify you) with Personal Information about you, we treat the
combined information as Personal Information.
3. How We Collect and Use Personal Information
A. Personal Information You Provide to Us
We collect the following types of information that you provide to us:
In various areas of the Site and in printed materials, we provide you the
opportunity to submit a form with basic contact information, such as your
name, company or organization, e-mail, phone number, or mailing address.
We use such information to inform you of new products, technical
information and services, and upcoming events that may be of interest based
on your participation in NASS, expressed interests, or practice area
engagement. After your membership expires, we may continue to send you
occasional e-mails to provide you with offers to rejoin NASS or attend
NASS-related events. If you no longer wish to receive these e-mails, the
opt-out process is described in Section 5 of this Privacy Policy.
In addition, if you choose, you may participate in a NASS e-mail list by
subscribing on the Site or by contacting NASS staff directly. You may
unsubscribe from these e-mail lists by following the unsubscribe
instructions found within the e-mail.
We process your e-mail and password to enable you to securely log into the
Site, and we process information regarding your NASS profile to
appropriately control access to your public-facing profile. We process this
Personal Information only as necessary to provide you services on the Site
under our Terms of Use and
to further our legitimate interests in protecting the Site and content.
NASS uses the information provided through membership forms to process
membership applications and related requests. For example, NASS processes
information such as your name, gender, date of birth, states in which you
are licensed, educational background, and professional background when
provided in a membership application. We also retain information contained
in a resume or curriculum vitae as part of your membership application to
serve our legitimate interest in verifying your identity and your
professional attainment and qualifications for various NASS activities. To
provide you with the benefits of membership, we process certain
membership-related information such as your membership category, purchases,
member ID, date joined, last sign-on, and last disclosure. We also process
membership and Personal Information in connection with a public member
directory at
www.knowyourback.org
and through a private members-only directory on our Site. You may adjust
what information is shared and to whom through your member profile. We also
archive membership information for historical purposes.
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Video Library and Continuing Medical Education Certificates
When you access our video library, we collect information relating to the
OnDemand courses you select and the meetings and conferences you
participate in for the purpose of delivering your requested content and to
further our legitimate interest in better understanding your interests in
our educational subjects so we can improve our future offerings. Similarly,
when you register for an event, we process Personal Information, such as
special accommodations requested, in order to reserve your space at the
event and to further our legitimate interest in preparing for the event. We
also track your Continuing Medical Education certificates attained through
our site or through a third party provider as applicable for the purpose of
allowing you to maintain your credentials and meet your continuing
education requirements.
In some cases, you may be required by NASS or the Accreditation Council for
Continuing Medical Education to voluntarily disclose certain
conflict-of-interest or financial-related information. For example, you may
be required to make a disclosure if you serve on a NASS committee or the
NASS board of directors, or if you publish or present with NASS. NASS
processes Personal Information in connection with these disclosures, and in
some cases, may publish the disclosure. For example, NASS may publish your
name, a funding partner’s name, and funding amount received in connection
with a publication or presentation. For more information, please review our
Disclosure Policy
.
When you purchase a membership, subscription, register for an event, or buy
products from us, third-party service providers acting on our behalf
process payment information, including payment card details and billing and
shipping addresses, to help us fulfill your orders.
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Information Collected through Various Forms
We gather information from online forms that are often similar or identical
to the information we gather from traditional printed forms. When you
submit information through forms, whether offline or on the Site, you
voluntarily provide us with the information requested, and we will use the
information in order to take the action requested, to complete a requested
transaction, or for other reasons related to the purposes for which you
provide the information.
For example, an application for membership form allows individuals to apply
for certain categories of membership. We use information submitted through
application for membership forms to confer membership benefits based on
category selected. As another example, we post career-related forms to
attract qualified candidates for various positions. We provide forms on our
Site via hyperlink to a static PDF or through a dynamic form entry process.
In addition, we may check the information a user has provided via any forms
against any information we have about the user in its customer database. We
do this to help further our legitimate interest in maintaining the most
current and accurate information about its customers.
B. Information We Automatically Collect through our Site
We collect the following types of information automatically when you use
the Site:
When you use our Site, our servers automatically record information,
including your Internet Protocol address (“IP Address”),
browser type, referring URLs (e.g., the site you visited before
coming to our Site), number of clicks, and how you interact with links on
the Site, domain names associated with your internet service provider,
pages viewed, and other such information (collectively, “ Log File Information”). We may also collect similar
information from e-mails sent to you which then help us track which e-mails
are opened and which links are clicked by recipients. We use Log File
Information collected from our implementation of the Site to further our
legitimate interests in securing the Site by identifying potential threats
and vulnerabilities, and in analyzing the effectiveness of our Site to
improve the Site’s function and content.
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Cookies and Similar Technology
When you use or access the Site, we use cookies, device identifiers, and
similar technologies such as pixels, web beacons, and local storage to
collect information about how you use the Site. We process the information,
including Personal Information, collected through such technologies to
further our legitimate interests in operating the Site, enhance your
experience through personalization, and help us better understand the
features of the Site that you and other users are most interested in.
Some of our service providers (described in Section 4, below) and third
parties from which we receive content (such as Your Membership, a career
services manager and provider) use cookies or other methods to gather
information regarding your use of our Site. For example, we use Your
Membership to allow you to easily identify career opportunities on the
Site, and Your Membership uses cookies which you can opt out of, or learn
more about, by reading its Privacy Policy. Such
third parties may use these cookies or other tracking methods for their own
purposes by relating information about your use of our Site with any of
Personal Information that they may have. The use of such information by a
third party depends on the privacy policy of that third party. If you would
like more information, please see Section 12 for our contact information.
We and our advertisers (through the advertising network, Feathr) use
cookies and similar technologies to collect information for advertising
purposes, such as which advertisements were viewed, how often they were
clicked, and device location information to provide you with content and
advertising that might be of particular interest to you. To opt out of
Feathr’s use of cookies, please visit its privacy policy here:
https://privacy.feathr.co/
.
For further information on how to
request to opt-out of an advertiser’s use of cookies, visit the
National Advertising Initiative
or the
Digital Advertising Alliance
. If you opt out of such cookies, you will continue to receive
advertisements, but those advertisements will no longer be personalized for
you.
Most browsers provide you with the ability to block, delete, or disable
cookies, and your mobile device may allow you to disable transmission of
device identifiers. If you choose to reject cookies or block device
identifiers, some features of the Site may not be available or some
functionality may be limited or unavailable. Please review the help pages
of your browser or mobile device for assistance with changing your
settings.
NASS does not track Site users over time and across third-party websites to
provide targeted advertising. Accordingly, we do not currently respond or
take any action with respect to web browser "do not track" signals or other
mechanisms that provide consumers the ability to exercise choice regarding
the collection of Personal Information about an individual consumer's
online activities over time and across third-party web sites or online
services.
4. To Whom We Disclose Personal Information
We will not disclose Personal Information about you except as set forth in
this Privacy Policy or with your consent. This section describes to whom we
disclose Personal Information, and for what purposes:
-
Trusted Partners.
We disclose information to trusted NASS Sites including
connect.spine.org, buyersguide.spine.org, marketing.spine.org, and
spine.org/advocacy to provide our members an efficient user experience
when seeking certain NASS-supported products and services. Trusted
Partners use your information for the limited business purpose to which
NASS assigns to them.
-
NASS Committees or Groups.
When you apply for, or participate in, a NASS Committee group or other
activity, we disclose information from your resume or curriculum vitae
with other members to determine your eligibility for committee
appointment. Additionally, to facilitate communication, members’
contact information is made available to other members of their
committee or group. The members of the committee or group agree to use
such information only for limited NASS business purposes.
-
Accrediting bodies.
We may share information with various certifying, licensing,
accrediting and governing bodies, as needed, to fulfill Continuing
Medical Education or other regulatory obligations. We share this
information for the limited business purpose of supporting
accreditation and licensing requirements.
-
Conference Attendees.
To facilitate networking among conference attendees and our exhibitors,
we provide our exhibitors with the names, physical mailing addresses,
and specialties of conference attendees. If, while attending a
conference event, you allow exhibitors to scan your badge, you consent
to the disclosure of additional contact information (such as telephone
number and e-mail address) to such exhibitors.
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Contracted Hotels.
We may provide a list of conference attendees' information to the
hotels we contract with for meetings and events for the limited purpose
of conducting audits for hotel room block attrition calculations.
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Conference or Course Partners.
NASS, at times, may work in conjunction with partner societies to host
a course or event. In such cases, we may share the information of those
who register for such courses and/or events through NASS with the
society we are working with on that particular event.
-
Our Service Providers.
We employ service providers to perform tasks on our behalf and to
assist us in providing the Site. A listing of our third party service
providers can be found
here
.
-
Content Delivery Networks.
We use content delivery networks, such as MaxCDN, that helps us deliver
certain content (such as FontAwesome icons). By providing content
through a third-party intermediary, we are able to offer quicker
download times on our Site by leveraging content that you have cached
from another website that uses the same service. Such content delivery
networks collect Log File Information and may also set cookies to track
users across third-party websites and over time. We do not control how
content delivery networks use the information collected, including for
targeted advertising purposes, and whether such information is combined
with other Personal Information in their possession.
-
Advertising.
From time to time, we engage advertising services that target
advertisements on third-party websites based on cookies or other
information indicating previous interaction with our Site.
-
Google Analytics.
We use Google Analytics, an analytics service, to help us analyze the
traffic on our Site. For more information on Google Analytics’
processing of Personal Information, please see
“How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps.”
-
Law Enforcement, Government Agencies, Courts, and Reporting
Entities.
We may disclose Personal Information at the request of law enforcement
or government agencies or in response to subpoenas, court orders, or
other legal process to establish, protect, or exercise our legal or
other rights or to defend against a legal claim or as otherwise
required or allowed by law, or to protect the rights, property, or
safety of a Customer or any other person. We may also disclose Personal
Information to investigate or prevent a violation by you of any
contractual or other relationship with us or your illegal or harmful
activity.
5. E-Mail Opt-Out
NASS values the privacy and communication preferences of its members and
customers, and maintains an e-mail communication and anti-spam policy. You
may choose not to receive marketing e-mails from us and can opt out of such
e-mails through your account settings or using the links at the bottom of
the emails.
6. International Transfers to U.S.
If you are using the Site or otherwise communicating with NASS from outside
the United States, please be aware that Personal Information about you may
be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. The data
protection laws of the United States might not be as comprehensive as those
in your country.
By using the Site, you consent to your information being transferred to
the United States for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
7. Your Data Subject Rights
We provide you with access to—and the ability to edit or delete—certain
categories of Personal Information through the Profile page. Our opt-out
features, described in Section 5, also enable you to exercise your right to
object to certain processing activities.
If you would like to access, amend, erase, export (i.e., data
portability), or object to or restrict the processing of Personal
Information, you may submit a request to administrator@spine.org. We
will promptly review all such requests in accordance with applicable laws.
Depending on where you live, you may have a right to lodge a complaint with
a supervisory authority or other regulatory agency if you believe that we
have violated any of the rights concerning Personal Information about you.
We encourage you to first reach out to us at administrator@spine.org, so we
have an opportunity to address your concerns directly before you do so.
8. Personal Information from Children
We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children. If we learn
that we have collected Personal Information from children, and if we do not
have a lawful basis to process such Personal Information under applicable
law, we will promptly take steps to delete such Personal Information.
9. Retention of Personal Information
We will retain Personal Information about you for the period necessary to
fulfill the purposes for which Personal Information about you has been
collected as outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention
period is required by law.
10. How We Protect the Confidentiality and Integrity of Personal
Information About You
We have implemented security measures to protect Personal Information from
loss, misuse, and alteration. Despite these efforts to store Personal
Information in a secure operating environment that is not available to the
public, we cannot guarantee the security of Personal Information during its
transmission or its storage on our systems. Further, while we attempt to
ensure the integrity and security of Personal Information, we cannot
guarantee that our security measures will prevent third parties such as
so-called hackers from illegally obtaining access to Personal Information.
We do not represent or warrant that Personal Information about you will be
protected against, loss, misuse, or alteration by third parties.
11. Links to Third Party Websites
Our Site may contain links to third party websites. Please be aware that we
are not responsible for the privacy practices of third party websites you
choose to visit. If you provide any information directly to parties other
than us, different rules may apply to the use or disclosure of that
information. We encourage you to investigate and ask questions before
disclosing Personal Information to third parties.
12. Contacting Us
If there are any questions regarding this Privacy Policy you may contact us
using the information below:
North American Spine Society
7075 Veterans Blvd.
Burr Ridge, IL 60527, USA
Phone: (630) 230-3600
info@spine.org
Third Party Service Provider
|
Assistance Provided
|
Your Membership
|
Helps us recruit talented professionals for employment
through our career services page
|
Pronto Marketing
|
Assist our members in acquiring marketing and website
solutions for their practices
|
Constant Contact
|
Assists in sending e-mails and maintaining our mailing
lists
|
Google Analytics
|
Performs statistical analyses
|
A2Z
|
Provides exhibitor booth management and the mobile app for
our Annual Meeting
|
TurnoutNow
|
Monitors activity at our annual meeting to optimize
attendee experience
|
Guidebook
|
Provides mobile apps for NASS’ smaller educational meetings
|
Aristotle
|
Manages member information for advocacy purposes
|
Elsevier
|
Fulfills subscriptions of The Spine Journal for members
|
GTXcel
|
Hosts digital access to SpineLine
|
onPeak
|
Provides housing services for NASS’ Annual Meeting
|
Higher Logic
|
Manages community message boards utilized by members
|
Telepro
|
Assists in managing member renewals
|
Spinal News International
|
Fulfills subscriptions of Spine News International for
members and non-members
|
Content Delivery Networks
|
A category of service providers, such as MaxCDN, that helps
us deliver certain content (e.g., FontAwesome
icons).
|
Freeman Exhibits
|
Assists in planning & executing our Annual Meeting and
other events.
|
Feathr
|
Assists in using data analytics to offer targeted advertising or other content based upon interests.
|