We, Western Veterinary Conference ("WVC") are strongly committed to protecting your privacy and providing a safe online experience for all of our users and subscribers while offering the highest quality user experience to them. Because we gather certain types of information about and from you, our users and subscribers, in order to fulfill your requests and better serve your needs, we feel you should fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the collection and use of this information. This Privacy Policy discloses what information we gather, how we use it, how to correct or change it, and what steps we take to safeguard personal information provided to us both online and offline. Please read the complete Privacy Policy below, as well as our Terms of Use, and contact us if you have any questions.
WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU?
You can visit our Website, access certain articles and materials, and check on offerings without giving us any personally identifiable information. However, in order to provide users and our subscribers with the most efficient and enhanced personalized service and attention, we may request information about you in certain circumstances and collect certain information automatically. We also sometimes use contact lists and other information which are obtained from third parties. For the convenience of all of our customers and to better serve you, we create and maintain a customer account that includes all the collected personal information we may have with respect to each individual customer. Nevertheless, you can update or correct your contact information or change your preferences about receiving offers and information from third parties or us at any time.
Information You Volunteer
We collect personally
identifiable information that you volunteer to us (such as your name, mailing
address, e-mail address, phone number, age, gender, family information and/or
similar demographic information), when you subscribe to our Website, place an
order through our Website (see the section below for more information on
subscriptions, account management and orders), request a catalog or voluntarily
register on our Website. This additional information is optional or may be
requested anonymously in connection with a survey. Website
visitors may register to receive our e-mail updates, or enter occasional online
contests and/or sweepstakes. Registration may also be required to participate
in certain message boards, bulletin boards, chat rooms or surveys available on
our Website. Sometimes registration can be accomplished by submitting only a
user name and password. Other offerings may require the submission of
additional information. For example, we may ask questions about the nature of
your practice. Registration forms will indicate what information is required
and what information (if any) is optional.
Information Collected Automatically
We may also automatically collect your IP and referring Website addresses, browser type, domain name and Website access times. This information helps facilitate your online experience on our Website. In addition, we use cookies to track usage patterns on our Website and to control the display of ads, as well as to offer other functionalities (such as screening, helping to track items in your shopping basket, and "recognizing" you to speed up your log-in when you visit our Website). You can turn off cookies, but that will affect your online experience and you may not be able to complete an order or transaction. Please see below for more detail on cookies.
Other Information
We conduct market research so that we can continually improve our Website and may purchase lists of potential subscribers or customers from third parties. Those lists may include information on current subscribers or customers. This information is included in our database in order to help us serve you better by, for example, minimizing multiple mailings and e-mailings and providing information tailored to your interests.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH COLLECTED INFORMATION?
We use information you provide to fulfill your requests and improve our Website, products and services. We may, from time to time, produce reports for our partners, sponsors and vendors containing anonymous, aggregate information about our users and subscribers, such as demographic, age and online usage information. This information allows us to provide content and offers that are most relevant to our subscribers and users and to work more closely with our partners, sponsors and vendors. We do not include any personally identifiable information of our users in these reports.
We use personal information so that we may display or send custom, personalized content to our Website visitors and send newsletters, mail, e-mails, features, promotional material, surveys and other updates, information or offers to our users and subscribers. From time to time, we may also establish business relationships with other persons or entities that we believe to be trustworthy and whose privacy policies are generally consistent with our privacy policy (“Choice Partners”). In such cases we might share and cross-reference information, including personal information about you that will enable our Choice Partners to contact you regarding products and services that you might find of interest. We encourage you to visit the sites of these Choice Partners and evaluate their privacy policies for yourselves.
To serve you better, we may also combine information you give us with publicly available information and information which we receive from our Choice Partners or other third-parties. We use the total mix of information to enhance and personalize your user experience with us, communicate with you about our products and events that may be of interest to you, and for other promotional purposes as we determine from time to time.
A user may, at any time, opt out of receiving such information by sending a request via email to WVC at info@wvc.org. We also use collected information to evaluate and administer our products and services, fulfill customer requests, announce contest winners, respond to any future problems, such as difficulties in navigating our Website or accessing certain features, and to gauge user trends to determine what products and services are most popular with users.
Where applicable, we may also allow users of our Website to send articles or links by e-mail to other parties who may be interested in them. We do not retain any e-mail addresses (unless you are a member who has already voluntarily provided your e-mail address) of either the sender or recipient of such articles or links after they are sent, and we do not share "send to a friend" e-mail addresses with third parties. Of course, we use personal information to allow you to subscribe online or to make product purchases on our Website. We and our technical and fulfillment agents, partners and consultants follow careful procedures to safeguard credit card data in connection with your transactions and adhere to certain legal requirements.
HOW DO WE SHARE PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Personal information is available to WVC and the technical and fulfillment agents, partners and consultants who make our Website, products and services available to you. Anonymous information is available to our advertisers, sponsors and promotional and business partners. We share your personal information with third parties only as described below.
WVC and Its Agents.
WVC may access
anonymous, aggregate demographic data and any personal information you provide
for internal marketing purposes, including sending you notices of contest
winners, new Website features, services or products we offer, and any other
orders. To facilitate subscriptions and orders, WVC will cache your order
information, and create an authorization with a merchant account (e.g., your
credit card company). Website hosting firms, technical and database
consultants, advertising agencies, order processing partners, customer service
partners and fulfillment firms, including firms assisting us in offering
contests and promotions, may have access to personally identifiable information
in the course of making our products and services available. All companies
working for and with WVC must comply with our privacy policies, and are not
permitted to sell your information to third parties or to use it except as
authorized by us and you, or as permitted or required by law.
Participating Vendors.
From time to
time, our Website may offer opportunities to make purchases online from special
participating vendors. When these online purchase opportunities arise, we will
also give participating manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers or distributors
the order information and authorization for the merchant bank. Any time you
order from a participating vendor, that vendor will automatically have all the
information related to the order. Participating vendors have their own privacy
polices, and they may use that information to advise you directly of other
products and offerings that they provide. WVC is not responsible for these
third parties' respective privacy policies, and we urge you to inquire about
their information collection and use practices. In addition, all vendors will
receive the same anonymous, aggregate data that our partners receive.
Credit Card Companies.
As in any
transaction, your credit card company will have all relevant information about
the name of the vendor, item(s) purchased, date, total cost and other
information necessary to process the transaction. WVC will not otherwise
provide any personal data to your credit card company without your permission.
Advertisers, Sponsors and Promotional and Business Partners.
We share
anonymous, aggregate demographic information (such as gender, age, etc.), and
anonymous information obtained from cookies and similar technologies, with our
advertisers, sponsors, promotional and business partners, and participating
vendors. No personally identifiable information is disclosed to any of these
third parties in providing these reports. Credit card numbers, bank account
numbers and passwords are not shared with advertisers, sponsors or promotional
partners, and are only shared with the specific vendor(s) with whom you place
an online order.
Information which we obtain in non-Internet transactions is handled differently. We may share offline contact information with third parties, who may send you offers or information about their products or services. You must opt-out if you do not wish to receive information from third parties or us by mail.
Your e-mail address is not shared with third parties unless you agree to receive information, by opting-in, from third parties. In other words, we may extend e-mail offers to users or subscribers on behalf of our business partners about a particular product or service that may be of interest to you, but only if you have indicated that you would like to receive these offers. If you wish to receive such offers, we will not share or disclose your name or e-mail address to those business partners, but will send you the information or offers on their behalf. As a result, although WVC may receive a fee from our business partners for this service, WVC sends the offers so that your personal information is never shared with any outside third party. Of course, you may opt out of receiving these offers at any time.
Sometimes we will give you the opportunity to opt in to receive e-mail offers from third parties not affiliated with WVC. If you decide to accept these offers, we will provide, with your consent, your contact information to the third party. On our Websites, visitors will also have opportunities to sign up directly with certain advertisers and sponsors to enter contests or sweepstakes or to receive e-mail updates and other information directly from them. Third party vendors and advertisers will also use technical and other consultants. We urge visitors to review carefully the privacy policies of these firms. WVC is not responsible for the privacy policies and procedures of any third party.
You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose information, personal or otherwise, online in any community area (whether through WVC's Website or any other service available online), that information can be collected and used by others. For example, if you use chat, forums, bulletin boards, blogs or message boards, or if you post personal information online (such as your e-mail address), you may receive unsolicited messages from others. WVC has no control over this use of your personal information.
Important Note
We reserve the right to use or disclose any information without notice or consent for the following purposes: as needed to satisfy any law, regulation or legal request; to conduct investigations of consumer complaints or possible breaches of law; to protect the integrity of our Website and our property; to protect the safety of our visitors or others; to fulfill your requests; or to cooperate in any legal investigation.
HOW DO WE USE COOKIES?
Your Web browser offers so-called "cookies" which, if you allow their use, store small amounts of data on your computer when you visit a Website. Cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information about you and therefore cannot be used to identify you personally. However, cookies assist us in tracking which of our features you like best and make it easier to use our site. We use a cookie in order to customize our content according to your preferences. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying your browser. Although, our Website is viewable even if you disable the cookie function on your browser. However, if you disable cookies, some advanced and customized features or offerings will not be available to you. Our third party advertisers may also use cookies.
HOW DO WE USE WEB BEACONS?
Some of our Web pages may contain electronic images known as Web beacons, which are also called "single-pixel gifs." These images allow us to count users who have visited those pages and to deliver services. We also may include Web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or newsletters in order to count how many messages have been opened and acted upon. Web beacons are not used to access your personally identifiable information but they are a technique we use to compile aggregated statistics about our Website usage. Web beacons collect only a limited range of information, including the time and date of page view, cookie number and description of the page on which the Web beacon resides. Some of our Web pages may also contain Web beacons placed there by our partners to help us determine the effectiveness of our campaigns.
WHAT ABOUT THIRD PARTY ADVERTISERS?
To the extent our Website contains third party advertising, this content may contain cookies and may also contain Web beacons. Unlike cookies and Web beacons used by WVC in content we control on our Website, we do not have access to information collected from cookies or Web beacons received in connection with third party content. While we may use third parties which we believe are reputable to serve some or all of the content placed within our Website, third parties may use information (not including personally identifiable information) about your visits to our Website and other websites to assist in serving their third party content to you. They may also share anonymous information with their clients such as date/time of the content shown, the specific content shown, the IP address and other similar information.
HOW CAN YOU CONTROL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We believe that choice in how and when you are contacted is key to customer satisfaction. Therefore, we offer several ways for you to update your contact information and/or change your preferences.
- If you have an online account at our Website, you may be able to log on and update or change your contact or account information. Check the Website for further information.
- You may unsubscribe to any of our online e-mail updates by following the unsubscribe instructions in the body of any e-mail message.
- You may write to us and update your contact information or ask that we not share your personal contact information with third parties at: Western Veterinary Conference, Attn: Online Privacy Coordinator, 2425 E Oquendo Road, Las Vegas, Nevada 89120. In those instances, we will retain your information in a "do not promote" file in our database.
- You may also contact us via e-mail at info@wvc.org.
We will take commercially reasonable steps to implement your opt-out requests promptly; but you may still receive promotional information from us by mail for up to 60 days due to printing and mailing schedules, and up to 10 days for e-mail. You may also continue to receive information from those third parties to whom your information was previously disclosed.
SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt important information, such as your credit card data, in an effort to prevent unauthorized access during transmission of your orders over the Internet. We incorporate standard industry practices internally and with our service providers, which we believe suits the degree of sensitivity of the information involved to maintain the security of your personal information and to avoid its disclosure except as described in this Privacy Policy. Your personal information may also be protected by the password you created when you subscribed at our Website. The confidentiality of any password is yours to protect. You may change it at anytime by following the instructions on the Website.
Although we have implemented systems and procedures to secure the data maintained by us, security during Internet transmissions can never be assured. Our policy is to limit access to personal data to those WVC employees or agents with a specific need to access or retrieve this information. We store data on multiple service systems, in controlled environments. To maintain security, we conduct internal reviews of our security measures on a regular basis. Remember, however, that any personal information you post in chat rooms, blogs or message boards is available to anyone.
CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
Some websites
may include features or material that may be appealing to children under the
age of 13. WVC is strongly committed to protecting the safety and privacy of
children who visit our Website. We do not knowingly collect personal
information online from children under 13. Our Websites include
content and features that we believe to be unsuitable for children under 13 and
which are not necessarily monitored. We encourage all parents to talk to their
children about online safety and to monitor their children's use of the
Internet.
CHANGES IN CORPORATE STRUCTURE
In the course of our business, we may engage in the sale of certain assets and the company itself, or parts of it, may be sold, merged or otherwise transferred. In such transactions and changes in ownership, user information, whether personally identifiable or otherwise, may constitute one of the transferred assets. WVC will notify affected users in accordance with the procedure for changing this Privacy Policy described below.
VISITORS AND SUBSCRIBERS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
Our Website and the servers that make the Website available worldwide are located in the United States. The Internet laws in the United States govern all matters relating to the Website. Any information you provide in subscribing to our Website or registering or ordering at our Website will be transferred to the United States. By visiting our Website and submitting information, you authorize this transfer, processing and use. WVC makes no EU Safe Harbor representations with respect to any data collected or used on the Website. For further background about the EU Safe Harbor, please refer to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Website at http://www.export.gov/safeharbor.
CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY
We will
occasionally update this Privacy Policy as necessary to protect our users and
to comply with a changing environment. We recommend that you check the Privacy
Policy when you visit our Website to be sure that you are aware of and
understand our current policy. If we make material changes to this policy, or
in how we use or collect your personally identifiable information, we will
prominently post such changes prior to implementing the change. We will not
make any retroactive material changes in how we handle previously collected
personal information unless you allow us to do so, or unless we are legally
required to do so, and in such a case we will e-mail registered Website
subscribers information on material changes to this Privacy Policy.
CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please e-mail us at info@wvc.org.
Or you can contact us by mail at:
Western Veterinary Conference
2425 E. Oquendo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89120
Fax: 702.739.6420
Updated June, 2011