What do we collect and how

Anonymous and Aggregated Web Traffic Information

General traffic, site usage and pages accessed, browser information, length-of-stay information, and location data, is collected and stored in log files. This type of information is collected and shared on an anonymous, aggregated basis meaning that we do not connect this information to your name or other personal information.

Personal Information (non-financial)

We may collect all or some of the following types of personal information: first and last name, street address, city, state, zip code, telephone number, email address, professional and educational history, demographic information and subject of inquiry, including in the following contexts:

• APA Website Registration: When you register to at our websites, we ask for your name, email address and a password.
• APA Membership Application: When applying to become an APA member, we ask for contact information, including mobile phone, medical school, university, degree dates, location, birthday, residency and fellowship information, board certification and ethics questions. We may collect and track your contact information (address and phone number) and APA Member ID number. When you personalize the website, we retain the preferences you select so that you will not have to reenter the information each time you access our website. You can access your profile by entering your user name and password each time you use the website.
• Event Registration: If you register to participate in an APA event, program, or promotion such as the APA Annual Meeting using online or paper registration forms, we collect and store your name, address, phone number, email address, and any additional information you voluntarily provide on the registration form.
• Products/Programs: In connection with certain online learning products, subscriptions and programs hosted by APA or one of our vendors on APA's behalf, we may collect some contact information and other background information. We may also ask about race and other demographic information when required to do so by a government agency that has provided grant funding for the opportunity. The option to provide or decline to provide race and demographic information is voluntary.
• Product Purchase: If you purchase a book, subscription product, or other item from APA we will collect the information necessary to fulfill your order, which may include name, address, phone number, email address and any additional information you voluntarily provide on the order form.
• Requests: We collect information volunteered by users, including from surveys or requests via "Contact APA." We also may collect email addresses of those who communicate with us via email.
• APA Member Search: We disclose the contact information APA members provide in the APA Member Directory. The directory is a reference tool for APA members only. Users of the directory are prohibited from providing the contact information (name, address, phone number) contained in the directory to others or using it for promotional or survey purposes without the written permission of the APA. Excessive use or abuse of the directory may result in loss of access for the user. APA will not include your contact information in the APA Member Directory if you opt out.
• Other Information: For some goods and services you also have the option of voluntarily offering additional information about yourself which may include demographic information, such as race or gender, and information about your practice of medicine and professional interests.

Financial Information.

We collect financial information to fulfill products or services you order. When you place an order online with us, register for an event, or pay your dues electronically, standard credit card information (card number, card type, expiration date, etc.) is collected through a third-party payer who is compliant with Payment Card Industry data security standards. The third-party payer provides us with, and we store, the last four digits of your credit card number, which is retained for purposes of issuing applicable refunds.

Information from Third Parties.

APA uses third parties to help promote, market and sell our products and services. We may receive from and exchange with these third parties information about you. Examples include the following:

What we do with the information we collect

We process your information to provide the products or services you request from us; and communicating with our members, meeting attendees, and other users about, and to provide access to, education and science via APA's in-person conferences and online learning programs, tools for practice management and patient education (including clinical practice guidelines), publications, and other products and services pertinent to APA's promotion of quality psychiatric care and efforts to enhance APA member career satisfaction. The APA exists for the benefit of its members and users and through the support of its customers. Processing your information for the purposes described is necessary for us to conduct the business of the APA. When we use your information attempt to balance our legitimate business interests and the necessity of processing your information with how such processing impacts you.

If you have any questions or concerns about our processing of your information, please contact us by email at [email protected] or phone at (202) 559-3900.

We'll ask for your consent before using your information for a purpose that extends beyond those described in this Privacy Policy or what you may reasonably expect from a medical specialty society.

The APA works and shares information with vendors, including in the following categories, to help fulfill our mission and process your information for the purposes described in this document: district branch of the APA; publication sales agent and platform; conference registration manager and event service provider; payment processor; bulk email and postal mail communication manager; conferences app developer; online learning manager; syllabi, abstract, and presentation manager; online communities' manager; volunteer management provider; distributors; and survey provider. APA provides contact information for its members and other customers who wish to receive informational newsletter offerings (such as Psychiatric News) to third-party vendors who transmit APA materials on APA's behalf. APA also shares limited personal information with other nonprofit organizations and government agencies for the purposes of complying with requirements related to its educational offerings and other accreditation services it offers to APA members and customers (e.g., continuing medical education, educational grant requirements, and board certification accreditation information).

These outside companies are required to use information to perform the services and actions for which they have been engaged by APA and are not authorized to use such information for any other purpose.

APA may provide a list of contact information other than email address for its North American members or event attendees from North America to organizations who request such information because they wish to engage with psychiatric professionals.

You may be asked by specific APA vendors to consent to their processing of your information when such processing will be subject to their privacy policy. We encourage you to review such policies closely and be sure that you agree to them before providing your consent.

Some APA websites may provide links (including any link through an on-line banner advertisement) to other sites on the Internet. These other sites are maintained by third parties over which APA exercises no control. The appearance of any such third-party links is not intended to endorse any particular company or product. If you decide to access any of the third-party sites linked to the APA websites, you do so entirely at your own risk and information you submit to them will be governed by their privacy policy, not this one. APA is not responsible for the services, content, conduct or handling of materials by any third-party advertisers appearing on an APA website.

What are cookies and how do we use them?

As part of offering and providing customizable and personalized services, we use cookies and other online tracking technologies (such as pixel tags and web beacons) on our sites to store and sometimes track information about you to:

The types of technologies we use include the following:

Cookies

A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a Web server and stored on your computer's hard drive. Cookies enable us to identify your browser as a unique user. Cookies may involve the transmission of information from us to you and from you to us. Cookies may also be used by another party on our behalf to transfer information to us in accordance with their privacy policy. Some cookies are "persistent cookies." They are used by us each time you access our website. Other cookies are "session cookies." Session cookies are used only during a specific browsing session. We may use a session cookie, for example, to remember that you have already navigated through a particular menu. We may also use "analytics cookies" that allow web analytics services to recognize your browser or device and, for example, identify whether you have visited our website before, what you have previously viewed or clicked on, and how you found us. This information is provided anonymously for statistical analysis only. Analytics cookies are usually persistent cookies.

You may disable browser cookies in your browser or set your browser to warn you when a cookie is being sent. You may lose some features or functionality when you disable cookies. Remember, also, that disabling cookies is browser specific. If you use both Microsoft Edge and Chrome, you will need to disable cookies in each browser.

Pixel Tags

We also employ a software technology known as a pixel tag or Web beacon. A pixel tag is a line of code that we place on our websites or in emails which allows us to analyze our advertising and the general usage patterns of visitors to our websites. Pixel tags help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content or promotions are effective. Unless you consent, we do not collect personally identifiable information from you using pixel tags. You may not disable pixel tags.

Social Networking (Indirect Collection)

Our websites permit you to use a third party social networking platform such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Linked-In and Google+. This includes use of social media plugins such as Facebook "Like", Tweet, Google "+1" buttons, etc. When you use these social networking platforms and plugins, your username and password for the available service are collected from you on these services and may be shared with us. We also use the ShareThis plugin to allow you to easily share information from our website on various social networking platforms, email or text message. You control when you share information from our website using the ShareThis plugin. When you use social networking platforms and plugins, you share your information with them and their privacy policy applies to disclosure of that information. In addition, they may be able to collect information about you, including your activity, or may notify your connections on the social networking platform about your use of the website. Such services may allow your activity to be monitored across multiple websites for purposes of delivering more targeted advertising. Please note that their privacy policies apply, and we encourage you to read them. We may add new social networking plugins and buttons to our website from time to time.

Analytics (Indirect Collection)

Our websites use Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, which are web analysis services offered by Google, Inc. to help APA analyze how users interact with our sites. You can learn more about these products from Google's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. APA also makes use of Google AdWords, another offering that uses cookies and remarketing technologies to deliver relevant information and advertisements to users who have previously visited APA websites. You may opt-out of the use of such web analytic products by downloading the "Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on" browser plugin offered by Google. We use Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to analyze the use of our website. We do not transfer personal information to Google Analytics.

APA may retain the non-identifying information derived from our use of cookies, web beacons, Google Analytics, and other similar technologies for up to twenty-six (26) months.

Choices you have about your information

If you are a registered user of an APA website, an APA member, or event attendee, you can review, correct and change your personal information and your communication preferences by logging into the website and visiting your account profile page. You can control what APA communications you receive by indicating your preferences in the customer relationship management platform available at my.psychiatry.org. The email preference center within this platform allows you to identify the products and services about which you wish to receive APA communications. It also gives you the option of opting out of all marketing communications from APA (though you will continue to receive transactional messages related to your account and any products or services you order).

If you select the 'unsubscribe' link in any promotional email from APA or contact us directly at [email protected] to unsubscribe from communications, APA will stop sending promotional materials to you. You may also send us an email at [email protected] to request access to, correction of, or deletion of any personal information that you have provided to us. Please note we may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

APA vendors, including those described in this Privacy Policy, with whom you engage directly, should provide information on reviewing, correcting, or changing your personal information or communication preferences within their systems.

Our websites do not support "Do Not Track" (DNT) codes, which are used in the privacy preferences of web browsers.

How do we protect your information?

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information we hold from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorized way. We limit access to your personal information to those employees or vendors who have a genuine business purpose to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorized manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach when we are legally required to do so.

How long we keep your information

We keep your information to provide the service you've requested of us (such as membership, meeting attendance, publication subscription, etc.) and to fulfill the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including for twelve (12) months after any commercial relationship between you and APA expires. At or about the twelve-month mark, if we no longer need to use your information for the purpose for which we collected it and there is no need for us to keep it to comply with our legal or other regulatory obligations, we will either remove it from our systems or depersonalize it so that we cannot identify you, with the exception of an email address which APA will keep and use for the sole purpose of informing you of APA products and services in which you may be interested.

APA vendors who contact you directly as described in this policy, may have different retention periods for your information, which you should discuss directly with the applicable vendor.