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PRIVACY POLICY.

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Our Commitment to You

Heart Rhythm Advocates, adheres to the same privacy policies as it's affiliated organization the Heart Rhythm Society located at 1325 G Street, Suite 500, Washington D.C. 20005, U.S.A. HRA and HRS values your privacy and recognizes the sensitivity of your personal information. We have crafted our privacy policy to assure you that your personal information, if provided to us, will be treated carefully and appropriately.

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Information Collection and Use

Heart Rhythm Advocates is the sole owner and acts as the data controller of the information collected on www.Heartrhythmadvocates.org. We will not sell, share, or rent this information without your permission, or use it in ways other than those outlined in this statement. This includes your SMS opt-in consent. HRA collects information from visitors at several different points on our site. Personal information provided by you will be used to improve our website and provide you with a more personalized experience. We do reserve the right to disclose user information in response to subpoenas, court orders, or as otherwise required by applicable law, and in those instances where we reasonably determine that disclosing such information is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, or to protect our rights or property, other web site users, or anyone that could be harmed by such activities.

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Information that identifies you as a specific individual will not be disclosed to others without your permission, except for those specific circumstances described in this policy or unless the disclosure is necessary to provide services that you have requested. We will not ask your permission to collect or use aggregate information about website visitors or users of our products or services, since aggregate information does not identify you as a specific individual.

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We are entitled to use your personal information for the purposes set out in this privacy policy because (i) in most cases you provide us with your consent to do so when submitting your personal information, (ii) we have legal, regulatory and compliance obligations that we have to discharge or (iii) the use of your personal data as described may be necessary for our legitimate interests, such as allowing us to effectively and efficiently administer and manage the operation of our activities, maintaining compliance with internal policies and procedures or informing you about our activities.

In addition to these general provisions, we collect and use personal information in the following ways:

 

Disclosures of Relationships and Competing Interests with Industry

As part of HRA's commitment to transparency and accountability, and to attain the highest standards of excellence, HRA maintains independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor in all of its activities. HRS requires Volunteers, Session Participants, and Authors, all as defined in Section 4.1 of the Code of Ethics, to disclose and manage relationships between personal, professional, financial, or business interests when engaged in Society activities. Interests include relationships with for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies with interests or activities related to those of the Society and apply as well to the immediate family or household members with such relationships. While not all relationships are prohibited or harmful, full disclosure of such relationships is required and mechanisms are in place to identify and resolve potential or perceived conflicts of interest. Any relationship from the previous 12-month period that could influence objectivity related to Society activities needs to be disclosed and should be updated as circumstances change, and at least annually.

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All volunteer and session participant disclosure forms are publicly available on HRS' website. Disclosure information is included in every educational presentation and Society-initiated document.

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Recipients of Fellowships and Grants

We may disclose award recipients' personal information, including funding and project summary information, for the purpose of publicizing Heart Rhythm Society awards and/or assessing the subsequent success of the Society's award recipients. You have granted us your permission to do so when you submit an application for a fellowship, travel or other grant to the Society.

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Donors

If you make a donation to the Heart Rhythm Society, your personal information, including your name, beneficiaries, amount of your donation and information about your estate, will be kept strictly confidential, unless you give us permission to release such information. We will honor your request for anonymity, except to the extent that the Society is legally required to disclose the identity of donors.

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Order Fulfillment

We may ask you for certain information, such as credit card information, when you order products or services, or when you register for an educational activity such as Scientific Sessions. We use this information to process your request and may share this information with credit card processing companies, merchants, and other third parties that may need the information for your request to be processed. These organizations have their own privacy and data collection practices, and we are not responsible for their independent policies. We only use your credit card information for completing the requested transaction and it is retained only as necessary for administrative purposes.

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Surveys

From time to time, we request information from members and other constituents via surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary. Information requested may include demographic information, such as name, address, age, membership category or professional affiliation. We use survey information to improve our programs, products and services, support our strategic planning efforts and gauge the satisfaction of our stakeholders.

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Email and SMS Messages

If you consented thereto, the Heart Rhythm Society will send you information about our programs, products and services via e-mail and SMS messages. If you no longer wish to receive our e-mail newsletters or promotional messages, you may opt-out of receiving these communications by following the "unsubscribe" or opt-out instructions in our e-mail and SMS messages. Unsubscribing from e-mail will remove you from all but transaction-based messages from the Society such as membership dues invoices, receipts, registration confirmations, etc., while email opt-outs provide you the opportunity to select specific types of information that you do not wish to receive.

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If you explicitly consented thereto, we may also rent or sell our member or subscriber information, or exchange this information with other organizations. You may choose to opt out of third party solicitations by following the opt-out instructions in the email message that you receive or by logging in to my.HRSonline.org and selecting Communication Preferences. If you have any questions, please call us at +1-202-464-3400.

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Cookies

Like most websites, we use cookies to allow you to move more efficiently through our site. Cookies are small text files that allow us to recognize repeat users and facilitate their access to and use of the site. Cookies do not collect personally identifying information; they collect information related to the characteristics of your computer, or when and how you reached our website. Generally, cookies work by assigning a unique number to the user that has no meaning outside the assigning site. They do not pose a threat to a user's system or files. We use this information only for purposes of planning and tracking, as well as assessing the technical function of our site. By understanding how our site is accessed, we can continually improve it to respond to users' interests.

However, we cannot control the use of cookies by advertisers or third parties hosting data on our behalf. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to deny or accept the cookie feature. Please note that cookies may be necessary to enable you to use certain features on our website.

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To learn more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, please visit our cookie declaration page. Alternatively, you can search the internet for other independent information on cookies.

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Links

The Heart Rhythm Society website contains links to other sites, including third-party vendors and advertisers of products and services. These vendors and advertisers may use cookie technology to measure the effectiveness of their ads or may otherwise collect personally identifiable information from you when you leave this site. The Heart Rhythm Society is not responsible for the privacy practices of such sites and we are not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, products, services or other materials offered by them. Transactions that occur between you and the third party are strictly between you and them, and are not our responsibility. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of every website that collects personally identifying information. This privacy notice applies solely to information collected on our website.

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Security of Your Information

We take every precaution to protect your personal information. All personal information collected on individuals is kept confidential and in a firewall protected and physically secure environment. Access to personal information is restricted to only those personnel with a legitimate business purpose. Servers used to store personally identifying information are kept in a secure environment.

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Retention of Personal Information

We retain personal information provided by you for as long as such information is considered to be relevant for the legitimate purposes of the Heart Rhythm Society, to respond to your requests or until you instruct us to remove such information by contacting us in the manner described below.

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Website Postings by Users

Information posted on our website by individual users, whether via sponsored blogs or other applicable fora, are the responsibility of the individual(s) posting such information. Such information does not necessarily reflect the views of the Society, and in no event shall the Society assume or have any responsibility or liability for any such information posted, or for any claims, damages or losses resulting from the use and/or appearance of such information. The Society shall have no obligation to monitor or control postings made by individuals, but reserves the right to do so, and to remove postings that it deems inappropriate or inaccurate. Further, the Society reserves the right to terminate the access of content providers or forum participants who, in the reasonable judgment of the Society are posting inappropriate or inaccurate information, or who appear to be violating the copyrights or other proprietary rights of others. To the extent individual users post information or content to the website, they grant to the Society a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, transmit, copy and display such information or content in any and all media, and further represent that they have all necessary rights to make such postings.

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Do Not Track

The Heart Rhythm Society does not track its users across third party websites and therefore does not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals. However, some third party plug-ins may keep track of your browsing activities when they serve you content, to enable them to tailor your experience.

 

Third parties that have content embedded on the Heart Rhythm Society's websites such as a social feature or a streaming video may set cookies on a user's browser and/or obtain information about the fact that a web browser visited a specific Heart Rhythm Society website from a certain IP address. Third parties cannot collect any other personally identifiable information from the Heart Rhythm Society's websites unless you provide it to them directly.

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Your Rights

You have a number of legal rights in relation to the personal data that we hold about you. These rights include:

  • the right to obtain information regarding the processing of your personal data and access to the personal data which we hold about you;

  • where you have actively provided your consent for us to process your personal data, the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Please note, however, that we may still be entitled to process your personal data if we have another legitimate reason (other than consent) for doing so;

  • in some circumstances, the right to receive some personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or request that we transmit those data to a third party where this is technically feasible. Please note that this right only applies to personal data which you have provided to us;

  • the right to request that we rectify your personal data if it is inaccurate or incomplete;

  • the right to request that we erase your personal data in certain circumstances. Please note that there may be circumstances where you ask us to erase your personal data but we are legally entitled to retain it;

  • the right to request that we restrict our processing of your personal data in certain circumstances. Again, there may be circumstances where you ask us to restrict our processing of your personal data but we are legally entitled to refuse that request; and

  • the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection regulator if you think that any of your rights have been infringed by us.

You can exercise your rights by contacting us using the details set out in the "How to contact us" section below.

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Changes in our Privacy Policy

Any changes to our Privacy Policy will be incorporated here so that you are always aware of the information we collect, the ways we use it, and any circumstances under which we disclose it. We may also contact you by e-mail to inform you of significant changes.

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