Privacy Notice

Last Updated: May 7, 2024

This Privacy Notice explains how the American Dental Association (“ADA”) and its subsidiaries, charities and affiliated entities (collectively, “ADA,” “we," “us” or “our”) collect information about you through our website and how this information is then used or disclosed. This Privacy Notice does not apply to websites that do not display or link to this notice or that have their own privacy notices or to information we may collect from you or about you in other ways, including through emails you may send to us.

ADA Contact Information

You may contact us about this Privacy Notice: Via postal address:
American Dental Association
Attn: General Counsel
211 E. Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611
By email MSC@ada.org

How We May Use and Disclose Information We Collect About You

The information we collect via our website may be used and disclosed to improve the content of ADA.org and advance the ADA’s mission. For example, the ADA may use this information for purposes such as:

  • Registering you for, or providing you with information, programs and services you have requested
  • Processing, fulfilling and following up on your orders or membership application
  • Providing access to publications
  • Responding to your emails or online requests
  • Sending you information you request
  • Sending and processing surveys and continuing education quizzes
  • Publishing membership directories and registration lists
  • Sharing with companies to offer you products and services that may be of interest to you
  • Sharing your email address with companies to deliver communications on our behalf
  • Sharing information about you with members and state and local dental societies
  • Sharing information about you with service providers, vendors and other companies we do business with
  • Sharing with third parties as required by law
  • Sharing demographic information for research purposes
  • Sharing your email address as described below

We collect information such as the internet protocol (IP) address of visitors to our website, aggregate information on what pages users access or visit, user-specific information on what pages users access or visit, and information volunteered by users, including from surveys, purchases and/or registrations. We may use tracking to recommend related articles, based on content users have viewed, or recommended based on geographic location. We may collect information about visitors to our website to help measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. We also may collect the email addresses of those who communicate with us via email. Our system can recognize the identity of individuals who sign in using their usernames and passwords.

The ADA utilizes Google services and tools for Analytics/Remarketing/Display Network/Demographics. By including these features, ADA enables Google to collect data about your traffic via Google cookies and identifiers, in addition to data collected through a standard Google Software implementation. Google will not identify users or facilitate the merging of personally identifiable information with non-personally identifiable information collected through any Google product or feature unless Google has robust notice of, and the user's prior affirmative (i.e., opt-in) consent to, that identification or merger, and are using a Google feature that expressly supports such identification or merger. Irrespective of users' consent, Google will not attempt to disaggregate data that Google reports in aggregate, and adheres to EU, GDPR, and COPPA regulations. Visitors have the option to opt-out of the Google features ADA uses, including through Ads Settings, Ad Settings for mobile apps, or any other available means.

The ADA utilizes BlueConic as its Customer Data Platform. A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is “packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.” Basically it’s a prebuilt system that centralizes customer data from all sources and then makes this data available to other systems for marketing campaigns, customer service and all customer experience initiatives. By including these CDP features, ADA enables BlueConic to collect data about your traffic via 1st party BlueConic cookie identifiers detailed within BlueConic Cookie Policy. BlueConic will not attempt to disaggregate data, and will adhere to EU, GDPR, and COPPA regulations. BlueConic partners with a third party to display advertising on our website. Visitors have the option to opt-out of the BlueConic features the ADA utilizes, or if located in the European Union, opt-out here.

With respect to cookies: We use cookies for a number of purposes, including to administer our website and to record session information, such as items that users add to their shopping carts and user-specific information on what pages users access or visit.

We use and may allow others to use cookies and similar technologies (e.g., web beacons, pixels) to recognize you and/or your device(s). See the Segment 1 link below for more information on why we use them (such as authenticating you, remembering your preferences and settings, analyzing site traffic and trends, and delivering and measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns) and how you can better control their use, through your browser settings and other tools.

Some web browsers (including Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome) have a “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) feature that tells a website that a user does not want to have his or her online activity tracked. If a website that responds to a DNT signal receives a DNT signal, the browser can block that website from collecting certain information about the browser’s user. Not all browsers offer a DNT option and DNT signals are not yet uniform. For this reason, many businesses, including ours, do not currently respond to DNT signals.

See more details about our Cookie Policy in Segment 1 of this document.

Advertising on ADA.org may be served through a vendor that uses IP addresses for purposes such as controlling ad frequency.

The ADA, its subsidiaries, charities, and affiliates may use or disclose individual's contact information and other information about you, such as your occupation, specialty, member status, graduation date and dental school, to alert you to new information, products and services, events and other opportunities. From time to time, in compliance with applicable law, we may also make your contact information, including your email address, and other information about you available to other organizations we believe to be reputable, such as companies whose products or services we think you might find interesting. If you register on ADA.org to attend an event, the ADA may provide an attendee list to other attendees and to entities that collaborate with the ADA on the event.

The ADA maintains directories of dentists that may include information you submit via our website. These directories are shared with ADA members and state and local dental societies. A directory containing information about ADA members is publicly accessible on MouthHealthy.org; members may elect to provide additional information, such as email address and photo, through the expanded profile option.

The ADA uses an association management database to collect, maintain, use, and share information about member and nonmember dentists who have attended a U.S. dental school, as well as individuals who interact with the ADA. Information in the database is generally accessible to state and local dental societies of the ADA “tripartite.” A “person record” may be created in the database for such dentists and other individuals. For example, a person record may be created when a dentist or other individual interacts with the ADA by becoming a member, purchasing an item or service, attending a meeting, volunteering, attending a continuing education or other course, or communicating with the ADA.

A person record contains information about the individual such as name, contact information, demographics, membership history, a record of purchases and meetings attended, volunteer positions held, and communications with the ADA and state and local dental societies.

Person records are retained indefinitely. ADA may use a person record for any permissible purpose under the applicable privacy notice. ADA has entered into agreements with participating state and local dental societies of the ADA tripartite that permit the society to use a person record for any permissible purpose if the individual is eligible for membership in the society; however, if the individual is not eligible for membership in the society, the society may use the person record only for registration of the individual at society sponsored meetings, for determining dues owed, for updating the data (e.g., with correct contact information), to assist with order fulfillment, to create de-identified aggregated data solely for internal use, and for any other purpose for which the ADA has provided express written permission. Person records may not be used or disclosed in a way that would violate this ADA.org Privacy Notice.

The ADA may provide delegates’ names and mailing addresses in response to a request from a dental specialty organization. The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) publishes delegates’ names, districts, cities and states, as well as information, including ADA.org email addresses, about officers and trustees.

The ADA may share or license information about you to a third party if, in our sole discretion, we believe that it is (1) reasonably necessary to perform a service or deliver a product or publication; (2) authorized by you or as set forth in any applicable agreement (whether express or implied) between you and ADA, or with your consent; (3) permitted under this Privacy Notice; (4) required by statute or regulation; (5) of interest to dentists, dental students, members of the dental team, or consumers of dental services, or (6) in the good-faith belief that such action is appropriate for reasons of security or legal compliance.

If you participate in an activity such as attending or speaking at a program or authoring a publication, information such as your name and photo may be shared via ADA.org or ADA publications.

The ADA also occasionally hires other individuals and entities to provide services on our behalf, including, but not limited to, hosting of online resources, processing credit card transactions, packaging, order fulfillment, answering customer questions about products or services, consulting services, data modeling, printing, sending postal mail and processing membership and event registration. We will provide those companies with information they need to deliver the service. Third parties may collect information such as your IP address that may indicate your online activities over time or across different websites when you use our websites. At this time, this website does not respond to do-not-track signals.

Certain sensitive personal information is protected by security measures (that may include computer safeguards and secured files and buildings security) to protect the information from unauthorized access and use. If such information is disposed of, it will be done securely.

ADA may use and disclose information about individuals and entities that violate ADA’s terms of use, or the terms of use of any ADA website or webpage in order to investigate and terminate the use or disclosure.

ADA® credentialing service, powered by CAQH ProView®

If you use the ADA® credentialing service, powered by CAQH ProView®, you consent to and authorize the ADA’s transfer of certain information about you to CAQH ProView® to use in accordance with the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare, Inc. (“CAQH”) applicable terms of use and privacy policy To the extent you designate ADA to receive information about you from CAQH (including its service providers), the ADA may use the information about you in accordance with ADA’s applicable Terms of Use and Privacy Notice, or upon your consent.

Your Rights and Responsibilities

It is important when you wish to exercise your rights that you contact us via any of the means listed in the first section of this Privacy Notice.

While the ADA takes measures to protect your personal information, no security measure or network is entirely secure. Your password to access ADA.org should be complex and should never be shared with anyone, and should be changed from time to time. After you access ADA.org, you should log off and exit your browser so unauthorized persons cannot access the site.

If you do not want to receive postal mail, telephone calls from us in the future, or if you do not want us to share your contact information in the manner described above, please provide us with your exact name and postal addresses, phone and fax numbers and, if appropriate, ADA membership number to msc@ada.org. It may take up to four weeks for your opt out to become effective. While we will continue to share information we maintain about you with our service providers, subsidiary and affiliates, and with state and local dental societies, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that any other specific contact information you so identify is removed from lists we share with other organizations. We have instituted opt-out capabilities to help you avoid receiving unwanted commercial email messages from the ADA. ADA will honor such requests within ten business days.

On request we may provide you with access to information that you submitted via ADA.org, such as certain transaction information (e.g., dates on which you made purchases, amounts and types of purchases), communications that you have directed to our site (e.g., emails, user inquiries), and contact information (e.g., name, address, phone number). On request we may also offer the ability to have inaccuracies corrected in contact information, financial information, unique identifiers, transaction information and certain other data.

In addition to the other rights we note in this Privacy Notice, you also have the right to contact the ADA to obtain the following information:

  1. What personal information about you the ADA holds;
  2. For what purposes does ADA process your information;
  3. To what third parties (and in what jurisdictions) has or may the ADA disclose your personal information;
  4. How long will your data be maintained by the ADA (and how that period of time has been calculated);
  5. How to request correction or deletion of specific portions of your personal data held by the ADA that you believe are incorrect; and
  6. The source(s) from which the ADA has obtained your personal data.

You may also contact us at msc@ada.org if you believe your information is being used improperly.

You may provide consent to additional uses and disclosures; for example, in connection with a product or service offered by the ADA, an affiliated entity, or a third party.

Children’s Privacy

We do not knowingly solicit data online from, or market online to children under the age of 13.

More About Our Privacy Practices

With respect to other websites and servers: ADA.org contains links to other websites. We have no control over and take no responsibility for the privacy practices or content of those sites.

We use Google Marketing Platform to serve ads on our site.

When users choose to make payments via credit cards, they do so on the website of a third party service provider. We do not store or reuse credit card information unless you have given us your credit card information directly and authorized us to do so.

Changes, Comments and Questions

If our Privacy Notice changes at some time in the future we will post the revised Privacy Notice to our website to notify you, and those changes will be effective on the day that we post the revised privacy notice. The latest version of our Privacy Notice will always be available at ADA.org.

We welcome your comments or questions about our Privacy Notice and privacy practices. If you feel that this site is not following its stated policy, please let us know.

SEGMENT 1: COOKIES AND OTHER SIMILAR DATA COLLECTION TECHNOLOGIES

Cookie Policy

Introduction

Our Cookie Policy explains what cookies are, what types of cookies may be placed on your device when you visit our website and how we may use them.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are sent to or accessed from your web browser or your device’s memory. A cookie typically contains the name of the domain (internet location) from which the cookie originated, the “lifetime” of the cookie (i.e., when it expires) and a randomly generated unique number or similar identifier. A cookie also may contain information about your device, such as subscriber settings, browsing history and activities conducted while using our services.

Are there different types of cookies?

First-party and third-party cookies

There are first-party cookies and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are placed on your device directly by us. For example, we use first-party cookies to better understand your use of our website. Third-party cookies are placed on your device by our partners and service providers. For example, we use third-party cookies to measure subscriber numbers on our website.

Session and persistent cookies

There are session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies only last until you close your browser. We may use session cookies for a variety of reasons, including to learn more about your use of our website during one single browser session and to help you to use our website more efficiently. Persistent cookies have a longer lifespan and aren't automatically deleted when you close your browser. These types of cookies are primarily used to help you quickly sign-in to our website again and for analytical purposes.

What about other tracking technologies, like web beacons?

Other technologies such as web beacons (also called pixel tags or clear gifs), tracking URLs or software development kits (SDKs) are used for similar purposes. Web beacons are tiny graphics files that contain a unique identifier that enable us to recognize when someone has visited our service or opened an e-mail that we have sent them. Tracking URLs are custom generated links that help us understand where the traffic to our webpages comes from. SDKs are small pieces of code included in apps, which function like cookies and web beacons.

For simplicity, we also refer to these technologies as “cookies” in this Cookie Policy.

What do we use cookies for?

Like most providers of online services, we use cookies to provide, secure and improve our services, including by remembering your preferences, recognizing you when you visit our website and Page 5 of 11 personalizing and tailoring ads to your interests. To accomplish these purposes, we also may link information from cookies with other personal information we hold about you. When you visit our website, some or all of the following types of cookies may be set on your device.

Strictly necessary cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features, such as access to secure areas.

Performance cookies
These cookies help us understand how our website is being used, how effective marketing campaigns are, and help us customize and improve our websites for you.

Targeting cookies
These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, selecting advertisements that are based on your interests and measuring the number of ads displayed and their performance, such as how many people clicked on a given ad.

Social cookies
These cookies are used on social networking platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on our website through third-party social networking and other websites. These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes too.

How can you control cookies?

There are several cookie management options available. Please note that changes you make to your cookie preferences may make browsing our website a less satisfying experience. In some cases, you may even find yourself unable to use all or part of our website.

Browser and devices controls

Some web browsers provide settings that allow you to control or reject cookies or to alert you when a cookie is placed on your computer. The procedure for managing cookies is slightly different for each internet browser. You can check the specific steps in your particular browser help menu. You also may be able to reset device identifiers by activating the appropriate setting on your mobile device. The procedure for managing device identifiers is slightly different for each device. You can check the specific steps in the help or settings menu of your particular device.

Interest-based advertising tools

You can opt out of seeing online interest-based advertising from participating companies through the Digital Advertising Alliance, the Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance or App choices (apps only).

Opting out does not mean you will not see advertising — it means you won’t see personalized advertising from the companies that participate in the opt-out programs. Also, if you delete cookies on your device after you opted out, you will need to opt-out again.

Social sharing

To allow you to share content on social media, some features of this website use social media plug-ins (e.g., Twitter™ “Share to Twitter” or LinkedIn™ “in” buttons). Depending on your social media account settings, we automatically receive information from the social media platform when you use the corresponding button on our website.

To learn more about social media sharing and cookies, we suggest you refer to your social media platform’s cookie policy and privacy policy.