Overview
The following information reflects the AVMA's commitment to maintain our Web site visitors' rights to privacy and the confidentiality of personal information. The AVMA takes extensive measures to ensure the safety and security of its Web site servers and the information contained on them and to guard against divulging private information.

General Information
If you send us an email, you should know that email is not necessarily secure against interception. The AVMA discourages sending of confidential information by e-mail. If your communication includes sensitive information such as your credit card information, and you prefer not to use one of our secure online forms, contact us by postal mail, fax or telephone rather than email.

Credit card information will be used by the AVMA solely as authorized by the sender and will not be used in any other manner or shared with any third party except as needed to conduct the requested transaction.

Only authorized AVMA personnel can access credit card information and solely for the purpose of processing the user's request and performing adjustments or refunds at the user's request.

Links
Our Web sites contain links to documents and pages located on Web sites maintained by various other organizations. Once you select a link that takes you to another Web site, you are subject to the privacy policy of that Web site.

Security
The AVMA uses generally accepted, industry-standard security systems, software, and encryption technologies to protect against unauthorized access to our servers, equipment, and other components of our online presence.

This includes the use of secure socket layer (SSL) encryption to protect the transmission of information you submit to us when you use our secure online forms on www.avma.org. All the information you provide us through these forms is stored securely offline. You will know that an online form is secure if "https://" appears at the beginning of the address line in your browser; if "http://" appears at the beginning, the page is not secure.

The AVMA has procedures in place for protecting personal information, including but not limited to: use of firewalls; frequent updates to security and virus-protection software; and storing any personal information collected online on a secure offline server that is not accessible from the Internet.

Information for all visitors to the AVMA Web site
In general, you can visit our Web sites without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself.

We do collect and store information that does not identify you personally when you visit our Web sites, including but not necessarily limited to the name of the domain and host from which you access the Internet (for example, aol.com or princeton.edu); the Internet protocol (IP) address used to access our Web site; the browser software you use and your operating system; the date and time you access our site; and the Internet address of the Web site from which you linked directly to our site. We use this information to measure the number of visitors to the different sections of our site, and to help us make our site more useful. This information does not allow us to individually identify any of our site visitors.

Like most websites, we employ cookies to help users more efficiently use our websites. A cookie is a string of information that is sent by a website and stored on a user's hard drive. Cookie information is used only by the AVMA and our agents, and is not provided to any other organization. If you do not want your browser to accept cookies, you can modify the cookie option in your browser's settings. However, some features or services of our sites may not function properly or be accessible without cookies.

Information for AVMA members or subscribers who log on to our site
When you log on to www.avma.org to access our members-only or subscribers-only features or information, a temporary "cookie" is used solely for the purpose of authenticating you as an AVMA member or as otherwise authorized to view restricted areas of www.avma.org. This is designed to maintain your "sign on" status for the duration of the visit. This cookie persists only as long as your member session remains open; your session will close after 30 minutes of inactivity or when you close your browser window, whichever comes first.

Information for parents of children who may visit the AVMA Web site
We would like you to know that the AVMA cares about the welfare of children and the privacy of our members and has taken steps to ensure that submitting information on our Web sites is a safe and secure experience. In order to safeguard children's privacy, and in keeping with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the AVMA does not collect any personally identifying information online from or about children under the age of 13. For any instance in which the AVMA needs to obtain information about children, such information is collected via fax or postal mail rather than online and will be accepted only with a signature indicating parental consent to the collection and specified use. None of the information is shared with any third party, and AVMA use of the information is limited to fulfillment of the requested service.

Upon your request, and after verification of your identity, we will provide you with a description of the information that we maintain about you or your children. We will accommodate all reasonable requests. Please contact us by e-mail at avmaonline@avma.org or in writing at the above address.

Information for AVMA Web site visitors who purchase products or services on our site
When you purchase products or services from the AVMA via the AVMA's Web sites, we collect your name, company name if applicable, contact information, your credit card information, as well as information about your current purchase. This information is used to support your interaction with our site, to deliver your purchases if applicable and to contact you as necessary to fulfill your product or service request.

We collect the e-mail addresses of those who communicate with us by e-mail. The e-mail addresses are used only to fulfill your request or to contact you with information related to your request unless you specify that you would like to receive further communications with us via e-mail.

Information for those who receive electronic communications from the AVMA
If you no longer wish to receive a specific AVMA electronic communication, please follow the unsubscribe instructions included in that communication or contact our help desk and request removal from the mailing list.

Please see the AVMA Electronic Communication Terms of Use for more information.

Changes to the AVMA Online Privacy Notice
The AVMA reserves the right to modify this policy at any time in the future. When we do, we will also revise the "updated" date at the top of this privacy Notice. Please refer to the online version of this Notice for the latest information regarding the AVMA's online privacy policy.