Privacy Policy
The Mayo Clinic Alumni Association (Alumni Association) is committed to protecting your online privacy. We feel it is important for you to know how we handle the information we receive from you via the Internet. You can visit the Alumni website without revealing any personal information. However, you are required to provide additional information and register for an account to comment on posts, make a purchase or to subscribe to a newsletter.
How we and our affiliates collect and use personal information
We use the personal information that you provide to us to provide website services to you, including:
- Providing any message board, group or chat functionalities that may be available on the site
- Fulfilling orders and requests for products, services or information
- Processing returns and exchanges
- Tracking and confirming online orders
- Delivering or installing products
- Marketing and advertising products and services
- Conducting research and analysis
- Communicating things like special events and surveys
- Establishing and managing your accounts with us
- Operating, evaluating and improving our business
Data retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements. We collect and log the Internet Protocol address (IP) of all visitors to the Alumni Association website. An IP address is a number automatically assigned to your computer whenever you access the Internet. IP addresses allow computers and servers to recognize and communicate with one another. We collect IP address information so that we can properly administer our system and gather aggregate information about how our site is being used, including the pages visitors are viewing. To maintain your anonymity, we do not associate IP addresses with records containing personal information. We will use IP address information, however, to personally identify you in order to enforce our legal rights or when required to do so by law enforcement authorities.
Newsletters
We require you to provide an email address to subscribe to a newsletter. If you subscribe, we may also use this email address to send you communications about other Mayo Clinic products and services. We may also share this email address with our third party email management vendor for purposes of delivering the newsletter to you; however, we do not share your email address with groups outside of Mayo Clinic for any marketing purposes.
How we use cookies
“Cookies” are small pieces of information that some websites store on your computer’s hard drive when you visit them. Like many other websites, the Alumni Association website uses cookies to provide us with information relating to the sources of our site traffic. Collecting this information, however, does not allow us to personally identify you.
Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies but allow you to modify security settings so that you can approve or reject cookies on a case-by-case basis. Our site requires that both cookies and JavaScript be enabled. If you reject cookies from our site, some parts of the site may not work properly for you.
Surveys
You may be asked to complete surveys when you visit the Alumni Association. We use information from surveys to better understand the needs of our users and to gather information about health care trends and issues. We generally do not ask for information in surveys that would personally identify you; if we do request contact information for follow-up, you may decline to provide it. If survey respondents provide personal information (such as an email address) in a survey, it is shared only with those people who need to see it to respond to the question or request, or with third parties who perform data management services for our site. Those third parties have agreed to keep all data from surveys confidential. Also, we may share information from surveys in an aggregated, de-identified form with third parties with whom we have a business relationship.
How we protect your personal information
All data that you enter on this site for financial transactions, such as registration for conferences or webinars, are encrypted with secure server software (SSL). The encryption means that your data are protected while they are being transferred over the Internet to our servers.
Once your data reach our servers, the same state-of-the art security software that guards our company’s essential business data protects your data as well.
In addition to using the most secure technology available, we de-identify all data before they are used in any aggregate reporting that may be done.
What we provide to third parties
We may share your personally identifiable information with third parties who we have engaged to help us provide the services. In each case, we will ensure that these third parties have agreed not to use or disclose your personal information except to help us provide the services.
Except as noted above for newsletters and surveys, the Alumni Association does not provide any third party access to your IP address and email address.
We may provide third parties with aggregate statistics about our visitors, traffic patterns and related site information. These data reflect site-usage patterns gathered during visits to our website each month, but they do not contain behavioral or identifying information about any individual member unless that member has given us permission to share that information.
In certain instances you may be taken to a site operated by a third party to provide certain functionalities, such as the processing of credit card transactions. In those situations, you may be subject to different or additional privacy terms, and you should review them carefully to make sure you understand your privacy rights in connection with your use of those third party sites.
Your Privacy Settings
Certain parts of the website may involve chat, message board or other group communication areas, and you should be aware that information posted to those areas of the site may be viewable by other registered site users, or members of the general public. Please make sure you review your site privacy settings carefully so that you understand who may access and view your personal information.
Children’s privacy
This site is intended for adults age 18 and older. It is not intended for or designed to attract people under the age of 18. We do not collect personally identifiable information from any person we actually know to be under the age of 18.
E-mail communications, newsletter and related services
The Alumni Association provides you with the opportunity to receive communications from us or third parties. You can sign up for free email newsletters and activity digests. You can unsubscribe from these at any time.
Email communication that you send to us via the email links on our site may be shared with a customer service representative, employee, medical expert or agent that is most able to address your inquiry. We make every effort to respond in a timely fashion once communications are received. Once we have responded to your communication, it is discarded or archived, depending on the nature of the inquiry.
The email functionality on our site does not provide a completely secure and confidential means of communication. It’s possible that your e-mail communication may be accessed or viewed by another Internet user while in transit to us. If you wish to keep your communication private, do not use our email.
You may decide at some point that you no longer wish to receive communications from our site. To stop receiving communications, send an email message to mayoalumni@mayo.edu or send regular mail to the following postal address:
Mayo Clinic Alumni Center
200 First St. SW
Rochester, MN 55905
Complaint process
If you have a complaint or problem, or if you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may email us by clicking the “Contact us” link at the bottom of any page. Our Customer Service department will forward your complaint to the appropriate network staff for response or resolution. If you don’t receive adequate resolution of a privacy-related problem, you may write to the Alumni Association’s security and privacy officer at:
Mayo Clinic Alumni Center
200 First St. SW
Rochester, MN 55905
If you’ve contacted the Alumni Association about a privacy-related concern and you do not believe your problem has been addressed, you may file a complaint with the Mayo Clinic chief security officer by calling the Mayo Clinic general number at 507-284-2511 and asking for the chief security officer.
Changes to our Privacy policy
We will occasionally update this privacy policy. You will see the word “updated” followed by the date next to the privacy policy link near the bottom of all pages on the site. If the “updated” date has changed since you last visited, you’re encouraged to review the policy to be informed of how this site is protecting your information.