Privacy Policy
Sloane Vision Center, has created this Privacy Policy in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy.
Sloane Vision Center, (“we,” “our,” or “us”), owns and operates the Web site located at the URL www.drsloane.com (the Site). By visiting, using and/or submitting information to the Site, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you have entered into another agreement with us, then you may be subject to additional or different provisions regarding privacy and data collection.
This Privacy Policy also applies to individuals that agreed to receive email marketing material from our partner Web sites, third-party partner Web sites, companies from which we purchase opt-in email lists and/or opt-in email lists generated by affiliate sites and organizations that we manage (List Management Arrangements). We take your privacy seriously and have published this Privacy Policy to inform you about the collection, use and disclosure of your information.
Collection of Personally Identifiable Information
Personally identifiable information allows us to identify and communicate with an individual. Through the use of the Site and through your consent to receive email or pursuant to List Management Arrangements, we may collect or maintain personally identifiable information such as your name, postal address, telephone number, or email address, or (b) other information about you, such as your zip code, gender, age, industry, personal interests, categories of interests, or other demographic information.
To better provide you with offers, we may append traditional data to email records by matching information that you provide to us with third-party data sources. For example, we may match your personally identifiable information to information from third-party data sources, such as past purchase information and your future Web usage from other sites. We may also use data collected through our other Web sites and combine this data with your personally identifiable information to enhance the data we collect on the Site and the data we receive from and manage for third-parties. By providing your personal information to us, some of your past and future Web usage and other information will no longer be anonymous to us.
The following are certain situations in which we may collect personally identifiable information from you:
Subscriptions, Forms, and Surveys. We may receive and retain your personally identifiable information from you when you complete and submit a subscription, form or survey.
Correspondence. If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails or letters, or if other users or third-parties send us correspondence about you, we may choose to collect such information.
Business Partners and Affiliates. We may receive and retain your personally identifiable information from one of our business partners or affiliates.
Registration for Sweepstakes. We collect personally identifiable information from you if you register online for one of our sweepstakes. When you register with us, we may ask for personally identifiable information like your name and e-mail address, as well as non-personally identifiable information, such as your birth date, gender, ZIP code, occupation, industry, personal interests and other demographic information.
Third-Party Advertisers. We may use third-party advertising companies to serve advertisements when you visit the Site. These companies may use information about you, including information about your visits to the Site and other Web sites, in order to provide you with advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you.
List Management Arrangements. We are in the business of managing email-recipient lists for clients. We receive personally identifiable information from marketing partners and we use this personally identifiable information to send relevant marketing content to those recipients. Our use of personally identifiable information collected by third-party marketing partners is limited to the uses allowed under the third-party’s privacy policy previously agreed to by you. We utilize service providers who assist us with our marketing efforts, but those service providers will not use any personally identifiable information collected by third-party marketing partners and managed by us for their own marketing purposes and are prohibited by contract from sharing that personally identifiable information with any party other than us. These businesses may include, but are not limited to: providers of direct marketing services and applications, including lookup and reference, data enhancement, suppression and validation services. We may, in order to provide the highest level of service, use data collected through another of our media properties to enhance the data we manage for third-parties.
You should consider any communication that you transmit to us as non-confidential and you agree that we are not liable or responsible if information that belongs to you is intercepted and used by an unintended recipient.
Use of Personally Identifiable Information
We may use your personally identifiable information for online and off-line marketing purposes, to send you emails, fulfill your requests for certain products and services, send you offers for goods and services that, in some cases, are targeted or relevant to your interests, for telemarketing, direct mail or SMStext, provide you with special offers that may be of value to consumers or to all our subscribers, help our clients better understand the demographics of our target audiences, analyze Site usage, send you administrative notices, alter you to changes in services or features, improve our content and product offerings, customize the Site’s content, layout, and services, send you communications relevant to your use of the Site, support our marketing data products and services, and as otherwise set forth in this Privacy Policy. We may broadcast special offers that would be of value to any online consumer to all of our subscribers.
We may share, loan, rent or sell your personally identifiable information to third-parties, such as marketing companies, affiliates, advertising agencies and data aggregation companies. These third-parties may use your personally identifiable information to provide you with information, goods and services that may be relevant to your interests, provide you with special offers, help understand the demographics of their target audiences, and support their products and services. If your personally identifiable information is disclosed to a third-party, pursuant to this Privacy Policy, we are not responsible for such third-party’s use of such personally identifiable information or that third-party’s privacy practices. We may also aggregate personally identifiable information and disclose such information in a non-personally identifiable manner to advertisers and other third-parties. We may also use your personally identifiable information to help us and such third-parties better understand the demographics of our users as well as to support our marketing data products and services.
Your personally identifiable information may also be aggregated and used by us, our affiliates, and third-parties for online and offline (including, without limitation, direct mail and telemarketing) advertising purposes, market research, project planning, troubleshooting problems, detecting and protecting against error, fraud or other criminal activity, to enforce our Terms of Use, for other internal purposes, and as otherwise described to you at the time of collection.
By using and accessing the Site, you expressly agree to the use of your personally identifiable information described in this Privacy Policy and to receive the information described above. You agree that our use of your personally identifiable information and data as described in this Privacy Policy is not an actionable breach of your privacy or publicity rights. If you do not wish for us to use your information or to receive these communications, we encourage you opt-out of the receipt of certain communications, as set forth below.
A third-party’s privacy policies may differ substantially from this Privacy Policy. If you do not want your personally identifiable information shared, loaned, rented or sold to third-parties, you should not provide any information to us or visit our Site.
The types of information that may be collected by us and third-party advertising companies include the following:
the type of Internet browser you use;
the type of computer operating system you use;
the domain name of a Web site you visit, as well as information related to Web sites and Web pages you are viewing when an advertisement is requested;
whether or not you visit specific pages of the Site or other Web sites;
the location of your Internet service provider’s point of presence;
the date and time of a visit to a Web site;
search keywords passed from another server;
the number of times you have clicked on an advertisement; and
other interactions between you and a Web site.
External Service Providers. There are a number of separate services offered by third-parties that we refer to as external service providers that may be complementary to your use of the Site. If you choose to use these separate services, disclose information to the external service providers, and/or grant them permission to collect information about you, then their use of your information is governed by their privacy policy. We only disclose your personally identifiable information to external service providers as set forth in this Privacy Policy.
Please note that if you choose to use the services of, or disclose information to, an external service provider, then the external service providers use of your information is governed by the external service providers privacy policy. You should evaluate the practices of external services providers before deciding to use their services.
Internal Service Providers. We may use third-parties that we refer to as internal service providers to facilitate or outsource one or more aspects of the business, product and service operations that we provide to you and therefore we may provide some of your personal information to these internal service providers. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that these internal service providers use your personal information only to facilitate our business, product and service operations pursuant to this Privacy Policy. If you provide additional information to an internal service provider directly, then their use of your personally identifiable information is governed by their applicable privacy policy.
Third-Party Advertisers. We may use third-party advertising companies to serve advertisements to you when you visit the Site. We may disclose information about your visits to the Site to third-party advertising companies to market more effectively to you. Our third-party advertising company may link your personally identifiable information, such as your name, address and e-mail address, to other information which they collect, such as past purchase information and your future Web usage from other sites. By providing your personal information on the Site, some of your future Web usage will no longer be anonymous to our third-party advertising company.
Our third-party advertising company may also merge your personally identifiable information with previously collected non-personally identifiable information. In these cases, because our third-party advertising company may link your name, address and e-mail address to your past Web usage, some of your past and future Web activity will not longer be anonymous to the advertising company.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, we reserve the right, and you authorize us, to share or disclose your personally identifiable information when we determine, in our sole discretion, that the disclosure of your personally identifiable information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against you or if:
you are or may be violating this Privacy Policy or our Terms of Use;
you are interfering with another’s rights or property, including, without limitation, our rights or property;
you are violating any applicable law, rule or regulation;
it is in connection with an investigation of fraud;
it is in connection with an effort to safeguard the person or property of one of our employees, agents, or representatives or a third-party;
it is necessary or required by any applicable law, rule or regulation;
it is in response to a subpoena or a court order; and/or
is requested by properly authorized authorities in the event of any act of terrorism or instance of local, regional or national emergency.
Personally identifiable information and other information collected from you may also be transferred to a third-party as a result of a sale, acquisition, merger, reorganization, other transfer or bankruptcy (a Transfer) involving us and/or our affiliates. We specifically reserve the right to transfer personally identifiable information and other information collected from or in connection and other information with the Site, and any of its databases, together with any personally identifiable information contained therein, to a third-party in connection with a Transfer, and nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to interfere with our ability to transfer all or part of our business and/or assets (including the Site) to an affiliate or independent third-party at any time, for any purpose, without any limitation whatsoever.
In addition, due to the existing regulatory environment, we cannot ensure that all of your private communications and other personally identifiable information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Privacy Policy. By way of example (without limiting the foregoing), we may be forced to disclose personal information to the government or third-parties under certain circumstances or third-parties may unlawfully intercept or access databases, transmissions or private communications. Therefore, although we value your privacy and use industry standard practices to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personally identifiable information or private communications will remain private.
Please note that, although we use security measures to keep your personally identifiable information anonymous, no security measure is perfect or impenetrable. In addition, due to the existing environment, we cannot ensure that all of your private communications and other personally identifiable information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Privacy Policy. By way of example (without limiting the foregoing), we may be forced to disclose personal information to the government or third-parties under certain circumstances or third-parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications. Therefore, notwithstanding anything to the contrary within this Privacy Policy or the Terms of Use, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personally identifiable information or private communications will always remain private.
NOTE: If you are submitting personally identifiable information pursuant to a sweepstakes entry, we may share, loan, rent and/or sell the personally identifiable information that you submit with our affiliates and other third-parties. Please refer to the Official Rules and Privacy Policy for each individual sweepstakes for the specific guidelines regarding information sharing and disclosure.
Opt-Out Procedure
You may at any time opt-out of our use of your personally identifiable information by sending an email requesting to opt-out of our use of your personally identifiable information at the following email address: info@drsloane.com. After we process your opt-out request, we will stop using your personally identifiable information.
We manage email lists through List Management Arrangements. You may wish to remove yourself from specific marketing lists and may do so by utilizing the unsubscribe option that is included in each email we send. You may also elect not to receive email from specific senders at any time by utilizing the unsubscribe option that is included in each email the send.
Unsubscribe requests are either processed on an advertiser-specific basis or on a list-specific basis depending on the election that you make when utilizing the unsubscribe option. Unsubscribing from one list managed by us will not remove you from all lists managed by us. Unsubscribing from one advertiser will not prevent you from receiving email from other advertisers.
Please note, however, that after you opt-out of our use of your personally identifiable information, third-parties may continue to use any personally identifiable information that may be in their possession and you may still receive offers from third-parties. You must contact these third-parties directly to opt-out of their use of your personally identifiable information. We are not responsible for any third-party’s use or failure to stop using your personally identifiable information.
Right to Contact Via Telephone
By providing us with your personally identifiable information, agree that such act constitutes an inquiry and/or application for purposes of the Amended Telemarketing Sales Rule (16 CFR 310 et seq.), as amended from time to time (the “Rule”) and you further agree that we may contact you in connection with your requests for products or services, even if you are listed on the National Do Not Call list, as permitted by law. Notwithstanding that your telephone number may be listed on the Federal Trade Commission’s Do-Not-Call List, we reserve the right to contact you via telemarketing in accordance with the Rule.
Newsletters and CAN-SPAM Compliance
We are fully compliant with the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (the “CAN-SPAM Act”). We are not responsible for any email communications that you may receive from third-parties.
Cookie technology
“Cookies” are alphanumeric identifiers in the form of text files that are inserted and stored by your Web browser on your computer’s hard drive. We, our external service providers, internal service providers, and third-party advertising companies, may set and access cookies on your computer to track and store preferential information about you. We, and our external service providers, internal service providers, and third-party advertising companies gather anonymous information about you through cookie technology on an aggregate level only. For example, a third-party advertising company may assign a cookie (and a Web beacon, described below) to you, to limit the amount of times you see a particular advertisement or to help better determine which advertisements to serve to you. Please note that most Internet browsers will allow you to stop cookies from being stored on your computer and to delete cookies stored on your computer.
Log Files
We use log files. Log files are not linked to personally identifiable information, and provide us with the following types of information: internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
Web Beacons
“Web beacons,” also called single-pixels (1×1) or clear GIFs, are electronic images that allow a website to access cookies and help track marketing campaigns and general usage patterns of visitors to those Web sites. Web beacons can recognize certain types of information, such as cookie numbers, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page where the Web beacon is placed.
Internal use of web beacons. We may use web beacons internally to count users and recognize users through cookies. Access to cookies helps us personalize your experience when you visit the Site.
Email. We may include web beacons in HTML-formatted email messages that we or our affiliates or agents send. Including web beacons in email messages helps us determine your interest in and the effectiveness of such emails.
External use of web beacons. We may also use web beacons externally. For example, we may report aggregate information about the Site’s users, such as demographic and usage information, to our partners and other third-parties. We may also include other companys web beacons within the Site or in emails.
Group Aggregate Data
We reserve the right to provide aggregate or group data about our users for lawful purposes. Aggregate or group data is data that describes the demographics, usage, or characteristics recipients of, and participants in, our email campaigns as a group, without disclosing personally identifiable information.
Security
We protect information we maintain with internal and external firewalls and physical and technological security measures. In certain areas of the Site, we may use industry-standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions. For this Site and web sites owned and operated by us, we use log files. These log files may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. If an unauthorized third-party compromises our security measures, we will not be responsible for any damages directly or indirectly caused by an unauthorized third-party’s ability to view, use or disseminate such information.
Links to Other Web sites
The Site and emails we send you, may include links to other third-party Web sites. Such links are not an endorsement by us of those Web sites and/or the products or services offered there. Third-party Web sites may have different privacy policies and we are not responsible for the privacy practices of those third-party Web sites. If you click on a link to a third-party Web site, we encourage you to check the privacy policy of that Web site, as it may differ substantially from that of this Privacy Policy.
Access and Use of the Site
The Site is intended to be accessed and used only by adults and is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly permit registration or submission of personally identifiable information by anyone under the age of 13.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to update, amend and/or change this Privacy Policy at any time in our sole discretion and without notice. Updates to this Privacy Policy will be posted here. Any information we collect from you online is subject only to our most current Privacy Policy. You are encouraged to revisit this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to review any changes that have been made. Our last update was July 20, 2008. Your continued access and use of the Site following the posting of any such changes shall automatically be deemed your acceptance of the same.
If a material change to our policies for treating your personally identifiable information occurs in the future, we will only use your personally identifiable information collected from the time of the policy change forward for these new purposes unless we have your consent.
Questions or Concerns
If you have questions, comments, concerns or feedback regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact Sloane Vision Center.
Governing Law; Arbitration
This Privacy Policy is to be governed by and construed in accordance with the internal laws of the State of Illinois, without regard for principles of conflicts of laws. Any civil action, claim, dispute or proceeding arising out of, or relating to, this Privacy Policy shall be referred to final and binding arbitration, before a single arbitrator, under the commercial arbitration rules of the American Arbitration Association in Cook County, Illinois. You and we shall select the arbitrator, and if you and we are unable to reach agreement on selection of the arbitrator within thirty (30) days after the notice of arbitration is served, then the American Arbitration Association shall select the arbitrator. Arbitration shall not commence until the party requesting it has deposited One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) with the arbitrator as a retainer for the arbitrator’s fees and costs. The party requesting arbitration shall advance such sums as are required from time to time by the arbitrator to pay the arbitrator’s fees and costs until the prevailing party is determined or the parties have agreed in writing to an alternate allocation of fees and costs.
Judgment upon any award rendered by the arbitrator shall be final, binding and conclusive upon you and us, and your and our respective administrators, executors, legal representatives, successors and assigns, and may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. Notwithstanding the previous sentence, in no event shall either you or we be entitled to punitive, special, indirect or consequential damages, and both you and we hereby waive your rights to any punitive, special, indirect or consequential damages, including, but not limited to, damages for any loss of profit, revenue or business. You agree that, subject to the previous sentence, such an award by the arbitrator shall be your sole and exclusive remedy pursuant to this Privacy Policy.
Miscellaneous
If any portion of this Privacy Policy is deemed unlawful, void or unenforceable by any arbitrator, this Privacy Policy as a whole shall not be deemed unlawful, void or unenforceable, but only that portion of this Privacy Policy that is unlawful, void or unenforceable shall be stricken from this Privacy Policy. The headings contained in this Privacy Policy are for convenience of reference only, are not to be considered a part of this Privacy Policy, and shall not limit or otherwise affect in any way the meaning or interpretation of this Privacy Policy.
All covenants, agreements, representations and warranties made in this Privacy Policy, as may be amended by us from time to time, shall survive your acceptance of this Privacy Policy.
This Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use represent the entire understanding and agreement between you and us regarding the subject matter of the same, and supersede all other previous agreements, understandings and/or representations regarding the same.