Privacy Notice

Effective Date: April 25, 2023
Notice Version: 1.0

Data Controller Contact Information:

American Physician Institute for Advanced Professional Studies LLC
1 Mid America Plaza, Floor 3
Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181
support@americanphysician.com

Our privacy notice governs our privacy practices when you are using our websites https://www.americanphysician.com, https://www.thepassmachine.com, https://www.beattheboards.com, https://www.masterpsych.com, https://www.thepassformula.com, https://www.lifebrief.com, https://americanphysician.my.site.com/api/, and our mobile application(s), hereinafter and collectively referred to as the Website.

Our privacy notice tells you what personal data and nonpersonal data we collect from you, how we collect them, how we protect them, how we disclose them, how you can access and change them, and how you can limit our disclosing of them. Our privacy notice also explains certain legal rights that you have about your personal data. Any capitalized terms not defined herein will have the same meaning as where they are defined elsewhere on our Website.

Definitions – These definitions may vary slightly from country to country.
‘NONPERSONAL DATA’ (NPD) means any information that is in no way personally identifiable.

‘PERSONAL DATA’ (PD) means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person can be identified directly or indirectly by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier, or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity of that natural person. PD is in many ways the same as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). However, PD is broader in scope and covers more data.

‘SENSITIVE PERSONAL DATA’ (SPD) means a consumer’s social security, driver’s license, state identification card, or passport number; a consumer’s account log-in, financial account, debit card, or credit card number in combination with any required security, access code, password, or credentials allowing access to an account; a consumer’s exact geolocation; a consumer’s ethnic or racial origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, or union membership; the contents of a consumer’s mail, text messages, and email unless the business is the intended receiver of the communication; a consumer’s genetic data; the processing of biometric data to uniquely identify a consumer; personal information collected and analyzed about a consumer’s health; sex life or sexual orientation.

Topics Covered in Our Privacy Notice

YOUR RIGHTS
INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE COLLECT IT
HOW YOUR PD IS USED AND DISCLOSED
RETAINING AND DESTROYING YOUR PD
PROTECTING THE PRIVACY RIGHTS OF THIRD PARTIES
DO NOT TRACK SETTINGS
LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES
PROTECTING CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
OUR EMAIL POLICY
OUR SECURITY POLICY
USE OF YOUR CREDIT CARD
TRANSFERRING PD FROM OTHER COUNTRIES
CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY NOTICE

YOUR RIGHTS

Contact us using the information at the top of this privacy notice to exercise any of your legal rights contained within this privacy notice. We will respond to your request within 30 days of receiving it. Occasionally it may take longer for multiple requests or complex circumstances.

California residents:  If you want to opt out of the sale of your personal information, you can do so here.

When using our Website and submitting PD to us, you have certain rights under privacy laws in the United States including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CaCPA), the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), and other U.S. state laws. You also have rights under privacy laws of other countries including the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the UK Data Protection Act of 2018, Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and other global privacy laws. Even if not listed here, we will make reasonable efforts to honor data subject access requests even though we may be under no legal obligation to do so. However, we reserve the right to decline any data subject access request that we are not legally obligated to comply with. Your rights may include but are not limited to the following:

• The right to equal service, and price, and not be discriminated against even if you exercise your privacy rights.
• The right to one or more means where you can submit requests under this privacy notice including (at minimum) a toll-free telephone number and an email address if the business operates a storefront and a website. If the business operates only an Internet website, then it must have a dedicated email address where you can submit requests for information required to be disclosed by law.
• The right to know whether your PD is sold or disclosed and to whom.
• The right to request that we do not sell any of your PD.
• The right to be informed about the PD that we collect from you and how we process it.
• The right to get confirmation that your PD is being processed and you can access your PD.
• The right to have your PD corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
• The right to request the removal or deletion of your PD if there is no compelling reason for us to continue processing it. However, the right to deletion is not absolute and can be overridden to continue data processing in some cases where we still have a legal ground or overriding legitimate interest to process your data.
• The right to ‘block’ or restrict the processing of your PD. When your PD is restricted, we are permitted to store your PD, but not to process it further.
• The right to request the PD that you provided to us and use it for your own purposes. Upon express request, we will provide your data to you or another service or product provider within 30 days of your request subject to commercial and industrial secrets.
• The right to object to us processing your PD for the following reasons:
  • processing was based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of official authority (including profiling);
  • direct marketing and targeted advertising (including profiling);
  • processing for purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics.
• The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects regarding you or similarly significantly affects you.
•  The right that we limit the collection of your PD to that which is adequate, relevant, and reasonably necessary with the purposes for which the data is processed.
• The right that we do not process your PD for purposes that are neither reasonably necessary nor compatible with the disclosed purposes for which such PD is processed, as disclosed to you unless the controller obtains your consent.
• The right to designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. When designating an authorized agent, you must provide a valid power of attorney, the requester’s valid government-issued identification, and the authorized agent’s valid government-issued identification.
• The right to file a complaint with supervisory authorities if your information has not been processed in compliance with your rights under privacy laws.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE COLLECT IT

Based on our current data collection methods, and including our practices over the last 12 months, we collect the following categories of PD, SPD, and other information about you:

Our Legal Basis for Collecting and Processing PD
Our legal basis for collecting and processing your PD when you buy our products or services or fill in any of the contact forms on our Website is based on the necessity for the performance of a contract or to take steps to enter into a contract. In some countries, consent may be the only legal basis to process PD. In those countries, we will use consent as the legal basis for processing PD. Our legal basis for collecting and processing your PD when you download free information, and access free videos and webinars through our Website is based on consent.

Automatic Information
We automatically receive information from your web browser or mobile device. This information may include the IP address of your computer or the proxy server you use to access the Internet, your Internet service provider’s name, your web browser type, the type of mobile device, your computer operating system, and data about your browsing activity when using our Website. We use this type of information to help improve our Website and marketing.

When Entering and Using Our Website
When you enter and use our Website and agree to accept cookies, some of these cookies may contain your PD.

Our Use of Cookies
Our Website uses cookies. A cookie is a small piece of data or a text file that is downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you access certain websites. Cookies may contain text that can be read by the web server that delivered the cookie to you. The text contained in the cookie consists of a sequence of letters and numbers that uniquely identifies your computer or mobile device; it may contain other information as well.

By agreeing to accept our use of cookies you are giving us and the third parties with which we partner permission to place, store, and access some or all the cookies described below on your computer or mobile device, or both.

• Strictly Necessary Cookies – These cookies are necessary for the proper functioning of the website, such as displaying content, logging in, confirming your session, responding to your request for services, and other functions.
• Performance Cookies – These cookies collect information about the use of the website, such as pages visited, traffic sources, users’ interests, content management, and other website measurements.
• Functional Cookies – These cookies enable the website to remember users’ choices, such as their language, usernames, and other choices while using the website.
• Media Cookies – These cookies can be used to improve a website’s performance and provide special features and content. They can be placed by us or third parties who provide services to us.
• Advertising or Targeting Cookies – These cookies are usually placed and used by advertising companies to develop a profile of your browsing interests and serve advertisements on other websites that are related to your interests.
• Session Cookies – These cookies allow websites to link the actions of a user during a browser session. They may be used for remembering what a user puts in their shopping cart as they browse a website. Session cookies also permit users to be recognized as they navigate a website so that any item or page changes they make are remembered from page to page. Session cookies expire after a browser session.
• Persistent Cookies – These cookies are stored on a user’s device between browser sessions, which allows the user’s preferences or actions across a website or across different websites to be remembered. Persistent cookies may be used for remembering users’ choices and preferences when using a website or target advertising to them.
• We may also use cookies for:
  • identifying the areas of our Website that you have visited;
  • personalizing the content that you see on our Website;
  • our Website analytics;
  • remarketing our products or services to you;
  • remembering your preferences, settings, and log-in details;
  • targeted advertising and serving ads relevant to your interests;
  • allowing you to disclose content with social networks.

Most web browsers can be set to disable the use of cookies. However, if you disable cookies, you may not be able to access features on our Website correctly or at all.

Web Beacons
We may use a technology called web beacons to collect general information about your use of our Website and your use of special promotions or newsletters. The information we collect by web beacons allows us to statistically watch the number of people who open our emails.

At User Registration or When Buying Products or Services
When you register as a user or when buying our products or services, we may collect some or all the following information: First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, Email Address, Birthdate, American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) ID #, Shipping and Billing Addresses, Credit Card Information, Employer Name, Position, Degree(s), Specialty/Specialties, Board Exam Level, and Board Exam Date.

Collecting Information About Your Physical Location
When you use our services, we may collect and process information about your actual physical location. We use several technologies such as GPS and IP tracking to determine your location. These technologies may also give us information about nearby cell towers, Wi-Fi access points, and other devices.

Google API
By using our Website, you are subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
When collecting and processing user data, including PD from Google APIs, we will follow Google API Services User Data Policy. We also require that our employees, contractors, and agents comply with the Google API Services User Data Policy.

Chat Software or Contact Forms
Our Website contains chat software or contact forms that enable visitors to communicate with us online or offline by email. Sometimes, visitors can communicate with us without buying our products and services. When you use our chat software or contact forms, we may collect some or all the following information: your email address, first name, last name, location, and any other information you willingly choose to give us. You should limit the information you give to us to one that is necessary to answer your questions.

Google Analytics
Our Website uses Google Analytics to collect information about the use of our Website. Google Analytics collects information from users such as age, gender, interests, demographics, how often they visit our Website, what pages they visit, and what other websites they have used before coming to our Website. We use the information we get from Google Analytics to analyze traffic, and improve our marketing, advertising, and Website. We do not combine the information collected using Google Analytics with PD. You can prevent Google Analytics from using your information by opting out at this link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Analytics
Our Website uses analytics services from companies other than Google to collect information about the use of our Website. Analytics collects information such as how often users visit our Website, what pages they visit, when they do so, what other websites they used before coming to our Website, and their IP addresses. We use the information we get from analytics to improve our services.

Remarketing
Our Website and applications use remarketing advertising services. These remarketing services are provided by companies that show our ads on websites and devices across the Internet. With remarketing you may see ads for our products you have previously looked at. As an example, suppose you visit a website that sells computers, but you do not buy a computer on your first visit to that website. The website’s owner might like to encourage you to revisit their site and buy a computer by showing you their ads on other websites that you visit. We use remarketing for similar purposes. For this to happen remarketing companies will read a cookie in your browser. This can only happen if your browser is set to let it happen. You can opt out of these types of advertising cookies by visiting http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices.

Disclosing Your PD for Lookalike or Similar Audience Marketing
We may disclose your PD with third parties for similar audience marketing purposes. Similar audience marketing is also called lookalike audience marketing. The third parties we disclose your PD with for this type of marketing include Facebook, Google, and Pinterest. Using your PD for similar audience marketing or lookalike audience marketing helps us find new audiences (users and customers) based on similar interests to yours. This helps us improve our marketing services. Your PD is only disclosed with Facebook, Google, and Pinterest for this marketing. By using our Website and agreeing to our privacy notice you are giving consent for your PD to be used for the marketing purposes described within this section.

What Happens If You Don’t Give Us Your PD
If you do not provide us with enough PD, we may not be able to provide you with all our products and services. However, you can access and use some parts of our Website without giving us your PD.

HOW YOUR PD IS USED AND DISCLOSED

We use the information we receive from you to:

• respond to any requests from you regarding sales and support;
• contact you regarding any agreements or accepted terms that you may have with us for our services;
• collect payment and bill you for our services;
• help personalize your searches;
• help you navigate our websites;
• find and prevent fraud; provide our products and services you have requested or purchased from us;
• personalize and customize our content;
• make improvements to our Website;
• contact you with updates to our Website, products, and services;
• resolve problems and disputes.

Communications and Emails
When we communicate with you about our Website, we will use the email address you provided when you registered as a user or customer. We may also send you emails with promotional information about our Website or offers from us or our affiliates unless you have opted out of receiving such information. You can change your contact preferences at any time through your account or by contacting us using the information at the top of this privacy notice.

Text Messaging, SMS, Push Notifications, and Telephone Calls
(This provision does not apply to our mobile app.) If you provide a mobile telephone number, or landline telephone number to us, you are giving your express consent and authorize us or a third party to contact you by using any of these communication methods. You are not required to give us your consent to contact you through these communication methods. However, withholding your consent may interfere with or prevent us from providing some or all our services to you. You can stop receiving text messages, push notifications, and telephone calls by contacting us or using one of our opt-out methods.

Disclosing Your PD to Third Parties
At times we may disclose your PD to our business partners and affiliates for marketing purposes, you can always opt out of this marketing.

Disclosing Your PD to Service Providers and or Contractors
At times we give your PD to service providers and or contractors whom we hire to provide services to us. These service providers and or contractors may include but are not limited to payment processors, web analytics companies, call centers, data management services, help desk providers, accountants, Salesforce, printing companies, law firms, auditors, shopping cart and email service providers, and shipping companies.

Legally Required Releases of Information
We may disclose your PD if such disclosure is (a) required by subpoena, law, or other legal processes; (b) necessary to assist law enforcement officials or government enforcement agencies; (c) necessary to protect us from legal action or claims from third parties, including you and or other users; or (d) necessary to protect the legal rights, personal and or real property, or the personal safety of our company, users, employees, and business partners.

Disclosures to Successors
If our business is sold or merges in whole or in part with another business that would become responsible for providing the Website to you, we retain the right to transfer your PD to the new business. The new business would retain the right to use your PD according to the terms of this privacy notice as well as to any changes to this privacy notice as instituted by the new business. We also retain the right to transfer your PD if our company files for bankruptcy and some or all of our assets are sold to another individual or company.

Community Discussion Boards, Blogs, or Other Mechanisms
Our Website may offer the ability for users to communicate through online community discussion boards, blogs, or other mechanisms. If you choose to post on these discussion mechanisms, you should use care when exposing any PD, as such information is not protected by our privacy notice nor are we liable if you disclose your PD through such postings. Also, PD which you post on our Website for publication may be available worldwide on the Internet. We cannot prevent the use or misuse of such information by others.

HOLDING AND DESTROYING YOUR PD

We only retain your PD for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including to satisfy any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for PD, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the PD. When your information is no longer needed, we will destroy, delete, or erase it.

PROTECTING THE PRIVACY RIGHTS OF THIRD PARTIES

If you make any postings on our Website that contain information about third parties, you agree that you have permission to include that information. While we are not legally liable for the actions of our users, we will remove any postings about which we are notified if such postings violate the privacy rights of others.

DO NOT TRACK SETTINGS

Some web browsers have settings that enable you to request that our Website not track your movement within our Website. Our Website does not obey such settings when transmitted to and detected by our Website. You can turn off tracking features and other security settings in your browser by referring to your browser’s user manual.

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

Our Website may contain links to other websites. These websites are not under our control and are not subject to our privacy notice. We have no responsibility for these websites, and we provide links to these websites solely for your convenience. You accept that your use of and access to these websites are solely at your risk.

PROTECTING CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

Our Website is not designed for use by anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect PD from children under the age of 18. If you are a parent or guardian and believe that your child is using our Website and they are under the age of 18, please contact us. Before we remove any information, we may ask for proof of identification to prevent malicious removal of account information. If we discover that a child under the age of 18 is accessing our Website, we will delete their information within a reasonable period of time. You acknowledge that we do not verify the age of our users nor have any liability to do so.

OUR EMAIL POLICY

You can always opt out of receiving email correspondence from us or our affiliates. We will not sell, rent, or trade your email address to any unaffiliated third party without your permission except in the sale or transfer of our company, or if our company files for bankruptcy as described in the section Disclosures to Successors.

OUR SECURITY POLICY

We have built our Website and services using industry-standard security measures and authentication tools to protect the security of your PD. We and the third parties who provide services to us also maintain technical and physical safeguards to protect your PD. SPD is protected at a higher level than most PD. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee the prevention of loss or misuse of your PD or secure data transmission over the Internet because of its nature. We strongly urge you to protect any password you may have for our Website and not disclose it to anyone.

USE OF YOUR CREDIT CARD

You may have to provide a credit or debit card to buy products and services from our Website. We use third-party billing services and have no control over them. We use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that your credit card number is kept strictly confidential by using only third-party billing services that use industry-standard encryption technology to protect your credit card number from unauthorized use. However, you understand and agree that we are in no way responsible for any misuse of your credit card number.

TRANSFERRING PD FROM OTHER COUNTRIES

PD that we collect from you may be stored, processed, and transferred among any countries in which we operate. The European Union has not found the United States and some other countries to have an acceptable level of protection of PD under Article 45 of the GDPR. Our company relies on derogations for specific situations as defined in Article 49 of the GDPR. If you are a European Union user, or a user from another country, with your consent your PD may be transferred to the United States or other countries when you request information from us. When you buy goods or services, we will use your PD to perform a contract with you. Wherever we transfer, process, or store your PD, we will try to apply reasonable safeguards to protect it. We will use the information we collect from you by following the practices described in our privacy notice. Also, we enter into data processing agreements and standard contractual clauses when appropriate. By using our Website, services, or products, you agree to the transfers of your PD described within this section.

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY NOTICE

We reserve the right to change this privacy notice at any time. If our company decides to change this privacy notice, we will post those changes on our Website so our users and customers are always aware of what information we collect, use, and disclose. If at any time we decide to disclose or use your PD in a method different from that specified at the time it was collected, we will provide advance notice by email sent to the email address on file in your account. Otherwise, we will use and disclose our users’ and customers’ PD in agreement with the privacy notice in effect when the information was collected. Your continued use of our Website, services, and products after any change to this privacy notice will constitute your acceptance of such change. If you have questions about our privacy notice, please contact us through the information at the top of this privacy notice.