AOCS Privacy Policy

last updated July 6, 2023

AOCS is a professional membership association for people who work to advance the science and technology of oils, fats, proteins, surfactants and related materials.

AOCS is committed to protecting the personal data collected from and about members, volunteers, donors, program participants, purchasers of our products and services and others. We collect and use personal data from or about you to help us support our non-profit mission, serve our membership and the industries that support our mission.  We do not sell personal information to anyone and only share it with third parties who are facilitating the delivery of AOCS services. This Privacy Policy applies to all operations of AOCS and AOCS Foundation.  This Privacy Policy also applies when you use AOCS websites or applications designed for smartphones, tablets, computers and other devices, as well as our community, inform|connect. This Privacy Policy applies when you communicate with us by mail, email, phone, social media or in person, including at AOCS events.  We recognize that information privacy is an ongoing responsibility and will therefore update this Privacy Policy as necessary.  Whenever we change the Privacy Policy, we will give reasonable notice by posting a notice on our home page.  Since these policy change notices are posted for a limited time, you should check this Privacy Policy regularly to see if there have been any changes.

How We Collect Your Personal Information

Information You Provide

As a membership organization, we must maintain contact information on our members to communicate relational or transactional information. We will also maintain customer contact information to communicate relational or transactional information in the process of fulfilling contractual orders for products and services and may use this information to inform members and customers of AOCS member benefits, events and other products/services.

AOCS collects personal information about its members, donors, volunteers and other customers. We collect your personal data when you choose to provide it as you interact with AOCS in person, through correspondence, by phone, by social media or through our websites or apps. As an example, when you join AOCS or register for an account on our websites or apps, you will be asked to provide basic personal data. Certain personal data will also be required when you register to participate in AOCS meetings, present at AOCS meetings or purchase AOCS products or services. You may be asked to provide certain personal data when you submit a contest or sweepstakes entry, respond to a survey, or volunteer. The personal data you provide might include:

  • Contact and identification information such as your name, employer’s name, work address, work email address, telephone number, personal address, photograph
  • Payment information such as your payment card number and expiration date or bank routing and account number
  • Demographic information such as your year of birth, postal code, educational background, job title, job function and interest area(s)
  • Login and access credentials for your AOCS account, app registrations, community account

Information AOCS Combines

AOCS may also maintain information about you that you do not directly provide. AOCS keeps track of :

  • Which events you have attended or presented at
  • Which products you have purchased
  • Which awards you have been awarded
  • Your board and/or committee service including which offices you have held
  • If you are a presenter at one of our events, we may also make and store a recording of your voice and likeness in certain instances.

AOCS may receive information about you from publicly available and third-party databases or services that provide information about business people and companies, or from third parties from whom we have purchased information (including an individual’s name, job title, business contact information, and information about the business where the individual works), and combine this data with information we already have about you. This helps us to update and expand our records, and to identify potential members and new customers that may be interested in our products and services.

Automated Collection of Personal Data

AOCS collects personal information about users over time and across our web sites when you use our sites. We also have third parties that collect personal information this way. To do this, we use several common tracking tools, which may include browser cookies, web beacons, flash cookies, and similar technologies.

Cookies are small files that download when you access certain websites for record-keeping purposes. To learn more, visit here, here and here. These pages also explain how you can manage and delete cookies.

AOCS uses tracking tools:

  • To recognize new visitors to our web sites.
  • To recognize past customers.
  • To store your password if you are registered on our site(s).
  • To improve our website and better understand your visits on our platforms.
  • To integrate with third party social media websites.
  • To serve you with interest-based or targeted advertising (see below for more on interest-based advertising).
  • To observe your behaviors and browsing activities over time across multiple websites or other platforms.
  • To better understand the interests of our customers and our website visitors.

AOCS uses the following tracking technologies and cookies on our sites to improve our site and the experience of our users:

  • Facebook Connect: We use this technology to allow users to share their experiences with our websites on Facebook and to track visitors to our sites who have interacted with our ads or posts on Facebook. For example, we may collect your browser information, demographic data, and interaction data. This allows us to determine the effectiveness of our marketing efforts on Facebook.
  • Facebook Custom Audience: We use Facebook Custom Audience to deliver ads on Facebook to a certain group of users.
  • Google AdWords Conversion: We use conversion tracking to help us understand how effective our digital campaigns are.
  • Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to collect information about how visitors use our website. For example, we collect details of the site where the visitor has come from and the total number of times a visitor has been to our website. This allows us to determine the effectiveness of our online campaigns in terms of sales and user activity on our sites. Google Dynamic Remarketing: We use these tracking tools to track user behavior over time and across third party sites to improve the effectiveness of our online advertising. We collect information about what ads users view and whether they click on the ads. We use this information to improve and customize our advertising.
  • Google Tag Manager: We use Google Tag Manager to measure what features on our site are interesting to our users. It also helps us understand what portions of our site users clicked on during a certain time and how users arrived on our site. This allows us to determine the effectiveness of our online campaigns in terms of sales and user activity on our sites.
  • Twitter: Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short messages. We use the Twitter cookies to enable social sharing buttons on our sites, as well as to track social media and other web browsing behavior in order to target ads and promotions to your interests. For more information on how to opt-out of Twitter cookies, you can go here.
  • LinkedIn: We use LinkedIn cookies to enable social sharing buttons on our sites, as well as to track social media and other web browsing behavior in order to target ads and promotions to your interests.
  • Hotjar: We use Hotjar to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g., how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback.

Interest-based advertising or “online behavioral advertising” includes ads served to you after you leave our website, encouraging you to return. They also include ads we think are relevant based on your browsing habits or online activities. These ads might be served on websites or on apps. They might also be served in emails. We might serve these ads, or third parties may serve ads. They might be about our products or other companies’ products.

The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) has created guidance for online advertisers and provided the “AdChoices” mechanism for such advertisers to comply with users’ choices regarding the placement of interest-based ads. By clicking on the AdChoices icon presented in the corner of each ad served by participants in the AdChoices program, you will be directed to a webpage to allow opt-outs from that ad network and/or for all ad networks participating in the AdChoices program.To learn more about ad networks, including how to opt out of interest-based ads, click here.

It is important to note that your choice to stop targeted advertising is specific to the browser you are using. If you make a choice to opt-out from one computer browser and you want your opt-out to apply to a different computer and/or browser, you must also opt-out from that computer. It is also important to note that most of these choices are cookie-based. If you delete cookies after making an opt-out choice, you will need to perform the opt-out again.

You can manage targeted ads in our apps through your device operating system settings. For iOS apps, visit the “advertising” controls in your privacy settings. For Android apps, use the Settings App. Both operating systems allow you to opt-out of targeted ads and/or reset your device advertising ID.

Professional Networking (inform|connect)

Online web site users should be aware that AOCS’ professional networking community (inform|connet) is public in nature. Any contributions and postings you make to the community will be viewable by other community users and will be associated with the personally identifiable information in your public profile (which includes your name, user name, and other optional information you may choose to include). If you decide to participate in our professional networking community, keep in mind that your personally identifiable information (for example, your name and online name), along with any other information you disclose in the communication you decide to post, will be publicly accessible and viewable by others who visit that area. In addition, we may highlight certain users’ postings or contributions to other members of the professional networking community. It is possible that your posting may result in unsolicited messages from third parties. Such activities are beyond the control of AOCS, and AOCS makes no guaranties about the discoverability of your identity.

How We Use Your Personal information

AOCS has a legitimate interest to maintain your personal data. As a membership organization, we must maintain contact information on our members to communicate relational or transactional information.  We will also maintain customer contact information to communicate relational or transactional information in the process of fulfilling contractual orders for products and services and may use this information to inform members and customers of AOCS member benefits, events and other products/services. This may include, for example, processing your personal information for membership administration, to deliver member benefits to you and to inform you of AOCS related events, content, products and services.  Your personal data may be used so that goods and/or services purchased can be delivered, or your membership record can be established, or processing credit card details in order to process your payment. Your personal data may be processed prior to entering into a contract with AOCS when you request information about a particular product, service or event. It may also be used to help the AOCS understand our members' and constituents' needs and interests to better tailor our products and services to meet your needs.

In association with attending one or more of our conferences, you will have the option to download the "AOCS Event App" to help you navigate the conference and plan your schedule. The "AOCS Event App" provider will only use your personal data to provide and support the Event App application.

AOCS may process your personal information for carefully considered and specific legitimate business purposes which support our non-profit mission and enable us to enhance the services we provide which also benefit our members and customers, which may include some or all of the following: 

  • Where the processing enables us to enhance, modify, personalize or otherwise improve our services/communications for the benefit of our members and customers
  • To identify and prevent fraud
  • To enhance the security of our networks and information systems
  • To better understand how our members and customers interact with our websites
  • To provide communications which we think will be of interest to you
  • To determine the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising

AOCS uses the automated tracking technologies listed above to improve our website and communities and to enhance the experience of our visitors.

How We Share Personal Data

AOCS may share personal data with third parties for legitimate business purposes, including for the following reasons or in the following circumstances:

  • To vendors or third-parties who deliver or provide goods and services or otherwise act on behalf of or at the direction of AOCS, which third parties include,
    • Cloud based database management services to facilitate record and communication management, located in the United States
    • Credit card companies for payment processing
    • Banks and other money services for wire transfers
    • Career Services located in the United States which might allow your information to be accessible to potential employers or recruiters
    • Package delivery companies
    • Social media networks to facilitate their delivery of our customized advertising or messages on their network. (Your ability to opt-out of these messages is governed by the privacy policies of the social media companies.)
    • Email newsletter providers to facilitate their delivery of our customized and curated content on their system. (Your ability to opt-out of these messages is governed by the privacy policies of the provider.)
  • To AOCS volunteers and board members
  • If you are an AOCS member, limited personal information is displayed through the AOCS Membership Directory to other AOCS members
  • If you are an event attendee, speaker, or sponsor, certain parts of your information will be included in the event roster, which roster will be disclosed to meeting attendees, and may also be shared with third-party event sponsors and exhibitors;
  • If you qualify as an Approved chemist your contact information will be included in a roster that is displayed on our website
  • If you are a member of the AOCS Governing Board, AOCS Foundation Board or hold a leadership position within an AOCS Division, Section or Common Interest Group, limited contact information might be displayed on our website
  • To investigate potentially fraudulent or questionable activities;
  • If we believe we are required to do so by law, regulation or legal process
    • In response to a court order, subpoena, or similar investigative demand
    • As we deem appropriate or necessary in response to requests for cooperation from a law enforcement agency, taxation authority, or other government agency
    • To defend against legal claims, exercise our legal rights, or as otherwise required by law.

We may also share data about activities on our websites with advertising networks administered by third parties, which may use many of the same technologies previously discussed (such as cookies, web beacons, and analytics tools) to track your online activities over time and across websites. This collection and ad targeting takes place both on our websites and apps and on third-party digital properties that participate in those ad networks. As a result, you may see certain ads on other websites based on prior activity on our websites and apps, and vice versa.

We may also work with certain social media websites or platforms (such as Facebook or Twitter) to serve ads to you as part of a customized social media campaign. You can opt-out of receiving customized ads by changing your ad preferences on those platforms, which we do not control.

Links to Third Party Sites

Our websites, community and apps may provide links or automatically redirect you to third-party websites that are not controlled by AOCS or governed by this Privacy Policy. For example, if you click on an advertisement or a link to access a technical journal you may be redirected to a website operated by that provider. These third-party websites may collect personal data and other data from or about you. AOCS is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of any website that we do not control, and your interactions with such websites are governed solely by the privacy policies of the entity operating the websites, not this Privacy Policy.  We suggest that when you go to another website you carefully read their privacy policy.

We do not currently process or respond to "Do Not Track" signals from your browser. As previously described, we do participate in online advertising networks administered by third parties, which may track your online activities over time and across third-party websites. You may opt-out of interest-based and other targeted advertising as set forth above in the Targeted Advertising section. However, even if you opt out of such ads, AOCS may continue to collect and use online activity data on our websites and in our apps for other purposes.  

Data Retention

AOCS retains personally identifiable information for as long as necessary for its legitimate business purposes, and as otherwise permitted by applicable law.

International Visitors

AOCS is headquartered in the United States and all of our data processing activities occur in the United States. Any personal data you provide to us, including through our websites and apps, will be transferred to, processed, and stored in the United States. By providing us your personal data or using our websites and apps, you acknowledge that the United States has standards for the processing and storage of personal data that may not be equivalent to (and may be less comprehensive than) those in the country where you reside and/or are a citizen, and you consent to our collection, transfer, processing, and storage of your personal data in the United States. If you do not agree to such cross-border transfers of your personal data, please do not submit it though our websites and/or apps.

EU Data Subjects

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and other countries' privacy laws provide certain rights for data subjects. A good explanation of them (in English) is available on the website of the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office. AOCS is the data controller for the processing of your Personal Data.  We act as data processor on behalf of Clients for Personal Data that we process through the Laboratory Proficiency Program. You may review and/or request changes to certain personal data we have collected about you (such as your contact information, username and password, year of birth) by logging onto your account on aocs.org or informconnect.org, or by contacting us at privacy@aocs.org You have the right to make a written request to be informed whether or not we hold or process any of your personal information (by emailing privacy@aocs.org). 

Subject to applicable law, you have the following rights in relation to your Personal Data:

  • Request that we provide you with details of your personal information that we process, the purpose for which it is processed, the recipients of such information.
  • Request that we rectify any errors in your personal information if it is inaccurate.
  • Request that we erase or cease processing your Personal Data and we will do so in some circumstances, such as where we no longer need it (we may not delete your data when other interests outweigh your right to deletion).
  • Request that we restrict or ‘block’ the processing of your Personal Data in certain circumstances, such as where you contest the accuracy of that Personal Data or object to us processing it.
  • Effective 25 May 2018, you have the right to obtain your Personal Data from us that you consented to give us or that is necessary to perform a contract with you. We will give you your Personal Data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You may reuse it elsewhere.
  • Request at any time to stop processing your Personal Data, and we will do so:
    • If we are relying on a legitimate interest to process your Personal Data—unless we demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing such as when the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract between us; or
    • If we are processing your Personal Data for direct marketing.
  • Object to automated decision-making and profiling on automated processing of your Personal Data, including profiling, that affect you, unless such processing is necessary for entering into, or the performance of, a contract between you and us or you provide your explicit consent to such processing.
  • If we rely on your consent to process your Personal Data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on your prior consent.

Children's Privacy

AOCS's products and services are generally designed for those ages 18 and older. AOCS does not intentionally gather personally identifiable information from visitors who are under the age of 13. If a child under 13 submits personally identifiable information to us and we learn that the personally identifiable information is the information of a child under 13, AOCS will attempt to delete the information as soon as possible. If you believe that we might have any personally identifiable information from a child under 13, please contact us at privacy@aocs.org.

Security

We use commercially reasonable administrative, technical, and physical security measures designed to protect personal data against accidental, unlawful, or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure, or use. In addition, in some areas of our Sites, AOCS may use Secure Socket Layer (“SSL”) or Transport Layer Security (“TLS”) encryption technology to enhance data privacy and help prevent loss, misuse, or alteration of the information under AOCS control. Despite our safeguards, however, no website, app, or information system can ever be completely secure, so we cannot guarantee that the use of our systems, websites, or apps will be completely safe or secure.

Unfortunately, no transmission of Personal Data over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Accordingly, and despite our efforts, AOCS cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, or to or from our online products or services. AOCS has no responsibility or liability for the security of information transmitted via the Internet.

We restrict access to Personal Data to our employees, contractors and services who need to know the information in order to operate, develop, or improve our services.

We retain your Personal Data 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.

Correct/Update Your Personal Information

AOCS gives users the option to change and modify personally identifiable information previously provided. To change such information, visit https://www.aocs.org, or https://www.informconnect.org  and log in with the credentials you provided when you first registered.  Or contact us at +1.217.359-2344.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our treatment of the information you provide us, please contact as at:

Address: 3356 Big Pine Trail, Ste C&D, Champaign, IL 61822 USA

Email: privacy@aocs.org