Privacy Policy
The Vapor Technology Association (referred as “VTA”, “Association,” “we,” “us,” and “our”) respects individual privacy and values the confidence of our members, program participants, and our community. This Privacy Statement sets out the privacy principles that we follow with respect to the collection, use, and disclosure of information that you may provide through the VTA website, vaportechnology.org (our “Website”), as well as through other channels, such us our social media channels, and at our events you may attend.
Please read this entire Privacy Statement before using our Website or submitting information to VTA through our Website or other submission channels.
Contact Details
If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Statement and our practices regarding information you provide to us. Please contact:
Vapor Technology Association
Attn: Executive Director
1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 530
Washington, DC 20004
Email: info@vaportechnology.org
VTA’s Mission Purpose; Legitimate Interests
VTA is the national trade association that is executing a coordinated federal and state lobbying strategy combined with an integrated public affairs strategy to protect and promote access to vapor products. VTA’s mission includes promoting tobacco harm reduction vapor products as an alternative to smoking cigarettes and encouraging rational regulations and responsible public policies, as well as ensuring the long-term viability of the vapor industry driven by small and mid-size business owners. Any information we collect serves to further our mission, including but not limited to the following:
Provide relevant information to our potential members, active members, legislators, executives, regulators, the media, and the public;
Respond to inquiries relating to VTA;
Promote VTA events, programs, and activities; and
Perform our contractual obligations with members and subscribers of our publications and other products/services.
Information We Collect About You; Purposes
You can access some areas of the Website without submitting any information to us. However, if you wish to access additional content available on the Website or participate in some of VTA activities, we may ask that you provide us personally identifiable information/personal data for the following purposes:
Join VTA as a member or renew membership
Create a user account and password to access certain content posted on the Website
Submit a testimonial through the Website to VTA
Contact VTA
Subscribe to VTA’s mailing list
Register for a VTA event
Participate in VTA programs or activities
Personal Information That You Voluntarily Provide To Us. VTA only collects personal information you voluntarily submit to VTA. The types of personal data we collect vary based on the programs, services, and products you wish to engage in, including the following:
For VTA Platinum, Industry and Association members, we collect your name, contact information, company, company type, state, zip code, cell phone, and credit card number.
For VTA Individual members, we collect your name, contact information, state, zip code, cell phone, and credit card number.
For subscribers of our mailing list, we collect your name, email and zip code.
When you participate in VTA’s advocacy programs, such as our call to actions or public campaigns, we may collect your cell phone number and we may invite you to answer survey questions relating to your smoking and vaping history and preferences, as well as demographic questions such as your age range.
Automatically Collected Data. When you visit the Website, we collect and store certain other information automatically that may not identify you personally:
Internet Protocol (IP) address. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to the computer you are using whenever you access the Internet.
Type of browser and operating system used to access our Website
Date and time you access our Website
The pages on our Website that you access
We use the foregoing information in the form of summary statistics to help us make our Website more useful to our visitors, such as assessing what information is of most and least interest. You may elect not to allow us to automatically collect data by following the procedures further described in the Cookies section below.
Cookies and Other Technologies
We may use cookies and other technologies to obtain certain types of information when your web browser accesses the Website. “Cookies” are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser. Our Website uses Google Analytics to help analyze how users use the site, which uses cookies. Cookies are used to collect standard Internet log information and visitor behavior information in an anonymous form. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the Website (such as your IP address) is transmitted to Google. This information is then used to evaluate visitors’ use of the Website and to compile statistical reports on Website activity for VTA.
Google Analytics collects information anonymously. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither VTA nor Google will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user. We will not associate any data gathered from the Website with any personally identifiable information from any source, unless you explicitly and voluntarily submit that information via a fill-in form on our Website. Google Analytics reports website trends without identifying individual visitors. You can opt out of Google Analytics without affecting how you visit our Website – for more information on opting out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites you use, visit this [Google page; embed link] https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/181881?hl=en.
We may use other companies to set cookies on our Website and advertisements and gather cookie information for us. In some cases, we may also use another company to operate web servers or process credit card payments for our Website. If you select “remember me” or “save information” on your computer when logging on to the Website, VTA will set a persistent cookie to store your visitor information so that you do not have to enter it more than once. The persistent cookie also enables VTA to track and target the interests of users to enhance the experience on the Website.
Disabling Cookies/Adjusting Cookies Setting: Most browsers will tell you how to adjust the cookies setting based on your preference, such as how to prevent your browser from accepting cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive cookies, and how to disable cookies altogether. Note that if you reject or block cookies, it may affect your ability to enjoy the full functionality and experience of our Website. Also note that different browsers may offer different tools to set your preference concerning cookies.
Web Beacons: Pages of our Website and our e-mails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit VTA, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an e-mail and for other related statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain web site content and verifying system and server integrity).
How We Use Information
We will use the information you provide to us in order to carry out VTA’s mission and relevant programs and activities, to fulfill our contractual obligations, and for internal use (by VTA staff, board/committee members, and consultants) such as performing marketing studies, research projects, and program development in support of VTA’s mission.
There may be times when we share de-identified, aggregate information—such as the number of hits per page—with our business partners and with advertisers, sponsors, and other third parties in an effort to customize or enhance the content and advertising on the Website for our users.
Also, VTA may share your information with carefully selected business partners and affiliates whose products and services may be of interest to our members and community. Collected phone numbers will not be sold to third parties or used for affiliate marketing, in any circumstance.
Email Signups & Unsubscribe
Submitting your email anywhere on the Website may result in your email address being added to VTA’s marketing list, and you may receive marketing emails from VTA including information about VTA membership, calls to action, newsletters, alerts, campaigns, as well as VTA conferences and events. You may unsubscribe to VTA promotional emails at any time by opting out of e-mail subscriptions with the “unsubscribe” link included in each e-mail. Your e-mail address will be removed from our marketing list. Please allow us a reasonable period of time in order to satisfy your request.
How We Share and Disclose Information
VTA may list the company name and locations of its Platinum, Industry and Association members on the Website. VTA does not post any personally identifiable information pertaining to any VTA individual members on the Website unless the individual member grants VTA permission to do so. It is VTA’s general policy not to share, sell, or rent information to any third parties for their promotional use or for marketing purposes except in the following circumstances:
VTA Agents/Selected Vendors: your personal information may be used within VTA or by a company acting as an agent of VTA for operational support purposes, including but not limited to event registration, content management and analysis, system maintenance, email distribution, printing, and mailing.VTA Business Partners and Affiliates: VTA may share your information with carefully selected business partners, affiliates whose products and services may be of interest to our members and community. All VTA business partners and affiliates are obligated to implement opt-out mechanisms and honor any opt-out requests by recipients in compliance with applicable laws.
Advocacy Groups: VTA may share your information with carefully selected advocacy groups that seek to collaborate on projects involving advocacy, lobbying, or public campaigns in pursuit of VTA’s mission. All third-party advocacy groups are obligated to implement opt-out mechanisms and honor any opt-out requests by recipients in compliance with applicable laws.
Individual Membership – Voices for Vaping Participating Stores: If you sign up to offer discounts to Individual VTA Members, you will be included on a list of participating stores. The list will include the following information: store name, store address, and the store’s point of contact person’s name and contact information. This list of participating stores will be posted on the Website for public access.
VTA Conference/Meeting Attendee list: VTA may retain third party vendors to process conference and meeting registrations. The list of VTA conference and meeting registrants, including the attendees’ contact information provided as part of registration, is provided for one-time use to authorized exhibitors for that one conference/meeting. Attendees may opt-out of being included on the foregoing list at the time of registration. All exhibitors are obligated to implement opt-out mechanisms and honor any opt-out requests by recipients in compliance with applicable laws.
VTA Webinar Attendee list/contact info: VTA contracts with third party webinar vendors to deliver educational programs for members and participants. The list of webinar attendees is made available to other webinar attendees. Attendees may opt-out of being included on the foregoing list at the time of registration.
VTA Call to Action and Engagement information: VTA contracts with third party vendor(s) to provide policy, electoral, media engagements and calls to action for its members and general public participants. VTA will use information collected through any such third party vendor for the purposes set forth herein.
When you terminate your membership, VTA may continue to share information about you according to our legal and regulatory requirements.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, VTA may disclose your personal information as required by law or as needed in legal proceedings when VTA believes in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request. In the event of a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale or transfer of some or all of our assets to a third party, we may also disclose your personal information to the third parties concerned or their professional advisors. In the event of such a transaction, the personal information held by VTA will be among the assets subject to the transaction.
Credit Card Information
VTA does not disclose credit card information provided by its members and contributors. When members or contributors choose to pay using their credit cards, VTA submits the information needed through a secure payment gate site, Authorize.net, to conduct the transactions. VTA reserves the right to change the secure payment gate site at any time.
How to Review, Correct, and Update Information
VTA members may review, correct, and update membership information by logging into the membership account from the Website. VTA members may also correct or update information that may be inaccurate or incomplete by contacting us at info@vaportechnology.org. We may ask you to provide sufficient evidence of your identity for your own protection so we can ensure that information is being released to the correct person. Please allow us a reasonable period of time in order to satisfy your request.
Children’s Information
The Website is not intended for children under 13 years of age. VTA does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years of age. If VTA discovers that a child under the age of 13 has provided us with personal information, we will delete the child’s personal information unless a parent or guardian provides verifiable consent to VTA.
Security Measures
The Website has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under VTA’s control. Notwithstanding the foregoing, when you submit information to VTA through our Website, you should be aware that your information is transmitted across the Internet and that no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure. Although we take reasonable security measures to protect your information when we receive it, you also need to ensure you take appropriate steps to protect your information.
International Website Access and Cross-Border Data Transfers
Our principal place of business is in the United States. If you are visiting the Website from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States where our servers are located and VTA is based. In addition, information that VTA collects may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries in which VTA operates to enable the use of the information in accordance with this Privacy Statement. You agree to such cross-border transfers of personal information.
Privacy Issues and Links to Other Sites
The Website may contain links to other third party websites that are not affiliated with VTA. VTA has no control over and is not responsible for the privacy policies or content of such sites.
Social Media Widgets
The Website includes social media features, such as the Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube buttons, that run on our Website. These features may collect your Internet Protocol address and which page you are visiting on our Website, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing them.
Amendments and Updates
VTA will occasionally update this Privacy Statement. Any changes to our Privacy Statement will be posted here so that users will know what information we gather, how we might use that information, and whether we will disclose it to anyone. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices and this Privacy Statement.
Privacy Policy Statement Effective Date: September 2022
