CANADIAN DENTAL HYGIENISTS ASSOCIATION
L’ASSOCIATION CANADIENNE DES HYGIÉNISTES DENTAIRES

Policy Type: Membership Control Policies

Policy Title: Privacy and Security

Reference:

Canadian Dental Hygienists Association (CDHA) values and respects the privacy of our Members including security of your personal data.  We agree to use such information for the purpose collected.  This applies to both on and off line information that is collected and used in the course of our activities.

Canadian Dental Hygienists Association strives to comply with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).  The Act – commonly referred to as the CSA Code – includes, with some modification, the principles set out in the National Standard of Canada Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, CAN/CSA-Q830-96. The ten overarching principles include Accountability; Identification of Purposes; Consent; Limiting Collection; Limiting Use, Disclosure and Retention; Accuracy; Safeguards; Openness; Individual Access; and Challenging Compliance.

Definitions

• The Executive Assistant of the CDHA will act as CDHA Privacy Officer.
• Provincial Privacy Officer - Each Provincial Association using the CDHA database designates an individual to approve content suitable for provincial mailings and uphold privacy policies on behalf of their members. The provincial designate must notify the CDHA of their approval in writing prior to any exchange of information.

Collection of Data
Data is collected annually during the membership application and renewal process. This data is updated online for individual files throughout the rest of the year.  Members can call, email, and fax to update their information in addition to updating their own record online via the Member’s Only section of the website. Reminders to keep information accurate are included in member communications, including Probe Journal, the official publication of CDHA.

Member and non-member data is primarily stored on the Association Information Management System (AIMS) database. This database is used for member mailings, broadcast email or fax to whole or subsets of the database, research surveys, employment surveys, third party label rental for survey or product promotion, management of professional standards and as deemed appropriate by management staff for other organizational business.

Additional data is collected as members and non-members interact with the organization through the Web site and act as volunteers or in contract positions. The collection of personal information is limited to that necessary for the purposes identified.  Consent for the collection of data is obtained as follows:

• Consent is confirmed annually upon completion of the membership application.

• Opt-in consent is provided for third party label rental.

Security
Security safeguards, such as limited access, password protection, encoding and CDHA policies and procedures protect personal information.

A Confidentiality Agreement must be signed by all parties with whom we exchange information. This extends to the exchange of information between the provincial associations and third parties.  

Protecting your CDHA membership number is critical in ensuring the protection of your personal information as it provides access to the Members' Only website and your Personal Profile. Your CDHA membership number should never be divulged to any third party organizations. If you choose to provide your membership identification number to organizations other than CDHA and your provincial association, you are potentially jeopardizing the privacy of your personal information. If you are required to provide proof of membership to a third party organization, the third party organization may contact CDHA at 613-224-5515 as we would be pleased to provide proof of membership on your behalf.

Third Party Access to Data
Member email addresses and telephone numbers will not be sold or provided to any outside parties.

In provinces where a hard copy of the Provincial Directory is available for sale to members, it is intended for personal networking use only by CDHA members and is not to be sold or distributed to other agencies, groups or corporations.

CDHA does provide mailing labels to third parties such as CDHA suppliers, educational organizations, industry and grant recipients. These parties wish to promote special events, inform members of new products and resources and/or conduct funded research.  Provincial associations with access to AIMS also provide mailing labels to third parties. CDHA or a provincial association designate reviews all materials distributed by third parties prior to loaning mailing labels to ensure these are of potential interest to members.  If members prefer not to receive these mailings, they may submit their request in writing to the CDHA.

The CDHA Privacy Officer shall receive a copy of all mailings to confirm content of the mailing, including any provincial association mailing.

The CDHA Web Site

• Using “Cookies”

The CDHA Members’ Only web site uses an Internet tool called a “session” cookie. Cookies are small bits of data that are sent to a user’s computer to improve the user experience.  We use them to track that the member has signed in so that they don’t have to continually enter their user name and password as they move around the site. This cookie is removed as soon as they log out or close their browser.

• Tracking IP Addresses

An IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) is a number that is automatically assigned to a user’s computer whenever they are using the Internet.  Web servers- the computers that “serve up” Web pages – identify the computer by its IP Address.  We collect IP addresses for the purposes of system administration, to report aggregate information to our partners, and to audit the use of our site.  When pages are requested from Members Only, our servers log the IP Address. We do not normally link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, which means that a user’s session will be logged, but the user remains anonymous.  We can and will use IP addresses to identify a user when it is deemed necessary to enforce compliance with our Terms of Use and License Agreement or to protect our service, site, customers, or others.

Summary
Please be assured that we take member privacy seriously, and make every reasonable effort to protect it.  If you have questions or comments about our member privacy policy, please contact the Executive Director.