Privacy Policy

California Society of Plastic Surgeons — Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 3, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes how the California Society of Plastic Surgeons ("CSPS," "we," or "us") collects, uses, and shares your personal information when you use our website https://californiaplasticsurgeons.org and any of our subdomains (the "Website"). It also covers information we collect in connection with membership, meetings, and educational programs, including those of the California Society of Plastic Surgeons Educational and Research Foundation (CSPSERF).

Topics:

  • Personal information we collect

  • How we use your personal information

  • How we share your personal information

  • Mergers and transfers

  • Public member directory

  • How we store your data

  • No processing of children's data

  • Email communications

  • Political action committee contributions

  • Your data protection rights

  • Additional rights for California residents

  • Third-party websites

  • Changes

  • Complaints

  • Contact us

Personal Information We Collect

When you visit the Website, we automatically collect certain information about your device, including information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on your device. Additionally, as you browse the Website, we collect information about the individual web pages or resources that you view, what websites or search terms referred you to the Website, and information about how you interact with the Website. We refer to this automatically collected information as "Device Information."

We collect Device Information using the following technologies:

  • "Cookies" are data files that are placed on your device or computer and often include an anonymous unique identifier. For more information about cookies, and how to disable cookies, visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org

  • "Log files" track actions occurring on the Website, and collect data including your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, and date/time stamps.

  • "Web beacons," "tags," and "pixels" are electronic files used to record information about how you browse the Website.

We use Device Information for:

  • Functionality: To recognize you on our Website, keep you signed in to your member account, and remember your previously selected preferences.

  • Security: To help protect member accounts and our systems against unauthorized access, fraud, and abuse.

  • Analytics: To understand how visitors and members use the Website so we can improve our content, educational resources, and member services.

We do not use your Device Information for targeted or behavioral advertising, and we do not run retargeting campaigns.

You can set your browser not to accept cookies, and the website above tells you how to remove cookies from your browser. Some of our Website features, including member login, may not function if you disable cookies. Please note that we do not alter our Website's data collection and use practices when we see a Do Not Track signal from your browser.

We also collect data you provide to us directly. We refer to the data you provide as "Provided Information." We collect and process data you provide when you:

  • Apply for membership in CSPS or renew an existing membership

  • Pay membership dues, meeting fees, or other amounts owed to us

  • Create or update a member account or member directory profile on our Website

  • Register for our annual meeting, educational sessions, webinars, or other CSPS or CSPSERF events

  • Participate in continuing medical education (CME) activities, including completing evaluations and claiming credit

  • Fill out our contact form or email us to request information about the Society, membership, or plastic surgery generally

  • Submit an application, nomination, abstract, or award submission

  • Make a donation to the California Society of Plastic Surgeons Educational and Research Foundation

  • Sign up for our email newsletter, legislative alerts, or other regular communications

  • Respond to a member survey, poll, or request for feedback

  • Contact us regarding advocacy or legislative matters

  • Contribute to our political action committee

  • Apply for a position, committee seat, or leadership role within the Society

The Provided Information we collect may include:

  • Personal identification information: name, credentials, email address, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers

  • Professional information: practice name and address, medical license number, NPI number, board certification status and dates, training and residency history, year of graduation, areas of practice, hospital affiliations, professional society memberships, CV

  • Membership information: membership category and status, dues history, committee and leadership service, meeting attendance, CME participation and credits earned

  • Billing information: billing address, and payment information such as credit card numbers, processed by our payment provider

  • Donor information for contributions to CSPSERF, including donation amount, date, and any recognition preferences

  • Political contribution information for contributions to our political action committee, including contribution amount and date, and your home address, occupation, and employer where required by law

  • Event information: dietary restrictions, accessibility needs, guest names, and travel or lodging details you provide to us in connection with an event

  • Any information you choose to include in a message, survey response, or profile you submit to us

When we talk about "Personal Information" in this Privacy Policy, we are talking about both Device Information and Provided Information.

We may also receive your Personal Information from third parties. In particular:

  • We may receive information from national or regional plastic surgery organizations, certifying boards, or licensing bodies in order to verify eligibility for membership

  • We may receive information from our payment processors while executing payment operations

  • We may receive information from third-party tools we use to collect information from you, such as form, event registration, and survey tools

  • We may receive information from members who nominate or refer you, and from business partners, sponsors, exhibitors, and service providers we work with

A note about health information: CSPS is a professional membership society. We do not provide medical care and we do not request or knowingly collect patient health information. Please do not send us patient records, medical images, or other protected health information through our Website or by email.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We use the Provided Information we collect generally to operate the Society and provide the services and benefits you have requested, including processing membership applications and renewals, processing your payment information, registering you for meetings and educational activities, issuing CME credit, maintaining our member directory, administering the Foundation, and providing you with invoices, receipts, and confirmations. Additionally, we use Provided Information to:

  • Communicate with you about your membership, our meetings, and Society business

  • Send you newsletters, legislative and advocacy updates, and other communications consistent with the preferences you have shared with us

  • Verify your credentials and eligibility for membership and for listing in our member directory

  • Screen registrations and payments for potential risk or fraud

  • Conduct surveys and evaluate our programs, meetings, and educational offerings

  • Administer elections, committee appointments, awards, and grants

  • Respond to inquiries from members of the public seeking information about plastic surgery or about our members

  • Comply with our legal, tax, and accreditation obligations, including CME accreditation recordkeeping

We use the Device Information we collect to help us screen for potential risk and fraud (in particular, your IP address), and more generally to improve and optimize our Website — for example, by generating analytics about how our visitors browse and interact with the Website, and by assessing the reach of our communications and outreach.

How We Share Your Personal Information

We share your Personal Information with third parties to help us use your Personal Information as described above.

We use the analytics tools built into our website platform, Squarespace, to understand how visitors use the Website. We do not use Google Analytics. You can read more about how Squarespace handles this information in its privacy policy at https://www.squarespace.com/privacy

The types of third parties with whom we might share elements of your Personal Information include:

  • Our association management company and administrative staff, who operate the Society's day-to-day business on our behalf

  • Payment processors engaged by us to securely store and handle payment information, such as credit or debit card information

  • Providers of association management systems, member databases, and customer relationship management tools

  • Providers of email management and distribution tools

  • Providers of event registration, meeting management, and virtual meeting or webinar services

  • Providers of website hosting, content management, and member directory services

  • Providers of security and fraud prevention tools and services

  • Providers of data aggregation and analytics software services that allow us to monitor and optimize our site

  • Providers of survey, evaluation, and CME tracking tools

  • Accountants, auditors, insurers, and legal advisors

  • National and affiliated plastic surgery organizations, where you have asked us to share your information or where sharing is necessary to verify membership or coordinate joint programs

  • State agencies that regulate political contributions, as described in the political action committee section below

See below for a list of third-party providers we may use to process your data.

We may also share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant, or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.

We do not sell your Personal Information for money.

Mergers and Transfers

In the event of a merger with, acquisition by, or transfer of CSPS's operations to another society or organization, your Personal Information may be among the assets transferred. We will provide notice before any Personal Information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Public Member Directory

CSPS maintains a directory on our Website that allows patients and members of the public to locate board-certified plastic surgeons in California. If you are a CSPS member, certain information from your member profile — such as your name, credentials, practice name, practice address, telephone number, website, and areas of practice — may be displayed publicly in that directory.

Information published in the directory is publicly accessible and may be indexed by search engines or collected by third parties. If you would like to review, correct, or limit the information displayed about you, or opt out of the public directory, please contact us using the information below.

How We Store Your Data

We process and store your data using the following third-party providers:

  • Squarespace, which hosts our Website and provides the built-in analytics we use to understand Website traffic

  • PRRI Association Management Company, which provides our administrative staff and maintains our proprietary association management system, member database, event registration system, and payment processing

  • Higher Logic, which we use to manage and distribute our email communications

  • Zoom, which we use to host webinars and other virtual educational sessions

Please visit their individual websites for information on the physical location of the servers where your information is stored.

We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to, or unauthorized alteration, disclosure, or destruction of, any information that may be stored on our servers. In particular:

  • We restrict access to your Personal Information to CSPS leaders, staff, and service providers who need that information in order to deliver, operate, develop, or improve our services.

  • Payment card and bank account information submitted through our Website is transmitted over encrypted channels using 128-bit or 256-bit encryption and is processed through the association management system maintained by PRRI Association Management Company. CSPS does not permanently store full payment card numbers on its own systems.

  • We require our service providers to maintain appropriate safeguards for the information they process on our behalf.

Of course, no computer network or data transmission on the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so you submit your information at your own risk.

We will maintain your Personal Information for as long as it is needed for the purposes described in this policy, including to maintain membership and CME records required by our accreditation and legal obligations, unless and until you ask us to delete this information.

No Processing of Children's Data

The Website is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 18. We do not intend to process children's data and will delete it if we become aware of it.

Email Communications

If you join CSPS, register for one of our meetings or educational programs, make a donation, download a resource in exchange for your email address, submit our contact form, and/or opt in to receive emails, you agree to receive email communications from us, including but not limited to newsletters, Society and site updates, meeting announcements, legislative and advocacy alerts, educational offerings, and other announcements and correspondence. We are not responsible for the receipt of any such emails. You are responsible for ensuring that our email addresses are not blocked or forwarded to your spam folder.

You have the right at any time to stop us from contacting you for marketing purposes, by using the unsubscribe link in any of our emails or by contacting us directly. If you opt to unsubscribe, you understand that you may no longer receive information or updates from us. We may still send you administrative messages related to your membership, dues, registrations, or CME records.

CAN-SPAM compliance. CSPS complies with the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Our commercial emails identify CSPS as the sender, include our physical mailing address, use accurate subject lines and header information, and include a working unsubscribe mechanism that we honor promptly. CSPS does not send, and does not permit others to send, unsolicited bulk email from our systems or from servers maintained on our behalf. If you believe you have received spam from us or from an address using our name, please tell us immediately so we can investigate and correct the problem. You can read more about the CAN-SPAM Act at https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Political Action Committee Contributions

CSPS operates a political action committee, CSPS-PAC (the "PAC"), which supports candidates and causes relevant to the practice of plastic surgery in California.

Contributions to the PAC are voluntary, are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes, and are separate from membership dues. You will not be favored or disadvantaged in your membership based on whether or how much you contribute, or on your decision not to contribute.

When you contribute to the PAC, we collect the information required to accept and report your contribution, which may include your name, home address, employer, occupation, and the amount and date of your contribution. California law requires committees to disclose this information in periodic campaign finance reports filed with the California Secretary of State and, where applicable, local filing officers. Those reports are public records and are published online. This means that if your contribution meets the applicable reporting threshold, your name, city, employer, occupation, and contribution amount will become publicly available. We cannot remove or withhold information that we are legally required to report.

PAC contributor information is maintained separately from our general membership records and is used only to administer the PAC, meet our reporting obligations, and communicate with contributors about the PAC's work. If you have questions about the PAC's practices, contact us using the information below.

Your Data Protection Rights

If you are a European resident, you have the right to access personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. Under certain conditions, you may also have the right to restrict or object to our processing of your data, and to request that we transfer your Personal Information to another organization. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us through the contact information below.

Additionally, if you are a European resident, we note that we are processing your information to fulfill contracts we might have with you (for example, if you join the Society or register for a meeting), or otherwise to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above. Please note that your information will be transferred outside of Europe, including to the United States.

For United States residents, depending on the applicable law in your jurisdiction, you may have additional rights, such as rights to access, correction, and deletion of your Personal Information. If you have any questions about what rights and choices apply in your jurisdiction or wish to exercise those rights, please feel free to contact us.

Additional Rights for California Residents

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, may give you the following rights regarding your Personal Information:

  • The right to know what categories of Personal Information we have collected about you, the sources of that information, the purposes for collecting it, the categories of third parties with whom we share it, and the specific pieces of Personal Information we hold about you

  • The right to delete Personal Information we have collected from you, subject to certain exceptions

  • The right to correct inaccurate Personal Information we maintain about you

  • The right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your Personal Information for cross-context behavioral advertising. CSPS does not sell your Personal Information and does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

  • The right to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive Personal Information

  • The right to non-discrimination for exercising any of these rights

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details below. We will verify your request by asking you to confirm information we already hold about you, such as the email address associated with your record. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf; we may ask the agent for proof of your written permission and may ask you to verify your identity directly with us.

We do not sell Personal Information, and we do not knowingly sell or share the Personal Information of consumers under 16 years of age.

Third-Party Websites

Our Privacy Policy applies only to our Website. We are not responsible for the data collection, privacy practices, or policies of any third-party site to which we may provide a link or that may link to our site, including the individual websites of our members. We encourage you to read the privacy statement and terms of use of other sites.

Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. The date of the last revision will be indicated by the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Any such changes are effective immediately upon publication on our Website.

This Privacy Policy replaces the privacy notice previously posted on our Website, which was last updated on November 20, 2020.

Complaints

Please contact us if you have any complaints about how we use your Personal Information so we can resolve the issue whenever possible. Residents of the European Union also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection regulator. California residents can contact the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs in writing at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, California 95834, or by telephone at (800) 952-5210 or (916) 445-1254.

Contact Us

For more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to exercise your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to contact us.

California Society of Plastic Surgeons 500 Cummings Center, Suite 4400 Beverly, MA 01915

Email: admin@californiaplasticsurgeons.org Phone: 978.927.8330 Contact form: https://californiaplasticsurgeons.org/contact/