Privacy Policy
Foundation Laboratory and its affiliated laboratories keep test results confidential, in full compliance with all Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. Foundation Laboratory will only release your test results to your healthcare provider, his or her designee, or to another healthcare provider as directed by you (or a person legally authorized to act on your behalf) in writing, or otherwise as required by federal and state laws.
Foundation Laboratory will monitor any use of its systems by its personnel at any time and maintain copies documenting such monitoring. Foundation Laboratory may collect, store and use personally identifiable information such as name, email, mailing address, and phone number when it is voluntarily submitted to Foundation Laboratory when you register to purchase our Services. To modify the information that you have submitted to Foundation Laboratory associated with your user account, you will need to log into your account at any time.
Our Privacy Statement sets forth the only expectations of privacy any individual should have in terms of usage of the Foundation Laboratory Services, website, or other systems. Foundation Laboratory may also include your information in Aggregated, De-identified Genetic and Self-Reported Information disclosed to third-party non-profit and/or commercial research partners who will not publish that information in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Foundation Laboratory research may be sponsored by, conducted on behalf of, or in collaboration with third parties, such as non-profit foundations, academic institutions or pharmaceutical companies. Foundation Laboratory research may study a specific group or population, identify potential areas or targets for therapeutics development, conduct or support the development of drugs, diagnostics or devices to diagnose, predict or treat medical or other health conditions, work with public, private and/or non-profit entities on genetic research initiatives, or otherwise create, commercialize, and apply this new knowledge to improve health care. Foundation Laboratory will never release your individual-level Information to any third party without asking for and receiving your explicit consent to do so unless required by law.
Further, Foundation Laboratory is free to preserve and disclose any and all Personal Information to law enforcement agencies or others if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal process (such as a judicial proceeding, court order, or government inquiry) or obligations that Foundation Laboratory may owe pursuant to ethical and other professional rules, laws, and regulations; (b) enforce the Foundation Laboratory TERMS OF USE; (c) respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third parties; or (d) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Foundation Laboratory, its employees, its users, its clients, and the public. In such event, we will notify you through the contact information you have provided to us in advance unless doing so would violate the law or a court order. You understand that the technical processing and transmission of the Services, including your Personal Information, may involve (a) transmissions over various networks; and (b) changes to conform and adapt to technical requirements of connecting networks, or devices. Finally, Foundation Laboratory may, in its sole discretion, restrict access to the website for any reason.
Information Foundation Laboratory Collects
a) Information you provide directly to us
• Registration Information. When you register an account with us or purchase our Services, we collect personal information, such as your name, date of birth, billing and shipping address, payment information (e.g., credit card) and contact information such as your email and phone number.
• Information. You have the option to provide us with additional information about yourself through surveys, forms, features or applications. For example, you may provide us with information about your personal traits, ethnicity, disease conditions, other health-related information, and family history information. Where you are disclosing information about a family member, you should make sure that you have permission from the family member to do so.
• User Content. Some of our Services allow you to create and post or upload content, such as data, text, software, music, audio, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials that you create or provide to us through either a public or private transmission (“User Content”). For example, User Content includes any post or message you place on Foundation Laboratory’s community forums.
• Referral Information and Sharing. When you refer a person to Foundation Laboratory or choose to share results information with another person, we will ask for that person’s email address. We will use the email address solely, as applicable, to make the referral or to share your results information, and we will let your contact know that you requested the communication. By participating in a referral program or by choosing to share information with another person, you confirm that the person has given you consent for Foundation Laboratory to communicate (e.g., via email) with him or her.
• Third-party services (e.g., social media). If you use a third-party site, such as Facebook or Twitter, in connection with our Services to communicate with another person (e.g., to make or post referrals or to request that we communicate with another person), then in addition to that person’s name and contact information, we may also collect other information (e.g., your profile picture, network, gender, username, user ID, age range, language, country, friends lists or followers) depending on your privacy settings on the third-party site. We do not control third-party site’s information practices, so please review their privacy policies and your settings on those sites carefully.
• Customer service. When you contact our Customer Care center or correspond with us about our Service, we collect information to: track and respond to your inquiry; investigate any breach of our TERMS OF USE, Privacy Statement or applicable laws or regulations; and analyze and improve our Services.
b) Information related to our services
• Sample. To use our laboratorytesting services, you must purchase, or receive as a gift, register an online account, and provide a sample at a Foundation Laboratory collection site. Once received, your sample will be processed and analyzed and discarded appropriately.
c) Information collected through tracking technology (e.g. from cookies and similar technologies)
• Web Behavior Information. We and our third-party partners use cookies and similar technologies (such as web beacons, tags, scripts and device identifiers) to help us recognize you, customize and improve your experience, provide security, analyze usage of our Services (such as to analyze your interactions with the results, reports, and other features of the Service), gather demographic information about our user base, to offer our products and services to you, to monitor the success of marketing programs, and to serve targeted advertising on our site and on other sites around the Internet. We and our third-party partners do not use your sensitive information, such as Information, for targeted advertising. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited.
• As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data. We may combine this automatically collected log information with other information we collect about you, such as your user profile ID or order number. We do this to improve services we offer you, and to improve marketing, analytics, and site functionality.
• When you access our Service by or through a mobile device, we may receive or collect and store a unique identification numbers associated with your device or our mobile application (including, for example, a UDID, Unique ID for Advertisers (“IDFA”), Google Ad ID, or Windows Advertising ID), mobile carrier, device type, model and manufacturer, mobile device operating system brand and model, phone number, and, depending on your mobile device settings, your geographical location data, including GPS coordinates (e.g. latitude and/or longitude) or similar information regarding the location of your mobile device.
• Because Foundation Laboratory relies on third-party ad networks who may track you across websites over time for advertising purposes, we are not able to respond to your selection of the “Do Not Track” option provided by your browser. We cannot advise on whether your selection of “Do Not Track” option will have any effect on the collection of cookie information by the third-parties who collect such cookie information on our site.
• Third-parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site or to display advertising based on your Web browsing activity use Flash Cookies (Local Shared Objects) to collect and store information.
How we use and share information
Foundation Laboratory will use and share your personal information with third-parties only in the ways that are described in this privacy statement.
a. Using information to provide, analyze and improve our Services
We use the information described above to operate, provide, analyze and improve our Services. These activities may include, among other things, using your information in a manner consistent with other commitments in this privacy statement, to:
i. open your account, enable purchases and process payments, communicate with you, and implement your requests (e.g., referrals);
ii. host our website, run our mobile application(s), authenticate your visits, provide custom, personalized content, and information, and track your usage of our Services;
iii. conduct analytics to improve and enhance our Services;
iv. offer new products or services to you, including through emails, promotions or contests;
v. implement online marketing campaigns and targeted advertising, including by utilizing third-party ads (subject to your cookie settings and preferences), and to measure the effectiveness of our marketing and targeted advertising;
vi. conduct surveys or polls, and obtain testimonials;
vii. process and deliver your results;
viii. perform research & development activities, which may include, for example, conducting data analysis and research in order to develop new or improve existing products and services, and performing quality control activities.
b. Information we share with third-parties
i. General service providers. We share the information described above with our service providers, as necessary to provide their services to us. Service providers are third-parties (other companies or individuals) that help us to provide, analyze and improve our Services. For example, we work with third-party laboratories, contractors, and sub-contractors to process and analyze your sample for purposes of generating your results.
NOTE: Our service providers act on Foundation Laboratory’s behalf. While we implement procedures and contractual terms to protect the confidentiality and security of your information, we cannot guarantee the confidentiality and security of your information due to the inherent risks associated with storing and transmitting data electronically.
ii. “Targeted advertising” service providers. We permit third-party advertising networks and providers to collect Web Behavior Information on our Service to help us to deliver targeted online advertisements (“ads”) to you. They use cookies and similar technologies (such as JavaScript, beacons, device identifiers, location data, and clear gifs) to compile information about your browser’s or device’s visits and usage patterns on our Services and on other websites over time, which helps to better personalize ads to match your interests, and to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns.
iii. Aggregate information. We may share aggregate information with third-parties, which is any information that has been stripped of your Personal Information (e.g., your name and contact information) and aggregated with information of others so that you cannot reasonably be identified as an individual (“Aggregate Information”). This Aggregate Information is different from “individual-level” information. Individual-level Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information consist of data about a single individual’s genotypes, diseases or other traits/characteristics information. We may provide such Aggregate Information in commercial arrangements with our business partners. In contrast, individual-level Genetic Information could reveal whether a specific user has a particular genetic trait or all of the Genetic Information about that user. Foundation Laboratory will ask for your consent to share individual-level Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information with any third-party, other than our service providers as necessary for us to provide the Services to you.
iv. Information we share with commonly owned entities. We may share some or all of your information with other companies under common ownership or control of Foundation Laboratory, which may include our subsidiaries, our corporate parent, or any other subsidiaries owned by our corporate parent in order to provide you better service and improve the user experience. We may provide additional notice and ask for your consent if we wish to share your information with our commonly owned entities in a materially different way than discussed in this Privacy Statement.
c. Disclosures required by law
Under certain circumstances, your information may be subject to disclosure pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, or orders, or in coordination with regulatory authorities. Foundation Laboratory will preserve and disclose any and all information to law enforcement agencies or others if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal or regulatory process (such as a judicial proceeding, court order, or government inquiry) or obligations that Foundation Laboratory may owe pursuant to ethical and other professional rules, laws, and regulations; (b) enforce the Foundation Laboratory TERMS OF USE and other policies; (c) respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third-parties; or (d) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Foundation Laboratory, its employees, its users, its clients, and the public.
Effective Date: January 15, 2019