Privacy Policy

Effective Date: February 2018

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA, Inc. ("Doctors Without Borders") is strongly committed to protecting the privacy of our donors, website visitors and other individuals who communicate with Doctors Without Borders. We wish to help you better understand the information we gather, how we handle it, whether we disclose it to anyone, and your options regarding our use of, and your ability to correct, this information. The following Privacy Policy applies when you make a donation to Doctors Without Borders, either online or otherwise, as well as when you visit our sites, doctorswithoutborders.org, donate.doctorswithoutborders.org, and forcedfromhome.com, or otherwise share your personal information with Doctors Without Borders as discussed below. By visiting our web sites, you are accepting this Privacy Policy. We will also provide hard copies of our Privacy Policy upon request.

If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact our U.S.-based third party dispute resolution provider (free of charge) at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request.

Donor Information

If you make a donation, either online or otherwise, we will request certain personally identifiable information about you (such as your name, address, telephone number, email address, and credit card information). This information enables us to process your donation and communicate with you about it. In addition, we may use such information to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, keep you updated about our work, analyze website usage, and improve our website's content, layout, and services.

We may also collect from you the following personal information about your contacts:

• Name and address of a gift recipient, in order to fulfill a purchase order

When you provide us with personal information about your contacts, we will only use this information for the specific reason for which it is provided.

If you believe that one of your contacts has provided us with your personal information and you would like to request that it be removed from our database, please contact us at (212) 763-5779 or email donations@newyork.msf.org.

We may receive information about you from other sources, including publicly available databases or third parties from whom we have purchased data, and combine this data with information we already have about you. This helps us to update, expand and analyze our records, identify new customers, and provide products and services that may be of interest to you. If you provide us personal information about others, or if others give us your information, we will only use that information for the specific reason for which it was provided to us.

Examples of the types of personal information that may be obtained from public sources or purchased from third parties and combined with information we already have about you, may include:

• Address information about you from third party sources, such as the U.S. Postal Service, to verify your address so we can properly ship a gift receipt to you and to prevent fraud
• Purchased marketing data about our customers from third parties that is combined with information we already have about you, to create more tailored advertising and products

Sharing

Sharing with Third Parties

In general, we may share your information with third-party business partners, for instance, for the purpose of enhancing our services. If you do not want us to share your personal information with these companies, contact us at (212) 763-5779 or email donations@newyork.msf.org.

We do not sell or rent our mailing list to other organizations that solicit donations or sell any products. However, in order to enhance our solicitation strategies and reduce our fundraising costs, Doctors Without Borders exchanges portions of our mailing list with select non-profit organizations. If you prefer not to have your personal information disclosed in this manner, please contact our Donor Services Department at donations.nyc@newyork.msf.org, call us at 212-763-5779 or write to us by postal mail sent to Doctors Without Borders, Attn: Donor Services, 40 Rector St., 16th Floor, New York, NY 10006.

Doctors Without Borders employs companies to assist us with such functions as hosting our donor information database, sending postal mail and email, modeling our data, and processing online and mail donations and credit card payments. These companies have access to personal donor information as needed to perform their functions. Doctors Without Borders requires that these companies keep such information confidential and are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us. We may retain your information 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. To have your contact information removed from our systems, contact us at (212) 763-5779 or email donations@newyork.msf.org. (See Security section below.)

Other Information

Through our sites or otherwise, you may decide to submit personally identifiable information (such as your name, postal address and email address) for purposes other than donating (such as receiving an email newsletter or further information as to a particular topic). We collect and store this information and use it for the purposes for which you submitted it. In addition, we may use such information to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, keep you updated about our work, analyze website usage, and improve our website's content, layout, and services. We do not share this information with any third parties except those that assist us with certain functions, as described above.

Employment

In connection with seeking employment or a volunteer position with Doctors Without Borders, you may decide to submit, through our sites or otherwise, personally identifiable information (including your name, address, telephone number, email address and any other personally identifiable information requested on our online and offline forms, as well as an electronic or paper copy of your resume/CV). All information entered into any online or offline forms related to employment or volunteering is strictly private, and will be viewed only by Doctors Without Borders for human resources purposes. No information stored or submitted in such forms will be used for any purpose other than to assess your qualifications as an employee or volunteer for Doctors Without Borders.

Other Disclosures

Please be advised that we may disclose your personal information to the government or to third parties pursuant to law enforcement inquiries, court orders, subpoenas and similar requests, or when we otherwise believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary or appropriate in connection with any activity that violates the law or may expose us to liability.

Security

When you send personal information to us by submitting an online form on our site, the information you transmit to us travels by high-grade encryption using the https protocol. We also require that the companies we work with to process your online donation payments use high-grade encryption and security protocols, and that all vendors processing check and credit card transactions received on our behalf meet all industry standards, certify their compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and are audited to meet with the Statement on Auditing Standard 70 (SAS 70). The personal information that you provide is stored in a secure location and accessible only by designated employees trained in the proper handling of customer information. We employ industry standard techniques such as firewalls, encryption, intrusion detection, and site monitoring to protect your personally identifiable information from unauthorized access by users inside and outside the organization. You should be aware, however, that "perfect security" does not exist on the Internet; third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications.  If you have any questions about the security of your personal information, you can contact us at (212) 763-5779 or email donations@newyork.msf.org.

We may retain your information 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.

Normal Browsing

Doctors Without Borders does not collect any personally identifying information from you when you visit our sites unless you choose to provide such information to us.

You can browse the Doctors Without Borders sites without telling us who you are or revealing any information about yourself. The information we gather during normal browsing comes from two sources: standard server logs collect information such as the IP (Internet Protocol) address, domain name, browser type, operating system, mobile related information if you access our website using your mobile device, and information such as the site that referred you to us, the files you downloaded, the pages you visited, and the dates/times of those visits. This is to analyze trends in the aggregate and administer the site.

Additionally, if you have come into the site from one of our newsletters or from a site that has requested a link to us, we will ask your browser to accept a cookie that carries a general marketing source code with you as you browse through the site, in order to help us match referring sites to donations made. This cookie does not capture or hold any personally identifying information about you, and is deleted when you end your session by leaving our site or closing your browser.

Cookies and Tracking Technologies

Doctors Without Borders and its partners use cookies, session replay/capture or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website/donation forms, track users’ movements around the website/donation forms, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on our website or service.

To manage Flash cookies, please click here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

When you visit our website, we might store some information on your computer in the form of a “cookie” (i.e. a small piece of text that stores information on your browser in your computer’s hard drive) or similar file. We use conversion tracking cookies as part of campaigns in order to analyze trends, gather broad demographic information, and monitor site traffic patterns that can help us further develop and improve the design and functionality of our site. Similarly, we also use cookies for ”retargeting” in our internet advertising campaigns so that third party vendors, including Google, can show you advertising about Doctors Without Borders as you browse the Internet. Retargeting is a marketing tool that identifies you as a previous visitor to the Doctors Without Borders website and targets you for specific outreach messages, encouraging you to revisit our website or consider donating. The cookies will only be used to obtain non-personal information (you will be anonymous). If you prefer, you can usually set your browser to refuse cookies, or to notify you when you receive a new cookie. You can also opt out of receiving cookies on the Doctors Without Borders website for Google advertising by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page (http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/#toc-edit).

We partner with a third party to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third party partner may use cookies or similar technologies in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities, interests, and geographic location. If you wish to opt out of interest-based advertising click here.Please note you will continue to receive generic ads.

Our website includes social media features, such as the Facebook Like button, and widgets, such as the Share This button. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, 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 policies of the companies providing them.

We may work with data providers to target advertising to you personally, through online and offline methods including email, display media and direct mail. This advertising may be directed to you because you visited or logged in to our website. When we generate this advertising, data we collect from you through online cookies and other technologies may be combined with other de-identified data (such as a hashed, non-readable email or postal address) in order to tailor ads to you based on your preferences and other information about you. To learn more about targeted advertising, these providers, or how you may opt out, please visit the DAA’s consumer choice page at http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Technologies other than http cookies may be used by third parties in a similar way, to recognize the email recipients’ computer or device and to keep track of which user identities match to which devices or browsers, and those technologies may not respond to browser settings that block conventional cookies. You may opt of many of these types of technologies by visiting the NAI’s opt out page at http://www.networkadvertising.org.

External Links

This site contains links to other sites. Unless we expressly state otherwise, Doctors Without Borders makes no representations whatsoever concerning the content of those sites. The fact that Doctors Without Borders has provided a link to a site is not an endorsement, authorization, sponsorship, or affiliation with respect to such site, its owners, or its providers. There are risks associated with using any information, software, or products found on the Internet, and Doctors Without Borders cautions you to make sure that you understand these risks before retrieving, using, relying upon, or purchasing anything via the Internet.

Please be aware that Doctors Without Borders is not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites. Our Privacy Policy applies to all web pages under our domains, and not to any web pages not under our domains, regardless of any hyperlinks from a web page under our domains to a web page not under our domains.

Note to Parents and Children

Doctors Without Borders welcomes children to learn more about our organization and about the humanitarian and medical issues presented on the Doctors Without Borders sites, and we are particularly respectful of the privacy of our young users. We encourage parents to monitor their children's use of the Internet and to help us protect their privacy by instructing them never to provide personal information on this site or any other without permission. We will never attempt to extract unnecessary information from our users, regardless of age. Consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 ("COPPA"), we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without prior verifiable parental consent. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with such information without consent, we will use our best efforts to remove such information from our files. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that a child under 13 has provided such information to us, he or she should contact us at (212) 763-5779 or email donations@newyork.msf.org. 

Updating Your Information

Upon request Doctors Without Borders will provide you with information about whether we hold any of your personal information. We work to process and maintain accurately the information that you share with us. If you have donated to us and would like to access, correct, update, or delete your personal data or to adjust your mail preferences, you can do so by using our contact form, calling us at (212) 763-5779, emailing donations@newyork.msf.org, or by sending us the update via postal mail sent to Doctors Without Borders, P.O. Box 5030, Hagerstown, MD 21741-5030.

We will respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe.

Opt-Out Preference

You may sign up to receive email or newsletter or other communications from us. If you would like to discontinue receiving this information, you may update your email preferences by using the "Unsubscribe" link found in emails we send you or at your member profile on our website or by contacting us at (212) 763-5779 or email donations@newyork.msf.org.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may, from time to time, make changes to our Privacy Policy, based on your comments and our need to reflect accurately our data collection and disclosure practices. If we make any material changes in the way we use your personal information, we will notify you by posting a prominent announcement on our website. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy.

Questions or Suggestions

It is important to us at Doctors Without Borders to hear what our site visitors and donors have to say about our services or our policies. If you have any questions, concerns, or complaints about this Privacy Policy, or want to let us know what you think about our products and services, please send an email to donations@newyork.msf.org, call us at 212-763-5779 or write to us by postal mail sent to Doctors Without Borders, Attn: Donor Services, 40 Rector St., 16th Floor, New York, NY 10006.

Governing Law

You agree that your use of this Privacy Policy and any disputes relating thereto shall be governed in all respects by the laws of the State of New York. Any dispute relating to this Privacy Policy shall be resolved solely in the state or federal courts located in Manhattan, New York.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on February 27, 2018. DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS®, MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES® and other marks used on this website are trademarks of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA, Inc. or its affiliates and may not be used without permission.