Privacy Policy

Last Modified: Nov. 13, 2023 (View Archived Versions) 

1. Introduction

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® is committed to respecting the privacy and protecting the personal information of individuals with whom we interact. CTA is a 501(c)(6) corporation incorporated in the Commonwealth of Virginia and operates as a standards and trade organization on behalf of more than 2,200 consumer technology company members in the United States. This Privacy Policy describes how CTA collects, uses and shares your personal information in connection cta.tech website and informs you of your choices concerning CTA’s processing of your personal information, with regard to:

• CES Unveiled in Europe;
• CES Unveiled and Hall of Fame in New York;
• The CTA Foundation website;
• CTA Membership Activities; and
• Other CTA events around the world

(collectively, “CTA Events”).

2. When Does this Privacy Policy Apply?

This Privacy Policy applies exclusively to the cta.tech website and related applications (“Services”) offered by CTA.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to:

• CES in Las Vegas, the CES mobile app, or other CES events (the Privacy Policy for ces.tech may be found here);
• Third party websites that operate independently in accordance with their own Privacy Policies (see Section 6 below); or
• CTA employees or job applicants.

3. What Are Your Responsibilities When Providing Personal Information?

Whenever you interact with CTA on behalf of another individual or entity, such as by providing or accessing personal information about another individual, you represent that your interactions and exchanges comply with the applicable data protection laws. You shall have sole responsibility for any violation of applicable privacy laws as a result of a failure to inform the other individual about how their personal information will be processed or to obtain any necessary authorizations from such individual.

You also have the responsibility to ensure that any personal information that you provide to us via this website or the Services are accurate and kept up to date.

You should not send us any sensitive information such as social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passwords unrelated to the use of this website, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, health data, biometrics or genetic, criminal background or trade union membership information. If you do send us sensitive information, then you are consenting to its processing in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

4. What Kinds of Personal Information Do We Collect and Use?

You may access and use many of our Services without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. However, some Services may require you to provide us with personal information (referred to for convenience as "Submission Pages").

We collect personal information from the following sources:

• Personal information we collect from you: Submission Pages collect information that you give us, for example, when you create an account with us to register for one of our CES events (and these events will each have specific and additional terms and conditions that each attendee will be required to accept as part of the registration process); download one of our publications; purchase a product; complete a form on the website; or subscribe to our publications and newsletters. The information collected includes (but is not limited to) your name, job title, employer name, address, email address, phone number, and information about your interests in and use of consumer industry technologies. In these situations, if you choose to withhold any personal information requested by us, it may not be possible for you to gain access to certain Services and for us to respond to you.
• Information collected from third parties: From time to time, CTA receives the categories of personal information described above from authorized third parties and sources other than through a CTA Service, such as our partners and exhibitors. This may happen, for example, if:
• Your employer is exhibiting, sponsoring, or otherwise participating in a CTA Event and signs you up for the CTA Event or shares your contact details for purposes of event coordination.
• A co-sponsor of a CTA Event provides us with your contact details for purposes of your participation or for event coordination.
• Information we collect automatically: We also collect information about you when you use our Service, for example, when you visit our websites, or view and interact with our ads and content. This information may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, the region or general location where your computer or device is accessing the internet, browser type, operating system, other information that is provided by the end user device and information about the use of the CTA Event services, including a history of the pages you view. We also use cookies and similar technologies, and you may view our Cookie Policy.

Note: As a general matter, we do not collect or process sensitive personal information. When you use credit card or bank account details to pay for products or services provided by CTA in connection with CTA events, we rely on third party payment processors and only they will have access to your financial information for purposes of completing your transactions with us.

5. For What Purposes Do We Use Your Personal Information?

We use personal information that we collect in a variety of ways in providing the Services and operating our business, including to:

• process your personal information for event registration and participation;
• deliver the products and services relating to CTA Events;
• assist you with hotel arrangements in connection with CTA Events;
• inform you of CTA/CES events, meetings, content, initiatives and other benefits or opportunities;
• understand your needs and interests to better tailor our products and services to meet your needs;
• use data for targeted advertising to which user has specifically opted in;
  
• respond to your questions.

CTA retains personal information for the duration of the customer’s or member’s business relationship with CTA and for a reasonable period after the relationship ends.

6. When Do We Disclose Your Personal Information to Third Parties?

A. Our Data Sharing Practices

We do not share your personal information with others except as indicated within this Policy or when we inform you in supplemental privacy notices relating to specific activities, for example, when:

• You authorize the sharing of your personal information by registering to an event or conference where we share data with event co-sponsors. In these instances, you will be asked to review specific and additional terms and conditions as part of the registration process.
• Your employer requests confirmation of your registration for event coordination purposes.
• You authorize the sharing of personal information by allowing exhibitors to scan your attendee badge at events. Again, in these instances, the event terms and conditions will outline this as part of the registration process.
• You request a special service with us. This typically relates to conference attendees who request additional services like accessibility or transportation services.
• You are the contact person for your company that registers for an event. We will share the business contact details that you provide us with third-party service providers, agents or contractors to perform services on our behalf or to assist us with providing services to you. This relates to exhibition coordinators whose contact information is shared with companies that provide show services for services such as booth setup, transportation, electricity and similar exhibition services.
• The information is provided to third-party suppliers, which typically act as service providers or data processors and perform functions on our behalf to process your personal information for one of the above services. These third parties may have access to or process your personal information as part of providing those services for us pursuant to contract. Examples include companies that provide registration services for our events and companies that help to send our marketing email messages.
• Any personally identifiable information that you elect to make publicly available through our Services, will be available to others.
• If you consent to CTA sharing your personal information.
• The information is provided in good faith to: comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement or government agencies for security purposes; to enforce our Terms of Service or an agreement we have with you; to take precautions against liability; and/or to protect our rights, property or safety, or the rights, property or safety of our employees or others.
• If we were to merge with another organization your personal information would be shared, in which event we would endeavor to make sure that the new organization would use and share your information in accordance with the commitments stated in this privacy policy.

When we share information with third parties, we limit the information provided to what is reasonably necessary for them to perform their functions, and we will ensure that our contracts require them to maintain the confidentiality of such information.

B. Links to External Websites

When interacting with this website our using our Services, you may encounter features or links to websites and services provided by third parties operating independently. Our Privacy Policy does not apply to services and products offered by such third parties, and any information you provide through those third-party sites or services is subject to those operators’ policies governing privacy and security, if any, even if accessed through our Services. We are not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites unless they are operating under contract to us, even if you access those links from a CTA Service. We encourage you to learn about third parties’ privacy and security policies before providing them with information.

Additionally, this website may use third-party vendors to enhance your user experience, including widgets, analytics tools, or targeted advertising. In some cases, interactions with these features are governed by the vendors’ own privacy policies. More information on this is outlined in our Cookie Policy.

With regard to CES Unveiled events, CTA licenses CVENT software and services to facilitate registration for these events. The processing of personal information collected via CVENT is subject to this Privacy Policy and our Cookie Notice.

7. Your Choices and Control

This Privacy Policy is intended to inform you in a transparent way about the types of personal information that CTA collects and how it is used, enabling you to make meaningful choices. Although privacy legislation, including U.S. state privacy laws and the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), do not generally apply to personal information that CTA collects and uses pursuant to this Privacy Policy, we are nonetheless committed to protecting your privacy and invite you to contact us by using the details set out at the Contact Us section below if you wish to do any of the following:

• Confirm that CTA is processing your personal information, or to have access to the personal information CTA may have about you. Reasonable access to your personal information will be provided at no cost upon request.
• Correct any personal information that CTA has concerning you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Request that CTA erase your personal information or stop processing it. Please note that in some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.
• Withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal information where consent is the basis for our processing.
• Make a complaint about our processing of your personal information.

We provide many choices in relation to our marketing communications via an unsubscribe option on every marketing email, but you may also request that CTA stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes by using our Email Opt-Out Form. If you opt-out of marketing emails, we may still send you transactional and administrative emails about the Services you use.

8. Where Do We Process Your Personal Information?

CTA’s headquarters, servers, this website and the majority of CTA Services associated with CES events are located and operated in the United States. If you are using the Services from outside the US, please be aware that your information will be processed in the United States or third countries where our service providers and partners are located.

By using our Services and providing us with information, you consent to the transfer, processing and storage of your information in the United States. When your personal information is provided to us by your employer or a legal entity with which you are affiliated that is based outside the United States, we will process your personal information in accordance with any contractual safeguards that the data exporter may put in place with CTA, as the data importer, in order to comply with applicable laws for protecting restricted data transfers. (Where we obtain personal information via such transfers pursuant to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (or the UK equivalent), data subjects covered by these clauses may request a copy of the relevant clauses (including the relevant annexes) by submitting a request in accordance with Section 12 below.)

Please be aware that data privacy laws vary worldwide and some may not be as comprehensive as others. When personal information is transferred to the us in the United States, we will adequately protect it as described in this Privacy Policy.

9. How Do We Protect Your Personal Information?

We are committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We have implemented appropriate physical, technical and administrative safeguards. We train our employees about the importance of confidentiality and maintaining the privacy and security of your information. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. We cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. If you believe your Personal Data has been compromised, please contact us. In the event that personal information is compromised, we will promptly notify our customers in compliance with applicable law.

10. Children's Privacy

Protecting the privacy of minors is especially important. Our site is not directed towards minors and CTA does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from minors. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a minor, please contact us and we will delete that information.

11. Updates to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy when necessary to reflect changes in our Services, to implement changes required by applicable law, or as we may otherwise deem necessary or appropriate. If you continue to use our Services after those changes are in effect, you agree to the revised policy. If the changes are significant, we will notify you by prominently posting a notice of such changes before they take effect. When required under applicable law, we will seek affirmative consent from you before making material changes to the way we handle personal information previously collected from you. If you do not provide such consent, your personal information will continue to be used consistent with the version of this Privacy Policy under which it was collected.

We encourage you to periodically review the Privacy Policy to learn how CTA is protecting your information. We will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review.

12. Contact Us

If at any time you would like to contact us with your views about our privacy practices, or with any inquiry relating to your personal information, please send an e-mail to dataprivacy-ces@cta.tech or write to Data Privacy – Legal, CTA, 1919 S. Eads Street, Arlington, VA 22202, United States.