CREF Privacy Statement

CREF privacy policies reflect our ongoing commitment to maintaining a close, trusted relationship with our conference participants. We have willingly made every effort to comply with the 2020 California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the European Union's 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law because we respect your privacy and want to be entirely transparent about the data we collect, how we store it, why we use it, and how you can opt out of the entire process if you wish.

How CREF Collects and Stores Information

CREF collects personal information in the following ways:

  1. When you register for the Cardiothoracic Surgery Symposium, all information you enter on your registration form—minus credit-card details—is retained. This includes data such as your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, and workshop or fireside chat preferences.
  2. If you submit an abstract or are invited to speak at CREF, all of your personal contact information is saved for possible future use. This includes data such as your name, professional job title, institution, mailing address, email address, phone number, assistant's name and email address, and disclosure information.
  3. When you sign up to receive our monthly newsletter, your email address is stored and used for sending our newsletter and any other urgent information.

All of the above data is stored in an encrypted, password-secured database. CREF does not retain credit-card or bank-account numbers after a conference has ended.

How We Use Your Information

Your contact information is used to distribute information about upcoming conferences. CREF does not sell mailing lists. On occasion, CREF sends email or print mailings on behalf of an industry sponsor, but CREF retains control of the data throughout the process.

Credit-card information is used only for the payment in question, and it is deleted following each conference. CREF privacy policies ensure that we take every reasonable step to make sure no outside parties have access to your personal information.

CREF Privacy: How to Opt Out

If you would like to know what information CREF has retained about you, please contact us, and we would be happy to oblige.  In addition, if you would prefer that we discard your contact data, notify us in writing either by email or by postal mail at the address listed below.