​COG RESEARCH FOUNDATION, LLC 

​WEBSITE PRIVACY POLICY

Effective Date: May 19, 2025

The COG Research Foundation, LLC, a California domiciled non-profit limited liability company (“the Research Foundation”, “we”, “us” or “our”) respects the principle of individual, personal privacy and is committed to protecting privacy through our compliance with this policy (this “Privacy Policy”) as described below.

This Privacy Policy applies to our website, https://www.cogresearchfoundation.org, and all associated Research Foundation web pages, including without limitation all content, materials, information, policies, modifications, updates, enhancements, revisions, new features, and or new web properties of such pages, along with all Website services provided through such websites and web pages (collectively, the “Website”).

By visiting the Website, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy. Please read this carefully to understand applicable policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, other policies, and practices, your choice is to not use the Website. By accessing or using the Website, you agree to this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Website.

This Privacy Policy applies to all ways that the Website is accessed and/or used, whether via personal computers, mobile devices or otherwise, and other interactive features, applications, or downloads that are operated by and made available by us.

We reserve the right to modify or amend the terms of this Privacy Policy from time to time without notice. When it does change, we will revise the date at the top of this page. Your continued use of the Website after such changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates.

What information do we collect?

As a general matter, you can browse the Website without submitting information by which you may be personally identified. However, there are circumstances in which you may elect to provide us with information such as your first and last name, mailing address, email address, telephone number, or any other identifier by which you may be contacted online or offline (“Personal Information”). We also collect certain data automatically when you interact with the Website, as described further below.

The following lists the most common ways in which we may collect your Personal Information.

• When you sign up to receive email newsletters, bulletins or other communications from us;
• When you participate in elections, surveys, or research;
• When you request information or assistance;
• When you send an email or call us (including one of our employees) through the contact information provided on the Website;
• When you interact with the Research Foundation pages or accounts on social media platforms—e.g., click on our social media links and/or provide information to us on those accounts;

• In conjunction with investigations into any activity that may violate the law or the Website’s terms and conditions;

• When you communicate with us through the Website;
• In conjunction with any other place on the Website where you knowingly volunteer Personal Information.

When you interact with the Website, we may keep an activity log that tells us how users interact with our services. In some cases, we collect this data through cookies, pixels and similar tracking technologies that create and maintain unique identifiers. Generally, we may collect the following categories of such data to understand and enhance how visitors use the Website:

•  We may collect and store certain information about the devices used to access the website, such as computer, mobile device, or other device. This information may include IP address, geolocation information, unique device identifiers, browser type, browser language, and other transactional information;
• We may automatically log certain information about use of the Website. This information includes a reading history of the pages viewed by users;

• We may collect and store additional “traffic data” such as time of access, date of access, software crash reports, session identification number, access times, and referring website addresses; and
• We may collect and store search terms and search results.

We may also collect and store certain other automatically collected data regarding our users’ use of the Website so that third parties may provide us with reports and analysis regarding usage and browsing patterns of the Website.

How do we combine your information?

We may combine information gathered from the Website and information that we have received, gathered, acquired, or stored from other sources, both information collected offline by us and information received from third parties—including information that currently exists in our files—into a single user record. We also may use and/or combine information that we collect offline or receive from third-party sources (e.g., contact information from government funders or grantor information) to edit, enhance, and/or check the accuracy of your user record.

How do we use your information?

We use the information we learn from our users to help us personalize and continually improve the user’s experience on the Website. We use Personal Information in the following ways:

• Responding to your inquiries;
• Presenting our Website and its contents to you;
• Providing you with information and services you request from us;
• Sending you information about features on our Website or about us;
• Communicating with you about changes to our policies;

• Notifying you about changes to our Website or any services or information we offer or provide through it;

• Detecting, investigating, and preventing activities that may violate our policies or be illegal;
• Performing statistical and demographic analyses of users of the Website and their usage patterns; and
• Managing our organization.

 
How do we share your information?

We adhere to ethical standards and practices in our operations and are dedicated to protecting the privacy of all visitors to our Website. We do not sell, barter, give away, or rent your Personal Information. Except as disclosed below, we do not permit anyone outside the Research Foundation to use or access your Personal Information, and in all cases, we only share your Personal Information where it is in the legitimate interest of furthering our mission. We DO share your information with our affiliates, including The Children’s Oncology Group Foundation, Inc. and the Children’s Oncology Group as an unincorporated association.

We use third-party service providers and independent contractors to help us operate the Website and administer activities on our behalf, such as providing website analytics, maintenance or site improvement and operational support (collectively our “Service Providers”). These Service Providers may have access to Personal Information necessary to perform their function but are required to protect the confidentiality of the information and to use it only for the limited purpose for which it was provided.

If you believe that Personal Information you provided to us is being misused by a third party, please contact us at [email protected].
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We may also use or disclose your Personal Information if required to do so by law or in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary to (a) conform to applicable law or comply with legal process served on us or the Website; (b) protect and defend our rights or property, the Website, or our users; and (c) act under emergency circumstances to protect the personal safety of us, our affiliates, our agents, or the users of the Website or the public.

How long do we keep your data?

We retain your Personal Information for as long as necessary for the purposes described above. This means that we retain different categories of data for different periods of time depending on the category of user to whom the data relates, the type of data, and the purposes for which we collected the data.

How do we use cookies?

Like many websites, we use “cookies,” which are small text files that are stored on your computer or equipment when you visit certain online pages that record your preferences. We use cookies to track use of our Website and online services. We may also use cookies to monitor traffic, improve the Website, and make it easier and/or relevant for your use. We use cookies to track individual sessions and logins. The Website is functional without the retention of cookies. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but, if you prefer, you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies. For more information on cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information provided by the Interactive Advertising Bureau at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/

We may use web beacons or flash cookies on our Website. A web beacon or flash cookie (sometimes referred to as an “action tag” or “single-pixel GIF”) is an invisible graphic on a web page or email newsletter that is programmed to collect non-personally identifiable information about your use of a given website or newsletter, e.g., whether you opened the email. Like cookies, web beacons allow us and our technology providers to summarize overall usage patterns for our analysis and provide personalized services to you. We do not share or provide personally identifiable information we may collect through such web beacons, such as names or email addresses.

We do not allow third-party cookies. We strive to protect the transmission and storage of any information submitted by visitors to the Website. But no transmission and storage of data is completely secure, and submissions are at your sole risk.
The Website may contain links to sites operated by third parties. Please be advised that the practices described in this Privacy Policy do not apply to information gathered through these other websites. We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However, these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way. You can opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) on the NAI’s website.

Please note that we do not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Do we collect data of children under the age of 16?

Protecting the privacy of children is especially important. The Website is not intended for children under 16 years of age. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under 16. If you are under 16, do not use or provide any information on the Website through any of its features on the Website, and do not provide any information about yourself to us, such as your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or user name you may use. If we learn that we have collected or received Personal Information from a child under 16, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 16, please contact us at [email protected].

What is our policy on data security?

COG is committed to the security, integrity and confidentiality of private information. We have implemented technical, administrative and physical security measures that are designed to protect your information from unauthorized access, disclosure, use and modification. We regularly review our security procedures to consider appropriate new technology and methods.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet and mobile platforms is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your Personal Information, we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Information transmitted through our Website. Any transmission of Personal Information is made at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures we provide.

What are your rights regarding your Personal Data?

A. General Rights - Following is a summary of your general rights regarding your Personal Data.

​Access Rights: you may have the right to receive certain information, such as the following (these rights, and the applicable types of data and time periods, will vary depending on the laws applicable to the state or country in which you reside):

• The categories of Personal Data we have collected or disclosed about you; the categories of sources of such information; the business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling your Personal Data; and the categories of third parties with whom we shared Personal Data.
• Access to and/or a copy of certain Personal Data we hold about you.
• In some circumstances, you may have the right to obtain certain Personal Data in a portable format.

 
Erasure: you may have the right to request that we delete certain Personal Data we have about you. We may either decide to delete your Personal Data entirely, or we may anonymize or aggregate your Personal Data such that it no longer reasonably identifies you. Certain Personal Data may be exempt from such requests under applicable law. For example, we need certain types of information so that we can provide our services to you, we may be required to retain certain information for legal purposes, and there may be other reasons we may need to keep certain Personal Data under various applicable laws. In addition, if you ask us to delete your Personal Data, you may no longer be able to access or use some of our Services.

Correction: you may have the right to request that we correct certain Personal Data we hold about you.

Limitation of Processing: certain laws may allow you to object to or limit the manner in which we process some of your Personal Data, including the ways in which we use or share it. For example, you may have these rights if the processing was undertaken without your consent in connection with our legitimate business interests (although we may not be required to cease or limit processing in cases where our interests are balanced against your privacy interests).

Regulator Contact: you may have the right to contact or file a complaint with regulators or supervisory authorities about our processing of Personal Data. To do so, please contact your local data protection or consumer protection authority.
If you believe that you have specific rights under your jurisdiction and you would like to exercise any of these rights, please submit a support request through our Website or email us at [email protected].  Other than marketing opt-out and do-not-sell requests, you will be required to verify your identity before we fulfill your request. In certain jurisdictions, you may be able to designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf, subject to certain requirements of your applicable law. We may require that you provide the email address we have on file for you (and verify that you can access that email account) as well as an address, phone number, or other data we have on file, in order to verify your identity. If an agent is submitting the request on your behalf, we reserve the right to validate the agent’s authority to act on your behalf, and we may be required to take additional verification measures under applicable law.

​B.   U.S. Rights

Various U.S. states provide specific rights to residents of the state regarding Personal Data, which includes allowing consumers in these states to opt out of certain sharing of their data or in Colorado where you must consent for us to process sensitive Personal Data or any data of children.
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Depending on where you reside, your state may have enacted privacy laws (e.g., California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia) that allow you to request us to:

• Disclose the sources, categories, and specific pieces of Personal Data we have collected about you, how that information is used, and with whom we share it;
• Disclose the purpose for collecting Personal Data;
• Disclose the categories of third parties with whom we share Personal Data;
• Delete/rectify/restrict their Personal Data, subject to certain exceptions (right of rectification not applicable to Iowa and Utah residents);
• Disclose, for any “sales” of Personal Data, the categories of Personal Data collected and sold and to what categories of third parties it was sold;
• Opt-out of sales of your Personal Data (if any), certain processing of your Personal Data (opting out of the processing of Personal Data not applicable to Iowa residents) for profiling/targeted advertising purposes (including California Civil Code Section 1798.83 “Shine the Light” law), and subject certain Personal Data to automated decision-making algorithms (not applicable to Iowa or Utah residents);
• Opt-in for sensitive data processing;
• Provide a copy of your Personal Data in a readily usable format that allows the information to be transmitted to others, or a representative summary (only in Indiana CDPA);
• Not discriminate against you for exercising any of the rights described above.

 
Residents of these states may exercise these rights by emailing us [email protected]. In general, we, including our Service Partners, collect and have collected over the last 12 months the following California-regulated categories of Personal Data:

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In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have disclosed the following categories of Personal Information for a business purpose:

• Category A: Identifiers.
• Category F: Internet or other similar network activity.
• Category K: Inferences drawn from other Personal Information.

California Civil Code Section § 1798.83 permits website users that are California residents to request certain information regarding the disclosure of personal data to third parties for direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please contact us at [email protected]. Note that we will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights.

C. GDPR and Personal Information
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Regulation (EU) 2016/679 – the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) is a European Regulation concerning the use and processing of Personal Information. The UK has adopted a similar regulation into law known as the UK GDPR. Thus, if you are a visitor to our Website from either the EU or the UK, please know that we are committed to processing your information in compliance with the GDPR or the UK GDPR. Under both schemas, we rely on the “legitimate business reason” exception to process your Personal Information in the United States.
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We will use reasonable efforts to securely process all Personal Information in line with the rights specified under the GDPR or UK GDPR, in particular those related to the following requests:

• Access to your Personal Information;
• Correction of the Personal Information that we hold;
• Deletion of your Personal Information;
• A restriction of processing of your Personal Information;
• The right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your Personal Information, if our processing is based on consent;
• Transfer of your Personal Information to another party and the right to receive it in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format; or
• Objection to processing of your Personal Information for direct marketing purposes or if our processing is based on COG’s legitimate interest (or those of a third party) to use it.

 
You may contact us at [email protected] to exercise any of these rights.
If you believe that our processing of your Personal Information is inconsistent with your data protection rights under the GDPR or UK GDPR, and we have not adequately addressed your concerns, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection supervisory authority of your country.

Important information for our non-U.S. Website visitors

The Website is published in the United States and is subject to laws of the United States. If you are located in a country outside the United States and voluntarily submit Personal Information to us, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this Privacy Policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States. COG shall not be liable under any circumstances for damages resulting from the use of information collected from visitors to the Website.

How to ask questions or make requests?

If you have any questions or requests regarding this policy, if you would like to change your preferences, if you no longer wish to receive email updates from us, or if you believe we have erroneous or incomplete information about you, please send an email to [email protected].

If you prefer to correspond with us by regular mail, our physical address is 444 East Huntington Drive, Suite 311, Arcadia, CA 91006.