Privacy Policy

Last Updated on March 27, 2023

Thank you for visiting us at <www.Chembio.com> (“Website”). This Website and Privacy Policy belongs to Chembio Diagnostic Systems, Inc. (“Corporation”, “Us” or “We”) and is created to explain how we collect, use, share, and protect the personal information you provide to us when you access our Website or use our Products, or engage with us on social media platforms (“Platforms”).

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully before accessing this Website, engaging with us on social media, or submitting any personal information; this Privacy Policy governs your use of our Website and how you interact with us on social media platforms. We will post any updates to this Privacy Policy by changing the “Updated” date at the top of this page. All updates to the Privacy Policy are effective immediately upon publication on this Website and you are deemed to have accepted these updates when you continue to use our Website or engage with us on any social media platforms.

This Privacy Policy is subject to our Terms and Conditions of Use found at https://chembio.com/terms-of-conditions-of-use. Each time that you access, register and/or use our Website or engage with us on social media platforms, you signify that you have read, understand, and agree to be bound by the Terms and Conditions of Use and this Privacy Policy, where permitted by law.

IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY, PLEASE DO NOT USE THE WEBSITE OR PROVIDE ANY INFORMATION TO US.

We recommend that you read this Privacy Policy in full to ensure you are fully informed. However, to make it easier for you to review those parts of this Privacy Policy which apply to you, we have divided the policy into the following sections:

QUICK LINKS

• Introduction
• What Information We Collect- Types of Information
• Why We Use Your Information
• Who We Share Personal information and Non-personal information
• Retention of Personal information
• Data Protection Rights
• Cookies and Tracking
• Third Party Links
• Opt-Out and Do Not Track
• Editing Your Information
• Deletion Requests
• Non Discrimination
• Data Security Measures
• International Users
• Age Compliance
• Your California Privacy Rights
• Your Nevada Privacy Rights
• Severability
• Law and Jurisdiction
• Entire Agreement
• Contact Information

1. Introduction

Chembio Diagnostic Systems, Inc. is committed to safeguarding the privacy of visitors to our Website, contacts for our customers and prospective customers, contacts for distributors of Chembio’s Products, candidates for employment, and any other individuals about whom Chembio obtains personal information (each, “you”). Please read the following Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy” or “Policy”), which sets out the principles governing Chembio’s use of personal information that we may obtain from you, to understand how Chembio collects, uses, and otherwise processes your personal information, as well as, the rights that you have in relation to our processing of that information.

2. What Information We Collect- Types of Information

At Chembio, we collect personal information and non-personal information about you.  “Personal information” is defined as any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer, as well as, inferences drawn from this information. “Non-personal information” is defined as information that on its own cannot identify you, but must be combined with other information in order to identify you personally.

Personal information – Chembio collects personal information in the following general categories: personal identifiers, information in customer records, commercial information, internet or other network activity, electronic data, professional or employment information, education information, and inferences drawn from any of the above. More specifically, we collect the following categories of personal information about Website visitors, customers, prospective customers, distributors and employees, prospective employees or third parties:

Basic data: Name, title, organization, job responsibilities, phone number, mailing address, email address, and contact details.

Registration data: Newsletter requests, event registrations, subscriptions, downloads, and username/passwords.

Customer service data: invoicing details, payment history, and customer feedback.

Marketing data: Data about individual participation in conferences and in-person or on-line seminars, credentials, associations, product interests, and preferences.

Job applicant data: Data provided by job applicants or others on our Website or offline in connection with employment opportunities.

Device data: Computer Internet Protocol (IP) address, unique device identifier (UDID), cookies and other data linked to a device, and data about usage of our Website (Usage Data).

Non-personal information – Whenever you use our Website we may collect non-personal information from you, such as your IP address, zip code, browsing history, search history, and registration history, interactions with the Website, quarry information, search history, location, referring URL, browser, operating system, data usage, data transferred, and internet service provider.

Anonymized Data – Chembio collects and aggregates personal information from our Website and may anonymize that information for our own research or internal purposes. Once such data has been anonymized, it cannot be traced back to you.

3. Why We Use Your Information

This section explains the purposes for which the categories of personal information shall be used. To use Chembio’s Website or Platforms, you agree that Chembio may use your personal information:

• To respond to inquiries or complaints we use basic data, registration data, customer service data, marketing data and device data.
• To manage our business operations and customer relationships we use basic data, special categories of data, registration data, marketing data, customer service data, compliance data, employee data, job applicant data and visitor data. This processing is necessary to perform our obligations under our contracts with our customers (e.g. issuing and processing invoices) and distributors.
• To provide any Products offered and to operate Chembio’s Website we use basic data, registration data, customer service data, and device data.
• To make our Website more intuitive and easy to use we use basic data, customer service data and device data. It is necessary for our legitimate interests to monitor how our Website is used to enhance or improve your user experience and the experience of other visitors on our Website.
• To protect the security and effective functioning of our Website and information technology systems we use basic data, registration data, customer Products data, and device data. It is necessary for our legitimate interests to monitor how our Website is used to detect and prevent fraud, other crimes and the misuse of our Website. This helps us ensure that you can safely use our Website.
• To address compliance and legal obligations, such as checking the identity of new customers and to prevent fraud we use compliance data, basic data, registration data, customer service data, marketing data and device data. This processing is necessary for the purposes of complying with legal requirements to which we are subject.
• To provide relevant marketing such as providing you with information about events or Products that may be of interest to you including Products, Product updates, and conferences we use marketing data, basic data, special categories of data, registration data, customer service data, marketing data, and device data. It is necessary for our legitimate interests to process this information to provide you with relevant marketing updates.
• To consider individuals for employment and contractor opportunities we use basic data, job applicant data and compliance data. The processing is necessary for the purposes of recruitment and for complying with legal obligations to which we are subject.
• For our legitimate interests in administering your visit, ensuring Website security and visitor safety, use visitor data.
• To share your information with third-party partners or third parties hired by us to perform functions and provide components of Products to us or with whom you have requested additional information relating to their component products used with our Products we use basic data, special categories of data, registration data, customer service data, marketing data and device data.
• To process your transactions (such as sending statements, invoices, and payment reminders to you, and collecting payments from you) we use basic data, registration data, customer service data, compliance data and device data.
• For our business purposes, such as auditing, detecting security incidents, short-term transient use, performing Products on behalf of Chembio or a service provider, internal research for technological development and demonstration, activities to verify or maintain the quality or safety of a Product manufactured by or for Chembio, data analysis, audits, fraud monitoring and prevention, developing new products, enhancing, or improving or modifying our Products, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, and operating and expanding our business activities we use basic data, special categories of data, registration data, customer service data, marketing data, compliance data, job applicant data, employee data, visitor data and device data.
• For Contract Administration to (1) negotiate, execute, renew and/or manage a contract with you; and/or (2) communicate with you in respect of the above (including sending (legal) notifications) we use basic data, registration data, compliance data, and customer service data.
• To provide access and communications on our Website, e.g., to (1) set-up and manage your Chembio account; (2) interact with you through our Website (e.g. software updates, Website announcements, etc.); and (3) manage and respond to your questions or comments (e.g. technical, commercial or administrative) or requests for information and support we use basic data, special categories of data, registration data, customer service data, marketing data, compliance data and device data.
• To terminate your use of, or registration on, the Website or related Products, as required by applicable law we use basic data, special categories of data, registration data, customer service data, marketing data, compliance data, job applicant data, employee data, visitor data and device data.

4. Who We Share Personal information and Non-personal information

WE DO NOT SELL, DISCLOSE, MAKE AVAILABLE, TRANSFER, SHARE OR OTHERWISE COMMUNICATE PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT DIRECTLY FROM YOU OR ABOUT YOU WITH OTHER CONSIDERATION. HOWEVER, CHEMBIO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO COMPILE, SELL, TRANSFER, EXCHANGE OR OTHERWISE GIVE AGGREGATED LISTS OF NON-PERSONAL DATA.

Although you are disclosing your information to Chembio, Chembio shares this information with third party individuals and organizations, including service providers, contractors, web hosts, and others, to perform functions and provide products or services to us for which Chembio does not receive monetary compensation or valuable consideration.

Thus, it is necessary that you grant the third parties the same rights that you afford us under this Privacy Policy to provide these products and services to Chembio. By using our Website, you agree that for every authorization which you grant to us in this Privacy Policy, you also grant to any third party that we may hire, contract, or otherwise retain the products and services of to conduct the necessary business of Chembio.  You also agree not to hold us liable for the actions of any of these third parties, even if we would normally be held vicariously liable for their actions, and that you must take legal action against them directly should they commit any actionable wrong against you. Please be aware that once the information is transferred your privacy rights may change. The possible list of third parties include:

• Our Suppliers and Service Providers. We share personal information with suppliers and service providers to enable such parties to perform functions on our behalf and under our instructions to carry out the purposes identified above. Tasks these third parties provide include, but are not limited to, customer relationship management, infrastructure, customer intake, Website hosting, finance, payment processing, order fulfillment, customer service, information technology, business analytics, marketing campaigns, and the provision of conferences and events. Chembio’s service providers do not further collect, sell, or use your personal information provided by Chembio except as necessary to perform the services specified in the contract between Chembio and the service provider, or as otherwise permitted by law.  If you separately provide a service provider with your personal information please refer to their Privacy Policy.
• Third-Party Vendors. Chembio uses third-party vendors (such as Google Analytics, HubSpot NetSuite) to analyze how users use Chembio’s Products. Chembio may use anonymous and aggregated data collected by Chembio itself or by such third parties on behalf of Chembio to track and examine the use of Chembio’s Products, to create statistics and reports for various business purposes, and to aggregate such anonymous data and share it with Chembio’s advertisers, service providers or business partners in order to offer you potentially desirable Products; however, such data will not include information that enables such third parties to identify you individually without your permission. The personal information compiled in our registration databases will not be shared with any marketing firms or other third parties (other than those providing services to Chembio and that are restricted to using such information on behalf of Chembio and solely as and to the extent necessary to provide such services to Chembio) without your express consent.
• Financial Institutions. We share personal information with financial institutions in connection with invoicing and payments.
• Companies Involved in Merger and Acquisition Transactions. In some cases, we may choose to buy or sell assets, or merge with another entity. In these types of transactions, user data (including personal information) is typically one of the business assets transferred. Moreover, if Chembio, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, user data would be one of the assets that is reviewed and transferred or acquired by a third party.
• Law Enforcement, Government Agencies, and Courts. We may disclose personal information at the request of law enforcement or government agencies or in response to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process to establish, protect, or exercise our legal or other rights or to defend against a legal claim or as otherwise required or allowed by law, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of a customer or any other person. We may also disclose personal information to investigate or prevent a violation by you of any contractual or other relationship with us or your illegal or harmful activity.

Additionally, you agree that we may disclose your personal information if we reasonably believe that you have violated U.S. laws, our Terms of Use or our Privacy Policy, or if we believe that a third party is at risk of bodily or economic harm. If we receive a subpoena affecting your privacy, we may elect to notify you to give you an opportunity to file a motion to quash the subpoena, or we may attempt to quash it ourselves, but we are not obligated to do either. We may also proactively report you and release your information without receiving any request from third parties where we believe that it is proper to do so for legal reasons, where your actions violate any law of the United States or our Terms of Use. You release us from any damages that may arise from or relate to the release of your information to a request from law enforcement agencies or private litigants.

5. Retention of Personal information

We typically retain Personal information related to marketing activities for as long as you accept marketing communications from us, and we will securely delete such data in accordance with applicable law upon request. For personal information that we collect and process for other purposes, we will typically retain such personal information for as long as it is necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy and as otherwise specified in applicable record retention policies and procedures. We will also retain personal information that could be relevant to legal proceedings or must otherwise be retained under law or regulations for longer periods.

6. Cookies and Tracking

A cookie is a small piece of data that a website asks your browser to store on your computer or mobile device. The cookie allows a website to “remember” your actions or preferences over time.

When you use or access Chembio’s Website, we use cookies, device identifiers, and similar technologies such as pixels, web beacons, and local storage to collect information about how you use the Website. We process the information, including personal information, collected through such technologies to further our legitimate interests in operating the Website, enhance your experience through personalization, and help us better understand the features of the Website that you and other users are most interested in. We use cookies to perform one or all of the following:

• Authentication: determine if you are logged in, and then deliver the right experience and features that are unique to you.
• Security: impose security measures on Chembio’s Website and help detect unusual and suspicious activities.
• Advertising: deliver a better advertising experience for you and advertisers.
• Performance: help Chembio’s Website learn how our Products are viewed by our visitors and how to route traffic between servers.
• Analytics and Research: learn which of our Products are most used/viewed or researched. This helps determine what to improve, what to remove and what to maintain. Some cookies can gather data across several websites in order to create user behavior profiles. These profiles are then used to send targeted content and advertisement to users.

We use the following types of cookies:

• Strictly Necessary Cookies: These cookies are essential to make our Website work. They enable you to move around our Website and use its features. Without these cookies, services that are necessary for you to be able to use the Website such as accessing secure areas can’t be provided. These include cookies used to authenticate users during log-in.
• Social Media Cookies: In order to enhance your Internet experience and to make the sharing of content easier, some of the pages on our Website contain tools or applications that are linked to third party social media service providers such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Through these tools or applications social media service provider may set its own cookies on your device. We do not control these cookies and you should check the social media service provider’s website for further details about how they use cookies.
• Fraud Prevention Cookies: These cookie files, flash storage tokens, smart phone applications, or other software on the end user’s device contain a unique identifier. Subsequently, in transactions between you and us, that identifier is accessed and checked through third party databases to determine if the device has been associated with suspected fraud or abuse reported by other online service providers in connection with prior transactions involving that device.
• Analytics Cookies: These cookies collect information about how people are using our Website, for example which pages are visited the most often, how people are moving from one link to another and if they get error messages from certain pages. These cookies don’t gather information that identifies you. All information these cookies collect is grouped together with information from other people’s use of the Website on an anonymous basis. Overall, these cookies provide us with analytical information about how our Website is performing and how we can improve it.
• Functionality Cookies: These cookies allow us to remember choices you make and tailor our Website to provide enhanced features and content to you. For example, these cookies can be used to remember your username, language choice or country selection and they can also be used to remember articles or documents your downloaded or the changes you’ve made to text size, font and other parts of pages that you can customize. In addition, they may be used to provide Products you’ve asked for such as using our contact us form.
• Advertising Cookies: These cookies are used to deliver advertisements on our Products and business and to deliver advertisements on other websites and/or mobile applications to users that have visited or used our Website or Products, or to deliver advertisements that are more relevant to you and your interests. These cookies are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure and report the results and effectiveness of an advertising campaign. They remember that you have visited our Website and this information may be shared with other organizations such as advertisers. This means you may see advertisements on our Products based on your activity elsewhere on the Internet or on other devices you use.

CHEMBIO’S WEBSITE IS CURRENTLY NOT CONFIGURED TO ALLOW USERS TO OPT-OUT OF COOKIES, THUS BY VISITING OUR WEBSITE YOU CONSENT TO THE USE OF THESE COOKIES. 

If you would rather we not use cookies when you visit our Website, you may disable cookies via your browser settings; however, disabling cookies may result in undesired performance when using Chembio’s Website. Additionally, if you disable cookies from your web browser some portions of our Website may not work.

7. Third Party Links

Chembio may post links to third party websites on our Website, which may include information that we have no control over. When accessing a third-party website through our Website, you acknowledge that you are aware that these third-party websites are not screened for privacy or security issues by us, and you release us from any liability for the conduct of these third-party websites. Please be aware that this Privacy Policy, and any other policies in place, in addition to any amendments, does not create rights enforceable by third-parties. Chembio bears no responsibility for the information collected or used by any advertiser or third-party website. You must review their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to understand how their information collection practices work.

8. Data Protection Rights

Opt-Out and Do Not Track:  If you decide to provide us with your contact information, you agree that we may send you communications via text and emails. However, you may unsubscribe from certain communications by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the relevant communication or contacting us at [email protected] or call +1-631-924-1135 and press 2.  We currently do not offer functionality for you to opt out through “do not track” listings.

Editing Your Information:  If you have submitted information to our Website you will be unable to edit, or access your information via any Website interface.  If at any time, you have any questions or wish to review or change any of your information collected by us, please contact us at [email protected] or call +1-631-924-1135 and press 2.

Deletion Requests:  If you wish to have any of your personal information removed from Chembio’s records, please contact us [email protected] or call +1-631-924-1135 and press 2. With each removal request you must list the information you wish to have deleted. Please be aware that removal requests are not processed instantaneously. There may be a reasonable delay in removing any information requested.

As Chembio collects data from multiple sources, a single removal request may not eliminate all of your personal information listed in our database. Therefore, you may be required to submit multiple requests. If your information repeatedly reappears, please contact us. You may make a removal request by sending an email to [email protected]. Please label the subject of the email with the following “Removal Request.” You may also call +1-631-924-1135 and press 2. Where you have requested modification or deletion of your personal information, we may keep just enough of your Personal information to ensure that we comply with your requests.  We may also keep inaccessible copies of your information for a commercially reasonable period of time.

Non Discrimination: If you exercise your rights under this Privacy Policy and the law, Chembio will not discriminate against you. That means Chembio will not deny you Products or services, or subject you to different prices than others.

9. Data Security Measures

Reasonable security measures are defined as how a reasonably prudent corporate entity in the same or similar circumstances would behave. Chembio implements reasonable security measures to protect your data from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. We have implemented technical, organizational, and physical security measures in an effort to safeguard the personal information in our custody and control. Such measures include:

• Restricting access to Personal information to staff and service providers on a need-to-know basis;
• Chembio relies on the following firewalls which may include software firewalls, hardware firewalls, cloud firewalls and proxy firewalls
• Chembio employees receive training about the importance of confidentiality and maintaining the privacy and security of your information.

However, due to the inherent nature of the Internet and other risk factors, we can make no guarantees as to the security or privacy of your information. For this reason, we recommend that you use anti-virus software, routine credit checks, firewalls, and other precautions to protect yourself from security and privacy threats. In the event that you have created a password and User ID on the Chembio Website, it is your responsibility to safeguard your passwords and User IDs and to notify us using one of the contact methods listed below if you ever suspect that your password or User ID has been compromised. You are solely responsible for any unauthorized use or sale of our Products that came about due to the use of your compromised password and User ID.

10. International Users

This Privacy Policy is intended to cover collection of information on the Chembio Website from residents of the United States. If you are visiting the Chembio Website from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. The data protection and other laws of the United States and other countries might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using our Website and Products, you understand that your information may be transferred to our facilities and those third parties with whom we share it as described in this Privacy Policy.

11. Age Compliance

You must be over the age of 18 to use our Website and engage with us on social media. We intend to fully comply with American and international laws respecting children’s privacy. Therefore, we do not intentionally collect or process any information for any children as defined by applicable law. If you are a child using our Website, please stop immediately and do not submit any information to us. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any personal information from or about a child, please email us at [email protected] or call +1-631-924-1135 and press 2.

12. Your California Privacy Rights

Under the California “Shine The Light” law, California residents may opt-out of Chembio’s Disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. Any California resident may choose to opt-out of the sharing of such personal information with third parties for marketing purposes at any time by directing such request to [email protected]

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) provides California residents with the right to receive certain disclosures regarding the collection, use, and sharing of “Personal Information,” as well as the right to know or access, to delete, and to limit sharing of Personal Information. The CCPA defines “Personal Information” to mean “information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.”

To the extent that we collect personal information that is subject to the CCPA, that information, our practices, and your rights are described below.

Right to Information Regarding the Categories of Personal Information Collected, Sold, and Disclosed.

• Right to Access Information. You have the right to request access to personal information collected about you and information regarding the source of that information, the purposes for which we collect it, and the third parties and service providers with whom we share it. To protect our customers’ personal information, we are required to verify your identity before we can act on your request.
• Right to Request Deletion of Information. You have the right to request in certain circumstances that we delete any personal information that we have collected from you. To protect our customers’ personal information, we are required to verify your identity before we can act on your request. We may have a reason under the law why we do not have to comply with your request, or why we may comply with it in a more limited way than you anticipated. If we do, we will explain that to you in our response.
• Right to Opt Out of the Sale of Personal Information to Third Parties. You have the right to opt out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. Please note that your right to opt out does not apply to our sharing of personal information with service providers, who are parties we engage to perform a function on our behalf and are contractually obligated to use the personal information only for that function.
• How to Submit a Request. You may submit a request to exercise your rights by emailing us at [email protected] for a request form or calling us at +1-631-924-1135 and press 2.

13. Your Nevada Privacy Rights

If you are a resident of Nevada, you may apply limits to the sale of certain personal information to third parties for resale or licensing purposes. You are entitled to register your preference for limits on such sales in the future by sending an email to [email protected] or call +1-631-924-1135 and press 2, with the subject line, “Nevada Do Not Sell Request” along with your first and last name, zip code, and whether you are a former or current customer or purchaser of any of our Products so that we can match your information to your account.

14. Severability

If any part of these Terms and Conditions of Use and Privacy Policy is deemed unlawful and/or unenforceable, all other provisions contained herein will remain in full force and effect.

15. Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms and Conditions of Use and Privacy Policy are governed by and construed in accordance with United States law. Any dispute arising out of or related to the information contained herein is subject to adjudication in the state of New York, USA.

16. Entire Agreement

The information contained herein constitutes the entire agreement between Chembio Diagnostic Systems, Inc. relating to the use of our Website and your engagement with us on any social media platforms.

17. Contact Information

If you have any questions or require additional information related to our information collection practices, please contact us at [email protected] or call +1-631-924-1135 and press 2.