AARP Understands How Important Privacy Is to Our Members

We are committed to protecting your privacy and want to make sure that you understand how your membership information is used. We also want you to be aware that you have choices about how we use this information.

What Information We Collect

When you apply for membership, we ask for basic information such as your name, contact information and date of birth. We keep track of your participation in AARP activities and member services so we can understand our members' interests and evaluate the effectiveness of our offerings. We also collect generic demographic information from other sources to help us better serve our members, and the age 50 and over population, as a whole, and to improve our programs, activities and resources. We also collect information online in additional ways that are described in the Questions and Answers section below.

Information Sharing

We share your personal information with companies we have selected to provide AARP member products and services or support AARP operations. Some of the providers of AARP member products and services, including many of those listed on the Member Benefits page on the AARP.org website, pay a fee for access to our membership list. Our contracts with these companies require them to keep the member information confidential, and allow them to use the information only to offer the contracted products or services to AARP and AARP members. We monitor the companies' compliance through our wholly owned subsidiary, AARP Services Inc. Some of our providers may also collect data about our members through their interactions with the members. The providers may share some or all of this data with AARP so that we may offer more effective and personalized service to our members. AARP may, in turn, make the data that we receive from the providers accessible to members in their respective online member account statements.

Other AARP affiliates, such as the AARP Foundation, may also have access to member information that we have acquired (the AARP Foundation has its own privacy policy that applies to its donors). We may occasionally release personal member information when release is appropriate to comply with law, to enforce the Terms of Service applicable to our website, or to protect the rights, property or safety of visitors to our site, our members, the public or AARP. We do not sell or rent personal member information to telemarketers, mailing list brokers or any other companies that are not offering AARP-endorsed services or benefits. We may, however, share personal member data, such as names and addresses, with specifically selected nonprofit organizations in “list exchanges” conducted by AARP and these organizations for the purpose of enlisting potential new members. This means that members may receive communications from other nonprofit groups that have agreed to participate in list exchanges with AARP, subject to approval of AARP. You may opt out of such list exchanges at any time by contacting us as provided below.

Your Choices

We respect your choices.

If you do not want us to share your information with providers of AARP member products or services, you can opt out by contacting us as specified below. You should then stop receiving AARP service provider mailings in about 12 weeks. (Note: If you request services or information from an AARP service provider directly, we may still need to confirm to the provider that you are an eligible AARP member).

If you do not want us to share your personal information with nonprofit organizations, you can opt out by contacting us as specified below.

If you wish to stop receiving all communications from AARP, including information about AARP activities, such as legislative events and educational programs, or about the activities of other AARP affiliates such as AARP Foundation, you can also opt out by contacting as specified below.

• Email us at AARPmember@aarp.org, or click here.
  
• Call us at 1-888-OUR-AARP (1-888-687-2277)
  
• Write to us at AARP Membership Center, 3200 E. Carson St., Lakewood, CA 90712
  

For More Information

For more detailed information about our privacy practices, and about privacy on AARP.org, please review the frequently asked questions below. To exercise your choices, or ask questions about your membership information, please contact us by email, by phone at 1-888-OUR-AARP (1-888-687-2277) or by mail:

AARP Membership Center
3200 E. Carson St.
Lakewood, CA 90712

Privacy and AARP.org – Questions and Answers

The following Questions and Answers address AARP and AARP.org privacy issues in more detail. We want to make sure that you understand the types of information that are collected at AARP.org, the ways in which that information is used and protected, and the choices that you have about this collection and use. The frequently asked questions listed below apply only to data collected online.

In this policy, the terms "AARP," "we," "our" and "us" refer to AARP and its subsidiary, AARP Services Inc. The terms "you" and "your" refer to AARP.org visitors such as yourself.

1. Do I have to submit any personal information in order to use AARP.org?

You do not need to give us any information about yourself in order to access most of AARP.org. You can visit our pages, read our publications and learn about our member services on a completely anonymous basis.

If you want to take advantage of some of the optional services available on AARP.org, however, we will sometimes request information that allows us to identify you ("personal information"). If you use the online form to join AARP or renew your membership, for example, we will ask for certain information to process your application (name, birth date, phone number, mailing address, email address, email permissions and credit card number). If you register to receive email newsletters, we will ask for your name, address, email address and birth date (or member number) so that we can send you the newsletters. We may also ask for personal information when you participate in other activities or services on AARP.org, such as surveys and discussion groups.

We also have relationships with certain companies that we have selected and approved to offer AARP member benefit products and services on linked sites. On some of these sites, you may be asked to enter personal information in order to take advantage of their services or programs. If you decide to purchase products or services on one of these linked websites, you may be asked for your name, member number, address and email address to enable the provider to contact you about your purchase transaction. The contracted member benefit providers of these linked sites may have their own privacy policies that apply to the information you have given them and you should review these policies.

Again, regardless of whether you are visiting AARP.org or a linked website, you do not have to disclose any personal information if you do not want to. You can always decide not to use the optional services that require the submission of such information. The choice is yours. We are only interested in offering you convenient online services that match your interests and needs.

2. Does AARP.org collect nonpersonal information, using "cookies" or otherwise?

We also collect other types of information that do not allow us to identify your name, email address or other personal characteristics. This "nonpersonal information" includes the number assigned to your computer whenever you access the Internet ("IP address") and the type of browser you use. None of this nonpersonal information allows us to identify or contact you. We use this information to help us evaluate how AARP.org is being used. By gathering this information, we can learn, among other things, how many people visit AARP.org, which AARP.org pages are the most and least popular, and which other websites are the most frequent referral sources for AARP.org.

We may also assign a "cookie" to your computer in some situations. Like an IP address, a "cookie" is a kind of online identification tag that allows us to recognize your computer each time you visit AARP.org. For example, the AARP Online Community, that is, those registered users of AARP.org who submit personal profiles, or participate in message boards, journals, chat rooms and user groups, uses cookies to recognize returning registered users of the site. We may also use Web beacons in conjunction with cookies to help us monitor the activity on our website. A Web beacon is an image file contained in an advertisement or other content that indicates when the ad or the content has loaded on to a user’s screen. We refer to cookies and Web beacons together here as “cookies.”

Unless you have already provided us with personal information on AARP.org or an affiliated linked website, cookies do not allow us to identify you by name, email address, or other personally identifiable information. We use cookies primarily to identify return visitors and make your AARP.org experience more relevant and convenient.

To support our operations, we use vendors that sometimes collect information on our behalf. For example, AARP uses a vendor to place AARP-approved banner advertisements on AARP.org. This vendor may sometimes assign cookies to allow AARP to manage the delivery of these ads, for example, by counting the number of times a visitor has viewed different banners. If a visitor has viewed the same banner a number of times, AARP can use the vendor's system to automatically display different banners in the next visit. We also use a vendor to collect aggregate information about AARP.org usage such as the most visited pages and features. This vendor uses cookies and transparent image tags to collect this information. Like cookies, image tags do not allow us or the vendor to identify you by name or other personal characteristics. These vendors do not collect any personal information from members on AARP.org, and they do not share the nonpersonal information collected on AARP.org with anyone else for any other purpose. If you are uncomfortable allowing cookies to be placed on your computer, you can set your browser so that it will not accept these cookies, or so that it will notify you whenever a website is trying to use cookies. If you choose not to accept cookies, however, you may not be able to use certain features of AARP.org or linked sites. You will still be able to visit the general AARP.org pages on an anonymous basis, just as you have in the past.

3. How does AARP use this electronic information, and can I control the uses?

Our primary purpose in collecting electronic information is to provide you with access to the products and services you request, and to evaluate and improve other services that we offer. We ask for information so that we can process your membership application, send you the email newsletters to which you have subscribed and provide you with special offers for AARP members. We use this information to service your membership account, send you publications such as AARP The Magazine and the AARP Bulletin, and answer any questions you may have about membership.

We may also use the electronic information we collect for other purposes. For example, we may review demographic information, survey results and statistical analyses of AARP.org usage in order to help us evaluate, modify and develop services that are likely to be of interest to our members.

On occasion, we will also use your membership information to send you notices in the mail or by email about special member benefits, discounts and offers. If you do not want to receive these mailings, you can opt out as noted above.

If you have subscribed to any of the AARP.org email newsletters, and would like to stop receiving them, follow the instructions at the bottom of each of the newsletters that you receive. Some affiliated linked websites may also send you promotional emails if you asked to receive them when you registered for their respective products or services. In addition, each issue of these email newsletters or notices will always include instructions for unsubscribing. Again, these notices are designed to describe the benefits of AARP membership, but we do not want to send them to you if you are not interested in receiving them.

4. Is any information shared with other companies or organizations, and can I "opt out"?

AARP takes seriously its responsibility to keep your personal information confidential. We do not sell or rent any personal information of our members or of registered users of our website to telemarketers, mailing list brokers, or any other companies that are not offering AARP-endorsed services or benefits. As explained above, we share member information with the limited number of companies that we have selected to provide AARP member product and services. Most of these AARP member benefit providers are listed in the Member Benefits pages of the AARP.org website. Like most organizations, we also hire companies to provide certain administrative services that require access to member information, such as processing address labels, managing databases and sending mailings ("approved vendors"). Finally, we may occasionally engage in “list exchanges” in which personal member data will be shared with selected nonprofit organizations. You may opt out of these list exchanges at any time. We require any company that comes into possession of our personal member data under this Privacy Policy hold such member data in strict confidence. These companies are contractually required to maintain the security and confidentiality of all member information, and are prohibited from using that information for any purpose other than as specified in their contracts with AARP. We audit and monitor these companies’ compliance with these requirements.

If you do not want us to share your personal information with these AARP member benefit providers or nonprofit organizations, you can opt out as noted above.

If you ask us not to share your personal information, you should then stop receiving mailings from these organizations in about 12 weeks. (Note: If you request services or information from an AARP member benefit provider directly, we may still need to confirm to the provider that you are an eligible AARP member).

We may also disclose personal information when required to do so by law, to enforce the Terms of Service, or to protect the rights, property or safety of visitors to our website, our members, the public or AARP. We reserve the right to contact the appropriate authorities in our discretion when visitors' activities appear to be illegal or inconsistent with our policies.

Finally, we may sometimes share aggregate statistics and nonpersonal information with the media, government agencies, advertisers and other third parties. For example, we may publish statistics on the number of members in various states or the number of visitors to AARP.org. These aggregate statistics will not allow anyone to identify member names or other personal information.

5. What privacy policy rules apply when I click over to other websites?

AARP.org includes links to other websites, some of which are operated by AARP member benefit providers or approved vendors, and some of which are not. Sites operated by AARP member benefit providers and approved vendors may also collect personal information, and may have their own privacy policies that are different and separate from this privacy policy. It is important that you review any privacy policies on these sites carefully before you use any services or programs offered.

When you click to third-party sites from AARP.org, AARP is not responsible for, and has no control over, the information collection or privacy practices of that site. It is important that you review and understand the privacy policies posted on any linked sites you visit before volunteering any of your personal information. These sites may also assign cookies, or allow third-party advertisers on their sites to set cookies. You can often find information regarding a site and its privacy policy on the site's home page. If you cannot find or do not like a site's privacy policy, you may prefer not to do business with, or furnish information to, that site.

6. Do privacy protections exist in AARP's Online Community?

It is important to understand that the information you submit in personal profiles, message boards, journals, chat rooms and user groups is publicly displayed. Your messages will be seen by people and organizations not related to AARP, and may be used by these third parties to contact you. As a result, you should be very careful about the information that you publish online. Because these unrelated parties will also see your "User Name" on any postings that you make in online discussions, you may not want to use your full name as your User Name. You can use your first name only, or use an assumed name, if you like. Read the Terms of Service to learn more about using the AARP Online Community.

7. How does AARP.org protect security and confidentiality?

In order to protect your personal information, we use technologies and processes such as encryption, access control procedures, network firewalls, physical security and other measures. Although we cannot guarantee the security of our database or our servers, these measures are designed to increase the security and privacy of information traveling to, from and within AARP.org. Only our authorized employees or agents carrying out permitted business functions are allowed to access personal information. Employees who violate our privacy access policies may be subject to disciplinary actions, including termination when appropriate.

In order to interact with AARP.org, we require you to use a password to protect your account from unauthorized access by others. If you do allow others, including family or household members, to access AARP members-only services through your personal password or to use your membership account number, please understand that you are responsible for the actions of those individuals.

This privacy policy describes the types of information we currently collect, and the ways we use and protect that information. If you are uncomfortable with our policies and practices, please do not provide any personal information to us through AARP.org.

From time to time, we may collect different types of information and use that information in different ways — for example, when we add features or services to AARP.org. In these cases, we may edit this policy to explain the new practices. Because protecting members' privacy is very important to us, we do not expect major changes in policy. However, if we do make significant changes in our practices, we will include announcements on the AARP.org home page so that you will know to review the revised policy.