Cookie Policy
Last updated: October 5, 2016
This Cookie Policy explains how Align, Inc. and its affiliates (“Align”, "we", "us", and "ours") use cookies and similar technologies to recognise you when you visit our website or use the My Invisalign Smile App (together the "Sites"). It explains what cookies are and why we use them, as well as your rights to control our use of cookies.
What is a cookie?
Most websites you visit use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either just for the duration of your visit (using a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (using a ‘persistent cookie’).
Cookies do lots of different things, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, and generally improving your experience of a website. Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website doesn’t use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site – for example, when you enter your login details and move to another page it won’t recognize you and it won’t be able to keep you logged in.
Some websites will also use cookies to enable them to target their advertising or marketing messages based for example, on your location and/or browsing habits.
Cookies may be set by the website you are visiting (‘first party cookies’) or they may be set by other websites who run content on the page you are viewing (‘third party cookies’).
Note: The 'first party' Align cookies (see below) do not retain any personal information (name, address, IP address, etc.) which the user may have entered on the Align website. However, we do use a robust combination of data sources (online, orders, customers, etc.) to get a full picture of our product and marketing efforts. This is only for our efforts and we do not share your information to other businesses for their own purposes.
The specific types of cookies served through our Site and the purposes they perform are described below (please note that the specific cookies served may vary depending on the specific Site you visit).
Strictly necessary cookies
Some cookies are strictly necessary in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features. Without these cookies, we will not be able to determine the number of unique users of the site or provide certain features, such as automatic sign in to Align services.
Examples of strictly necessary cookies set by Align:
| Cookie name | Purpose | How to refuse |
| Invisalign | "cookiesDirective" - this is the cookie which keeps the personalized settings for cookies on the Align site. You can edit these settings on the "Manage Cookies" page. | N/A |
Functionality cookies
Functionality cookies record information about choices you’ve made and allow us to tailor the website to you. For example, on the "Find a practitioner" page we use a cookie to remember your browser's language settings so that we have your country pre-selected in the country picker.
Examples of functionality cookies set by Align:
| Cookie name | Purpose | How to refuse |
| Invisalign | "acceptLanguage" - contains the language preferences of the current user which are used on the "Find a practitioner" page. | Manage cookies |
Performance cookies
We use Performance cookies across the Align website for internal purposes to help us to provide you with a better user experience. Information supplied by cookies helps us to understand how our visitors use the Align website so that we can improve how we present our content to you. They also allow us to test different design ideas for particular pages, such as the Align Homepage. We generally contract with independent measurement and research companies to perform these services for us and when this is the case, these cookies may be set by a third party company (third party cookies). Third party cookies are identified in the list below, together with information as to how you can opt out of receiving them.
Examples of performance cookies set by Align:
| Cookie name | Purpose | How to refuse |
| Invisalign | "vid" - session cookie used on the "Find a practitioner" page for tracking the search request made by the user. | Manage cookies |
| Google Analytics | The Align website uses Google Analytics. This is a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics sets a cookie in order to evaluate use of those services and compile a report for us. | Opt-out of Google Analytics cookies |
| Google DoubleClick | The Invisalign website sometimes uses Google DoubleClick to measure the effectiveness of its online marketing campaigns. | Opt-out of DoubleClick cookies |
Third party cookies
To support our efforts, we sometimes embed photos, video and other content from social media websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Google and Twitter. Pages with this embedded content may present cookies from these websites. Similarly, when you use one of the “like” or “follow” buttons on our websites, a cookie may be set by the service you have chosen to share content through. You may also choose to use tools from other social media that Align cannot control, such as Pinterest. Align does not control the use of any third party cookies and our tool will not block cookies from those websites. You should check the relevant third party website for more information about these.
| Cookie name | Purpose | How to refuse |
| These cookies are used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on our Site through third party social networking and other websites. We provide a non-exhaustive list of these cookies in the first column These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes too. | These cookies are used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on our Site through third party social networking and other websites. We provide a non-exhaustive list of these cookies in the first column These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes too.Twitter: Opt-out instructions available at https://support.twitter.com/groups/51-me/topics/267-security-privacy/articles/20170407-faqs-about-tailored-ads-and-your-privacy-controls | |
| YouTube | To learn how to control advertising that may be delivered to you through your use of YouTube, please also see: https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en-GB/policies/technologies/ads/ | |
| To learn how to control advertising that may be delivered to you through your use of Facebook, please also see: https://en-gb.facebook.com/help/cookies/?ref=sitefooter |
Note: While exercising an opt-out should serve to stop these third parties from serving targeted advertisements to you, please note that Align cannot guarantee that they will cease collecting data using cookies they have served to your device.
Online behavioural advertising
Our websites may occasionally have advertising. A certain amount of this advertising is tailored to the individual user. We use cookies to determine what advertising might be most relevant to you based on the areas you look at on our sites and your IP address geo-location. The table below provides links to the individual ad serving partners’ opt-out mechanisms but you can also manage these through the cookie settings page.
Examples of online behavioral advertising cookies set by Align:
| Cookie name | Purpose | How to refuse |
| Ad Serving (non-targeted) | The advertisements seen by international users of the site are served by a number of third party ad serving providers (full list provided below). The cookies accompanying the ads allow them and their advertisers to monitor the effectiveness of the ads (e.g. by using statistical analysis cookies) and make the ads more relevant to you (e.g. if you use our sites from outside of the UK, you may get ads from your local country). | You can choose whether or not to allow these cookies to be set in cookie settings. If you would like to opt-out of an individual organization’s cookies, please use the links below. Google DoubleClick 24/7 Real Media Atlas Solutions (Microsoft Advertising) |
What about web beacons?
Cookies are not the only way to recognise or track visitors to a Site. We may use other, similar technologies from time to time, like web beacons (sometimes called "tracking pixels", "action tags" or "clear gifs"). These tags are placed on both online advertisements that bring users to our Sites and on different pages within the Site itself. We use this technology to measure visitors' responses to our Sites and the impact of our advertising campaigns (including how many times a page is opened and which information is viewed). This helps us measure how long it takes for someone who visits our Site to become a customer, so we do compare information gathered from the website to actual customer data.
In most instances, these technologies are reliant on cookies to function, and so declining cookies prevents them from functioning.
Do you use Flash cookies or Local Shared Objects?
Our Site may also use so-called "Flash Cookies" (also known as Local Shared Objects or "LSOs") to, among other things, collect and store information about your use of our services, fraud prevention and for other site operations.
If you do not want Flash Cookies stored on your computer, you can adjust the settings of your Flash player to block Flash Cookies storage using the tools contained in the Website Storage Settings Panel. You can also control Flash Cookies by going to the Global Storage Settings Panel and following the instructions (which may include instructions that explain, for example, how to delete existing Flash Cookies (referred to "information" on the Macromedia site), how to prevent Flash LSOs from being placed on your computer without your being asked, and (for Flash Player 8 and later) how to block Flash Cookies that are not being delivered by the operator of the page you are on at the time).
Please note that setting the Flash Player to restrict or limit acceptance of Flash Cookies may reduce or impede the functionality of some Flash applications, including, potentially, Flash applications used in connection with our services or online content].
How can I control cookies?
You have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies. You can exercise your cookie preferences by clicking on the appropriate opt-out links provided in the cookie table above or by using our Manage Cookies tool.
You can set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies. If you choose to reject cookies, you may still use our website though your access to some functionality and areas of our website may be restricted.
Most advertising networks offer you a way to opt out of targeted advertising. If you would like to find out more information, please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ or http://www.youronlinechoices.com.
Do you support Do Not Track?
You can inform the web services with which the Site integrates (such as social buttons, widgets, and other embedded features or content) that you do not want certain information about your webpage visits to be collected. Enabling “Do Not Track” in your web browser settings is an easy way to accomplish this. The “Do Not Track” browser setting is supported by recent versions of major browsers, including Firefox 5+, Internet Explorer 9+, Safari 5.1+, and Google Chrome. Please consult http://donottrack.us on how to enable this privacy setting on your browser.
How often will you update this Cookie Policy?
We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to the cookies we use or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons. Notice of such update and/or modification will be provided on our Site or to you directly if required by law. Please re-visit this Cookie Policy regularly to stay informed about our use of cookies and related technologies.
The date at the top of this Cookie Policy indicates when it was last updated.
Where can I get further information?
If you have any questions about our use of cookies or other technologies, please email us at privacy@aligntech.com