Last Modified: October 22, 2026
Thalamus.org, Inc. (“Thalamus.org,” “we,” “us,” and “our”) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting it through compliance with this Privacy Policy (this “Policy”).
This Policy describes how we collect, use, and share personal information of (1) consumer users of the Thalamus.org website located at https://thalamus.org and all other websites and mobile sites where this Policy appears or is linked (collectively, the “Website”) and (2) consumer users of our services, including, but not limited to, the scholarships and programs offered by Thalamus.org (together, the “Services”).
This Policy applies to personal information that we collect:
This Policy does not apply to information collected by:
PLEASE READ THIS POLICY CAREFULLY TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE WILL TREAT YOUR INFORMATION. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS POLICY, YOUR CHOICE IS NOT TO USE THE WEBSITE OR THE SERVICES. BY ACCESSING OR USING THE WEBSITE OR ANY OF THE SERVICES, YOU AGREE TO THIS POLICY. YOU FURTHER AGREE THAT ANY DISPUTE REGARDING THE PRIVACY OR USE OF YOUR INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS OF SERVICE, AVAILABLE AT https://www.thalamus.org/terms-of-service (THE “TERMS OF SERVICE”), INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ITS PROVISIONS GOVERNING LIMITATIONS ON LIABILITY, THE RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES, AND THE APPLICATION OF DELAWARE LAW. THIS POLICY MAY CHANGE FROM TIME TO TIME (SEE UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY). YOUR CONTINUED USE OF THE WEBSITE OR ANY OF THE SERVICES AFTER WE MAKE CHANGES TO THIS POLICY IS DEEMED TO BE ACCEPTANCE OF THOSE CHANGES, SO PLEASE CHECK THIS POLICY PERIODICALLY FOR UPDATES.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
We collect personal information about you in several different ways:
Personal Information Collected from You. When you use the Website or any of the Services, we collect information (a) by which you or your household may be personally identified, related, or described and (b) that is reasonably capable of identifying you or your household when we combine it with other information (collectively, “personal information”). Personal information may include the following categories, depending on how you use the Website or any of the Services and how you communicate with us:
Sensitive Information. We may collect or process personal information that is deemed “sensitive information” or “sensitive data” under certain laws on an incidental basis in the course of providing our Website and Services. Such information may include information related to your age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, religion or creed, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, veteran or military status or genetic information. We collect and process sensitive information only with your consent or as otherwise permitted by law, and we use it only for the purposes described in this Policy.
You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on public areas of the Website or transmitted to other users of the Website or third parties (collectively, “User Contributions”). Your User Contributions are posted on the Website and transmitted to others at your own risk. Although you may be able to set certain privacy settings for such information by logging into your account profile, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users of the Website with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.
Information We Collect Automatically. The Website and Services may automatically collect the following categories of usage and technical personal information about you. This personal information is used by Thalamus.org for the operation of the Website and Services, to maintain quality of the Website and Services, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Website and Services. This personal information may include:
The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:
Cookies. We may log information using “cookies.” Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive by a website. We may use both session Cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent Cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience on our Website.
Web Beacons. Pages of the Website and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit us, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related Website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain Website content and verifying system and server integrity).
Device Identifiers. When you access the Website by or through a mobile device (including but not limited to smart phones or tablets), we may access, collect, monitor, and/or remotely store one or more “device identifiers,” such as a universally unique identifier, which are small data files or similar data structures. A device identifier may remain persistently on your device, to help you log in faster and enhance your navigation through the Website. Some features of the Website may not function properly if use or availability of device identifiers is impaired or disabled.
Third-Party Use of Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies. Some content or applications, including advertisements, on the Website may be served by third parties, including advertisers, ad networks and servers, content providers, and application providers. These third parties may use cookies alone or in conjunction with web beacons or other tracking technologies to collect information about you when you use the Website. The information they collect may be associated with your personal information, including that they may collect your information about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. They may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioral) advertising or other targeted content. We do not control these third parties' tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about this, you should contact the responsible provider directly.
Information We May Receive from Third Parties. We may collect additional personal information about you from third-party websites, social media platforms, and/or sources providing publicly available information (e.g., from the U.S. postal service) to help us provide the Website and Services to you, to manage your account, to maintain our customer/visitors lists, to provide feedback, for authentication purposes, for service improvement, to provide updates and announcements, to help prevent fraud, and for marketing and advertising purposes.
This Policy only applies to personal information collected by the Website and Services. We are not responsible for the privacy and security practices of those other websites or social media platforms or the personal information that they may collect. You should contact such third parties directly to determine their respective privacy policies. Links to any other websites do not constitute or imply an endorsement or recommendation by us of the linked website. As you are using the Website and Services, you may click through certain links or promotions that will enable you to purchase products or use services provided by promotional partners or other sites or commerce providers. Some of those entities may share with us certain information that you provide to them.
Further, as part of their use of the Services, and subject to the administrator’s determination that such data sharing is permitted under the third party’s terms of use, administrators of residency programs may pull applicant data directly from third parties that they have access to, including ERAS and ACGME, and provide this personal information to Thalamus.org. We may also receive Information from the AAMC.
You may also separately provide personal information to websites, retailers, or other commerce, product, or service providers through which we provide access to register for the Website and Services. Depending on the particular promotion, when you register for the Website and Services through such a promotional partner of ours, that partner may provide us with a user/member name that you already use with that partner’s products or services or that you or it have otherwise pre-selected as part of the promotion.
Additional Information. If you choose to transmit additional personal information on the Website or through the Services that is only optional for you to provide to us, we will collect that personal information that you provide and use it in the same manner as other of your personal information that you provide to us.
Information About Third Parties. You shall not provide us with personal information regarding another individual unless you have their permission to do so. Providing personal information about another individual without their consent could be viewed as a data privacy violation and could subject you to sanctions.
Generally, we may use your personal information in the following ways and as otherwise described in this Policy or described to you at the time we collect the personal information from you:
To Provide the Website and Services and Personalize Your Experience. We use personal information about you to provide the Website and the Services to you, to personalize your experience with the Services, to manage your account, and to respond to your inquiries and questions and provide customer service.
Transactions. We use your personal information to carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection of donations.
Changes. We use your personal information to notify you about changes to the Website or to any Services.
Improvement of the Services. We may use your personal information to maintain, improve, customize, or administer the Services, perform business analyses, or for other internal purposes to improve the quality of our business or the Services, resolve technical problems, improve security, or develop other products and services.
Creating Deidentified or Other Anonymous Data. We may create de-identified or other anonymous data from personal information we collect. We make personal information into de-identified or other anonymous data by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to you. We may use this de-identified and other anonymous data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes as permitted by law, including activities that produce generalizable knowledge with an intent to share that knowledge with the public for the betterment of academic medicine and the public good through journal articles, self-published articles, presentations, and other means of disseminating findings and analyses.
Company Operations. We may use personal information for our day-to-day operations, including for employment and administrative purposes and for security, company systems, compliance, and database use.
Marketing. We may use your personal information in connection with sending you, and permitting our third-party advertisers to send you, marketing communications, including by mail and email, and interest-based (behavioral) advertising, in each case as permitted by law.
Compliance and Protection. We may use any of the categories of personal information described above to:
With Your Consent. If you provide us with express consent or expressly instruct us to share your personal information with a third party, we may do so.
We may also use personal information we receive from partners such as the AAMC to provide Services to you and for data analysis and research that we share with other users of the Services and the general public. Additionally, we may provide your personal information to our partners to provide other users of the Services with selected offers. In addition to marketing and advertising, our partners may use your personal information for services that include, but are not limited to, verification, validation, reference, lookup, risk mitigation and data enhancement. We may also use your personal contact information to contact you to further discuss your interest in the Services, to send you information about us or our partners, to identify your company/organization as a customer, and to use your company/organization’s name and/or logo on our website and in our marketing materials.
We may disclose de-identified or anonymous information about our users, and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction.
We may disclose all categories of your personal information described above with the following categories of third parties:
Affiliates. We may share your personal information with our affiliates for purposes consistent with this Policy.
Third-Party Service Providers. We may provide your personal information to third-party service providers that help us provide you with the Website or any Services and to operate our business (for example, web services operators and credit card billing partners). We may also provide your personal information to third-party service providers who may serve you with marketing communications or interest-based (behavioral) advertising as described in this Policy. We sometimes utilize third-party service providers to help us track analytics information. We may disclose your personal information to track your movement and use of the Services. Such data may be stored and analyzed for purposes of internal analysis by Thalamus.org.
Survey Data. Any of your personal information collected via survey will be used only by Thalamus.org unless we specify otherwise when we ask you to participate in a survey. However, we may share aggregate survey information with third parties.
Partner Organizations. We may provide certain of your personal information to our partner organizations (1) to perform data analysis and service improvement; and (2) for research, which may involve provision of your personal information to collaborators, contractors, and researchers.
Professional Advisors. We may provide your personal information to our lawyers, accountants, bankers, and other outside professional advisors in the course of the services they provide to us.
Corporate Restructuring. We may share some or all of your personal information in connection with, or during negotiation of, any merger, financing, acquisition or dissolution, transaction, or proceeding involving the sale, transfer, divestiture, or disclosure of all or a portion of our business or assets. In the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership, personal information may also be transferred as a business asset. If another company acquires Thalamus.org or our business or assets, that company will possess the personal information collected by us and will assume the rights and obligations regarding your personal information described in this Policy.
Other Disclosures. We may disclose your personal information if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary for any of the following:
Third-Party Websites. The Website or the Services may contain links to third-party websites. When you click on a link to any other website or location, you will leave the Website or the Services and go to another website, and another entity may collect your personal information from you. We have no control over, do not review, and cannot be responsible for these outside websites or their content or any collection of your personal information after you click on links to such outside websites. The links to third-party websites are for your convenience and do not signify our endorsement of such third parties or their products, content, websites, or privacy practices.
With Your Consent. If you provide us with express consent or expressly instruct us to share your personal information with a specific third party or type of third party, we may do so.
Use and Disclosure of Sensitive Information. Notwithstanding the foregoing to the contrary, we do not collect, use, or disclose your sensitive information beyond the purposes authorized by the applicable law. Accordingly, we only use and disclose your sensitive information as reasonably necessary and proportionate: (i) to perform the Services requested by you; (ii) to help ensure security and integrity, including to prevent, detect, and investigate security incidents; (iii) to detect, prevent and respond to malicious, fraudulent, deceptive, or illegal conduct; (iv) to verify or maintain the quality and safety of the Services; (v) for compliance with our legal obligations; (vi) with our service providers who perform the Services requested by you on our behalf; and (vii) for purposes other than inferring characteristics about you.
You have several choices regarding the use of your personal information through the Website and Services:
Email Communications. We may periodically send you emails that directly promote the use of the Website or Services. When you receive such emails from us, you may indicate a preference to stop receiving further emails, and you will have the opportunity to “opt out” by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in the email you receive or by emailing us directly at contact@Thalamus.Org. Despite your indicated email preferences regarding promotions, we may still send you important Services-related communications, including notices of any updates to this Policy or the Terms of Service.
Text Messages. You may sign up to receive text messages from Thalamus.org or third-party service providers on behalf of Thalamus.org. Message and data rates may apply. Information we collect in connection with providing text messages may be used in accordance with this Policy. Thalamus.org may send transactional or marketing messages, but will only do so with your separate consent for each.
You may provide your prior express consent to receive transactional messages, such as text message notifications about the status of your scholarship application, scholarship awards, or other activity in connection with the Services. You may provide your prior express consent by signing up for transactional text messaging services, or otherwise opting in to receive transactional text messages (such as by opting in via short code or entering your phone number into a Website collection widget) or through another method. You agree that you have provided Thalamus.org and its third-party service providers with prior express consent to be contacted by text message for transactional purposes.
You may separately consent to receive commercial or marketing messages. If you do, Thalamus.org may send you marketing messages. You may provide your consent by signing up for marketing text messaging services, opting in to receiving marketing messages, asking to be informed by text message about Thalamus.org or its services, or through another method. When required by applicable law, we may require you to provide your prior express written consent. You agree that you have provided Thalamus.org and its third-party service providers with prior express written consent to be contacted by text message for Thalamus.org’s marketing and commercial purposes.
Cookies. If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to accept cookies from the Website for any of the purposes described above, then you can instruct your browser, by changing its settings, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. Consult your browser’s technical information. If you do not accept cookies, however, you may not be able to use all portions of the Website or all functionality of the Services. If you have any questions about how to disable or modify cookies, visit https://www.allaboutcookies.org/.
Disclosure of Your Information for Third-Party Marketing Communications. If you do not want us to share your personal information with third parties for their marketing communications to you, you can directly unsubscribe from their marketing communications by following the unsubscribe instructions in those marketing communications.
Thalamus.org is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. No method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we use reasonable efforts to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
We keep your personal information only as long as necessary to use it as we have described in this Policy.
Please note that the Website and the Services are hosted in the United States. If you use the Website or any of the Services from outside the United States, please be aware that your personal information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. The data protection and privacy laws of the United States may differ from the laws in your country. By using the Website or any of the Services, you consent to the transfer of your personal information to the United States.
The Website and the Services are not intended for children under 18 years of age. No one under age 18 shall provide any personal information to or on the Website or the Services. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If you are under 18, do not use or provide any personal information on this Website or through any of the Services. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 18 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 18, please contact us at contact@Thalamus.Org.
Residents of certain states under 13, 16, or 18 years of age may have additional rights regarding the collection and sale of their personal information, and we will honor those rights, as applicable.
Individuals with disabilities who are unable to usefully access the Policy online may contact us at contact@Thalamus.Org to inquire how they can obtain a copy of our policy in another, more easily readable format.
We currently do not support the Do Not Track browser setting or respond to Do Not Track signals. Do Not Track (or DNT) is a preference you can set in your browser to let the websites you visit know that you do not want them collecting certain information about you. For more details about Do Not Track, including how to enable or disable this preference, visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com. Some browsers and browser extensions transmit universal opt-out signals, such as the Global Privacy Control. Because we do not sell your personal information and do not process it for targeted advertising, there is no such processing for these signals to opt you out of.
We reserve the right to change this Policy at any time. If we make any changes to this Policy, we will post the revised version to the Website and update the “Last Modified” date at the top of this Policy. If we make material changes to this Policy, we will notify you of the changes by email or by posting a notice to the home page of the Website, which in each case will provide you with an opportunity to accept or reject those material changes (note that if you choose to reject the material changes, you must immediately cease your access and use of the Website and all Services).
Our contact information is as follows:
Thalamus.org, Inc.
501 Union St Ste 545
PMB 162741
Nashville, Tennessee 37219-1876
Email: contact@Thalamus.Org
Support the next generation of doctors — and the patients they’ll serve.
