Privacy Policy

Jump to Section

MEMA PRIVACY POLICY

Effective Date: 09/19/2025

To print this Privacy Policy, please click here.

This Privacy Policy applies to the processing of personal information on https://www.mema.org and all websites controlled by the Motor & Equipment Manufacturer’s Association, including, and any affiliated organizations (collectively, “MEMA”). Those websites are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the "Sites." 

PLEASE READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY BECAUSE BY USING THE SITES, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTOOD THE PRIVACY PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY, PLEASE DO NOT USE THE SITES. Your use of the Sites is also expressly subject to our Terms of Use.

We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to stay updated on how we process your personal information.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to:

  • This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected on the Sites. The Sites may contain links to other websites, such as to relevant online resources, our partners' websites, and other third party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these other websites.
  • Any specific contracts agreed to by the parties and relationships that may be governed by further privacy agreements. If you are engaging with us on behalf of your employer, others in your company, or are otherwise providing the personal information of others, by engaging with us, you acknowledge and agree that you have the consent of the other individual to provide that individual’s information to MEMA.
  • This Privacy Policy does not pertain to information that is collected offline.

INFORMATION COLLECTION

What Personal Information are We Collecting?

When you use our Sites, we collect various types of information, including your personal information. When we use the term “personal information” we mean any information relating directly or indirectly to an identified or identifiable natural person. The types of personal information we collect from you depends on the features, services, and Sites you use. The following is a list of categories of personal information we collect, either directly from you or indirectly via third parties, and the manners in which it may be collected on the Sites:

Account Information. If you elect to become a registered user of the Sites, we may collect your first and last name, title, mailing address, job function, market area (i.e., vehicle information and company geography), your e-mail address, professional or employment information, as well as your phone number(s) and/or photograph (if provided). 

  • Other Registration or Contact Information. We may collect your first and last name, date of birth, mobile phone number and e-mail address. For example, we may collect your information if you: (a) choose to participate in a contest or sweepstakes offered on the Sites, or offered via another means, such as through social media or a mobile device; (b) interact with certain features and functions of the Sites that allow you to submit information, feedback, post content, etc. by e-mail, text message, instant message or other similar technology; (c) vote in a poll or send a shout out from your mobile phone or send us your picture or video for broadcast by e-mail or via social media; (d) submit your e-mail address or telephone number when you contact us with a question or sign up to receive a newsletter or other updates regarding our content, its availability, or other products or services offered by us or our business partners; or (e) upload your name, image or other personal information when posting any content on the Sites, such as video files, or other communications made via chat rooms or social media. We may retain your contact information, communications and other information and content you submit to us for our internal purposes and to help us serve you better as set forth in the Terms of Use.
  • Payment and Financial Information. We may collect your first and last name, your address, and your credit card and billing information if you make a purchase through the Sites.
  • Demographic Information. We may collect your demographic information such as your gender, age, zip code, interests and views, which you voluntarily provide to us on the Sites or which may be automatically collected as described within this Privacy Policy. We use this information to provide you with personalized services and to analyze trends to ensure the information provided by the Sites meets your needs. Some of this information may be aggregated, in which case it is not considered personal information.
  • Location Information. We may also collect your location if you choose to allow us to track your location through our Sites or services or if your device indicates a certain geographic location. This information may help us provide recommendations based on your location, serve you with advertisements or direct you to a product or service that we believe may be of interest to you and that is marketed to people near your location.
  • Device and other Electronic Information. We may collect an identification number unique to your device when you interact with the Sites using a mobile device and we also collect your IP address and other information regarding your mobile device or computer. This could include things such as the features you use, the web pages you visit, and the search terms you enter. This could also include data about your devices and the network you use to connect to our services, including IP address, device identifiers, and data about the performance of the services you use on the Sites and any problems you experience with them. You understand and agree that you will be charged standard data rates by your wireless carrier for all interactions with the Sites using a mobile device. While you’re under no obligation to provide the information requested, if you decline to do so, MEMA may be unable to provide you with certain services.

How Do We Collect Your Personal Information?

We collect personal information directly from you when you provide it to us. For instance, if you sign up for a membership, participate in a survey, or contact us with a question, we may process those communications, including any personal information you include in them, so we can effectively respond to you. We may also receive your personal information directly from your employer when we are asked to create an account on your employer’s behalf.

We may also collect information from third parties, such as sponsors, business partners, and via online tracking technologies like cookies when you visit or interact with our Sites, or from your employer. Please see the section “Cookies and Similar Technologies” for more information about these tools. 

USE OF INFORMATION COLLECTED VIA THE SITES

We process your personal information for the following purposes:

  1. To provide you with updates and other information from MEMA.
  2. To try to ensure the Sites are relevant to your needs.
  3. To help us improve, create, and publish content most relevant to you.
  4. To provide you with important notices.
  5. To manage your memberships through the Sites, allow you access to limited entry areas of the Sites, verify access to accounts, and handle other visitor and member support inquiries.
  6. To contact you in response to proposals or inquiries that you submit on the Sites.
  7. To generate web analytics and compile user information for marketing purposes, advertising, conducting marketing analysis, providing you with recommendations for products or services based on your profile, and promotional material planning and distribution.
  8. To protect out Sites, network, business operations, members, and to stop activities that may violate our policies or be fraudulent or illegal.
  9. To comply with applicable laws or legal process and/or respond to requests from public and government authorities, such as to comply with valid law enforcement requests or court orders.

LEGAL BASES FOR PROCESSING

We process personal information in accordance with applicable law and with transparency and fairness. The legal bases for the processing activities listed in the section above are as follows:

For letters a) through f), in order to fulfill our contractual obligations to you;

For letter g), with your consent; and

For letter h), in compliance with the law.

SHARING AND DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

We may share or disclose your personal information as follows:

  • With our employees and affiliates to provide our Sites and services.  

With event sponsors if you are entering a sweepstakes, contest, or other promotion in order to fulfill the terms of that promotion (i.e., for entry collection, winner selection and prize fulfillment). We also may share your information with the co-sponsor and/or promotional partners of that promotion for similar purposes.

  • With affiliates, strategic partners, agents, third party marketers or other unaffiliated parties who are offering products or services that we believe may be of interest to you or who require your personal information for research, administrative, and/or internal business purposes. These parties may use your personal information to contact you with an offer or advertisement related to a product or service, or they may use such information for their own research, administration or business purposes.
  • With third parties, such as service providers, in order to fulfill a service to you. For example, if you choose to attend an event or request information, we may share your personal information with service providers in order to provide the program to you. In addition, if you contact us with a question, we may use your e-mail address or mobile phone number to process your request and respond to your question.
  • With unaffiliated third-party service providers, agents, independent contractors who help us maintain our Sites and provide other administrative services to us (including, but not limited to, processing your requests, order processing and fulfillment, providing customer service, maintaining and analyzing data, and sending customer communications on MEMA’s behalf).
  • With law enforcement, a government agency, or an investigatory body to comply with the law, a valid court order or subpoena, or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary in order to conform to the requirements of law or comply with legal process served on us, protect and defend our rights or property, including the rights and property of MEMA and the Sites to protect someone’s personal safety.
  • With third parties as part of any corporate reorganization process including, but not limited to, mergers, acquisitions, and sales of all or substantially all of our assets.
  • With third party service providers to protect against potential fraud, such as to verify information collected from the Sites. In the course of such verification, we may receive personal information about you from such services. In particular, if you use a credit card or debit card to purchase services with us, we may use card authorization and fraud screening services to verify that your card information and address matches the information that you supplied to us, and that the card has not been reported as lost or stolen.
  • For any other reasons that we may describe to you at the time your personal information is collected.
  • Except as described in this Privacy Policy or at the time we request the information, we do not otherwise use, share or otherwise disclose your personal information to any third parties.

COLLECTION AND USE OF INFORMATION FROM CHILDREN

The Sites are not intended for use by children under the age of 18. MEMA does not knowingly collect information from children. If we discover that we have received information from a child under the age of 18, we will delete it.

COOKIES AND SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES

We use, and allow certain third parties to use, cookies, social media pixels, web beacons, Software Development Kits (“SDKs”), and other similar online tracking technologies (collectively, “cookies”) to provide our services and to help collect data. We, or third parties, may use session cookies or persistent cookies. Session cookies only last for the specific duration of your visit and are deleted when you close your browser. Persistent cookies remain on your device’s hard drive until you delete them or they expire. 

We may also use software tools called “session replay technology” to monitor how you interact with our Sites. The personal information collected by this technology may include which links you click on, pages and content you view, information that you type into our online forms, recordings of mouse clicks and movements, and information about your device or browser.  

We use the following categories of cookies on our Sites or when providing our services:

  • Essential. Some cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around our Sites and use their features, such as accessing secure areas of the Sites. Without these cookies, we cannot enable appropriate content based on the type of device you are using.
  • Browsing and Functionality. These cookies allow us to remember choices you make on the Sites, such as your preferred language and the country from which you are visiting, and provide enhanced, more personalized features.
  • Performance and Analytics. We use our own cookies and/or third-party cookies to see how you use our Sites in order to enhance their performance and develop them according to your preferences. To help facilitate the delivery of relevant content, we use Google Analytics and have implemented the following Google Advertising Features and Google Analytics uses cookies to report on user interactions on our and others’ websites. We use the data collected for analyzing site usage and patterns. You can opt out of the Google Analytics features we use by indicating your preference using the interest-based opt-out link here. Google also provides a complete privacy policy, and instructions on opting out of Google Analytics here. Note that Google’s opt-out mechanism is specific to Google activities and does not affect the activities of other ad networks or analytics providers that we may use.
  • Targeting and Advertising. We may allow certain third parties (including advertisers, third party ad networks, and other ad companies) to use cookies and other similar technologies to provide our services, serve advertisements on the Sites, and to improve the performance of MEMA's advertising across the Internet. Please be advised that such advertising companies may gather personal information about your visit to the Sites or other sites to enable such advertising companies to market products or services to you, to monitor which ads have been served to your browser, and which webpages you were viewing when such ads were delivered. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS POLICY DOES NOT COVER THE COLLECTION AND USE OF INFORMATION BY SUCH THIRD PARTY WEBSITES AND ADVERTISING COMPANIES.

There are several ways to manage cookies. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. The Help feature on most browsers provides information on how to accept cookies, disable cookies or to notify you when receiving a new cookie. Please note, however, that by blocking or deleting cookies which are “strictly necessary,” you may not be able to access certain features of our Sites.

In the US, the Network Advertising Initiative also offers a means to opt-out of a number of advertising cookies. Please visit www.networkadvertising.org to learn more. Note that opting-out does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the company or companies from which you opted-out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your preferences and usage patterns.

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER OF INFORMATION

If you choose to provide MEMA with personal information, MEMA may transfer that information to its affiliates and subsidiaries or to other third parties, across borders, and from your country or jurisdiction to other countries or jurisdictions around the world. If you are visiting from the European Union (EU) or other regions with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from US law, please note that you are transferring your personal information to the United States which does not have the same data protection laws as the EU and may provide more limited recourse mechanisms, including dissimilar or, at times, weaker data protection rights. Where necessary, we utilize Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission to legitimize the transfer of personal information from the EU to the United States and other countries. 

With knowledge of these risks, by providing your personal information you acknowledge that you understand: (i) your personal information will be used for the uses identified above in accordance with this Privacy Policy; and (ii) your personal information will be transferred to the United States as indicated above.

YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS AND CHOICES

  • Your Membership Account: You can update, change, or delete certain personal information (such as your email address, mailing address, and payment method) on the Sites by accessing your account here.

Email Opt-out: We communicate with users who subscribe to our services on a regular basis via email. For example, we may use your email address to send you information about a service requested by you, to confirm a service requested by you, to send you notices regarding important information and meetings, to send you information about changes to our services, and to send notices and other disclosures as required by law. Generally, users cannot opt-out of these communications, but they will be primarily informational in nature rather than promotional. However, we provide you the opportunity to exercise an opt-out choice if you do not want to receive other types of communication from us, such as emails or updates from us regarding new services and products offered on the Sites or if you do not want us to share your personal information with third parties. The opt-out choice may be exercised by ticking or un-ticking the appropriate box if such checkbox is available at the points where personal information is collected, or by contacting us. We will process your unsubscribe request as soon as possible and in accordance with applicable law, but please be aware that in some circumstances you may receive additional messages prior to the unsubscribe request being processed. You also may opt-out of receiving such promotional emails by clicking on the "unsubscribe" link within the text of the email.

  • Text or SMS Messaging: We may also offer text/SMS messaging to you. In some circumstances, we might require you to opt-in to receive text messages from us. At any time, you may opt-out of receiving particular text messages from us by texting STOP in response to any text message.
  • General Questions: Please contact MEMA at the address below if you have questions about your personal information or if you would like to otherwise make a change to such information.
  • Do Not Track Signals: MEMA does not support Do Not Track browser settings and does not currently participate in any "Do Not Track" frameworks that would allow us to respond to signals or other mechanisms from you regarding the collection of your personal information.

California’s “Shine the Light” Law

California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits our visitors who are California residents to request certain information regarding MEMA's disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please contact us at the address provided below. Please indicate in your request that you are a California resident making a “Shine the Light” inquiry.

Rights for individuals located in the European Economic Area, the U.K, and Switzerland 

Individuals located in these countries of regions may have the following rights: 

  • Right to access: You may have the right to confirm whether your personal information is being processed and to get access to it and other information.  You may also have the right to get a copy of your personal information. Where possible and allowed by law, we will provide a copy of the personal data we are processing. For more copies, we may charge a reasonable fee. If you make the request by electronic means, and unless otherwise requested, the data shall be provided in electronic form. 
  • Right to correction, rectification, and completion: You may have the right to correct, rectify, or complete your personal data if inaccurate or incomplete.  
  • Right to deletion or erasure (“right to be forgotten”): You may have the right to the deletion or erasure of your personal data.
  • Right to restriction of processing: You may have the right to request that we restrict our processing of personal information.
  • Right to data portability: You may have the right to receive your personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format or where technically feasible to have it directly transferred to another controller.
  • Right to object to processing: You may have the right to object to processing of your personal data which is based on our legitimate purposes.  
  • Right to withdraw consent: where consent is relied upon to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw consent, subject to legal restrictions.
  • Right to provide instructions: in some restricted jurisdictions, you have the right to provide instructions regarding the use of your personal information after death.
  • Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: Users who are located in the EEA, UK, Switzerland or other countries that may offer this recourse have the right to lodge a complaint about our privacy practices with a supervisory authority.  

FORUMS, CHAT ROOMS & OTHER PUBLIC POSTING AREAS

Please note that any information you include in a message you post to any chat room, forum or other public posting area is available to anyone with Internet access. If you don't want people to know your e-mail address, for example, don't include it in any message you post publicly. PLEASE BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL WHEN DISCLOSING ANY INFORMATION IN CHAT ROOMS, FORUMS AND OTHER PUBLIC POSTING AREAS. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE USE BY OTHERS OF THE INFORMATION THAT YOU DISCLOSE IN CHAT ROOMS, FORUMS AND OTHER PUBLIC POSTING AREAS.

OUR USE OF CHAT FEATURES

Our Sites may also incorporate a third-party chat feature for support purposes. This chat feature may be powered by generative artificial intelligence (“AI Features”). If you interact with the AI Features, you are not communicating with a human representative of MEMA. Instead, you are communicating with artificial intelligence software that generates responses to your inputs based on machine-learning algorithms. These chat features may collect the content of your communications including any personal information you provide it. Any information you provide to these chat features will be used, shared, and stored in accordance with our Terms of Use and this Privacy Policy. Please discontinue use of the Sites if you do not consent to the collection and use of such information by us and third parties.

SECURITY AND RETENTION

We implement reasonable security measures to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of the information you provide us. We may use third party products and services to secure or store your information. Please understand that no data transmissions over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Consequently, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you understand that any information that you transfer to MEMA is done at your own risk. We use firewalls to protect your information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. However, please note that this is not a guarantee that such information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed by breach of such firewalls and secure server software. 

We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will also revise the “Effective Date" date at the top of this Privacy Policy. If we are going to use information in a manner that is materially different from that stated at the time of collection or make any material changes to our privacy practices, we will notify you either by email or by posting a prominent notice on our Sites.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at the following address:

MEMA
ATTN: Privacy Officer
info@mema.org
PO Box 13966
RTP, NC 27709-3966