Effective Date: September 30, 2021
This Privacy Notice explains how Abbvie Corporation, 8401 trans-Canada Hgwy, St-Laurent,Quebec, H4S 1Z1 (referred to as “AbbVie,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) may process Personal Data about you through your online and off-line interactions with us through AbbVie services, products, communications, and digital properties (including websites and mobile applications) that refer to this Privacy Notice and where AbbVie may obtain and control your Personal Data from a third party (collectively, “AbbVie Relationships”). Your continued use of AbbVie Relationships signifies your acceptance of the terms of this Privacy Notice.
This section describes the general categories of Personal Data that we may collect for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice. You can find additional information on the types of Personal Data we collect for online interactions, job applicants, health care professionals, and patient and customer programs by clicking on the relevant links.
AbbVie may collect Personal Data from you directly, for example as part of a registration or in response to a questionnaire. AbbVie may also obtain Personal Data indirectly, such as from publicly available sources (e.g., websites or publicly accessible databases), third-party data vendors, health care providers and health insurance companies, and third-party partners and collaborators. We may combine Personal Data from multiple online and off-line sources. The categories of Personal Data that AbbVie may collect about you include:
We may use your Personal Data for the business and commercial purposes relating to your AbbVie Relationships, communicating with you, improving AbbVie Relationships and our products and services, and for other internal business purposes. You can find additional information on how we use Personal Data for online interactions, job applicants, health care professionals, and patient and customer programs by clicking on the relevant links.
We may use your Personal Data for everyday business purposes, such as payment processing and financial account management, contract management, website administration, fulfilment, corporate governance, and reporting obligations. We may also use your Personal Data to provide you with the programs or services that you requested, or to administer AbbVie services, such as direct purchasing, participating in a savings program or signing up to receive a rebate. This means that we may use your Personal Data to respond to your questions, provide you with your requested services, offer you an optimal customer experience, perform our contractual obligations to you, or perform actions based on your consent.
We provide marketing communications that promote the use of or offer participation in AbbVie products, services, programs, research events or provide other information that may be of interest to you, such as information on certain health conditions. We will use your Personal Data to send you marketing communications and to determine the types of marketing communications to send.
You can opt-out of marketing communications at any time. Marketing communication opt-out instructions are included in each marketing communication you receive, or you can email us at privacyoffice@abbvie.com.
Personal Data may be used to create customized offers, information, or services tailored to your interests and preferences. It may also be used to develop and improve your AbbVie Relationships. We collect your Personal Data with your consent.
In order to discover new facts that could help AbbVie better understand customer needs and help improve, develop, and evaluate product services, materials, programs, and treatments, AbbVie analyzes Personal Data for its legitimate interests in business and product improvement.
We may process your Personal Data to comply with laws and regulations, including those related to pharmacovigilance. We may also use Personal Data to monitor compliance with our policies and procedures, for fraud prevention, and to investigate and prosecute users who violate our rules or who engage in behavior that is illegal or harmful to others or to others’ property.
We generally share Personal Data with third parties for the business and commercial purposes described below. We do not sell Personal Data to third parties. You can find additional information on how we share Personal Data for online interactions, job applicants, health care professionals, and patient and customer programs by clicking on the relevant links.
We have relationships with various vendors, including our affiliated companies, that help us operate our business and for whom it may be required to have access to your Personal Data in the course of providing services to AbbVie. We require them to handle your Personal Data collected through the AbbVie Relationships in accordance with appropriate contractual privacy and security provisions.
We may partner with other companies and public and private organizations to provide you with products, content, or services on a joint or “co-branded” basis. You should be aware that, in such cases, in addition to this Privacy Notice, the relevant partner’s privacy notice may also apply, and, in limited cases, there may be a shared privacy notice.
For co-branded forms and sites, you will see displayed both the AbbVie logo and the logo of the co-branding partner. To access co-branded services, you may have to complete a registration form, and this registration information may be shared with AbbVie’s co-branding partners, and you should read the individual privacy policies of our co-branding partners, as they may differ in some respects from ours.
In addition, we may disclose Personal Data to our external auditors, attorneys, accountants, and similar professionals based on our legitimate interest in the operation of our business and our obligations to comply with applicable laws and regulations.
If you contact AbbVie regarding your experience using our products, we may use the information you provide to us to submit our reports to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, other similar health and medicine government agencies across the world, and as otherwise required of us by law. We also may use the information to contact your prescribing physician to follow up regarding an unexpected event involving the use of our product.
In certain limited circumstances, we may need to disclose your Personal Data to comply with a legal obligation, process, or demand and for reasons of public interest, such as to comply with reporting obligations to our governing regulatory authorities regarding the safety of our products, in response to a subpoena, or to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.
We may transfer your Personal Data to a successor entity upon a merger, consolidation or other corporate reorganization, to a purchaser of all or a portion of our assets, or pursuant to a financing arrangement or co-promotional agreement. The Personal Data we have about you may be transferred to parties to the transaction based on our legitimate interest in preparing for and completing the transaction. Any successor entity shall be bound by terms and conditions reasonably similar to this Privacy Notice.
We may collect additional categories of Personal Data relating to your online interactions with us, as described in this section. We also use, share, and disclose your Personal Data for online interactions for the additional purposes described in the section. The categories of Personal Data collected and the purposes of use and disclosure described in this section are in addition any other collection, use and disclosure of Personal Data practices described separately in this Privacy Notice.
This section also describes how we use cookies and other data-collection technologies and how you can manage cookies that are not required to operate our websites and mobile applications.
We may collect the following additional categories of Personal Data through your usage of our websites and mobile applications.
IP address
We may record the Internet Protocol (“IP”) address of your computer or other electronic device when you visit our website. An IP address identifies the electronic device you use to access websites, which allows us to maintain communication with your device and to customize content.
Cookies and other data-collection technologies
We collect information automatically through your online interactions with us through tracking and data-collection technologies such as cookies, web beacons and pixels, APIs, web services, scripts, browser analysis tools, and server logs. A “cookie” is a unique numeric code that is transferred to your computer to track your interests and preferences and to recognize you as a return visitor. A “Web beacon” (also known as a pixel tag) is a transparent graphic image placed on a website, email, or advertisement that enables the monitoring of things such as user activity and site traffic, including the collection of data about the website and mobile application you were visiting before and after you came to our website or mobile application. To learn more about cookies and other data-collection technologies, please visit All about cookies.
We classify our cookies into the following categories:
If you would like to see a detailed list of the cookies we use on our websites, including the third parties that place cookies on our websites, the specific cookie, and cookie lifespan, please click on “cookie settings” at the footer of this page. If the cookie lifespan is not disclosed in the cookie settings, we use a default life span of thirteen (13) months, unless a shorter period is required by law. You can also use the “cookie settings” to opt out of a nonrequired cookie category.
In addition to the cookie settings feature, you can disable cookies through your browser. Please note that some cookies are essential to the functioning of our websites and deleting or disabling them on your browser will reduce the site’s functionality.
If you want to use your browser instead of our cookie settings feature to opt-out of the Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics tracking cookies, you can install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, and you can opt-out of Adobe Analytics.
Mobile tracking
Some AbbVie Relationships are available as either mobile applications or mobile sites that you can use on your mobile device. If you use a mobile device to access and use the AbbVie Relationships, we may collect the following mobile-specific information in addition to the other information described above: device or advertising ID, device type, hardware type, media access control (“MAC”) address, international mobile equipment identity (“IMEI”), the version of your mobile operating system, the platform used to access or download the AbbVie sites and applications (e.g., Apple, Google, Amazon, Windows), location information and usage information about your device and your use of the AbbVie Relationships.
In addition to the uses described separately in this Privacy Notice, we may use your Personal Data collected online for the additional purposes as described in this section.
We may use your IP address and the Personal Data that we obtain automatically through the use of cookies or similar tracking technologies to make our websites and mobile applications easier for you to use and navigate, to assist in your registrations and login, to personalize the content by anticipating the information and services that may be of interest to you, and to personalize and improve our interactions with you by making the information we provide more relevant to you. We may also add your website usage data to the general profile we maintain about you so that our AbbVie Relationships with you are a more personalized experience. When we send email communications, we may place a web beacon or similar tracking technology in the email to know whether your device is capable of receiving HTML emails, or to collect data on whether the email or an attachment or link in the email has been opened. We use this data to help us determine and document if a particular part of our communication was more relevant to you.
In some cases, we collect this Personal Data with your consent. In other cases, we collect this information for our legitimate business interest to optimize and customize your user experience.
We may use the Personal Data that you provide to us and the online information we collect automatically through cookies and similar tracking technologies to monitor user traffic patterns and preferences. We may also track email communications through web beacons or similar tracking technology in emails to create aggregated statistics and reports to analyze the effectiveness of and improve our marketing campaigns.
We collect this information for our legitimate business interests of security, improvement, analytics and optimization of AbbVie Relationships
We may also analyze public sources, such as websites and social media channels, to monitor, analyze and improve our understanding of interactions with and views of our products, services, and events. AbbVie and its service providers will respect the privacy notices and terms of use applicable to such sources in performing such activities.
We may offer “tell-a-friend” functionality on our sites. If you choose to use this function, we will collect your friend’s contact information from you. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email with the information you specified or inviting your friend to visit the site. We use this Personal Data you provide us as part of the “tell-a-friend” functionality for the sole purposes of sending this one-time email. Do not share your friend’s contact information with us unless you have your friend’s consent to do so.
In addition to the types of disclosures of Personal Data described separately in this Privacy Notice, we may share Personal Data online for the additional purposes as described in this section.
Third-party advertising and online behavioral advertising
We may provide you with online advertisements for AbbVie products and services on third-party websites and mobile services that are tailored to you, which may be based on the Personal Data that you provide to us or to a third-party website that you are visiting, or on your browsing activity, purchases, or interests. We may share some of your device information with our advertising service providers that we have obtained from cookies and other data-collection and tracking technologies based on your AbbVie Relationships.
Some AbbVie Relationships participate in online behavioral advertising (this is also sometimes called targeted advertising or interest-based advertising). You can identify these sites by the “Advertising Choices” link in the advertisement. Our advertising network partners may place and use cookies on our websites and on other third-party sites to collect Personal Data about your activities in order to provide you with online advertisements that are based on your interests. When an AbbVie online behavioral advertisement is delivered to you, you will see an “Ad Choices” icon. Clicking on the icon or link will take you to a website where you can manage or opt-out of the use of data about your browsing history that is used for the delivery of online behavioral advertisements. If you opt-out, you may still see advertisements online, including advertisements from AbbVie that are based on other information (e.g., based on the content of the page being viewed rather than your prior clickstream activity). In some cases, data may still be collected about your browsing activity by these third-party advertisers, but they will not use this data to deliver advertisements that are based on your past online browsing behavior. You can also opt-out now by clicking here.
You may also opt out of certain online behavioral advertising on the Digital Advertising Alliance's consumer choice tool, and the Network Advertising Initiative’s tool.
Some web browsers may transmit “do-not-track” signals to web services with which your browser communicates. As of the effective date of this Privacy Notice, an industry standard has not yet been established on how to respond to these signals; therefore, AbbVie does not currently respond to these signals. However, you can opt-out from advertisers that use your browsing history to deliver online behavioral advertisements via the mechanisms listed above.
This Privacy Notice only applies to AbbVie Relationships linked to this Privacy Notice and does not apply to third-party websites to which AbbVie Relationships may link, including links to outside websites or advertisements from third parties. We encourage you to review the privacy statements provided by all third parties prior to providing them with Personal Data.
AbbVie Relationships may use social media plug-ins (e.g., the Facebook “Like” button and the “Share to Twitter” button) to enable you to easily share information with others. When you visit our sites as part of an AbbVie Relationship, the operator of the social plug-in and integrated social media platforms can place a cookie on your device that enables that operator to receive your Personal Data that allow the operator to recognize individuals who have previously visited our sites. If you are logged into the social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) while browsing on our site, the social media plug-in allows that social media site to receive information that you have visited our site. The social media plug-in also allows the social media site to share information about your activities on our site with other users of that social media site. These sharing settings are managed by the social media site, and you should refer to those sites’ privacy policies for information about their privacy and data-sharing practices.
If you are a California resident, you have certain rights with respect to AbbVie’s use and disclosure of your Personal Data. Those California-specific privacy requirements not addressed in other Privacy Notice sections are described here.
Consistent with the collection practices described in this Privacy Notice, we may collect certain categories and specific pieces of Personal Data either from your or from other third parties. We collect, use, and disclose Personal Data for our business and commercial purposes described in this Privacy Notice. AbbVie does not sell Personal Data. Furthermore, AbbVie receives, and may further share with its collaborators and partners, deidentified health data from health care providers and health plans, subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”). The health data received by AbbVie was deidentified based on either HIPAA’s “safe harbor” method, which means that certain direct identifiers were removed from the health data, or HIPAA’s expert determination method, which means that a qualified statistician reviewed the health data shared with AbbVie and confirmed that there is a very small risk that an individual could be identified from the remaining health data.
As a California resident, you have the right to request:
Should you exercise any of your privacy rights as a California resident, AbbVie will not discriminate against you by offering you different pricing or products, or by providing you with a different level or quality of products, based solely upon this request. However, certain AbbVie Relationships may require your consent to have your Personal Data shared with AbbVie to provide the service or to allow us to use and disclose your Personal Data to provide the AbbVie Relationships. When you exercise your deletion right, you may lose access to certain aspects of AbbVie Relationships that require your Personal Data to perform the service.
Please see the Your privacy rights and choices section if you or your authorized representative have questions or would like to make a request to exercise any of your rights described in this section. After you make your request, we will use the information we have to verify your identify (and if applicable, your authorized agent’s identify), and to match the Personal Data we have collected about you, if any, to your verified identify. Our verification process may include a request for additional information to confirm your identify or your authorized agent’s identify, or to obtain proof that you have given your authorized agent permission to act on your behalf. If our verification process is successful, we will respond to your request within the time and in the manner required by applicable law. If we cannot validate the identify of you and/or your authorized agent or obtain proof that you have given your authorized agent permission to act on your behalf, we will attempt to contact you to inform you.
If you have applied for employment with AbbVie, the Personal Data submitted with your job application may include your resume; previous professional, education and other background information; driver’s license information; social security number or equivalent national identification (as required or permitted by local law); cover letter; licenses; permits and certifications held; reference information; and any other information that you choose to provide (e.g., employment preferences, willingness to relocate, awards or professional memberships). This information may come from you, a recruiter, your references, prior employers, or your educational institutions.
Consistent with applicable law, we may ask questions about race/ethnic origin, gender, veteran status, and disability status of our applicants, for the monitoring of equal employment opportunity compliance. Except as specifically requested or legally required, we ask that you avoid submitting information in your application that may qualify as sensitive information under applicable law. Sensitive information includes data about race, color, religion, ethnicity, nationality or national origin, age, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical or health information (including physical or mental disabilities or pregnancy status), genetic or biometric information, political or philosophical beliefs, political party or trade union membership, veteran status, photographs, background check information, judicial data such as criminal records or information on other judicial or administrative proceedings, or any other legally protected status.
Personal Data will be processed based on our legitimate interest in processing your job application and evaluating your candidacy and qualifications and to conduct reference checks. We may also inquire about criminal records and perform a background check following a conditional offer of employment, where permitted by applicable law. We may also process Personal Data from your job application for regulatory, compliance and legal purposes, consistent with this Privacy Notice. Personal Data may be also be used for additional administrative purposes, including aggregate management reporting, internal training, and as generally required to operate our business.
We may share the data on your applications with recruiters, consultants, attorneys, preemployment background check services, and our affiliates.
We may collect additional categories of Personal Data if you are a health care professional, as described in this section. We also use and disclose Personal Data about health care professionals for the additional purposes described in this section. The categories of Personal Data collected and the purposes of use and disclosure described in this section are in addition any other collection, use and disclosure of Personal Data practices described separately in this Privacy Notice.
If you are health care professional, we may collect Personal Data about you directly from you, or from third-party sources such as the organization where you work, publicly available sources, interactions with AbbVie (including online available sources), and participation in AbbVie-sponsored or -supported initiatives such as AbbVie-sponsored clinical research and development activities, third-party databases, and reporters of pharmacovigilance events.
We may collect the following additional categories of Personal Data about health care professionals:
We use and disclose Personal Data of health care professionals for the following additional purposes.
AbbVie does not knowingly collect any Personal Data directly from anyone under the age of 13. All AbbVie Relationships that support children are directed to and are communicated with parents and guardians only. If you are a parent or guardian and become aware that your child has provided us with Personal Data, please contact us using one of the methods in the Your privacy rights and choices section, and we will work with you to address this issue.
You may contact us or our Global Privacy Office, including our Data Protection Officer, at any time, using the contact information below if you have questions about this Privacy Notice or have any other privacy request or inquiry. You can also opt-out or unsubscribe from any of our programs or services.
Please submit your privacy requests or inquiries here. You can also contact us by clicking on this here. You can also contact us by emailing us at privacyoffice@abbvie.com, or by calling us toll-free at 1-800-255-5162. Alternatively, you may send a letter to the following address:
AbbVie Customer Service
Attn: Privacy
Department 36M
1 N. Waukegan Road
North Chicago, IL 60064-6163
In all communications to us, please include the email address used for registration (if applicable), the website address, mobile application, or the specific program to which you provided Personal Data (e.g., AbbVie.com), and a detailed explanation of your request. If you would like to delete, amend, or correct your Personal Data and are contacting us by email, please put “Deletion Request” or “Amendment/Correction Request” in the subject line of the email. We will respond to all reasonable requests in a timely manner, and we may need to further confirm your identity in order to process certain requests.
Under applicable data protection law, you may have the right to request access to and/or rectify, block, or delete Personal Data relating to you, transmit Personal Data to another controller, withdraw your consent at any time (this will not affect the lawfulness of previous data-processing activities), or object to any use of your Personal Data. If we are not able to provide the requested information or make the change you requested, you will be provided with the reasons for such decisions. Under local law, you may be entitled to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.
You may have the right to object to the processing activities described in this Privacy Notice that are based on our legitimate interests.
Please submit your privacy requests or inquiries here.
AbbVie maintains appropriate technical, administrative, and physical controls to reasonably safeguard any Personal Data collected through AbbVie Relationships. However, there is always some risk that an unauthorized third party could intercept an Internet transmission, or that someone will find a way to thwart our security systems. We urge you to exercise caution when transmitting Personal Data over the Internet, especially your health-related information. We cannot guarantee that unauthorized third parties will not gain access to Personal Data about you; therefore, when submitting Personal Data to us, you must weigh both the benefits and the risks.
We will only keep Personal Data as long as necessary for the fulfillment of the purposes outlined in this Privacy Notice, except if otherwise required by applicable laws or legal orders. The criteria used to determine our retention periods include (i) the length of time we have an ongoing Abbvie Relationship with you; (ii) whether there is a legal or best practice retention obligation to which we are subject; and (iii) whether retention is needed in light of litigation or regulatory investigations.
We may transfer Personal Data internationally as described in this section.
Personal Data may be transferred and processed by and among AbbVie Inc. in the U.S., the parent company of AbbVie, and its affiliates in other countries. For a full list of AbbVie Inc.’s affiliates and their jurisdictions, please see our most recent SEC filing here. Our company maintains several inter-company data transfer agreements, which are based on EU model contracts and covers Personal Data transfers among AbbVie Inc. and its affiliates worldwide to ensure the adequate protection of Personal Data. Copies of these agreements can be obtained by sending an email to privacyoffice@abbvie.com.
Personal Data may also be transferred and processed by our vendors, suppliers, and business partners in other countries. Note that when your Personal Data is transferred and processed in a jurisdiction other than your jurisdiction of residence, the laws of the transferred jurisdiction will apply. These laws may differ in the protection of Personal Data as compared to your jurisdiction of residence. Any international transfer of Personal Data to third parties, including outside the EEA, will be conducted in compliance with the international data-transfer restrictions and requirements that apply under data-protection laws, including, where appropriate, using EU model contracts for Personal Data transfers to data processors or data controllers.
This site is owned and operated by AbbVie in Canada. If you are visiting this site from a country other than Canada, your communication with us will result in the transfer of Personal Data across international borders. We will only process your Personal Data with your consent, to perform a contract between you and us, to comply with legal obligations, or where we have a legitimate interest. These legitimate interests include administrative activities and complying with your requests.
We will use Personal Data only in the manner described in the Privacy Notice in effect when the Personal Data was collected. However, and subject to any applicable consent requirements, we reserve the right to change the terms of this Privacy Notice at any time. Any changes to this Privacy Notice will be promptly posted to this page and accompanied by a new effective date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this Privacy Notice regularly for any changes. Any Personal Data collected upon your continued use of AbbVie Relationships will be handled in accordance with the currently posted Privacy Notice.