Updated on: March 15, 2024
This Privacy Policy is issued on behalf of Illumina, Inc., and its subsidiaries globally, so when we say “Illumina”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy, we are referring to the relevant subsidiary of Illumina that is responsible for handling personal information. A list of Illumina’s global offices is available at https://www.illumina.com/company/contact-us/locations.html.
Illumina’s mission is to improve human health by unlocking the power of the genome. As a leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of life science tools and integrated systems for large-scale analysis of genetic variation and function, our products and services serve business and individual customers in research, clinical, and applied markets.
Protecting the privacy of personal information is a foundational principle of Illumina’s business. Personal information means information that identifies, relates to, describes, or is reasonably capable of being associated or linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household, including names, addresses, emails and genomic information. This Privacy Policy describes how Illumina may collect, store, use, handle, or otherwise process certain types of personal information in the provision of our products and services. Our Privacy Policy also describes the controls we provide to you to manage the use of your personal information.
Across our business activities, Illumina is committed to processing personal information according to applicable laws and four fundamental guiding principles:
We understand our legal and ethical responsibilities to protect genomic and other personal information. Consistent with our commitment to transparency, this Privacy Policy is meant to help you understand the types of information we collect and to describe how we use, maintain, protect, and disclose any personal information that we collect from you.
We are committed to responsible stewardship and ethical use of personal information, and to our accountability to you; one way that we demonstrate this is through this Privacy Policy.
By engaging with us, such as by accessing or using our products or services, or by transmitting information to us by email or other electronic means, you accept our policies, procedures, and practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with our policies, procedures, and practices as described, you can choose not to access or use our products or services or not to transmit personal information to us.
We collect several categories of personal information from and about users of Illumina websites and of our products and services, including:
Some of this personal information is collected through voluntary submissions of information, some of it is collected or received in the course of us providing website content, and some through our products and services. Examples of the types of personal information we collect are below:
You must provide certain personal information when you make a purchase of our products and services in order for us to administer our relationship with you, provide such products and services, and respond to inquiries. You may also be required to provide certain information when you create an account to access certain portions of our website, such as MyIllumina, or to use our products and services. This information may include your name, email address, shipping address, phone number, credit card or other payment information. Your account information may also include records and copies of any correspondence with you, details of your participation in webinar and training courses, message boards and chat features, and details of any transactions you carry out through our products and services, such as logging a support and maintenance ticket.
As you interact with our products and services online, including this website, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your computer or device, as well as your browsing actions and usage patterns. This data may include:
The computer, device, and browsing information we collect can help us learn how visitors use our website, which supports our understanding of the kind of content visitors prefer and informs improvements to the site. It also helps us to deliver better and more personalized features to you, by allowing us to recognize you when you return to our website and services, by storing information about your preferences, and by customizing our services according to your individual interests. It also allows us to target our advertising, estimate our audience size and usage patterns, and monitor the success of our marketing activities.
The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include cookies. You can control cookies by adjusting your cookies settings as described in our Cookie Policy. Blocking cookies may reduce the functionality of a website or prevent access, depending on the browser options selected.
Some of our products and services may include our monitoring services for our customers, such as Illumina Proactive. Illumina Proactive is a secure remote instrument performance and proactive support service, which seeks to identify failure risks of certain products before they affect sequencing runs. The Illumina Proactive Service does not collect or monitor any genomic data or other personal information. However, if you permit other optional support services, such services may obtain incidental access to personal information in the course of monitoring and analyzing quality control data.
The services may also provide functionalities to let you connect with and share content with other users of our products and the services, such as through Illumina’s Genomics Learning Exchange. The purpose of these features is to allow you to collaborate, share product experiences and connect with other users. Through your participation, you may submit the content you choose to share. Please note that we do not control who will have access to the information that you choose to make available to others and cannot ensure that parties who have access to such information will respect your privacy or keep it secure. We are not responsible for the privacy or security of any information that you make available to others when you use these collaboration features or what others do with information you share with them on such platforms.
Some of our products and services may involve testing of biological samples that we or our customers use to create test reports, genotyping or sequencing services for research or clinical purposes, and the receipt, creation, or analysis of genomic or other data derived from samples, including through our customers’ use of our Software as a Service products. In receiving samples and providing our products and services, we may obtain date-of-birth, gender, and other health related information.
In addition to the personal information discussed above, we may come into possession of other types of information: personal identifiers and contact information (such as your name, email address, IP address), characteristics of protected classifications under federal or state law (such as gender, race, physical or mental disability and religion), audio/electronic/visual information about you (such as images you provide us or consented recordings of your service calls to us) and inferences drawn from the information used to create a profile about you.
We may also collect and maintain different types of personal information about you to process job candidate applications, as required for employment with us, or in accordance with applicable law. Categories of this personal information include contact information, employment information, educational information, and biometric information (for specified employee timekeeping purposes).
If you are under 18, do not register on our website or provide any information about yourself to us. We do not provide products or services directly to minors or proactively collect their personal information. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected personal information from children under the age of 18, we will take the necessary steps to delete it as soon as possible. Despite this prohibition, it is possible that we may sometimes be given information about minors in compliance with applicable laws, e.g., while handling samples from our customers in our clinical labs, or through use of our products and services by our customers and partners.
We may aggregate information we collect or receive about customers and users of the website and our products and services for quality, regulatory, and internal business purposes to improve our products, data quality, and laboratory processes. Information that is aggregated is summary-level and cannot reasonably permit someone to identify individuals. Illumina may also use aggregated information to publish findings.
Illumina uses non-genomic personal information that we collect or that you provide to us as described in the table below. Please note that this table also explains the legal basis for processing personal information where such concept is recognized (e.g., the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK)) and the circumstances in which such personal information will be shared with a third party (if at all).
| Purpose for processing | Legal basis for processing | Examples of third party organizations to which Personal Information is shared |
|---|---|---|
| To provide products and services, and otherwise administer our relationship with you. | Contractual necessity. | Affiliates and service providers in connection with providing products and services (e.g., completing transactions), and to others for legal purposes. |
| To respond to inquiries via email or by telephone or fulfill your requests (e.g., send you documents or information you request or respond to your support requests). | Legitimate interest (in responding to requests for information about our products and services). | Affiliates and service providers in connection with providing products and services (e.g., completing transactions), and to others for legal purposes. |
| To ensure the billing of any products and services procured by you and obtain payment. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction. | Contractual necessity. | Government VAT and tax inspectors, external auditors, credit check agencies, financial partners. |
| To communicate with you about content and Product offerings, newsletters, webinars, seminars, and event invitations which are relevant to your interests and in line with your preferences. | Legitimate interest (in promoting our products and services) and/or consent (where required by law). | With your consent, co-sponsors of events, webinars, seminars. |
| To record conversations for monitoring, training, and quality purposes. | Legitimate interest (in improving our products and services, and our customer support offering) and/or consent (where required by law). | Affiliates and service providers in connection with providing products and services, and to others for legal purposes. |
| To process and respond to complaints. | Legal obligation; Legitimate interest (in ensuring customer satisfaction). | Affiliates and service providers in connection with providing products and services, and to others for legal purposes. |
| To monitor and record information relating to the use of our products and services, including our website. | Consent (where required by applicable law); Legitimate interest (in improving our products and services and our website for individuals). | Web service providers and cookie providers. |
| To remarket, target, and retarget content to you about our products and services. | Consent (where required by applicable law); Legitimate interest (in improving our products and services and our website for individuals, and the targeting of our advertising, such as by showing advertisements on third-party websites to users who have previously visited our website). | Google AdWords Remarketing, LinkedIn Website Retargeting, Twitter, Facebook Website Retargeting, Salesforce Audience Studio, Adobe Analytics, Liveramp (AMR), and other service providers, affiliates, and to others for legal purposes. Learn how to control this in our Cookie Policy. |
| To verify compliance with the Terms of Use, license, subscription agreement or other agreement governing the use of the website or our products and services. | Contractual necessity; Legitimate interest (in ensuring our products and services or website are used in accordance with our Terms of Use or other agreement governing its use, where applicable). | Service providers, affiliates, and to others for legal purposes. |
| To conduct human resource and employment administration to include assessing suitability, eligibility and/or fitness to work. | Consent; Legal obligation; Legitimate interest (in hiring personnel in accordance with our mission and values and maintaining a safe work environment). | Background check agencies, service providers, affiliates, and to others for legal purposes. |
| To administer employment-related benefits. | Contractual necessity, including taking action before entering into a contract; Consent (where applicable). | Benefits administrators, service providers, affiliates, and to others for legal purposes. |
| To protect against illegal activity or security incidents | Legal obligations; Legitimate interest (in maintaining a safe work environment). | Service providers that provide security and access control services, and to others for legal purposes. |
To provide our products and services, Illumina may collect, receive and process biological samples to isolate and sequence DNA and RNA. Illumina may then store resulting genomic information, use genomic information to provide our products and services, and share relevant genomic information or biological samples with an authorized research partner or customer when necessary to enable the partner or customer to validate a test finding and in accordance with rights granted to Illumina, such as under the relevant products or services terms.
In some cases, Illumina may provide or facilitate interpretations of genomic information on behalf of its customers, including clinicians, business partners, and research partners. This is typically done pursuant to a written contract or a Test Requisition Form with a patient’s informed consent and is subject to applicable legal and ethical safeguards. When a customer obtains a patient’s informed consent, the customer’s own privacy policy and informed consent practices will govern its collection, use, processing, storage, disclosure, and transfer of genomic information.
Illumina may also facilitate interpretations of genomic information in the course of Illumina’s own research or clinical trial protocols. Illumina implements appropriate safeguards in connection with such scientific research. Among these safeguards, Illumina sponsored clinical research protocols involving the collection and or testing of human samples are subject to review by a qualified Institutional Review Board (IRB), an ethical oversight body that assures appropriate safeguards are in place to protect individual rights and welfare in accordance with ethical standards, government regulations, and applicable law.
Illumina’s specific uses of genomic information that relates to an identifiable individual are described in the table below. Please note that this table also explains the legal basis for processing genomic information where such concept is recognized and the circumstances under which genomic information will be shared with a third party, if at all.
| Purpose for processing | Legal basis for processing | Examples of third party organizations to which Personal Information is shared |
|---|---|---|
| To provide support and maintenance services to customers who use our products and services. | Contractual necessity; Legitimate interest (in providing customer support). | Affiliates and service providers in connection with providing products and services. |
| To provide genotyping and sequencing services and analysis for our customers, including clinicians, business partners, and research partners. | Contractual necessity; Consent (as allowed by a Test Requisition Form with a patient’s informed consent). | Affiliates and service providers in connection with providing products and services. Authorized partners and experts (under a contract and/or informed consent subject to applicable legal and ethical safeguards). |
| To conduct genotyping and sequencing services and analysis for research or clinical trials. | Contractual necessity; Consent (informed consent subject to applicable legal requirements and/or legal and ethical safeguards); Legal obligation. | Affiliates and service providers in connection with providing products and services. Authorized partners and experts (under a contract and/or informed consent subject to applicable legal requirements and/or legal and ethical safeguards). FDA or other regulatory agencies (only as required by law or regulation). |
| To conduct genotyping and sequencing services and analysis for quality control, process and product development and improvements, and optimization in our labs to reflect quality improvements and advances in our technology. | Contractual Necessity; Consent (informed consent subject to applicable legal requirements and/or legal and ethical safeguards). | Affiliates and service providers in connection with providing products and services. Authorized partners and experts (under a contract and/or informed consent subject to applicable legal requirements and/or legal and ethical safeguards). FDA or other regulatory agencies (only as required by law or regulation). |
| To conduct secondary research with appropriate confidentiality protections in place. | Contractual necessity; Consent (informed consent subject to applicable legal requirements and/or legal and ethical safeguards). | Affiliates, services providers, and to others for legal purposes. Authorized partners and experts (under a contract and/or informed consent subject to applicable legal requirements and/or legal and ethical safeguards). |
| For quality assurance purposes. | Contractual necessity; Legal obligation; Legitimate interest (in ensuring our products and services maintain a high level of accuracy and proficiency). | Authorized services providers, affiliates, partners and experts. FDA or other regulatory agencies (only as required by law or regulation). |
We will not disclose personal information to any outside third parties for their own marketing purposes unless we have consent.
We use third-party service providers to provide elements of services for us. Contracts with our data processors and service providers restrict their access to and use of personal information.
We may also disclose personal information in our possession and under our custody to a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Illumina’s assets.
We may also disclose personal information, including genomic information, to comply with applicable law, a valid court order, a judicial proceeding, subpoenas, warrants or in connection with any legal process. We will not disclose genomic information without a valid subpoena or search warrant, or without otherwise being satisfied that we have a sufficient legal basis on which to share the information. Please review our annual transparency report for information about the requests we have received and how we have responded.
We strive to provide you with choices about the information you provide to us, including the following:
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies some parts of our website may not be accessible or may not function properly. You can learn more about this by reading our Cookie Policy.
Some mobile and web browsers transmit "do-not-track" signals. Because of differences in how web browsers incorporate and activate this feature, it is not always clear whether users intend for these signals to be transmitted, or whether they even are aware of them. We currently do not take action in response to these signals.
We work with advertising service providers that collect non-personally identifying information from you when you visit our website and other sites, in order to show ads for our products and services that we think may be of interest to you after you visit our website. If you do not wish to receive our personalized ads, you can visit the opt-out pages of the Network Advertising Initiative or the Digital Advertising Alliance to learn about how to opt out of receiving personalized ads from their member companies.
Illumina works with Google Analytics to better understand our audience and users, to improve our marketing campaigns, and to enhance our products and services. The information we receive back from Google Analytics do not identify specific website visitors, but rather the trends related to how the website is used. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, you can visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Illumina uses Salesforce Audience Studio to improve the targeting of our advertising, such as by showing advertisements on third-party websites to users who have previously visited our website. To opt out of targeting via the Salesforce Audience Studio technology platform, you can do so via the opt-out page of the Network Advertising Initiative.
Illumina may use your account information (e.g., your email address, your transaction history, and participation in webinar and training courses, message boards and chat features) to promote our products and services or those of our business or research partners. If you do not wish to have your account information used by Illumina for this purpose, you can opt out of receiving marketing communications by setting your preferences at MyIllumina or visiting our Community Preferences Register. Note that you may not be able to opt out of receiving certain service-related emails, such as communications about orders, billing, legally required product communications, account creation, registration and policy updates. If we have sent you a promotional email or other informational email not related to your order or account, the email will have an “unsubscribe” feature that will allow you to opt out of receiving future email distributions.
If you are in the EU, the UK, or Switzerland you may have certain data protection rights under applicable laws (e.g., the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU). These rights are not absolute and include the following:
This Privacy Policy, together with our Cookie Policy, tells you about the ways in which we use your personal information (which is referred to as “personal data” in Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (the “GDPR”).
You may have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. There are some exemptions and limitations in what we can provide in response to such requests, which means you may not always receive all the personal information we process. We will inform you if any exemption or limitation applies and what its impact is.
You may have the right to ask us to correct your personal information that you think is inaccurate. You also may have the right to ask us to complete your personal information that you think is incomplete.
You may have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances. Please note that we may not always be able to remove your personal information from ongoing or completed research studies. We may also retain some account information related to purchase and service history. This enables us to provide ongoing support regarding prior purchases and services, and is also necessary for accounting, audit and compliance purposes. We may also retain limited backup copies and archival files of your personal information to satisfy our state and federal legal obligations or regulatory requirements, including those set by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA).
You may have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances. For example, you can request that we limit the way in which we use your “personal data” (as defined by the GDPR) if you are concerned about the accuracy of the data or how it is being used.
You may have the right to object to processing of your personal information in certain circumstances. Where it is appropriate that we comply with your request, we will stop processing your information for the use you have objected to.
You may have the right to receive your personal information which you have provided to us. You also have the right to have us send your personal information to another organization where our lawful basis for the processing is your consent, or where the processing is necessary for the performance of an agreement and the processing is carried out by automated means.
When you consent to our processing of your personal information for a specified purpose, you may withdraw your consent at any time, and we will stop processing of your personal information for that purpose. The withdrawal of consent will not affect the lawfulness of our processing of your personal information based on consent before the withdrawl.
In order to exercise the above-mentioned rights, please use this webform or refer to the contact details specified in the “Questions, Comments or Complaints” section below.
This section applies to personal information that is processed pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). It does not apply to personal information that we process on behalf of other businesses, information that is subject to federal or state medical privacy laws, or that is otherwise not covered under the CCPA.
The section, above, entitled “What Information Do We Collect” outlines the categories of personal information we may have collected during the 12-month period prior to the effective date of this section.
California law permits California residents to request information about our collection and use of your personal information in response to a verifiable consumer request. This may include:
Illumina does not share your personal information with third parties for their own marketing purposes without your consent.
We share personal information with third parties as described in this policy, including, in certain circumstances, for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes. This "sharing" may meet CCPA's definition of "sale of personal data". California residents have the right to opt out of any sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising of their personal information, consistent with applicable law. You may enforce this right by clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link in the footer of this page and toggling the opt-out option, or by broadcasting the Global Privacy Control signal. Please see the “What Choices Do You Have About How We Use and Disclose Your Information?” section above for more information. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of individuals who are younger than 16.
California residents have the right to not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising their privacy rights, consistent with applicable law.
California residents have the right to request correction of inaccuracies contained in the personal information maintained by Illumina related to that specific resident, consistent with applicable law.
California residents have the right to request deletion of their personal information maintained by Illumina, consistent with applicable law.
The rights available to you depend on our reasons for processing your personal information.
To request access to, correct, restrict, or delete any personal information that you have provided to us, you may use this webform. Additionally, you may contact privacy@illumina.com. You may also call our Consumer Rights Hotline at +1 (888) 914-9661. Please enter PIN: 320 533 when prompted. California residents may designate authorized agents to make such requests on their behalf.
These rights are not absolute. Among other limitations, before responding to access, correction, or deletion rights, we will first need to verify your identity to ensure that the information we maintain is provided to the correct individual to whom it belongs. As part of this process, we may ask you or your authorized representative to provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information.
We may not accommodate a request if we believe actioning the request would violate any law or legal requirement. Information that has already been de-identified and/or aggregated, including aggregated genomic information, may not be retrievable or traced back for correction or removal from any database.
To the extent that you do not reside in one of the jurisdictions listed above, or otherwise included in this webpage, you may be entitled, in accordance with applicable law, to object to or request restriction of Illumina’s processing of your personal data, and to request access to, rectification, erasure, and portability of your information or more information about our information practices. Requests should be submitted by using this webform. Once we receive your request, we may verify it by requesting information sufficient to confirm your identity. You may be entitled, in accordance with applicable law, to submit a request through an authorized agent or to appeal a refusal to take action on your request.
Please note, this section does not apply to personal information that we process on behalf of other businesses, information that is subject to federal or state medical privacy laws, or that is otherwise not covered under relevant U.S. and global data privacy laws. As noted above, we may not accommodate a request if we believe actioning the request would violate any law or legal requirement. Information that has already been de-identified and/or aggregated, including aggregated genomic information, may not be retrievable or traced back for correction or removal from any database.
We are committed to protecting the security of the information we collect, and we employ reasonable physical, technical, and administrative safeguards such as data anonymization and encryption to help protect personal information from unauthorized or inappropriate access or use. It is your responsibility to protect the confidentiality of your passwords, account information, and any other access features associated with your access or use of the website or our products and services, as well as to adhere to any applicable Terms of Use or other contract between us and you or, where applicable, the organization with which you are affiliated.
Illumina retains your personal information only for so long as it is needed to achieve the purpose for which it was originally collected. We may retain collected information to comply with applicable law, to resolve disputes, to enforce any rights in connection with the website and our products and services, as provided in this Privacy Policy, or an applicable contract between us and you or, where applicable, the organization with which you are affiliated. How long we retain specific personal information varies depending on the purpose for its use and we may delete or retain your personal information in accordance with applicable law.
Where we provide links to websites of other organizations or give you access to applications, software, or products provided by third parties, this Privacy Policy does not cover how that third-party processes personal information. Please understand that those third-party sites and products may have different terms of use and privacy policies. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of any third-party sites and products. We are also not responsible for the terms of use you may be required to agree to in order to use third-party sites and products.
We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time. We will post any changes we make to our Privacy Policy on this page. If we make material changes to how we treat our users’ personal information, we will notify registered users by email to the email address specified in their account. All changes are effective immediately when we post them, and they apply to all access to and use of the website and our products and services from that point onward. Your continued access to or use of the website, products or services represents your acceptance of any such changes made to our Privacy Policy.
Illumina is a global company with its headquarters in the United States. To facilitate Illumina’s global operations, Illumina may transfer and access personal data from around the world, including from other countries in which it has operations. A list of Illumina’s global offices is available at www.illumina.com for reference. This means that personal data may be used, processed, and transferred to Illumina’s locations, affiliates, service providers or other third parties in the United States and other countries or territories, including to jurisdictions which are not deemed to provide “adequate” data protection under applicable data protection and privacy laws (such as those in the EU and the UK). For further details, please visit European Commission – Adequacy Decisions and UK – Adequacy Regulations.
However, you acknowledge that, in some other cases, any personal data you provide or that we may collect may also be used, processed, and transferred to countries or territories that may not offer the same level of data protection under applicable laws.
Illumina acknowledges and seeks to comply with the latest legal developments regarding international data transfers. As such, where your personal data is transferred to a country outside of the EU, the UK, and Switzerland, Illumina ensures that appropriate data protection safeguards are in place, including by entering into the Standard Contractual Clauses as previously approved by the European Commission and/or other standard clauses that may be prescribed by the applicable data protection laws. For further details, please visit European Commission – Standard Contractual Clauses and UK – International Data Transfer Agreement.
Where personal data is transferred from the EU and Switzerland, as applicable, to the United States, Illumina complies with the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (collectively, the “Data Privacy Framework”), as set out in Illumina Data Privacy Framework Notice.
Please contact us for any queries related to the specific transfer mechanisms used by Illumina.
To ask questions or comment on this Privacy Policy and our privacy practices, you may contact privacy@illumina.com. Please do not include any protected health information or other sensitive information when you contact us. Note that inquiries sent through privacy@illumina.com are not encrypted or secure, unless you have an email encryption service. Alternatively, you can write to us at the following address: Illumina, Inc., 5200 Illumina Way, San Diego, CA 92122, attention: Legal Department – Website Privacy Policy. Any person with a disability that prevents or restricts them from accessing this Privacy Policy through the website may request a copy of the Privacy Policy at that email or postal address.
With respect to the processing of your personal data which falls within the scope of data protection laws in the EU, Switzerland, and the UK: