Cookie Policy (Tracking Technology)

www.starbritedentalrockville.com · Effective September 11, 2026 · Supersedes the version dated April 1, 2025

This policy explains the technologies we and our service providers use to collect information about you when you visit our website, why we use them, and how you can control them. It applies to www.starbritedentalrockville.com and to any other website, landing page, or online form we operate that links to this policy.

The way we handle your dental and medical records, treatment information, and billing information is governed by our Notice of Privacy Practices — not by this policy.

This policy covers something different and narrower: the information collected automatically by your browser or device when you visit our public website, including when you are only browsing and have never been a patient. We do not need to know your name, and usually do not, to collect this information.

We do not place advertising or analytics trackers on the pages you use to complete patient forms, review your records, or make a payment.  Those pages are configured to exclude marketing and measurement tags.

StarBrite Dental, the practice of Maryam Seifi, DDS, P.A., is the owner of this website and the controller of the information described in this policy.

Address: 5930 Hubbard Drive, Rockville, Maryland 20852

Telephone: 301-770-1070 Email: info@starbriteteam.com

Privacy Officer:  Nina Kimmel, VP & General Counsel

We use "tracker" throughout this policy as a single term for the various technologies that let us or a service provider store information on your device, read information from it, or run code in your browser. These include:

• Cookies  — small text files stored by your browser, which may last only for your visit (session cookies) or persist for a set period (persistent cookies).

• Pixels, tags, and beacons  — small pieces of code or invisible images that report that a page was loaded or an action was taken.

• Local and session storage  — browser storage used to remember settings or maintain a session.

• Server-side and offline measurement  — information sent from our systems, rather than your browser, to an advertising or analytics provider so that an inquiry can be matched to the advertisement that produced it.

• Dynamic telephone numbers  — a telephone number displayed on the site that varies by visitor or traffic source so that a call can be matched to that source.

Some trackers are set by us directly ("first-party"). Others are set by companies that provide services to us ("third-party"), and those companies may also use the information for their own purposes as described in their own privacy policies. Lifespans vary by provider; current detail for each is available in the preference panel described in Section 6.

The tables below list the categories of trackers used on this site and the service providers associated with each. Because advertising and analytics platforms change their products frequently, the provider lists are accurate as of the effective date of this policy and are indicative rather than exhaustive.

4.1 Strictly necessary — always active

These make the site work and keep it secure. They cannot be switched off through our preference panel, and we do not use them to build a profile of you.

4.2 Functionality — consent required

These support features you ask for: contacting us, requesting an appointment, chatting, finding the office, or watching a video.

4.3 Measurement and analytics — consent required

These tell us how the site is used in the aggregate, which pages are working, and which advertisements and referral sources bring people to us.

Note on Universal Analytics and Google Optimize. Our prior policy listed Google Analytics (Universal Analytics), Google Optimize, and Google Optimize 360. Those products have been retired by Google and are no longer in use on this site.

4.4 Advertising — consent required

These measure whether our advertising works and, in some cases, allow the platform to show you our advertising after you leave the site. Where these providers are in a position to use the information for their own purposes, that use may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of personal data under some state privacy laws, and you can opt out as described in Section 6.

We think it is as important to tell you what we have decided against as what we use. On this site:

•  We do not sell your personal information for money.

•  We do not build advertising audiences based on a dental or medical condition, a treatment you searched for, or a symptom page you viewed, and we do not ask any advertising platform to target you on that basis.

•  We do not upload patient lists, appointment histories, or any information drawn from your dental record to an advertising platform to build a custom or lookalike audience.

•  We do not use session replay or keystroke-capture tools that would record what you type into a form before you submit it.

•  We do not use geofencing to identify, track, or send notifications to anyone based on their presence near a health care facility.

•  We do not knowingly collect information online from children under 13.

Global Privacy Control and other universal opt-out signals

We honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) and comparable browser or device signals as a valid request to opt out of targeted advertising and of the sale or sharing of personal data. If your browser sends one, we apply it automatically and you do not need to do anything else.

Your browser and device

Your browser lets you see, block, and delete cookies, though it cannot give you category-by-category control the way our panel can. Mobile devices offer separate advertising-identifier controls in their system settings.

Industry opt-out tools

Interest-based advertising can also be limited through the Digital Advertising Alliance, the Network Advertising Initiative, and, outside the United States, Your Online Choices. You can also adjust your advertising settings directly with Google and with Meta through your account on each platform.

A limitation worth knowing

Deleting cookies stops browser-based tracking, but some measurement happens on our servers rather than in your browser — for example, when we report to an advertising platform that an inquiry we received came from one of its advertisements. Using our preference panel or a GPC signal addresses both; clearing cookies alone addresses only the first.

You are free to refuse any category other than strictly necessary trackers, and refusing will not affect the dental care you receive or your ability to reach us by phone or in person. Some conveniences may not work: chat may be unavailable, embedded maps and videos may not load, and we may not be able to tell you which of our advertisements you responded to.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to know what personal data we hold, to obtain a copy of it, to correct or delete it, to opt out of targeted advertising and of the sale or sharing of personal data, and to appeal a decision we make on your request. Maryland residents have these rights under the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act, and residents of California and a number of other states have comparable rights under their own laws, in each case to the extent those laws apply to us.

These rights concern the website information described in this policy. Your rights in your dental record — including the right to inspect, copy, amend, and receive an accounting of disclosures — come from HIPAA and Maryland law and are described in our Notice of Privacy Practices. Requests about your record should go to our Privacy Officer. To make a request under this policy, contact us at info@starbriteteam.com or 301-770-1070. We will verify your identity before acting, and we will not treat you differently for exercising a right.

Our site links to sites we do not control, including social media pages, review platforms, and our online scheduling and payment providers. This policy stops at our boundary; theirs governs once you arrive.

Retention varies by tracker and by provider. Session trackers expire when you close your browser. Persistent trackers expire on a schedule set by us or the provider, which is disclosed for each tracker in the preference panel. We configure our analytics retention to the shortest period that still allows us to understand year-over-year patterns, and we do not retain advertising identifiers longer than the platform requires for measurement.

We will update this policy when our technology or our providers change. The effective date at the top tells you which version you are reading. If a change materially expands how we use trackers, we will ask for your consent again rather than rely on a consent you gave to something narrower.

Questions about this policy, about a specific tracker, or about a privacy request can go to Nina Kimmel, Vice President & General Counsel, StarBrite Dental, 5930 Hubbard Drive, Rockville, Maryland 20852, 301-770-1070,info@starbriteteam.com.