PRIVACY POLICY

PRIVACY POLICY

LAST UPDATE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY – May 22, 2023

BEFORE USING OUR SITES, PLEASE READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY.

This Privacy Policy applies to the Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project and sets out our policy on the gathering and use of information on these sites: https://buildingourzoo.com and https://arkproject.buildingourzoo.com. At the Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project we are committed to providing safe websites for all of our visitors, and as such, we have implemented this Privacy Policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy. The Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project comply with Canadian Federal and Provincial privacy laws and regulations including the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act.

There may be links from our sites to other websites; note that this Privacy Policy applies only to our sites and not to websites of other companies or organizations to which our sites may be linked. You must check on any linked sites for the privacy policy that applies to that sites and/or make any necessary inquiries in respect of that privacy policy with the operator of the linked sites. These links to third party websites are provided as a convenience and are for informational purposes only. The Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project do not endorse and are not responsible for these linked websites.

Although you are not required to register to access our sites, you may be asked to provide us with personal information when you visit certain sections of our sites. Your use of our sites signifies your acknowledgment and consent to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, please do not continue to use our sites. Your continued use of the Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project websites signifies your acceptance of these terms and any changes in effect at the time of use.

COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

Personal Information is information about you that identifies you as an individual, for example, your name, address, e-mail address, or telephone number.

We collect information that you voluntarily provide to us through the use of contact & information request forms when you leave a review or a comment on a product, when you create an account, and when you purchase items through our websites. We collect this information for various purposes to provide and improve our products and service offered to you.

TYPES OF DATA COLLECTED:

Personal Data: While using our Service, we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Data”). Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:

  • Email address
  • First name and last name
  • Phone number
  • Address, Province, Postal Code, City
  • Cookies and Usage Data

Tracking & Cookies Data: We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our Service and hold certain information.

Cookies are files with small amount of data which may include a unique anonymous identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from websites and stored on your device. Tracking technologies also used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our Service.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.

Examples of Cookies we use include:

  • Session Cookies. We use Session Cookies to operate our services.
  • Preference Cookies. We use Preference Cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.
  • Security Cookies. We use Security Cookies for security purposes.

HOW DOES THE VALLEY ZOO DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY & THE ARK PROJECT USE INFORMATION GATHERED ABOUT ONLINE VISITORS?

Before forwarding us any personal information, please be advised that any information gathered on our sites may be used in the aggregate for research and development relating to our sites and/or for future sites development and, if you ask us to, to send you promotional materials. In particular, we may use information gathered about you for the following purposes:

  • To provide and maintain services and products
  • To notify you about changes to our service(s)
  • To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service when you choose to do so
  • To provide customer care and support
  • To provide analysis or valuable information so that we can improve our services
  • To monitor the usage of our services
  • To detect, prevent and address technical issues

PROMOTIONAL & INFORMATIONAL OFFERS

With the permission of an online visitor, information submitted at the time of registration or submission may be used for marketing and promotional purposes by The Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project provided notice of this fact is made available online. If a visitor objects to such use for any reason, he/she may prevent that use, either by e-mail request or by modifying the registration information provided. The Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project uses reasonable efforts to maintain visitors’ information in a secure environment. If you have submitted personal information and want to change it or opt-out, please contact us as described below.

NEWSLETTER SIGN UP FORMS & NEWSLETTER

When you provide us with your name and e-mail you may be signed up for our “Wild Times Newsletter.” In this case, your email and name are provided to our 3rd party email platform. If you wish to be removed from that list, and your information to be erased from our database, simply click the “Unsubscribe” button located at the bottom of every email we send out, or email or call us using the information at the bottom of this page and we would be happy to remove your information for you.

COMMENTS & PRODUCT REVIEWS

When visitors leave comments or product reviews on our sites, we collect the data shown in the comment or review form and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service Privacy Policy is available HERE. After approval of your comment or review, your profile picture (should you have one) is visible to the public in the context of your comment or review.

CONTACT FORMS

If you use our contact forms, or donation request forms you are providing us with information such as your name, email, phone number, event or venue information and whatever additional information you may add. We retain this information for up to a year, or until we have answered your request or solved your issue. We do not use the information submitted through these forms for marketing purposes outside of your request.

OUR SHOP

We collect information about you during the checkout process on our store. While you visit our shop, we’ll track:

    • Products You’ve Viewed: We use this to, for example, show you products you’ve recently viewed.
    • Location, IP Address and Browser Type:

We use this for purposes like estimating taxes and shipping

  • Shipping Address: We ask you to enter this so we can, for instance, estimate shipping before you place an order, and deliver you the order.
  • Other: We’ll also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you’re browsing our sites. (See: COOKIES)

When you purchase from us, we’ll ask you to provide information including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number, credit card/payment details and optional account information like username and password. We’ll use this information for purposes, such as, to:

  • Send you information about your account and order
  • Respond to your requests, including refunds and complaints
  • Process payments and prevent fraud
  • Set up your account for our store
  • Comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes
  • Improve our store offerings
  • Send you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them
  • If you create an account, we will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders.

We generally store information about you for as long as we need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it, and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, we will store order information for 2 years for tax and accounting purposes. This includes your name, email address, and billing and shipping addresses.

WHO ON OUR TEAM HAS ACCESS

Only the Administrators and Shop Manager on our team have access to the information you provide us.

Administrators and Shop Managers can access:

  • Order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be delivered, and
  • Customer information like your name, email address, and billing and shipping information.

Our team members have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you.

WHAT WE SHARE

Through our shop, we share information with third parties who help us provide our orders and store services to you; this includes:

PAYMENTS
We accept payments through PayPal. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to PayPal, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information. Please see the PayPal Privacy Policy for more details.

We also accept payments through Stripe. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to Stripe, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information. Please see the Stripe Privacy Policy for more details.

ANALYTICS
We may use third-party Service Providers to monitor and analyze the use of our Service.

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports websites traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity. For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=enGoogle Privacy & Terms web page.

EMBEDDED CONTENT

Articles on our sites may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Our sites use Facebook conversion tracking pixels, a service of Facebook Inc. These tools allow us to follow the actions of a user after they are redirected to our sites after clicking on a Facebook advertisement. This allows us to track the efficiency of our Facebook advertisements for statistical and marketing purposes. The data collected remains anonymous; meaning we cannot see the personal data of any individual user. The data collected is, however, saved and processed by Facebook. Facebook is able to connect this data to your personal Facebook account, and use that data for their own advertising purposes both within Facebook, and outside of Facebook. In Addition, a cookie is saved on your computer for these purposes. You can read Facebook’s Data Policy here.

TRANSFER OF DATA

Your information, including Personal Data, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from your jurisdiction.

If you are located outside Canada and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the data, including Personal Data, to Canada and process it there.

Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.

The Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your data and other personal information.

SECURITY OF DATA

We have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online. We apply security safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, such as retaining information in secure facilities and making personal information accessible only to authorized employees on a need-to-know basis.
The security of your data is of the utmost importance to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

The Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project will not disclose personal information that you provide on our sites to any third parties except: i) in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy, or ii) to comply with legal requirements such as a law, regulation, warrant, subpoena or court order, and/or iii) if you are reporting an adverse event, in which case the Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project may be required to disclose such information to bodies such as, but not limited to, Canadian and/or international regulatory authorities, iv.) to protect or defend the rights or property of the Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project, v.) to prevent and investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with our services, vi.) to protect against legal liability, vii.) to protect the personal safety of users of our service or the public. Please note that any of these disclosures may involve the storage or processing of personal information outside of Canada and may, therefore, be subject to different privacy laws than those applicable in Canada, including laws that require the disclosure of personal information to governmental authorities under circumstances that are different than those that apply in Canada.

PROTECTION OF CHILDREN ONLINE

The Valley Zoo Development Society & the Ark Project considers the protection of children’s privacy, especially online, to be of the utmost importance. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from children nor do we allow them to become registered users of, or to request information through, our sites.

WHERE OUR DATA IS STORED

Personal information you share with us is stored on our database servers hosted by third parties who have entered into agreements with us that require them to observe our Privacy Policy.

POLICY CHANGE

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. We will let you know via email and/or a prominent notice on our Service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the “effective date” at the top of this Privacy Policy. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

If we alter our Privacy Policy, any changes will be posted on this page of our Sites so that you are always informed of the information we collect about you, how we use it and the circumstances under which we may disclose it.

ACCEPTANCE OF OUR PRIVACY POLICY

By using this Sites or any other The Company Sites or interactive banner ads, you signify your acceptance of our Privacy Policy, and you adhere to the terms and conditions posted on the Sites. By submitting your information, you agree that it will be governed by our Privacy Policy.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us by visiting these pages on our websites:

HELP BUILD OUR ZOO!

It is through today’s zoos that future generations will come to a greater understanding of the human impact on the natural world and be motivated to preserve it and reverse the damage already done. Every donation, big or small, helps us revitalize our beloved Edmonton Valley Zoo! Thank you for caring for the animals, our children’s future and the planet!