California Adopt-a-Pet Day Website Privacy Policy

Last Edited:  May 10, 2024

This Privacy Policy describes how CalAnimals, the ASPCA, and the San Francisco SPCA (collectively “the Partners,” “we,” “our” or “us”) processes, uses and shares the Personal Information (defined below) that it receives or collects from visitors to and users of the California Adopt-a-Pet Day website located at the URL https://caadoptapetday.org (“Website”).

We use Cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our Website and store certain Personal Information. Cookies are small files that are placed on your computer, mobile device or any other device by a website, containing the details of your browsing history on that website, among their many other uses (“Cookies”). Our Cookie Declaration is here. 

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do so, we will post our updated Privacy Policy on the Website where applicable, and for a reasonable period of time we may post notice of the change so it is visible to visitors and users after the change is posted. By your continued use of the Website, you will be deemed to consent to the terms of the revised Privacy Policy.

When and How Do We Collect Personal Information?

While using the Website, we may collect your Personal Information. “Personal Information” means any information about an individual from which that person may be identified. Personal Information includes obvious things, like your name and email address, as well as less obvious things like your IP address, device ID and location information. Personal Information does not, however, include information from which the identity of an individual has been definitively removed (also known as anonymized or aggregated data). 

We collect Personal Information directly from you when you provide it to us, such as when you sign up to be a participating shelter. We also may collect Personal Information indirectly through automated technologies, such as Cookies or similar tracking technologies (as further explained in our Cookie Declaration), or from third parties.

Types of Personal Information We Collect

Personal Information You Provide

You can generally visit our Website without having to directly submit any Personal Information about yourself to us. However, to participate in California Adopt-a-Pet Day, you will be required to provide us with certain Personal Information such as your name, email address, any other information you may submit to us directly. 

Contact Information

If you contact us for more information via our Website sign up for our newsletters or register for an account to make an appointment or to take a class, we will collect your contact information: 

  • your name;
  • your email address; and 
  • any other information you may submit to us directly.

Personal Information We Collect Indirectly

Device and Usage Information

When you visit, use or interact with the Website, even if you do not have an account, we, or our authorized third-party service providers may automatically collect information about your use of the Website via your device, some of which information is Personal Information. Device and Usage Information that we collect consists of:

  • Information About Your Device: information about the devices and software you use to access the Website – primarily the internet browser or mobile device that you use, the website or source that linked or referred you to the Website, your IP address or device ID (or other persistent identifier that uniquely identifies your computer or mobile device), the operating system of your computer or mobile device, device screen size, and other similar technical information.
  • Usage Information: information about your interactions with the Website, including access dates and times, hardware and software information, device event information, crash data, and/or Cookie data. This information allows us to understand the screens that you view, how you’ve used the Website (which may include administrative and support communications with us or whether you have clicked on third-party links), and other actions on the Website. We, or our authorized third parties, automatically collect log data when you access and use the Website, even if you have not created an account or logged in. We use this information to administer and improve the Website, analyze trends, track users’ use of the Website, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. 

Location Information

We also may collect your broad geographic location (e.g., country or city-level location) based upon your IP address, in order to determine our marketing strategies and to better serve you.

Cookies and Similar Technologies

We or authorized third parties collect some information, including Device and Usage Information and Location Information by automated means using cookies, and server logs for analytic purposes. Google and Meta set cookies as described in the Behavioral Remarketing section below.

Aggregated Information

With the Device and Usage Information and Location Information collected by our third-party analytics services, we generate and process aggregated information, such as statistical or demographic data. Aggregated Information may be derived from Personal Information, but is not considered Personal Information under the law if it does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may track the total number of visitors to our Website or the number of visitors to each page of our Website, and we may aggregate usage data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific feature of the Website and analyze this data for trends and statistics.

However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Information with your Personal Information so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as Personal Information, which will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy

Why We Use Personal Information

We may use your Personal Information for a number of different reasons, as further explained below.

  • Communicating with you about your use of the Website and our services or providing you information you have requested.
  • Generating user analytics to improving our Website, guide our marketing strategy and enhance our offerings.
  • Responding to your general inquiries.
  • Marketing our services. This allows us to provide you with information about new products. We will provide an option to unsubscribe or opt out of further communication on any electronic marketing communication sent to you (or you may opt out by contacting us.
  • Complying with our legal and regulatory obligations. We may use Personal Information to fulfill our legal obligations; for the prevention of fraud and monitoring security; to enforce our legal rights; to comply with any legal or regulatory reporting obligations; and/or to protect the rights of third parties.

Disclosure of Information

We disclose your Personal Information to those of our personnel who need to process Personal Information in order to provide our services. In addition, we may disclose your Personal Information to the categories of third parties indicated below (and for the following reasons): 

  • Entities and individuals that help us provide the Website and our services;
  • Professional service providers, such as auditors, bankers, lawyers, consultants, accountants and insurers; 
  • Third party entities that we believe have services or products that may be of interest to you, as explained below;
  • Governments, regulators, law enforcement and fraud prevention agencies, but only as authorized as explained below.

Third-Party Service Providers

The following categories of third parties may collect, process or receive your Personal Information in order to assist us in providing our Website and products:

  • Entities that host various components of our Website;
  • Email marketing providers;
  • Social Media for marketing purposes; and

Service providers may only process your Personal Information for the specified purposes of providing their services to us and in accordance with our instructions unless they aggregate and anonymize your Personal Information such that you may no longer be identified or identifiable at any time or in any manner.

Legal Obligations & Security

We will disclose your Personal Information:  (i) when we have a good faith belief it is required by law, such as pursuant to a subpoena, warrant or other judicial or administrative order (as further explained below); (ii) to protect the safety of any person; (iii) to protect the safety or security of our Website or to prevent spam, abuse, or other malicious activity of actors on our Website; or (iv) to protect our rights or property or the rights or property of those who use our Website and/or products.  

If we are required to disclose Personal Information by law, such as pursuant to a subpoena, warrant or other judicial or administrative order, our policy is to respond to requests that are properly issued by law enforcement within the United States or otherwise via a mutual legal assistance mechanism (e.g., treaty).

Note that if we receive information that provides us with a good faith belief that there is an exigent emergency involving the danger of death or serious physical injury to a person, or the detection or prevention of a crime, we may provide information, including Personal Information, to law enforcement trying to prevent or mitigate the danger (if we have it), to be determined on a case-by-case basis. 

Tracking Disclosure

Some web browsers offer a “Do Not Track” signal. A Do Not Track signal is a HTTP header field indicating your preference for tracking your activities on the Website or through cross-site user tracking. The Partners track users’ use of the Website and may track users across third-party websites. We do not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals.  For more information on Do Not Track signal settings generally, please visit https://allaboutdnt.com.

Deleting or Correcting Your Personal Information and Your Choices

If you would like us to delete your Personal Information, or if you want to correct Personal Information you previously provided to us via the Website, please contact us at [email protected] and we will comply unless precluded from doing so for record-keeping purposes or by applicable law. 

Marketing Communications

For marketing communications, we will allow you to opt out of future communications that we send at any time by clicking the “Opt Out” or “Unsubscribe” link in the email or replying to any email you receive with a message that reads “Opt Out” in the subject line. Note that opting-out of one email list may not opt-you out of every email list and you should confirm the specific list you are opting-out of when making your selection.

Links to Other Websites

Our Website may link to websites or subdomains maintained by outside organizations, such as to apply for financial aid or credit or to purchase products. Please be aware that these third-party websites and subdomains are governed by their own privacy policies and do not fall within this Privacy Policy. The Partners are not responsible for the content or policies maintained by these websites or subdomains. Please familiarize yourself with the privacy policy or notice of any third-party website or subdomain you visit, as it will govern any information you submit through that website or subdomain.

Social Plugins

We use social plugins on our Website and may include icons that allow you to interact with third-party social networks such as Meta. For example, you may “like” us on Meta. The third-party social plugin may set a Cookie when your browser creates a connection to the servers of such social networks and the plugin may transmit your Personal Information to the social networks. Your use of these social plugins is subject to the privacy policies of the third-party social networks.

We also have a presence on some social media platforms. Through our accounts on social medial platforms, we may in some instances collect Personal Information when you interact with our accounts or otherwise communicate with us through those accounts. Any information that you post on social media is governed by each social media platform’s privacy policy, and any Personal Information that we collect via our social media accounts will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Behavioral Remarketing

The Partners uses remarketing services to advertise on third party websites to you after you visit our Website. For instance, we use Google and Meta to send request information to Google and Meta and track conversions. We provide Personal Information to Google and Meta and Google and Meta may set Cookies on your hard drive.  

You can learn more about interest-based advertising from Meta by clicking here, and to opt-out from Meta’s interest-based ads, click here and follow the instructions provided by Meta.  

Meta adheres to the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising established by the Digital Advertising Alliance. You may learn more about interest-based advertising and opt-out from Meta and other participating companies through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the USA. 

You can learn more about interest-based advertising from Google and its use of Cookies, and you can opt-out, by visiting the Google Marketing Platform opt-out page or the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

Information about how your visitors can opt out of Google’s use of Cookies or device identifiers by visiting Google’s Ads Settings. Alternatively, you can point your visitors to opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of Cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page or control the use of device identifiers by using their device’s settings.

Children’s Privacy

Our Website does not target anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of 13. If you are under the age of 13, please do not submit any Personal Information through the Website or our services. We encourage parents and legal guardians to monitor their children’s Internet usage and to help enforce our Privacy Policy by instructing their children never to provide Personal Information on our Website and/or through our services without their permission. 

We recognize the privacy interests of children, and we encourage parents and guardians to take an active role in their children’s online activities and interests. To the extent that we are required to collect information regarding a minor in order to provide our services, we will only do so with parental consent or collect the information from the parent directly. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of 13 has provided Personal Information to us through the Website or our services, please contact [email protected] and we will endeavor to delete that information from our databases.

Protecting Your Personal Information

We have put in place reasonably appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect the Personal Information that we collect and process about you. The measures that we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your Personal Information.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so. We also require those parties to whom we transfer your Personal Information to comply with the same. 

While we take reasonable steps necessary to provide the most secure Website, you understand and assume the risks associated with your activities on the Internet.

International Transfers

Our Service is targeted to users in the United States. We are located in the United States, and the Personal Information that we collect is stored on servers located in the United States. This means that your Personal Information will be collected, processed and stored in the United States, which may have data protection laws that are different from (and sometimes less protective than) the laws of your country or region. 

By sending us Personal Information, you agree and consent to the processing of your Personal Information in the United States, which may not offer an equivalent level of protection to that required in other countries (particularly the European Union), and to the processing of that information by us on servers located in the United States, as described in this Privacy Policy. The English text of this Privacy Policy constitutes the sole authentic text. If there is any discrepancy between the English text and a translation into a foreign language, the English text shall prevail.

We have implemented safeguards designed to ensure that the Personal Information we process remains protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

How to Contact Us About Privacy

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, have additional questions, please contact us at [email protected]. 

You may also write to 

San Francisco SPCA
Attn: Legal Department

201 Alabama Street

San Francisco, CA 94103.