Privacy Policy

The Animal Rescue Professionals Association (“ARPA”) respects and values your privacy. As part of your doing business with us, it will be necessary for some personal information to be shared. This Privacy Policy explains how ARPA uses your information and applies to all who use our Website, mobile applications, electronic services, social networking websites, or any other area-specific websites we offer that link to or reference this Privacy Policy, including when you receive electronic communications from us. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully and review it periodically for the latest information about our privacy practices.

By using the Website, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with the practices described in this Privacy Policy, do not provide us with your personal information or interact with the Website.

Due to things like changes in the law or technology, we may routinely update this Privacy Policy to clarify or modify our practices. The latest version of the Privacy Policy will be available to you at all times for your review. It is your responsibility to periodically review this Privacy Policy.

All definitions contained in ARPA’s Terms of Use are hereby incorporated in this Privacy Policy.

I. Information we receive

We receive a number of different types of information about you, including:

Your information:

Your information is the information that is required when you sign up for the site, as well as the information you choose to share.

• Registration information: When you sign up for ARPA, you are required to provide information such as your name and email address. In some cases, you may be able to register using other information, like your telephone number.
• Information you choose to share: Your information also includes the information you choose to share on ARPA, such as when you upload a photo or video.

Your name, profile pictures, cover photos, gender, networks, Username and User ID are treated just like information you choose to make public.

Other information we receive about you:

We also receive other types of information about you:

• We receive data about you whenever you interact with ARPA, such as when you look at another user’s Page or timeline, or search for a user or a Page, click on, view or otherwise interact with things, use a ARPA mobile app, or purchase ARPA Credits or make other purchases through ARPA.
• When you post things like photos or videos on ARPA, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date, and place you took the photo or video.
• We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access ARPA, including when multiple users log in from the same device. This may include your IP address and other information about things like your Internet service, location, the type (including identifiers) of browser you use, or the pages you visit. For example, we may get your GPS or other location information so we can notify you of relevant local services.
• Sometimes we get data from our affiliates or our advertising partners, users and other third parties that help us (or them) deliver ads, understand online activity, and generally make ARPA better. For example, an advertiser may tell us information about you (like how you responded to an ad on ARPA or on another site) in order to measure the effectiveness of – and improve the quality of – ads.
• When we get your GPS location, we put it together with other location information we have about you (like your current city). But we only keep it until it is no longer useful to provide you services, like keeping your last GPS coordinates to send you relevant notifications.
• We only provide data to our advertising partners or users after we have removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it, or have combined it with other people’s data in a way that it is no longer associated with you.

Public information:

“Public Information” means the information you choose to make public, as well as information that is always publicly available.

• Information you post/choose to make public: Choosing to make your information public is exactly what it sounds like: anyone, including people not accessing ARPA, will be able to see it.
• Information that is always publicly available: The types of information listed below are always publicly available, and are treated just like information you decided to make public.
  • Name and Organization Contact Information: Sharing of contact information is necessary for the core purpose of ARPA. Any information of this type (e.g. name, address, phone number, email address, etc.) will be available to other ARPA users to allow everyone to use the system and its services.
  • Transportation information: This type of information may include such things as phone numbers and insurance and vehicle information. You should input the necessary information into ARPA that you feel comfortable sharing with other ARPA users.
  • Profile Pictures and Cover Photos: These help other ARPA users recognize you. If you are uncomfortable making any of these photos public, you can always delete them. Unless you delete them, when you add a new profile picture or cover photo, the previous photo will remain public in your profile picture or cover photo album.
  • Username and User ID: These allow you to give out a custom link to your timeline or Page.

Usernames and User IDs:

When you register for a ARPA account, you will be assigned a Username. A Username is a custom link to your timeline that you can give out to people or post on external websites. We use your Username to identify your ARPA account.

We use your User ID to identify your ARPA account. If someone has your Username or User ID, they can use it to access information about you through the ARPA.com website or mobile apps. For example, if someone has your Username, they can type ARPA.com/Username into their browser and see your public information.

II. Privacy
Sharing Your Information and Content in a Public Forum

“Public Forum” means any area, site or feature offered as part of the Website (including, without limitation, discussion forums, message boards, blogs, chat rooms, emails or personal messaging features) that enables you (i) to upload, submit, post, display, perform, distribute and/or view User Content, and/or (ii) to communicate, share, or exchange User Content with other Website users or other Website visitors.

Public Forums, and features contained therein, are for public and not private communications. Anything you upload, submit, post, transmit, communicate, share or exchange by means of any Public Forum may be viewed on the Internet by the general public, and therefore, you have no expectation of privacy with regard to any such submission or posting. You are, and will remain, solely responsible for the User Content you upload, submit, post, transmit, communicate, share or exchange by means of any Public Forum and for the consequences of submitting or posting same. ARPA cannot control or monitor the access of your information within its systems and accordingly will not be responsible for any for any losses or liabilities relating to the access of such information by others..

Sharing Your Content and Information

You own all of the content and information you post on the Website, subject to any licenses you have granted to ARPA. When you publish content or information , it means that you are allowing everyone, including people not on the Website, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture). In addition:

• When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
• We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about ARPA, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).

How we use your information

We use the information we receive about you in connection with the services and features we provide to you and other users like your friends, volunteers and affiliates, our partners, the advertisers that purchase ads on the site and the developers that build the mobile apps. For example, we may use the information we receive about you: to deliver the services you have requested; to manage your account and provide you with customer support; as part of our efforts to keep ARPA products, services and integrations safe and secure; to protect ARPA’s or others’ rights or property; to measure or understand the effectiveness of ads you and others see, including to deliver relevant ads to you; to make suggestions to you and other users on ARPA; to exercise and enforce any rights in our terms and conditions; to manage our business; and for other internal operations, which may include, without limitation, troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, service improvement, performance of other functions otherwise described to you at the time of collection and other purposes compatible with this policy. We may use your payment method to process payment for any purchases made on our site, to protect you against or identify possible fraudulent transactions and otherwise as needed to manage our business.

Granting us this permission not only allows us to provide ARPA as it exists today, but it also allows us to provide you with innovative features and services we develop in the future that use the information we receive about you in new ways.

While you are allowing us to use the information we receive about you, you always own all of your information. Your trust is important to us, which is why we don’t share information we receive about you with others unless we have: received your permission; given you notice, such as by telling you about it in this policy; or removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it.

Of course, for information others share about you, they control how it is shared.

Data may be processed at our facility or externally by our third party service provider(s).

We store data for as long as it is necessary to provide products and services to you and others, including those described above. Typically, information associated with your account will be kept until your account is deleted. For certain categories of data, we may also tell you about specific data retention practices. We take commercially reasonable technical and organizational measures to safeguard your personal information.

If you have a ARPA account, you can access, review and update your personal information online by logging into your account and clicking on your account settings.

Deleting your account

When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted from ARPA. It typically takes about one month to delete an account, but some information may remain in backup copies and logs for up to 90 days. You should only delete your account if you are sure you never want to reactivate it. Upon deletion, your Page will be removed from the ARPA website. However, we will retain certain information after you delete your account in accordance with our records retention policy.

If you delete your account and then search for yourself on a public search engine, you may still see a preview of your Page and/or timeline. This is because some search engines cache information for a period of time.

II. Other websites and applications

Public search engines

People who enter your name on a public search engine may see your Page and/or timeline (including in sponsored results). They may still see these items after you delete your ARPA account because some search engines cache information for a period of time.

III. How advertising works

We do not share any of your information with advertisers (unless, of course, you give us permission). As described in this policy, we may share your information when we have removed from it anything that personally identifies you or combined it with other information so that it no longer personally identifies you.

We use the information we receive, including the information you provide at registration or add to your account to deliver ads and to make them more relevant to you. When an advertiser creates an ad, they are given the opportunity to choose their audience by location, demographics, likes, keywords, and any other information we receive or can tell about you and other users. If the advertiser chooses to run the ad (also known as placing the order), we serve the ad to people who meet the criteria the advertiser selected, but we do not tell the advertiser who any of those people are. So, for example, if a person views or otherwise interacts with the ad, the advertiser might infer that the person is an 18-to-35-year-old woman who lives in the U.S. and likes basketball. But we would not tell the advertiser who that person is.

After the ad runs, we provide advertisers with reports on how their ads performed. For example we give advertisers reports telling them how many users saw or clicked on their ads. But these reports are anonymous. We do not tell advertisers who saw or clicked on their ads.

Advertisers or their partners sometimes place cookies on your computer (or use other similar system technologies) in order to serve ads and to make their ads more effective. Learn more about cookies, pixels and other system technologies.

IV. Cookies, pixels and other similar technologies

Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored on your computer, mobile phone or other device. Pixels are small blocks of code on webpages that do things like allow another server to measure viewing of a webpage and often are used in connection with cookies.

We use technologies like cookies, pixels, and local storage (like on your browser or device, which is similar to a cookie but holds more information) to provide and understand a range of products and services.

We use these technologies to do things like:

• make ARPA easier or faster to use;
• enable features and store information about you (including on your device or in your browser cache) and your use of ARPA;
• deliver, understand and improve advertising;
• monitor and understand the use of our products and services; and
• to protect you, others and ARPA.

For example, we may use them to know you are logged in to ARPA, to help you use social plugins and share buttons, or to know when you are interacting with our advertising partners.

We may ask advertisers or other partners to serve ads or services to computers, mobile phones or other devices, which may use a cookie, pixel or other similar technology placed by ARPA or the third party (although we would not share any other information that identifies you with an advertiser).

Most companies on the web use cookies (or other similar technological tools), including our advertising and Platform partners. For example, our Platform partners, advertisers or Page administrators may use cookies or similar technologies when you access their apps, ads, Pages or other content.

Cookies and things like local storage help make ARPA work, like allowing pages to load faster because certain content is stored on your browser or by helping us authenticate you to deliver personalized content.
Refer to your browser or device’s help material to learn what controls you can often use to remove or block cookies or other similar technologies or block or remove other data stored on your computer or device (such as by using the various settings in your browser). If you do this, it may affect your ability to use ARPA or other websites and apps.

V. Some other things you need to know

Responding to legal requests and preventing harm

We may access, preserve and share your information in response to a legal request (like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so. This may include responding to legal requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law in that jurisdiction, affects users in that jurisdiction, and is consistent with internationally recognized standards. We may also access, preserve and share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to: detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity; to protect ourselves, you and others, including as part of investigations; and to prevent death or imminent bodily harm. Information we receive about you, including financial transaction data related to purchases made with ARPA Credits, may be accessed, processed and retained for an extended period of time when it is the subject of a legal request or obligation, governmental investigation, or investigations concerning possible violations of our terms or policies, or otherwise to prevent harm. We also may retain information from accounts disabled for violations of our terms for at least a year to prevent repeat abuse or other violations of our terms.

Notifications and other messages

We may send you notifications and other messages using the contact information we have for you, like your email address.

Affiliates

We may share information we receive with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies as ARPA, or that become part of that group (often these companies are called affiliates). Likewise, our affiliates may share information with us as well. We and our affiliates may use shared information to help provide, understand, and improve our services and their own services.

Service providers

We give your information to the people and companies that help us provide, understand and improve the services we offer. For example, we may use outside vendors to help host our website, serve photos and videos, process payments, analyze data, conduct and publish research, measure the effectiveness of ads, or provide search results. In some cases we provide the service jointly with another company. In all of these cases our partners must agree to only use your information consistent with the agreement we enter into with them, as well as this Data Use Policy.

Security and bugs

We do our best to keep your information secure, but we need your help. We try to keep ARPA up, bug-free and safe, but cannot make guarantees about any part of our services or products.

Children’s privacy

You must be eighteen years old to use the Website. ARPA prohibits the use of the Website by anyone under the age of eighteen. By using the Website, you represent that you are at least eighteen years old and understand that you must be at least eighteen years old in order to use the Website. We will delete any account if we have actual knowledge that the account is associated with a user who is not at least eighteen years old..

Visiting our site from outside the United States

If you are visiting our website from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States where our servers are located and our central database is operated. By using our services, you understand that your information may be transferred to our facilities and those third parties with whom we share it as described in this policy.

No rights of third parties

This Data Use Policy does not create rights enforceable by third parties or require disclosure of any personal information relating to users of the website or mobile apps.

Change of control

If the ownership of our business changes, we may transfer your information to the new owner so they can continue to operate the service.

Contact us with questions or disputes

If you have any questions or complaints regarding our Privacy Policy or practices, please contact us by mail at 1405 Capital Drive, C-206, Pewaukee, WI 53072.