Privacy policy

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

We understand privacy is important, and we work hard to protect yours. We do collect personal information when you voluntarily submit it to us, both offline and online. For example, donors may provide us with personal information (such as name, address, email address, telephone numbers and/or credit/debit card information). Providing data is required in these contexts in order for us to process your donations, requests, or respond to inquiries.

Any information transmitted to us may be stored, accessed, or processed in the United States. We collect information primarily to accept donations, complete our charitable work, and provide you with information concerning our programs and activities. We also use information for analytical purposes, to improve our website, donor base, and outreach, or to respond to requests for information.

We do not trade, share, or sell information that you provide to us with other organizations who intend to use it only to market their products or services to you.

There may be unique instances in which we share your information with others. For example, we may share your information with law enforcement as required by law, to comply with legal process, to protect our legal rights, to protect the safety or security of a person, or to protect against fraud, criminal acts, or misconduct. We may also share your information with companies that provide us with services or with a successor legal entity.

To help prevent unauthorized access and maintain data accuracy, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.

If you would like to access the data that we received from you or make corrections to it, you may contact us at the email or mailing addresses provided at the end of this policy. If you register to receive communications from us and later change your mind, you may ask that your name and information be removed from our distribution list. You can send such a request to the email or mailing addresses at the end of this policy, and we will immediately comply.

Our website may contain links to other websites. Please note that when you click on one of these links, you are entering another site, which maintains its own privacy policy.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments 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: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Providing data is required in these contexts in order for us to process your donations, requests, or respond to inquiries.

Cookies, Analytics, and Embedded Content

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Articles on this site 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.

In addition to the personal information that you submit to us, we may collect personal information about you from reputable third parties, or automatically collect information. Our web servers may collect certain information such as IP address, pages visited, time of visits, and referring website. Cookies are simple text files stored by your web browser that provide a method of distinguishing among donors and visitors to the website. We can use cookies to identify your browser as you visit pages on our site. They also help us provide you with more relevant, targeted content. The information is used to optimize the users’ experience by customizing our web page content based on visitors’ browser type and/or other information.

Third parties, including Facebook, may use cookies, web beacons, and other storage technologies to collect or receive information from your websites and elsewhere on the internet and use that information to provide measurement services and target ads.

We use the information we collect in various ways, including to:

  • Provide, operate, and maintain our website
  • Improve, personalize, and expand our website
  • Understand and analyze how you use our website
  • Develop new services, features, and functionality
  • Communicate with you, including for customer service, to provide you with updates and other information relating to the website, and for marketing purposes
  • Send you emails
  • Find and prevent fraud

We follow a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this, and it is a part of hosting services’ analytics. The information collected by log files includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movement on the website, and gathering demographic information.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

CCPA Privacy Rights

Under the CCPA, among other rights, California consumers have the right to:

  • Request that a business that collects a consumer’s personal data disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal data that a business has collected about consumers.
  • Request that a business deletes any personal data about the consumer that a business has collected.
  • Request that a business that sells a consumer’s personal data, not sell the consumer’s personal data.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us.

GDPR Data Protection Rights

We would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:

  • The right to access. You have the right to request copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.
  • The right to rectification. You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request that we complete the information you believe is incomplete.
  • The right to erasure. You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to restrict processing. You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to object to processing. You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to data portability. You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at the contact information below.

Protection of children

Asheville Humane Society does not knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

Any changes to this policy will be reflected on this website.

Again, as an organization, we take your privacy seriously and commit to doing our best to ensure the protection and appropriate use of the information you provide to us.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

If we need to contact you, we may do so by telephone, email, or mail. 

If you have any questions, concerns, requests, or comments, you can contact us by email, telephone, or mail at:

Asheville Humane Society

14 Forever Friend Lane, Asheville, NC 28806

828.761.2001

office@ashevillehumane.org