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Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 10, 2022

Privacy Policy

Pawscout, Inc. (“we,” “us,” “our,” or “Company”) knows that you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and we take your privacy seriously. Please read the following to learn more about what information we collect when you visit, access or use the www.pawscout.com website and domain name, any other linked pages, features or content, the Pawscout Tag (the “Product”), or Pawscout application services or other of our services (including, without limitation, mobile applications) offered from time to time by Company (collectively, the “Website and Application”).

What does this Privacy Policy cover?

This Privacy Policy covers Company’s treatment of personal information that Company gathers when you visit, access or use the Website and Application. Personal Information is information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. You may be asked to provide your personal information anytime you are in contact with Company or the Website and Application. We may combine your personal information with other information to provide and improve our products, services, content and advertising. You are not required to provide the personal information that we request, but, if you choose not to do so, in many cases we will not be able to provide you with our products or services or respond to your questions.

We do not consider personal information to include information that has been anonymized or aggregated so that it can no longer be used to identify a specific person, whether in combination with other information or otherwise.

This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that Company does not own or control (including any third-party products or services used for logging into the Website and Application or that are integrated with the Website and Application), or to individuals that Company does not employ or manage.

Children under 16

The Website and Application are not directed to people under 16. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 16 or knowingly allow such persons to register for the Website and Application. If you are under 16, please do not attempt to register for the Website and Application or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 16 may provide any personal information to us or on the Website and Application. If you are under the age of 16, you must obtain your parent or guardian’s permission to supply personal information to us. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 16 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible and take steps to promptly terminate that person’s account. If you are a parent or legal guardian of a minor under the age of 16 and believe that the minor has disclosed personal information to us, please contact us at [email protected].

What personal information do we collect?

The information we gather from customers enables us to personalize and improve our services, and allows our users to set up a user account and profile that can be used to personalize their experience on the Website and Application. We collect the following types of information from our customers:

Personal information you provide to us:

We receive and store any information you enter on our Website and Application or provide to us in any other way, including, without limitation, through use of the Product or when you register an account with us. The types of personal information collected in this fashion may include your (and your pet’s) name and/or location, details about your pet (weight, breed, color, medical issues, and other information), your veterinarian’s contact information, your email address, phone number, and address, device information, username, password, financial information (such as credit card information) when you buy something from us, information to link to social media services, and any other information necessary for us to provide our services. You can choose not to provide us with certain information, but then you may not be able to take advantage of many of our features.

Personal information collected automatically:

We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with our Website and Application or use our services. Company automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser including your IP address, browser and/or mobile device identifiers and information, operating system, timestamps, the pages you request, and the actions and path you take on the Website and Application as well as location and activity information relating to you and your pet.

Generally, our service automatically collects usage information, such as the numbers and frequency of visitors to our Website and Application and how they use its various components, including, without limitation, movement data from using certain features of the Product, including but not limited to the walk, virtual pet leash, and lost pet features. We also use third party tracking-utility partners to gather information, including Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp and click-stream data.  We only use this data in aggregate form, that is, as a statistical measure, and not in a manner that would identify or that is identifiable with you or your pet personally. This type of aggregate data enables us to figure out how customers use parts of the Website and Application so that we can make the Website and Application appealing to as many customers as possible, and improve our services.

E-mail communications:

We may communicate with you if you’ve provided us the means to do so. For example, if you’ve given us your phone number or email address, we may send you promotional email offers on behalf of other businesses, or email you about your use of the Website and Application or text you certain safety alerts about your pets. We may receive a confirmation when you open an email from Company if your computer or device supports this type of functionality. Company uses this confirmation to help us make emails more interesting and helpful and to improve the Website and Application and our services. When you receive e-mail from Company, you can opt out of receiving further e-mails by following the included instructions to unsubscribe.

What about cookies?

Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer’s (or other device’s) persistent storage medium (e.g., hard drive) through your browser to enable our systems to recognize your browser and tell us how and when pages in our site are visited and by how many people. We use cookies, web beacons, unique identifiers and similar technologies to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take when using our Website and Application within our advertising or email content. There are primarily three types of cookies:

  • Session cookies are specific to a particular visit and carry information as you view different pages so you do not have to re-enter information every time you change pages or attempt to checkout. Session cookies expire and delete themselves automatically in a short period of time like after you leave the site or when you close your web browser.
  • Persistent cookies remember certain information about your preferences for viewing the site and allow us to recognize you each time you return. Persistent cookies are stored on your browser cache or mobile device until you choose to delete them, and otherwise typically delete themselves at expiration.
  • Third-party cookies are placed by someone other than Company and may gather browsing activity across multiple websites and across multiple sessions. They are usually a type of persistent cookie and are stored until you delete them, or they expire based on the time period set in each third-party cookie.

These cookies and other technologies help us better understand user behavior, help us to remember your settings, tell us which parts of our websites people have visited, and facilitate and measure the effectiveness of advertisements and web searches. Cookies may also be used to offer you enhanced or personalized functionality (e.g., to welcome you by name and keep track of your preferences) or to deliver content, including advertisements, relevant to your interests on the Website and Application or on third-party sites. We treat information collected by cookies and other technologies as non-personal information. To the extent IP addresses or similar identifiers are considered personal information by applicable law, we also treat these identifiers as personal information. Similarly, we may combine the general information collected through cookies with other personal information to tell us who you are or what your screen name or email address is; and to the extent that non-personal information is combined with personal information, we treat the combined information as personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.

Most browsers have an option for turning off the cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your browser software) allowing you to decide on acceptance of each new cookie in a variety of ways. If you do not leave the cookies activated, you will not be able to take advantage of some of the features of our Website and Application.

Ads appearing on the Website and Application may be delivered to users by our advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer or other device each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer or device. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Company and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Social Media:

We place social networking buttons on some of our pages to make it easier for you to share them with other people. They generally use cookies to function, but we do not have any control over the use of these cookies or the data they share and advise that you consult their privacy policies to find out what happens to any data that these services collect when you use them.

We are currently showing buttons for: Facebook and Twitter.

Some technologies help you to interact with social networks you are signed into while using the Service, such as sharing content with the social network, logging in with the social network, and other features you employ with the social network, or that are allowed in the social network’s privacy policy. These may be set and controlled by the social networks, and your preferences with those social networks.

Social networks may also work with the Company or with you for analytics or for marketing purposes, as discussed below. You may be able to manage your privacy preferences for these social networks and their tools and widgets via your account with the social network.

Services in Apps (SDK):

Apps may include third-party application software development kits (“SDKs”) that provide mobile performance and analytics data, bug reporting features, and APIs to third parties that help provide the Services, for social media functionality, and for marketing and advertising.

Legitimate Interests in Processing:

Certain cookies and similar technologies are employed to make our site function for its intended purpose and are provided based on contractual necessity based on your agreement with Company to perform the services you have requested. These include the functions that help us to provide security and our services, as noted above.

Consent to Use Cookies and Similar Technologies:

Any personal information that we collect and store through use of these technologies is first obtained through notice and consent: we obtain your consent by providing you with transparent notice of use of the technologies and providing you with the opportunity to make a choice to disable these technologies.

By choosing to use our Services after having been notified of our use of cookies and similar in the ways described in this Policy, and, in applicable jurisdictions, through notice and unambiguous acknowledgement of your consent, you agree to such use.

Our partners and advertisers and other third parties share information with us:

We supplement the personal information we collect directly with the information collected from third parties and add it to your account information (e.g. social media sites, publicly available information), as allowed by applicable laws.

How we use your personal information & your choices

We use your personal information to communicate with you about, and to provide and improve, our products and services, provide you with a personalized experience on our site and products and services, contact you about your account and our products and services, provide you customer service, provide you with advertising and marketing and to detect, prevent, mitigate and investigate fraudulent or illegal activities. We have a legitimate interest in using your information in these ways.

We use your personal information to fulfill a contract with you and provide you with our Website and Application, to comply with our legal obligation, protect your vital interest, or as may be required for the public good.

This includes:

  • To provide payment processing and account management, operate, measure and improve our products and services, keep our products and services safe, secure and operational and customize Website and Application content.
  • To contact you regarding your account, to troubleshoot problems with your account, to resolve a dispute, to collect fees or monies owed.
  • To provide other services requested by you as described when we collect the information.
  • To provide you with location tracking of your pet and other location-based services (such as advertising, search results or other personalized content).
  • To prevent, detect, mitigate and investigate fraud, security breaches or other potentially prohibited or illegal activities.
  • To enforce our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy or other policies.

We use your personal information to pursue our legitimate interests where your rights and freedoms do not outweigh these interests. We have implemented controls to balance our interests with your rights.

This includes:

  • Improve our products and services, for example by reviewing information associated with stalled or crashed pages experienced by users allowing us to identify and fix problems and give you a better experience.
  • Personalize, measure and improve our advertising based upon your communication preferences.
  • Contact you via email or postal mail to offer you coupons, discounts and special promotions, poll your opinions and inform you about our products and services, as authorized by applicable law.
  • Deliver targeting marketing, service updates and promotional offers based upon your communication preferences.
  • Measure the performance of our marketing campaigns.
  • Monitor and improve the information security of our site.

With your consent, we may use your personal information to:

  • Provide you with marketing via telephone, email, SMS or text.
  • Provide you with marketing from other Company corporate family members.
  • Provide you with marketing from third parties.
  • Use the precise geolocation of you and your pet to provide location-based services.

You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

If you do not wish to receive marketing communications from us, you can unsubscribe by following the subscription management instructions contained in the communication to have your email address or phone number removed from our marketing list or otherwise by contacting us at the email address noted above and requesting that you be removed from marketing lists. We do not sell, rent or otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your consent.

If you do not wish to participate in our advertising personalization programs, you can opt-out by writing to [email protected] and asking us to delete your account.We do not allow third parties to track or collect your personal information on our site for their own advertising purposes without your consent.

Will company share any of the personal information it receives?

We neither rent nor sell your personal information to anyone. We share your personal information only as described below and, in all cases, subject to the preferences you select and choices you have to restrict access to and use of your data, as described under “How we use your personal information & your choices” section above.

Affiliated businesses we do not control: We anticipate that we may become affiliated with a variety of businesses and work closely with them. In certain situations, these businesses may sell items to you through the Website. In other situations, Company may provide services, or sell products jointly with affiliated businesses. You can easily recognize when an affiliated business is associated with your transaction, and we will share your personal information that is related to such transactions with that affiliated business and solely for the purpose of that transaction.

Agents: We employ other companies and people to perform tasks on our behalf and need to share your information with them to provide products or services to you. Unless we tell you differently, Company’s agents do not have any right to use personal information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us. This is necessary to the provision and support of our Website and Application for you. You hereby consent to our sharing of personal information for these purposes.

User profiles and submissions: Certain user profile information, including your name, location, and any video or image or other content that you have uploaded to the Website and Application, may be displayed to other users to facilitate user interaction within the Website and Application or address your request for our services. Your account privacy settings may allow you to limit the other users who can see the personal information in your user profile and/or what information in your user profile is visible to others. Please remember that any content you upload to your public user profile, along with any personal information or content that you voluntarily disclose online in a manner other users can view (in social media posts, on discussion boards, in messages and chat areas, or even by sharing your pet or marking your pet as lost) could become publicly available, available for collection and use by others. Your user name and any other information you choose to include may also be displayed to other users if and when you send messages or comments or upload images or videos through the Website and Application and other users can contact you through messages and comments.

Business transfers: In some cases, we may choose to buy or sell assets. In these types of transactions, customer information is typically one of the business assets that are transferred. Moreover, if Company, or substantially all of its assets were acquired, or in the unlikely event that Company goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, customer information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Company or its assets may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.

Protection of company and others: We may release personal information when we believe in good faith that release is necessary to comply with the law; enforce or apply our conditions of use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Company, our employees, our users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

With your consent: Except as set forth above, you will be notified when your personal information may be shared with third parties, and will be able to prevent the sharing of this information.

How long we keep your personal information

We keep your information only so long as we need it to provide our products and services to you and fulfill the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. When we no longer need to use your information and there is no need for us to keep it to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations, we will either remove it from our systems or depersonalize it so that we cannot identify you.

Your options

You may request to access, correct or delete your personal information by writing in to [email protected] and asking us to delete your account. The length of time during which we will store your personal information will vary depending on the nature of your relationship with us. But generally, we will store your personal information for so long as is required to fulfill our obligations to you, or in order for us to satisfy any reporting, audit or other requirements that we may be subject to pursuant to applicable law, whichever is longer, and thereafter will delete such information in accordance with our routine data review and removal processes.

We will honor any statutory right you may have to access, modify or erase your personal information or to data portability. Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible in accordance with applicable laws.

You can ask us to stop using your information, including when we use your information to send you marketing materials. We only send you marketing material if you have agreed to it, but, if you would rather we do not you can easily access the links on all our emails to unsubscribe permanently fromall marketing messages.

You can complain to a regulator. If you are based in the EEA and think that we have not complied with data protection laws, you have the right to lodge a complaint with Data Protection Commission in Ireland or with your local supervisory authority.

You may request a copy of any personal information about you that we hold. The request must be in writing and you may be required to verify your identification prior to release of any such information. Unless otherwise required by local law, we may decline to process requests that are frivolous, jeopardize the privacy of others, are extremely impractical or for which access is not otherwise required by local law. Access requests can be made by writing in to [email protected].

Is personal information about me secure?

Your Company account personal information is protected by a password for your privacy and security. You need to ensure that there is no unauthorized access to your account and personal information by selecting and protecting your password appropriately and limiting access to your computer (or other device) and browser by signing off after you have finished accessing your account.

We protect your personal information using technical and administrative security measures to reduce the risk of loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure and alteration. These safeguards include strict access control to personal data, automated backups and secure, encrypted communication. We analyze system traffic and load in real time to prevent unauthorized access to stored data.

While Company endeavors to protect user information to ensure that user account information is kept private, Company cannot guarantee the security of user account information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors, may compromise the security of user information at any time.

Other websites

We may provide links to third-party websites on our Website and Application or in other communications to you. Such links may appear as a specific domain. The Website contains links to other sites. Company is not responsible for the privacy policies and/or practices on other sites. When linking to another site you should read the privacy policy stated on that site. This Privacy Policy only governs information collected on the Website.

What choices do I have?

As stated previously, you can always opt not to disclose information, even though it may be needed to take advantage of or register for certain features of the Website and services.
You are able to add or update certain information on pages, such as those listed in the “What personal information can I access” section above. We may use any aggregated data derived from or incorporating your personal information after you update or delete it, but not in a manner that would identify or be identifiable with you personally.

You may request deletion or inactivation of your Company account by sending an e-mail to [email protected].  

Global privacy standards.

Company is located in the United States but operates an Internet-enabled service and Product that may be accessed from outside of the United States. By using our Website and Application, you authorize us to transfer and store your information in the United States, for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

The United States, European Economic Area (“EEA”) Member States, and other countries all have different laws. When your information is moved from your home country to another country, the laws and rules that protect your personal information in the country to which your information is transferred may be different from those in the country in which you live. For example, the circumstances in which law enforcement can access personal information may vary from country to country. In particular, if your information is in the US, it may be accessed by government authorities in accordance with US law.

Additionally, we will only transfer user information of user located in the EU to third-party processors that provide an adequate level of protection when processing user personal information (for instance by entering into contracts based on the model clauses for the transfer of EU User Information to processors established in third countries published by the European Commission). Agreements with third-party processors provide for legal remedies in the event of a breach of the agreement.

We take additional measures when information is transferred from the European Economic Area (EEA). This includes the following:

Model Clauses

The European Commission has adopted standard contractual clauses (also known as Model Clauses), which provide safeguards for personal information that is transferred outside of Europe. We may use these Model Clauses when transferring personal information outside of Europe. You can request a copy of our Model Clauses by emailing [email protected].

Privacy Shield

We do not participate in Privacy Shield at this time. However, we may rely on the EU-US Privacy Shield to transfer personal information to some of our third-party service providers in the United States, where they are certified to receive such information under the Privacy Shield Program.

Changes to this privacy policy

Company may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. Use of information we collect now is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is used unless and except where the requirements of applicable law require different practices. If we make changes in the way we use personal information, we will notify you by posting an announcement on our Website and Application or sending you an email. If you do not or are unwilling to agree to any changes to our Privacy Policy, we may terminate your account.

Questions or concerns

If you have any questions or concerns regarding privacy on our Website, please send a detailed message to [email protected].