PRIVACY POLICY

Last Updated:  February 16, 2021

This privacy policy discloses the privacy practices for Salvadores de Animales, Inc., our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/saldeapanama/ , our newsletter published through Mailchimp, social media tools, online donation platforms, our email address at info@saldea.org, our website; https://www.saldea.org, and information collected on paper documents.  This policy will notify you of the following:

  • What information we collect, use, and share;
  • With whom it is shared;
  • How it can be corrected;
  • Your access to and control over your information;
  • Security, storage, and protection of information;
  • Preferred modes of communication;
  • Collection, ownership, and use of photographs;
  • External links;
  • Disclaimers; and
  • How to address concerns over misuse of personal data.

Information We Collect, Use, and Share, Both Online and On Paper

We are the sole owners of the information collected on this site, via social media, email, and in person. Any information, including photographs and text, that you voluntarily send to us electronically becomes the property of the corporation.  However, we only have access to/collect information that you voluntarily give us via email or other direct contact from you. We do not sell or rent this information to anyone.  We do not seek any unnecessary information, such as your date of birth or credit card number. Your information will be protected from unauthorised or accidental disclosure, and stored in an appropriate manner to maintain its integrity and confidentiality.

When adopters sign an adoption contract, we collect the name, email, two telephone numbers, cedula number (Panamanian national ID number), and general address of the adopter (in Panama this may be the neighborhood and local township, since most homes lack numbers or street names).  We retain these contracts indefinitely as legal documents showing the disposition of animals in our care. We maintain a cloud-based roster of photographs of the adoption contracts with the adopter’s cedula. We maintain a cloud-based spreadsheet of the disposition of all our animals.  When an animal is adopted, we record the adopter’s name, email, and phone number. We do not grant access to this information to anyone outside of the Board of Directors and a small number of trained volunteers who work exclusively with adoption follow-ups. The online files are password protected, and cannot be accessed unless the files are explicitly shared with a user.

We collect and use email addresses to send out in our newsletter, which informs our constituents about Saldea’s work.  We also use email and telephone numbers to contact adopters as a follow-up, to answer questions and/or resolve problems that may occur with a newly adopted pet.  This post-adoption follow-up is part of our mission, so phone numbers and emails are essential tools to maintain contact with adopters.

On our website, we use analytics to study the geographic distribution of IP addresses visiting our site. We also gather general information about the use of our website, such as which pages users visit most often and which services, events, or animals are of most interest. We may track which pages users visit when they click on links in emails. We do not retain your IP address, nor do we share it with anyone.  We look at it for the sole purpose of improving our strategies for communication and fundraising.

On Facebook, we study trends in our posts in reports provided by Facebook that mask the identity of the individuals who visit our page.  We do not share the list of people who Follow or Like our page with anyone for any reason.

Your Access to and Control Over Information

You may opt out of any future contacts from us at any time. You can do the following at any time by contacting us via the email address or phone number provided on our website:

  • See what data we have about you, if any.
  • Change/correct any data we have about you.
  • Have us delete any data we have about you.
  • Express any concern you have about our use of your data

Web-based Contact Forms

When you complete an Adoption Application or send us a message with the Contact Us website function, the data go to our Gmail account.  This account is accessed by several Saldea Board members, none of whom disclose your information to outside parties. We use this information to respond to questions, help interested parties, and communicate with our constituents.

PayPal and Zelle

We accept donations by PayPal and Zelle on social media, through fundraising platforms, and on our website. We do not promise any product or service in return for a donation. We do not have access to sensitive financial information via the secure servers of these platforms. The name and email of donors are used by the Secretary to acknowledge the gift and for internal accounting purposes.  

Sharing Information

We share aggregated demographic information from Facebook and our website with corporate sponsors and advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that could identify any individual person.  We do not sell or share names or contact information of adopters, donors, or volunteers with anyone.

Ownership and Use of Photographs

We share photographs of foster animals, adopted animals, and adoptive families through social media.  Any photograph or video taken by or submitted to SALDEA becomes the property of the corporation.  We reserve the right to communicate photographs with the public for purposes of fundraising, education, and publicity of our mission, but we never include any identifying information about adoptive families, the general public, or volunteers.  As a community service, we publicize notices about missing pets that we receive from the public through social media.  We also occasionally post photos of animals needing foster homes that are rescued by private pet helpers who need our assistance with publicity.  We do not retain or use “lost pet” or “pet helper” photographs, and we assume no responsibility for the accuracy of the information in “lost pet” or “pet helper” announcements.

Security Online and Offline

We take precautions to protect your information. Wherever we collect sensitive information (for example, PayPal data), that information is encrypted and transmitted to us in a secure way. You can verify this by looking for a closed lock icon at the bottom of your web browser, or looking for “https” at the beginning of the address of the web page.

While we use encryption to protect sensitive information transmitted online, we also protect your information offline. Only Saldea members who need the information to perform a specific job (e.g. adoption follow-up) are granted access to personally identifiable information.

Storing and Protecting Your Information

We place great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our adopters, supporters, directors, and volunteers. We have security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration or destruction of personal data under our control. Information is stored by us on computers located in Colorado, U.S. A backup version of our website is maintained in Chiriqui, Panama. We store paper adoption contracts in a locked cabinet. All of our online forms are protected by encryption. We maintain a database of email addresses in Mailchimp for our newsletter that are only accessible by one Board member and two IT consultants who are under contract with us.  We use secure PayPal and Stripe servers when you make a donation or payment via our website. We maintain management files and spreadsheets in Google Drive in password-protected accounts that are only shared on a need-to-know basis with a very small number of people, who are required by our corporate by-laws to maintain strict confidentiality.

However, no data transmission over the internet is 100% secure. As a result, while we cannot absolutely guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur while it is under our control, we use our best efforts to prevent this and protect your personal information.

We will keep your information only for as long as we need it to provide you with the services or information you have requested, to administer your relationship with us, to inform our research or the preferences of our supporters, to comply with the law and tax accounting rules, or to ensure that we do not communicate with people who have asked us not to.

Cookies

We use “cookies” on this site. A cookie is a piece of data stored on a site visitor’s hard drive to help us improve your access to our site and identify repeat visitors to our site. For instance, when we use a cookie to identify you, you would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. Cookies can also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance their experience on our site. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information on our site.

Some of our corporate sponsors may use cookies on our site (e.g., advertisers). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information.

Disclaimer Regarding Communications Through Social Media

Occasionally constituents contact us by WhatsApp.  While this popular mode of communication is encrypted on both ends, we strongly discourage important communication with constituents by WhatsApp because it is easy to lose track of information or to fail to communicate key information to other parties.  Similar concerns apply regarding Instagram and Facebook Messenger – it is easy to lose track of vital information and impedes rapid follow-up. These communication platforms reside on individuals’ cell phones, not on a secure server used by the corporation. We cannot ensure that your personal information or messages communicated to us over WhatsApp, Instagram, or Facebook Messenger will be guarded and curated with the same consistency as our other web-based data.  We therefore strongly urge our constituents to communicate with us exclusively via saldeapanama@gmail.com, info@saldea.org, or through our website, and to avoid using social media platforms to convey personal information.  We are not responsible for the loss or disclosure of personal information communicated by social media platforms to individual members of the organization.

If you feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, you should contact us immediately via telephone at +507 6823-6899 or via email at info@saldea.org.