Privacy Policy

How I Met My Dog, Inc. Privacy Notice

This privacy notice ("Privacy Notice") discloses the privacy practices of How I Met My Dog, Inc. ("HIMMD," the "Company," "we," "us" and cognates thereof) with respect to our website located at http://www.howimetmydog.com, as well as all products and services offered by the Company (collectively with the website the "Service").

Effective Date This Privacy Notice was last revised on December 5,2020.

Please read this Privacy Notice carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your personal information and how we will treat it. This Privacy Notice applies to individuals who interact with the Service ("you" and cognates thereof). This Privacy Notice explains how your personal information is collected, used, and disclosed by us and third parties acting on our behalf. It also tells you how you can access and update your personal information and make certain choices about how your personal information is used.

This Privacy Notice covers both our online and offline information collection activities, including personal information that we collect through our various channels such as websites, apps, third-party social networks, consumer affairs, points of sale, and events where this notice is provided to you. Please note that we may combine personal information from different sources (website, offline event). We also may combine information from third parties with information we already have.

The Personal Information We Collect and How We Use It

The types of information that we collect fall under two general categories: Personally identifiable information (PII) and non-personally identifiable information (non-PII). PII consists of any information that can be used to specifically identify you as an individual, whereas non-PII consists of aggregate information or any information that does not reveal your identity. The following sections describe how your PII and non-PII are collected by us, and how we use such information.

How We Collect and Use Information

The "personal Information" addressed by this Privacy Notice consists of any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular individual or household.

The following describes the categories and sources of personal information we collect and the purposes for which such personal information will be used:

Log Files. Any time you visit our website, our servers automatically gather information from your browser (such as your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks) to analyze trends, administer the site, track visitor movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information. For example, we may log your IP address for system administration purposes. IP addresses are logged to track a user’s session. This informs us as to which parts of our site users are visiting.
Cookies. We use "cookies" to keep track of some types of information while you are visiting our website or using our services. Cookies are very small files placed on your computer, and they allow us, for example, to count the number of visitors to our website and distinguish repeat visitors from new visitors. They also allow us to save user preferences and track user trends.
Most browsers let you remove or reject cookies. To do this, follow the instructions in your browser settings. Many browsers accept cookies by default until you change your settings. Please note that if you set your browser to disable cookies, our website may not work properly. Similarly, your browser settings may allow you to clear your browser web storage. Users who refuse cookies assume all responsibility for any resulting loss of functionality.
Web Beacons. "Web beacons" (also known as "clear gifs" and "pixel tags") are small transparent graphic images that are often used in conjunction with cookies in order to further personalize our website for our users and to collect a limited set of information about our visitors. We may also use web beacons in email communications in order to monitor the behavior of our customers with respect to such emails.
Information provided by You in the Registration Process When you register for the Service, we collect a variety of information about you. For example, you may provide us with information about yourself (in the form of questionnaire responses) to participate in matching with an appropriate pet. You may choose to provide us with photos or videos of yourself, family members and/or pets, and by providing us such content, you agree that we may make them available to other users of the Service and on our website generally. Please see the cautionary information opposite the caption "Public Forums" below with respect to uploading videos, photos and other information to public areas of our website.
Information from Other Sources. We may periodically obtain personal information about you from current or future affiliates, business partners, contractors and other third parties. Examples of personal information that we may receive include: updated contact, address or delivery information, purchase history, and additional demographic information.
Information required to Process Purchases. To process purchases, we may require your name, address, phone number, email address and credit card information. Such information is used to process your order and as otherwise described herein. Credit card transactions are processed in compliance with Payment Card Industry requirements through industry standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and/or strong encryption (3DES) by a third party, which only uses your information for that purpose.
Email and Telephone Calls. We require an email address from you when you register for our services. We use your email for both transactional (e.g., order confirmation) and promotional (e.g., newsletters, new product offerings, special discounts, event notifications) purposes. Email messages we send you may contain code that enables our database to track your usage of the emails, including whether the email was opened and what links (if any) were clicked (see caption "Web Beacons" above). If you would rather not receive promotional emails from us, please see the section below captioned "Choice/Opt-Out" or utilize the unsubscribe link provided in any of such emails. We reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to the Service, such as service announcements and administrative messages, without offering you the opportunity to opt out of receiving them. We may also contact you by telephone or text message (including to any mobile number you may provide to us) solely in connection with the Service. If you would rather not receive telephone calls or text messages from us, you may delete your number from your account profile, or ask to be removed from our contact list if you receive a call or text message from us. We fully comply with the requirements of the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act.
Demographic Data. Demographic personal information is also collected from you at our site, including during the registration process and your interaction with our website. We may use this personal information to tailor your user experience, showing you content that we think you might be interested in, and displaying the content according to your preferences.
Online Survey Data. We may periodically conduct voluntary member surveys. We encourage our members to participate in such surveys because they provide us with important information regarding the improvement of our Services. You may also volunteer for certain surveys that we may offer to our users, and any additional rules regarding the conduct of such surveys will be disclosed to you prior to your participation. We do not link the survey responses to any individual, and all responses are anonymous and constitute deidentified information.
Public Forums. We may choose to make event pages, discussion boards or other areas of the Service available to other members and visitors. Any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose any of your personal information in areas of our website that are accessible by other users or to visitors of our website generally. Our website will provide conspicuous notice of any areas of our website that are public.
Please do not embed personal information in the content you generate or share personal information online in public forums, because any such information can be collected and used by others. We have no control over, and take no responsibility for, the use, storage, dissemination or erasure of personal information embedded in user-generated content or shared on our Service. By posting personal information online in public forums, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties. We do not control how other users or third parties use any personal information that you make available to other users or third party platforms.
Use on Behalf of Affiliates and Trusted Business Partners; Advertising. We may use information we collect, including personal information, on behalf of current or future subsidiaries, parent or sibling corporations, or other HIMMD affiliates. Using this information on behalf of other parties enables us to provide you with information about a variety of products and services that might interest you. We may use personal information on behalf of carefully selected businesses with which we partner to offer you products, services, discounts, special offers or promotions tailored to our members’ interests. See "Choice/Opt-Out" below for further information on your choices in terms of recieving promotional communications.
We may also work with third party advertising partners who use cookies and similar technologies to deliver targeted advertising that is displayed on unaffiliated websites, to measure the effectiveness of advertising on behalf of our advertising partners, and to identify the audience most likely to respond to an advertisement. These advertisements are delivered by our advertising partners and may be targeted based on your use of our Service or your activity elsewhere online.
Use for Research. In addition to the uses outlined above, by using our site, you understand that we may aggregate and use the information from you and your experiences that is deidentified for research and development purposes and to improve the HIMMD customer experience.

How we Disclose Your Personal Information to Third Parties

Disclosure Required by Law. You acknowledge and agree that we may disclose personal information you provide if required to do so by applicable law, at the request of a third party, or if we, in our sole discretion, believe that disclosure is reasonable to (1) comply with the law, requests or orders from law enforcement, or any legal process (whether or not such disclosure is required by applicable law); (2) protect or defend the Company’s, or a third party’s, rights or property; or (3) protect someone’s health or safety, such as when harm or violence against any person (including you) is threatened.
Disclosure to Authorized Service Providers. We may share your personal information with authorized service providers that perform certain services on our behalf. These services may include fulfilling orders, processing credit card payments, providing customer service and marketing assistance, delivering goods or services, performing business and sales analysis, supporting our website functionality, and supporting features offered through our website. These service providers may have access to personal information needed to perform their functions but pursuant to our contracts with such service providers they are not permitted to share or use such information for any other purposes.
Advertising Partners. We may enable advertising partners to automatically collect information directly from our website for targeted marketing purposes. Please see the information beneath the caption "Third-Party Advertising and Links" below.
Public Forums. Please see information opposite the caption "Public Forums" above.
Information Transferred as a Result of Sale of Business. As we develop our business, we may buy or sell assets and, depending on the transaction, your personal information may be one of the transferred assets. In the event that we are acquired by another company, your personal information may be part of the assets transferred to the acquiring party. If this occurs, you will be notified if there are any material changes to the way your personal information is collected or used.

Our Commitment to Privacy of Children

Our services are intended for adults over the age of 18. We do not target our website or services to children under the age of 13, and in compliance with the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, we do not knowingly collect any personal information from users under the age of 13 and any information we receive from users we believe to be under the age of 13 will be purged from our database. If you are a parent or legal guardian and think that your child under 13 has given us data, you can contact us by email or mail as provided below under the caption "Contact Us." Please mark your inquiries "COPPA Information Request."

Service Limited to United States

The Service is intended for use only by United States residents at this time. If you reside outside the United States, you access the Service at your own risk. Users may not access our website or register for or use the Service if prohibited by law in their country of residence.

HIMMD is headquartered in the United States. Presently, information we collect from you will be processed in the United States, but your personal information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and by using the Service you understand that your information may be transferred to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of the country in which you reside.

Security

We have appropriate physical, technological and organizational security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and unauthorized access to or alteration of the information stored in our database. These measures include the use of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and/or strong encryption (3DES) technology during credit card transactions and administrative access to site data, as well as other proprietary security measures which are applied to all repositories and transfers of user personal information. We will exercise reasonable care in providing secure transmission of information between your computer and our servers, but given that no information transmitted over the Internet can be guaranteed 100% secure, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information transmitted to us over the Internet and hence are not liable for any unauthorized disclosure in transmission.

California Residents' Privacy Notice

Scope

This section describes how we collect, use, and share the personal information of California residents as a “business” under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) and their rights with respect to their personal information. For purposes of this section, “personal information” has the meaning given in the CCPA but does not include information exempted from the scope of the CCPA.

Personal Information that we collect and use

The list below summarizes the personal information we collect and use by reference to the categories specified in the CCPA [link] in California Civil Code § 1798.140(o). The “categories we collect” are described above in the section entitled “The Personal Information We Collect and How We Use It.” Information you voluntarily provide to us, such as in free-form webforms, may contain other categories of Personal Information not described below.

Identifiers
Commercial Information
Financial Information
Online Identifiers
Internet or Network Information
Inferences

For information (which describes our practices during the 12 months preceding the effective date of this Privacy Notice) with respect to:

The categories of sources of this information, see the section above entitled “The Personal Information We Collect and How We Use It;”
The business/commercial purposes for which we collect this information, see the section above entitled “The Personal Information We Collect and How We Use It;” and
The categories of third parties to which we disclose this information for business purposes, see the section above entitled “How we Disclose Your Personal Information to Third Parties.”

California Residents’ Privacy Rights

As a California resident, you have the rights listed below. However, these rights are not absolute, and in certain cases we may decline your request as permitted by law.

Information.You can request the following information about how we have collected, used and shared your personal information during the past 12 months, which we have made available to you without your having to request it by describing it above:
- The categories of personal information we have collected.
- The categories of sources from which we collected the personal information.
- The business or commercial purpose for collecting and/or selling personal information (we do not sell personal information).
- The categories of third parties with whom we share the personal information.
- The categories of personal information that we sold (none) or disclosed for a business purpose.
- The categories of third parties to whom the personal information was sold (none) or disclosed for a business purpose.
Access. You can request a copy of the personal information that we maintain about you.
Deletion. You can ask us to delete the personal information that we collected from you.
Nondiscrimination. You are entitled to exercise the rights described above free from discrimination as prohibited by the CCPA.

We do not sell your Personal Information

Based on our understanding of the term “sell” under the CCPA, we do not “sell” your personal information and have not sold it to third parties for a business or commercial purpose in the 12 months preceding the effective date of this Privacy Notice. However, like many companies online, we use services that help deliver interest-based ads to you as described in the section above captioned “Third Party Advertising and Links.”

How to Submit a Request

To request access to or deletion of personal information:

Email: support@howimetmydog.com
Mail: 116 East 68th Street, New York, New York 10065,

We cannot process your request if you do not provide us with sufficient detail to allow us to understand and respond to it.

We will need to verify your identity to process your information, access and deletion requests and reserve the right to confirm your California residency. To verify your identity, we may require you to log into your HIMMD account (if applicable), provide government identification, give a declaration as to your identity under penalty of perjury and/or provide additional information. Your authorized agent may make a request on your behalf upon our verification of the agent’s identity and our receipt of a copy of a valid power of attorney given to your authorized agent pursuant to California Probate Code Sections 4000-4465. If you have not provided your agent with such a power of attorney, you must provide your agent with signed permission to exercise your CCPA rights on your behalf, provide the information we request to verify your identity, and provide us with written confirmation that you have given the authorized agent permission to submit the request. Authorized agents are required by California law to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices to protect their clients’ information.

Choice/Opt-Out

You may use the following options for removing your information from our email database if you wish to opt out of receiving promotional emails and newsletters.

Click on the “unsubscribe” link on the bottom of the email;
Send mail to the following postal address letting us know which promotional emails you wish to opt-out of: HIMMD, 116 East 68th St, 3B, New York, NY 10065
For any services that allow you to control which emails you receive, go to the email settings page from your account home page, and un-check the undesired promotions.

It may take up to 10 business days before you stop receiving promotional emails. This opt-out does not apply to operational communications (as described above opposite the caption “Email and Telephone Calls”), for example, order confirmation emails.

Updating Your Information

HIMMD provides users the following options for changing and modifying information previously submitted.

You may change your credit card (if applicable), email address, password and other information from the “Edit Profile” page on our website;
Send us an email at support@howimetmydog.com and our customer service agents will be happy to assist you; or
You can send mail to the postal address listed under the caption “Contact Us,” providing us with your account information and letting us know which information you wish to update.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, the practices of our website, or your dealings with the Company, you can contact us:

By Email: support@howimetmydog.com
By Mail: 116 East 68th Street, New York, New York 10065,

Acceptance of Privacy Notice

Your use of our website, including any dispute concerning privacy, is subject to this Privacy Notice and the Terms of Use Agreement. BY USING OUR WEBSITE, YOU ARE ACCEPTING THE PRACTICES SET OUT IN THIS PRIVACY NOTICE AND THE TERMS OF USE AGREEMENT. If we decide to change our privacy policies, we will post those changes to this Privacy Notice page and any other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

Changes to Privacy Notice

We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Notice at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, or by other means, such as email, at our discretion. Your continued use of any portion of our website following posting or other communication to you of the updated privacy statement will constitute your acceptance of the changes.

Choice/Opt-Out

You may use the following options for removing your information from our email database if you wish to opt out of receiving promotional emails and newsletters.

Click on the "unsubscribe" link on the bottom of the email;
Send mail to the following postal address letting us know which promotional emails you wish to opt-out of: HIMMD, 116 East 68th St, 3B, New York, NY 10065
For any services that allow you to control which emails you receive, go to the email settings page from your account home page, and un-check the undesired promotions.

Updating Your Information

HIMMD provides users the following options for changing and modifying information previously submitted.

You may change your credit card (if applicable), email address, password and other information from the "Edit Profile" page on our website;
Send us an email at support@howimetmydog.com and our customer service agents will be happy to assist you; or
You can send mail to the postal address listed above, providing us with your account information and letting us know which information you wish to update.

Contacting the Website

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of the Site, or your dealings with the Company, you can contact us by email at support@howimetmydog.com or by mail to the postal address listed above.

Acceptance of Privacy Statement

Your use of our website, including any dispute concerning privacy, is subject to this privacy statement and the Terms of Use Agreement. BY USING OUR WEBSITE, YOU ARE ACCEPTING THE PRACTICES SET OUT IN THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT AND THE TERMS OF USE AGREEMENT. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement page and any other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, or by other means, such as email, at our discretion. Your continued use of any portion of our website following posting of the updated privacy statement will constitute your acceptance of the changes.