Data Dignity - Privacy Statement

The Internet is not inherently private. As you navigate the web, various entities may gather information about your online behaviour. We encourage you to read the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's tips on protecting your online privacy for practical steps on safeguarding your personal information.

 

Like most websites, our Sites collect and process a range of data about visitors to enable full functionality of the website and to deliver requested services. We take many steps to protect your privacy when you visit our websites. How and when we do so is explained below.

We rely on data collected from our community to advance our mission. Data collected includes information you provide directly and data automatically received from your browser. This section outlines what data is collected, as well as information on how we use collected data.

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Information You Provide Directly

Certain pages on our Sites may invite you to share personal information, such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, payment information (e.g., credit card information to complete a transaction), or other information you provide when accessing certain goods and services provided by TorontoSOS. Sharing this information will allow you to join our email list, register for an event, send us a message or feedback, or to participate in other similar online activities.

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Web Data

TorontoSOS uses cookies and similar technologies to operate our Sites.

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Required Web Data Collection

We may automatically receive and record information from your browser when you visit our Sites. The information that we collect with these automated methods may include your IP address, cookie information, browser type, system type, and the referring URL.

 

In addition, if you sign up for our email list(s), we may send you emails that include technologies to track open and click-rates.

 

These web data collection technologies support our operations and the security of our Site.

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Optional Cookies

We may also use cookies to improve website performance, to remember user preferences and settings, and to collect analytic data. By “cookies” we mean small files placed on to your device by websites you visit. “Cookies” may also refer to local storage, which is a mechanism similar to cookies where the information is stored within your web browser. In some instances, we place these cookies ourselves. In other instances, we allow outside service providers to place these cookies, but only if those providers abide by our requirements.

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Purposes for Web Data Collection

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Protection against fraud: We have cookies and similar technologies set up to protect us from fraudulent actors making payments through our Sites.

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Communications and marketing: We are constantly learning which platforms are the best platforms to make sure our message reaches people interested in our mission. In order to do that, we may use cookies to collect information about who referred our visitors to our Sites.

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Website Performance: Website performance cookies allow us to make our Sites easier and more pleasant to use. For example, they may enable us to:

Determine how often and where you see our promotions.

Save you time when filling out a form by populating it with information you provided in previous visits.

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Registration: If you are visiting our Sites as a registered user — for example, when you create an account with TorontoSOS, if/when available to do so — we may use cookies and similar technologies to allow our Sites to recognize that you are logged in or recognize your chosen preferences via unique tokens.

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Analytics: We may use analytics tools that place cookies and similar technologies in order to give us a better understanding of how people engage with our Sites. That in turn allows us to gauge the current performance of website features, and to develop better content. Analytics cookies and similar technologies can provide us with information such as:

How many individual visitors we have

How many visitors are new or returning

How often visitors come to the website

What content they’ve visited

How visitors interact with particular pages or content

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Third Party Links and Hosted Content

Our Sites are connected in a variety of ways to content hosted by third parties, including links to social media sites, links to other sites, and embedded media. When you access this content, including content that loads when you browse on through our domain, third party content hosts may place tracking devices (e.g. cookies or pixels) on your computer, access existing tracking devices that were set when you previously visited other websites, or otherwise gather information about you as you access their content.

 

When you click on links to third party websites, including social media sites, you will leave our Site. To learn about how those third parties treat the data they collect through tracking devices and otherwise, see their respective online privacy policies and other posted guidance.

 

When you view embedded media, such as videos, that are hosted on other platforms, such as YouTube, but viewable directly through the buttons we provide, you will remain on our Site, but you will be visiting these third party’s web environments. In these instances, we make clear that you are viewing external content when you click on links or buttons.

Data Uses​

We may use your data to:

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Fulfill your orders or complete transactions.

Contact you about other TorontoSOS activities or news, or about opportunities to support TorontoSOS.

Conduct research in order to learn about our community as a whole and about ways we might engage you individually.

Use or share your information as otherwise disclosed at the point of collection. For example, when you elect to take an action on our website, we may request information about you and provide a notice that completing and submitting the form will mean that you permit us to share the data you have entered with other parties.

Deliver targeted content—including advertisements—to you over the phone, through the mail, and using digital platforms such as social media, other websites, search results pages, and mobile applications.

Measure and improve the performance of our Site.

Investigate or maintain the stability and security of our Site.

 

To perform each of these functions, we may share your information with service providers that support our operations.

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Additional Uses

This section provides additional information on some special circumstances where we may use or share your data with other organizations. We believe you should have choice regarding these activities and have included information on how you can choose whether your data is used for these practices in the section Communication Preferences below. 

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These additional uses are:

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Delivering targeted content, including advertisements, to you on non-TorontoSOS digital platforms such as social media, other websites, search results pages and mobile apps.

Engaging in list sharing agreements with organizations that may be of interest to you.

 

Deliver targeted content on non-TorontoSOS platforms

To enable us to provide the most relevant information on our activities, we may share your personal information with communications platforms, such as Facebook, to deliver our content to you or to identify other people who may enjoy our content.

 

We may also share our community members’ information with organizations that display our advertisements or any TorontoSOS-branded materials to their subscribers in order to reduce the volume of communications you may receive. 

 

Importantly, we want you to have the opportunity to learn about these practices and give you the opportunity to opt out of them.

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If you do not wish to have your data shared with these service providers, please let us know by contacting TorontoSOS’s Privacy Lead, Natasha Ali at hello@torontosos.com.

Mandatory Disclosures

We may disclose your data to third parties if we are required to do so by law, such as to comply with a subpoena or other legal process, a court order, or government reporting obligations, or if we determine that sharing data about you is necessary to detect, prevent, and respond to misuse of the Site or privacy and security threats to the Site.

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We will object to legal demands for access to your information that we believe to be improper. However, if we determine we are required by law to disclose your data and if we are legally permitted to do so, we will attempt to provide you with notice of the request by whatever method is reasonably practicable prior to making the disclosure. We will not provide such notice, however, if the disclosure is pursuant to our regular government reporting obligations, such as financial disclosures required for tax law compliance.

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Security Measures and Data Transmission

We have taken physical, electronic, and administrative measures to safeguard the information we collect. We work to ensure data accuracy and protect against unauthorized access to, and improper use of, information we collect online.

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Information that can be readily linked to you personally, such as your name and address, is stored by us on servers subject to security safeguards. Additionally, all data transmitted to and from our Site, including credit card numbers, are encrypted in transit.

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We require our service providers to whom we transfer your personal information to agree to take reasonable security measures in the handling and storage of that information. For service providers to whom we transfer particularly sensitive personal information, we may also undergo a more intensive assessment of their platforms and security practices to verify their commitments to maintain the confidentiality and privacy of that information in their possession.

Communication Preferences

If you wish to update personal information or change your communication preferences, you may contact us to update our records.

 

If you have any other questions regarding this Privacy Statement or our data practices, you can reach our Privacy Lead by emailing hello@torontosos.com.

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Procedure When We Update This Statement

Our privacy statement may change from time to time. We will post privacy statement changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice on our website.

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