Privacy Policy

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it. The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to inform you what personally identifiable information we may collect and how it may be used. This statement only applies to this Website.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT AND HOW IS IT USED?

General

Travel Solo Anyway (the “Office” or “We/Our”) and our trusted partners acting on our behalf, use your personal data:

• to provide services to you
• to make a tailored website available to you (subject to our Terms of Use here)
• to help us verify your identity
• for crime and fraud protection, detection and related purposes
• with your agreement, to contact you electronically about promotional offers and services that we think may interest you
• for market research purposes – to better understand your needs
• to enable us to manage customer service interactions with you; and
• where we have a legal right or duty to use or disclose your information (for example in relation to an investigation by a public authority or in a legal dispute.)

Newsletter and Marketing

On the Website, you may subscribe to our newsletter, which may be used for advertising purposes. All newsletters sent may contain tracking pixels as part of the service provided to us by our email list provider (ActiveCampaign). The pixel is embedded in emails and allows an analysis of the success of online marketing campaigns. Because of these tracking pixels, we may see if and when you open an email and which links within the email you click. This allows us to adapt the Website content of future newsletters to the interests of the user. This behavior of yours will not be passed on to third parties however your behaviour may be tracked and shared by the email service provider.

Information You Voluntarily Submit to the Website

We may collect personal information from you and may use that personal data for electronic marketing purposes. We may collect the following information about you:

• your name, age/date of birth and identified gender
• your contact details: postal address, telephone number and e-mail address
• services purchased by you and your payment details
• your on-line browsing activities on this Website
• your communication and marketing preferences
• your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses
• your location
• your correspondence and communications with us; and
• other publicly available data, including as mentioned elsewhere in this Policy or which you have shared via a public forum such as a Twitter feed, LinkedIn Page, or public-Facebook Page or other social media.

For example, you may voluntarily submit information to the Website by leaving a comment, subscribing to our newsletter, or submitting a contact form.

Your email address will never be shared or displayed publicly. Email addresses are only stored for the purposes of responding to comments, email inquiries, or for sending an email newsletter, to which you have voluntarily and affirmatively opted-in to receive. If you respond to or send us an email directly, we may also see your name, profile picture, email signature, and any other information you have attached to your email account, in the same way as any other email correspondence.

You may opt-out of receiving promotional communications from us at any time by changing your marketing preferences via email to [email protected], or making use of the simple “unsubscribe” link in the emails sent to you.

Automatically-Collected Information

We automatically collect certain information about you and the device with which you access the Website. For example, when you use the Website, we may log your IP address, operating system type, browser type, referring website, pages you viewed, and the dates/times when you accessed the Website. We may also collect information about actions you take when using the Website, such as links clicked.

HOW YOUR INFORMATION MAY BE USED

We may use the information collected in the following ways:

• To operate and maintain the Website
• To send you promotional information, such as newsletters. Each email promotion will provide information on how to opt-out of future mailings
• To send you administrative communications, such as administrative emails, confirmation emails, technical notices, updates on policies, or security alerts
• To respond to your comments or inquiries
• To provide you with user support
• To track and measure advertising on the Website
• To protect, investigate, and deter against unauthorized or illegal activity.

SHARING DATA WITH THIRD-PARTIES

A. General service providers and suppliers

In order to make certain services available to you we may need to share your personal data with some of our service partners. These include administration or back office support personnel, IT support personnel, accountants or our other trusted partners. We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information when we have confirmed that they apply appropriate data protection and security controls. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to data protection and security, which means they can only use our data to provide services to us and to you, and for no other purposes.

B. Other third parties

Aside from our services providers, we will not disclose your personal data to any third party EXCEPT as set out below.

We may share your information with third parties when you explicitly authorize us to share your information. We may share your data with:

• Our carefully selected partners who provide our company’s branded services.
• Credit reference agencies where necessary for payments
• Governmental bodies, regulators law enforcement agencies, courts/tribunals where we are required to do so in order to:
  • comply with our legal obligations
  • exercise our legal rights (for example in a court case)
  • prevent, detect, investigate crime or prosecution of offenders; and
  • protect our employees and customers.

C. Specific Third Party Service Providers

Additionally, the Website may use specific third-party service providers to service various aspects of the Website. Each third-party service provider’s use of your personal information is dictated by their respective privacy policies. *** PLEASE SEE THE FULL LIST OF SPECIFIC THIRD PARTY SERVICE PROVIDERS AT THE END OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY***

WHERE WE STORE YOUR DATA

When you contact us by email or through our Website, your data is stored on our email server or in Gmail – a service offered by Google. For WordPress users please note the additional comments under “Those using their WordPress.com account” set out below at the end of this Policy. If you are a customer or client of ours, we store your data in our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software platform, or in our own accounts software on Google Drive.

HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR DATA?

We will not retain your data for longer than is necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of data, however the longest we will normally hold any personal data is ten (10) years.

HOW DO WE PROTECT YOUR DATA?

We are committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure. Our security measures include:

• Regular cyber security assessments of all service providers who may handle your personal data
• Regular scenario planning and crisis management exercises to ensure we are ready to respond to cyber security attaches and data security incidents
• Security controls which protect our entire IT infrastructure from external attacks and unauthorized access; and
• Internal policies setting out our data security approach and training for third parties as necessary.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP PROTECT YOUR DATA?

We will never ask you to confirm any bank account or credit card details via email. If you receive an email claiming to be from us asking you to do so, please ignore it and do not respond. If you are using a computing device in a public WIFI location, we recommend that you always log out and close the website browser when you complete an on line session.

WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS RELATED TO YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

You have the following rights:

• the right to ask for a copy of the personal information that we hold about you (the right to access)
• the right (in certain circumstances) to request that we delete personal data held about you; where we no longer have legal reason to retain it (the right of erasure or to be forgotten)
• the right to ask us to update, amend and correct any out-of-date or incorrect personal data that we hold about you (the right of rectification)
• the right to opt-out of future of any marketing communications that we may send you and to object to us using/holding your personal data if we have no longer have any legitimate reasons to do so (the right to opt out and the right to object)
• the right (in certain circumstances to ask us to restrict processing of data, which means that we would need to secure and retain the data for your benefit but not otherwise use it (the right to restrict processing); and
• the right (in certain circumstances) to ask us to supply you with some of the personal data ww hold about you in a structured machine-readable format and/or to provide a copy of the data in such a format to another organisation (the right to data portability).

If you wish to exercise any of the above rights please contact us via: [email protected]

Please note that we may need to retain certain information for record-keeping purposes or to complete transactions, or when required by law.

ANONYMOUS DATA

From time to time, we may use anonymous data, which does not identify you alone, or when combined with data from other parties. This type of anonymous data may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Examples of this anonymous data may include analytics or information collected from cookies.

PUBLICLY VISIBLE INFORMATION

If you leave a comment on the Website, certain information may be publicly visible. This includes the name you choose to enter. If you have a Gravatar connected to the email address you use to comment on this Website, the Gravatar profile picture (avatar), along with the name you choose to enter, will be publicly displayed. Your email address will never be available publicly. At your option, you may also add a link to your website, social accounts or any other webpage. Visitors to this website may see any information you input in the comments, excluding your email address, including your username, avatar and website information.

COOKIES

Like many Websites, the Office may collect information in the form of “Cookies” to store information about users who visit this Website. We use that data to compile statistics about your preferences, how the Website is used by you, such as what pages you accessed, what documents you downloaded and what tabs are opened. Gathering this information about Website usage helps the Office understand what users find useful and also helps us to update the user experience of the Website. Our Advertisers may also utilize Cookies when collecting information about how users interact with links to their products, or by third-party services, such as Google Analytics.

Users may, at any time, prevent the setting of cookies, by the Website, by using a DNT (Do Not Track) or corresponding setting of your internet browser and may thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Furthermore, already set cookies may be deleted at any time via an Internet browser or other software programs. This is possible in all popular Internet browsers. However, if users deactivate the setting of cookies in your Internet browser, not all functions of our Website may be entirely usable.

ADVERTISING

Display Ads

We may use third-party advertising companies to serve content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use cookies, as noted above.

Retargeting Ads

From time to time, the Website may engage in remarketing efforts with third-party companies, such as Google, Facebook, or Instagram, in order to market the Website. These companies use cookies to serve ads based on someone's past visits to the Website.

Affiliate Program Participation

The Website may engage in affiliate marketing, which is done by embedding tracking links into the Website. If you click on a link for an affiliate partnership, a cookie will be placed on your browser to track any sales for purposes of commissions. Travel Solo Anyway is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and links to Amazon.com. As part of this Amazon Associates program, the Website will post customized links, provided by Amazon, to track the referrals to their website. This program utilizes cookies to track visits for the purposes of assigning commission on these sales.

SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION

At no time should you submit sensitive personal information to the Website. This includes your social security number, information regarding race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, health information, criminal background, or trade union memberships. If you elect to submit such information to us, it will be subject to this Privacy Policy.

CHILDREN'S INFORMATION

Our Website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 16. If a parent or guardian believes that the Website has personally identifiable information of a child under the age of 16 in its database, please contact us immediately at [email protected] and we will use our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR DATA PROTECTION AT OUR COMPANY?

Travel Solo Anyway has appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to ensure that we protect the personal data of our customers (and others) and comply with data protection legislation. If you have any questions about how Travel Solo Anyway uses your personal data, please contact our DPO by:

e-mail: [email protected]

You have a right to lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. Further information, including contact details, is available at: https://www.oaic.gov.au/

CONTACT INFORMATION

At any time, please contact us at [email protected] for questions related to this Privacy Policy.

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*** Specific Third Party Service Providers

The Website currently uses the following third-party service providers:

Google Analytics – this service tracks Website usage and provides information such as referring websites and user actions on the Website. We have anonymized IP addresses (meaning that the last 3 digits of your IP address will not be captured). This means we are able to understand our audience's geography generally, without having access to specific location. No personal information is captured by Google Analytics.

ActiveCampaign – this service is used for delivery of email updates and newsletters. We store your name and email address for the purposes of delivering such communications. Please refer to ActiveCampaign's privacy policy for more information.

OptinMonster – this service is used for displaying forms, such as those used for signing up to an email mailing list. Your information is stored by ActiveCampaign, as described above. Cookies are utilized in order to provide a better user experience – for example, not being shown a form if you have already used it, or only showing the form again after a certain amount of time has elapsed. Please refer to OptinMonster's privacy policy for more information. As an additional measure to allow EU residents to exercise their rights under the The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), forms that do not utilize cookies will be served to users within the EU.

Jetpack Comments – a WordPress plugin (owned by Automattic) used to collect, display and store comments you voluntarily make on the Website. It collects the commenter’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided via the comment form), timestamp, and IP address. The comment author’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided during the comment submission) are stored in cookies. Learn more about these cookies.

When Akismet is enabled on the site (outlined below), the IP address and user agent originally submitted with the comment are synced, as well, as they are stored in post meta.

Those using their WordPress.com accounts to comment, should note that a jetpack.wordpress.com IFrame receives the following data: WordPress.com blog ID attached to the site, ID of the post on which the comment is being submitted, commenter’s local user ID (if available), commenter’s local username (if available), commenter’s site URL (if available), MD5 hash of the commenter’s email address (if available), and the comment content.

Akismet – an anti-spamming plugin that may flag comments as spam. This means that contact and comment form submission data — IP address, user agent, name, email address, website, and message — is submitted to the Akismet service (also owned by Automattic) for the sole purpose of spam checking. The actual submission data is stored in the database of this Website and is emailed directly to us as the owner of this Website. This email will include the submitter’s IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and message.

Except when required by law, we will not sell, distribute, or reveal your email addresses or other personal information without your consent; however, we may disclose or transfer personal information collected through the Website to third parties who acquire all or a portion of our business, which may be the result of a merger, consolidation, or purchase of all or a portion of our assets, or in connection with any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding brought by or against us.

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Changes to this Policy

Last updated: October 21, 2020