Privacy Policy

Table of Contents

1. Protecting your personal information as laid out in our Privacy Policy
2. What information does NovaShores Adventures collect?
3. Communicating with NovaShores Adventures
4. Why does NovaShores Adventures collect personal information?
5. Who does NovaShores Adventures share your personal information with?
   5.1 External service providers
   5.2 Payment card information
6. How long will your information be stored?
7. Your rights
8. Methods used to collect information
   8.1 Contact Forms
   8.2 IP Addresses
   8.3 Web Server Logs
   8.4 How cookies are used
   8.5 Embedded content from other websites
   8.6 Links to other websites
   8.7 Google Analytics
9. Security measures
   9.1 Email messages
   9.2 How NovaShores Adventures safeguards your information
10. Business Transfers
11. Privacy Policy Changes
12. Contact

 

Privacy Policy

 

1. Protecting your personal information as laid out in our Privacy Policy

NovaShores Adventures has a legal duty to protect your personal information, whether you are browsing our website for information or conducting business with us through electronic channels. NovaShores Adventures’ handling of personal information is governed by legislation, including the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) Act as well as other regulations and policies. This Privacy Policy explains how we fulfill this legal duty.

By using the NovaShores Adventures website and online services, you accept the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not wish to use the internet to provide personal information to NovaShores Adventures for an online service, you are welcome to contact the organization in person, by phone or by mail.

Your privacy is very important to us. At NovaShores Adventures we don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it. We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to process tour bookings, payments and refunds through third party providers such as the payment gateway Bambora or the online booking system provided by Checkfront. We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the ongoing operation of our site. It is NovaShores Adventures’ policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our website.

General information (for example, type of web browser you use and what website pages you visit) is not considered personal information.

2. What information does NovaShores Adventures collect?

Visitors to NovaShores Adventures’ website may choose to interact with this website in ways that require us to gather personal information. Personal information means recorded information about an identifiable individual, as defined in the FOIPOP Act. It includes information such as your name, address, telephone number, email address, dietary restrictions, credit card information, and other information that identifies you during your booking process.

According to our Privacy Policy, the amount and type of information that NovaShores Adventures gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who comment on our blog to provide a username and email address. From those who wish to receive the NovaShores Adventures newsletter via email, we collect their emails. In each case, NovaShores Adventures collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with NovaShores Adventures. Visitors can refuse to supply personal information. If you choose not to provide this information, we may be restricted in our ability to provide services to you.

3. Communicating with NovaShores Adventures

If you send NovaShores Adventures an email, submit an inquiry or provide feedback online, we will use or disclose your personal information as needed to provide you with a response.

NovaShores Adventures collects some information automatically when you visit our website and when you use our online booking system.

Here are some of the ways in which our website collects user information as per our Privacy Policy:

• User name and email address in WordPress comment forms
• Comment form cookie which remembers a user’s name or email address
• Name and email addresses submitted by user by using a contact form
• Name and email address submitted to sign up for email list by MailChimp
• Google Analytics tracking
• Social media platform widgets that track users

Beyond the website, we may also collect and store your information through interactions with our employees over the phone, in-person or through email and other online and social media connections.

4. Why does NovaShores Adventures collect personal information?

 NovaShores Adventures collects your personal information only if it’s necessary for tour and guest room booking purposes.

NovaShores Adventures collects your personal information online, if you choose to provide it, to:

• respond to your email inquiries, comments or requests
• allow you to subscribe to information online
• contact you as needed, in relation to providing tourism services
• process your booking of the tours and guest room offered by NovaShores Adventures 
• enable you to register for and receive products or services online
• get your feedback and allow you to leave reviews
• allow you to complete transactions and pay for services

5. Who does NovaShores Adventures share your personal information with?

NovaShores Adventures uses or discloses your personal information for the same purpose or compatible purpose for which it was collected. We will not rent or sell personal information to anyone.

5.1 External service providers

Information we collect may be shared with third party service providers for processing bookings and payments, and to enable NovaShores Adventures to analyze trends.

Services like online booking and payment processing are handled by Checkfront and Bambora. Both are Canadian companies with seats in Victoria, BC. Another payment processor for NovaShores Adventures is PayPal. All external service providers that work with NovaShores Adventures comply with legislative requirements and security policies. Both Checkfront and Bambora are Canadian companies.

5.2 Payment card information

Personal information you provide during an online credit card transaction is not disclosed to or stored by us. It will be provided directly to a third party provider who processes the payment. In our case you can choose between the payment processing facilitators Bambora and PayPal. Please refer to their Privacy Policy. For information on how credit card companies protect your information, please refer to their card holder policies and privacy policies.

When you complete an Interac® Online transaction, your financial institution collects personal information. Please refer to your financial institution’s privacy policies for information on how it protects your information.

In case we take your personal information over the phone, we will enter it into the online booking system Checkfront, a third party provider, where it will be stored. We will not store your credit card information at our office. Access to your personal banking information is restricted to specific individuals who need access to this information specifically to process your payment.

 

6. How long will your information be stored?

 Personal information that NovaShores Adventures stores is restricted to name, dietary restrictions and special requests. It is kept in an online Google Calendar that is shared with employees such as guides, kitchen and office staff indefinitely or until you request to have your information removed.

Personal information such as name, email address, phone number, address, and dietary restrictions are stored by the online booking system Checkfront indefinitely or until you request to have your information removed.

Credit card information is stored by our payment facilitator Bambora indefinitely where required by law, or until you request to have your information removed.

If you leave a comment under our blog, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely by WordPress unless you request to have your information removed. This is so they can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

 

7. Your rights

 You have the right to be informed of how your information will be used, the right to access your information and rectify it, and the right to erase your information from our systems at any time. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. You also have the right to restrict our processing of your data or object to its use. Please contact us by email at seakayak@novashores.com to request access to your information and submit requests related to your rights.

 

8. Methods used to collect information

 

8.1 Contact Forms

We may collect personal information through online contact forms (or links to forms) available on our website or through a service provider such as MailChimp or Checkfront. You actively opt in to receiving a service by filling out these forms. The forms collect information such as name, email and other related information required to deliver our services, process contact requests, and deliver email marketing campaigns. You actively sign up for email campaigns. Each email provides an opportunity for recipients to opt-out, unsubscribe or update their information. Our current provider is MailChimp.

8.2 IP Addresses

The Government of Nova Scotia considers the IP address to be personal information. IP addresses are unique numbers assigned by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to all devices used to access the internet. Web servers record the IP addresses of visitors to their sites. The IP address, on its own, does not identify an individual. In certain circumstances, it could be used, together with other information available to government, to identify an individual using the site. For example, an ISP may co-operate with government in a criminal investigation by providing extra information to use for this purpose.

 

 8.3 Web Server Logs

 When you access the NovaShores Adventures website, servers collect some information about your internet connection and your browsing experience in their logs. This includes the IP address of your internet connection and information about what you access on the websites.

NovaShores Adventures uses this information only to fulfill your requests. NovaShores Adventures does not attempt to use this information to identify individuals visiting the websites, unless it detects an attempt to damage or violate the site. NovaShores Adventures protects and restricts access to this information.

8.4 How cookies are used

 A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Cookies collect certain pieces of information about your website visit. This information helps us identify what visitors are interested in, so that we may continually work towards providing useful and relevant content. Cookies also track website activity in order to optimize site security and prevent fraud. Cookies last from 1 minute up to up to several years.

Cookies don’t allow us to identify individuals. It is possible to change the settings on a web browser to deny cookies or to warn when cookies will be deposited. However, it may affect your experience when you interact with the NovaShores Adventures website as the website may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

NovaShores Adventures’ website uses cookies and also allows embedded content from other websites to use cookies on our website. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by NovaShores Adventures and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Google Analytics places cookies on our website to track visitors’ activity and analyze how they use the NovaShores Adventures website. This data gives us the opportunity to continuously improve our content and presentation. YouTube measures bandwidth by use of cookies to determine whether the user gets the new or old player interface. It also tracks how often embedded videos are played on our website and user preferences.

If you leave a comment under a blog on our WordPress website you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

8.5 Embedded content from other websites

 The NovaShores Adventures website uses a variety of web applications such as Google Analytics, Google Maps and YouTube to provide visitors with relevant information and enhance the online experience. Pages on this site therefore may contain embedded content (e.g. YouTube videos, images, articles, Google Maps etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Further information on Google’s policies on the protection of personal information can be found through Google’s Privacy FAQ. Refer also to YouTube to learn more about their commitment to privacy.

8.6 Links to other websites

The NovaShores Adventures website may include links to websites managed by other organizations. NovaShores Adventures is not responsible for the protection of any information you give to these websites or the content on these websites.

 

8.7 Google Analytics

 We use Google Analytics to collect site usage data in aggregate to monitor the user experience and measure visitation patterns. Understanding how you use the NovaShores Adventures website helps us improve our online services and make the websites more useful.

NovaShores Adventures uses Google Analytics to collect information about:

• the pages you visit
• how long you spend on each web page
• how you got to the website
• what you click on while you’re visiting the website
• type of browser or device
• date and time

Google Analytics does not collect or store your personal information (for example your name or address) so this information can’t be used to identify who you are. Data collected by Google may be stored outside of Canada.

We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

You can opt out of Google Analytics by downloading a browser add-on that deactivates Google Analytics.

 

9. Security measures

9.1 Email messages

NovaShores Adventures cannot guarantee the privacy and security of email messages sent from your computer to ours, because this information might be transmitted without encryption. For your protection, carefully consider the type and the amount of personal information you send to NovaShores Adventures by email.

9.2 How NovaShores Adventures safeguards your information

 NovaShores Adventures takes reasonable security steps to protect your personal information. We use a variety of security measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure or disposal. For example, we use industry standard web browser certificate and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt the information on our website.

10. Business Transfers

 If NovaShores Adventures or all of its assets were acquired, the business including user information would be transferred to its new owner. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of NovaShores Adventures may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.

 

11. Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, NovaShores Adventures may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in NovaShores Adventures’ sole discretion. NovaShores Adventures encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

 

12. Contact

 seakayak@novashores.com