Last update: Oct 18th, 2024

Meowtel takes your privacy seriously, and this Privacy Policy ("Policy") sets out how we collect, use, and protect your data as well as your related legal rights. Please read it carefully. By using Meowtel's website, mobile app, or Services, you confirm that you consent to the collection, use and sharing of your information as described in this Policy.


We also recommend that you read our Terms, which govern how we provide Services and incorporate this Policy. Any terms used in this Policy without definition have the meaning provided in the Terms.

Users with a disability can access this Policy in an alternative format by emailing [email protected] or calling us at 1-844-MEOWTEL.


  1. I. What This Policy Covers
  2. II. Data We Collect
  3. III. How We Use Your Information
  4. IV. How We Protect Your Information
  5. V. How We Store And Retain Your Information
  6. VI. How We Share Your Information
  7. VII. Cookies, Tracking, Advertising and Opt-Out Information
  8. VIII. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Notice
  9. IX. California Consumer Privacy Act Statement and Special Rights of California Residents
  10. X. Changes To This Policy
  11. XI. How To Contact Us


I. WHAT THIS POLICY COVERS

This Policy describes how we collect and treat Personal Data when you access or use our Services. Personal Data is any information that identifies or relates to a specific person and may be referred to in applicable rules, laws or regulations as "personally identifiable information" or "Personal Information." This Policy does not extend to the practices of third parties that are not owned, managed or controlled by Meowtel.


II. WHAT WE COLLECT

Types of Personal Data:

Meowtel may collect the following types of Personal Data from you when you use our Services or interact with our website:


  1. Contact information, such as your name, email address, all or part of your postal address, and phone number;
  2. Payment and billing data provided to us or our third-party service providers, such as bank information; credit card, bank or check numbers; credit card expiration date, billing address, and security code; and tax information as may be necessary for us or our third-party services providers to provide Services, including processing payment by clients and paying our Cat Sitters. To keep your financial data secure, we contract with a third-party provider to maintain and process your payment information;
  3. Identity information, such as date of birth, government-issued identification number, and, for Cat Sitters, employment history and, where required by our policies and to the extent permitted by law, the results of any reference or background checks provided by our third- party agents;
  4. Commercial and user-specific data, such as order history; profile; past participation in online promotions; communications through our website; information about your cat, like age and health background; photos or videos of you and your cat; and other information in order to personalize client services, such as an identification number unique to each user;
  5. Device information, such as IP address, device ID, and the type of device or operating system used to access the website;
  6. Web analytics, such as interactions between websites, the manner through which you accessed the website, non-identifiable request IDs, and related statistics;
  7. Tracking and registration, such as hashed identifiers derived from email addresses for the purposes of cross-device tracking for targeted advertising;
  8. Location Data, which may be general information inferred from your IP address or specific geolocation information; and
  9. Social Network Site ("SNS") information if you register via a SNS (like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+), such as your name, profile information, gender, networks, user IDs, friends, location, birthdate, email address, photos, videos, people or posts you interact with or follow or who interact with and follow you, and pixel tracking information. SNS sites have their own privacy policies that govern how they use and disclose your Personal Data, and Meowtel has no control over third-party use or disclosure.


Sources of Personal Data:

Meowtel may gather and combine Personal Data received from information that (i) you voluntarily provide to us, (ii) we collect automatically, and (iii) we receive from third parties.


A. Information you provide:

When you register for an account with Meowtel, whether to become or to book a Cat Sitter, you will be asked to provide Personal Data in order to complete your profile, process your requests, and personalize your services. In addition, you may be asked to provide Personal Information if you use our Services or certain website functions and special features, such as surveys or promotions. You may also provide us with Personal Data if you choose to send us an email or otherwise contact us or other users through Meowtel's platforms.


B. Information we collect automatically:

When you use Meowtel Services, some information is collected automatically through your mobile device or web browser, applications or software that you download or use and which may transmit information, or Cookies and tracking technologies, which are further described in Section VII. Automatically collected information may include geolocation, device, browser, and usage information.


C. Information from third parties:

To the extent permitted by law, we may collect Personal Data from our affiliates, business partners, or other third parties, such as supplemental information for identity verification, fraud detection, safety, integration of our Services with the services of a business partner, and enhancement of our business through marketing products and services. If you choose to use integrated services, we may also receive Personal Data as part of that integration. For our Cat Sitters, we may work with third parties to perform criminal background, identity, and right to work checks, as applicable and permitted by law, for our legitimate interest in maintaining the quality of our Services and safety of clients.


III. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We may use the Personal Data we collect from you to:

  1. Personalize our website based on your preferences and location to improve and customize the content and advertising you see on our website, while using our Services, and elsewhere across the Internet;
  2. Process your requests and transactions as efficiently as possible, including to provide you with requested Services;
  3. Provide fast and direct customer service whenever you need it, including responding to questions or concerns;
  4. Make improvements to our website;
  5. Send periodic emails and messages regarding your bookings or requests, marketing communications, technical notices, updates, and security alerts;
  6. Administer a promotion, survey, mailing list or other website feature;
  7. Share with our business partners or service providers with regard to our Services or another legitimate business interest, such as identity verification;
  8. Carry out certain marketing activities;
  9. Conduct research and analysis; or
  10. Enforce our Terms, including legal compliance and protecting rights, safety, and property.


We also collect anonymous information when you navigate our website or use our Services. We use this information to make improvements to our website and Services, personalize your experience, and measure website traffic.


When you provide us with your email address, we may use it to send you information, respond to requests, process orders, send order confirmations, and send you other information related to our Services. You have the right to unsubscribe from receiving future emails at any time, and can do so by following the instructions at the bottom of any email we send to you.


IV. HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION

Your Personal Information is protected behind secured networks. In addition, all of the personal information you provide on our website is encrypted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology, as is any connection you complete on our website that requires you to submit Personal Information.


When you submit payment information for processing via Checkout.com, that information will be stored securely on the Checkout.com Payment Gateway and is never stored on Meowtel servers. You can read Checkout.com's privacy policy here.


When you submit payment information for processing via PayPal, that information will be stored securely on PayPal and is never stored on Meowtel servers. You can read PayPal's privacy policy here.

We run regular virus, malware, and vulnerability scans on our website. If any data breaches are ever detected on our website, you will be notified via the website and via email, if you have provided us with your email address, within one business day.


V. HOW WE STORE AND RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION

We store your Personal Data securely on our website and servers or with third parties. For example, we may use Hubspot CRM for Cat Sitter resumes, which may also be stored on our servers. In addition, Checkout.com and PayPal may store your credit card or banking information in order to expedite future reservations and make the billing or payout process more convenient for you when you use our Services. If you do not wish to have your information stored, you can remove your credit card information via the "Payment Info" section of your account. We use Checkout.com and PayPal to handle payments.


We will keep your Personal Data until you delete your account or request deletion, for as long as we have a legitimate business need to do so, or as required by law for tax, legal, accounting or other purposes, whichever is the longer.


If you have elected to receive our marketing communications, we generally retain information about such preferences until you opt out of these communications.


Periodically we will review our data retention practices to determine the appropriate retention period for your Personal Data, considering the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure, the purposes of use and retention and whether such purposes can be achieved through other means, and any applicable legal requirements. We may anonymize your Personal Data in some cases so that it can no longer identify you, in which case it is no longer Personal Data.


Where we provide your Personal Data to third parties, we contractually prohibit the retention, use, or disclosure of your Personal Data, except as required to perform the contracted services for us. To the extent permitted by law, we may, however, permit third parties to use information that does not identify you for other purposes, including information that has been aggregated or de-identified.


VI. HOW WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION

We may share your Personal Data and other information with the following third-parties:

  1. Affiliates, Service Providers, and Business Partners: To meet our business and operational needs, perform key functions, and market and deliver our Services, we may share your Personal Data with our third-party service providers, such as hosting, storage, and other information technology; payment processing and financial; fraud prevention and detection; email communication and customer or technical support; tax, regulatory or legal; and analytics, marketing, and advertising. Such third parties may access, process, or store your Personal Data. We have no control over the policies and practices of any third-party, and where you choose to access Services that involve third- party providers, we advise you to review their privacy and Personal Data usage policies.
  2. By creating a Meowtel account using the Nestle Purina co-branded landing page located at https://meowtel.com/purina, you agree and acknowledge that your Personal Information will be shared with Nestle Purina PetCare Company ("Purina") and that Purina's handling of your Personal Information will be governed by Purina's privacy policy.
  3. By creating a Meowtel account using the Spot Pet co-branded landing page located at https://meowtel.com/spotpet, you agree and acknowledge that your Personal Information will be shared with Spot Pet Insurance Services, LLC ("Spot Pet") and that Spot Pet’s handling of your Personal Information will be governed by Spot Pet’s Privacy Policy.
  4. By creating a Meowtel account using the AAA Northeast co-branded landing page located at https://meowtel.com/AAANE, you agree and acknowledge that your Personal Information will be shared with AAA Northeast ("AAA") and that AAA's handling of your Personal Information will be governed by AAA Northeast's Privacy Policy.
  5. Cat Sitters, Clients, and Interactive Website Users: If, through your use of our Services, you share messages, reviews, videos or photos in areas designated as not private, then this content may be visible to other Cat Sitters, clients, or website visitors, including the general public. Meowtel also facilitates contact between Cat Sitters and clients and reserves the right to share the basic contact info (such as name, email address, phone number, and address where the Services will be performed) of each with the other or with a legal or other representative to (i) enable the performance of Services; (ii) facilitate the resolution of a dispute arising from or related to our Services.
  6. Change in Business Structure: If we undergo a merger, acquisition, financing due diligence, reorganization, bankruptcy, receivership, sale of all or a portion of our assets, or transition of services between providers, your Personal Data and other information may be shared or transferred pursuant to the transaction.
  7. Legal Regulation: If required by law or regulation, including the good faith belief that disclosure is necessary, we may share your Personal Data to (i) comply with a legal obligation or court order, (ii) protect and defend the safety, rights, or property of any person, or (iii) defend ourselves from legal liability, including enforcing our Terms. In general, your personally identifiable information will not be shared with third parties unless we give you advance notice.


Your non-personally identifiable information may be provided to third parties for purposes such as marketing or advertising, including Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and Google Adwords.


We also use social networking buttons provided by Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google. Your use of these buttons is optional, and is governed by the privacy policies of the respective services.


VII. COOKIES, TRACKING, ADVERTISING, AND OPT-OUT INFORMATION

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small data files placed on your computer or mobile device at the request of a website to enable recognition of users who have previously visited and to retain certain information such as user preferences and history. Cookies can be set onto your computer or mobile device by us or by others. "First party Cookies" are those set by us and allow us to provide you with our Services and enable our website to function. Cookies set by anyone other than Meowtel are called "third-party cookies" and enable third-party features or functionality that are provided on or through the website, such as advertising, interactive content and analytics. The third party that sets these Cookies may be able to recognize your computer both when it visits our website and also when it visits certain other websites.


The following Cookies may be in use on our website:



  1. Essential Website Cookies: These Cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with available Services through our website and to use some website features, such as accessing secure areas.
  2. Performance and Functionality Cookies: These Cookies are used to enhance the performance and functionality of our website but are non-essential to use the website or access Services. However, without these Cookies, some website features, such as videos, may not be available.
  3. Analytics and Customization Cookies: These Cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us to customize our website for you and to understand our efficiency and effectiveness with, for example, website use or marketing campaigns.
  4. Advertising Cookies: These Cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant for you by, for example, preventing the same advertisement from appearing multiple times, ensuring proper display of advertisements, and selecting advertisements based on your interests.
  5. Social Networking Cookies: These Cookies may be used for advertising and also allow you to share pages and content from our website through third party social networking or other websites.


Why do we use Cookies?

We use Cookies to store certain information on your computer's hard drive to make our website work, to operate our Services, and to provide reporting information about our visitors and users so that we can analyze trends and improve our Services. Cookies can also be used for web and user analytics so that we can recognize your browser, remember your login information, customize the website to suit your preferences, gather data on website traffic and trends, and ensure that each visit you make to Meowtel is as personalized as possible. We or our third-party service providers may use these technologies in emails to help with tasks such as tracking email response rates, identifying when emails are viewed, and determining whether emails are forwarded. Third parties (such as AdRoll) may set Cookies for targeted advertising purposes.


Do I have to accept Cookies?

No. You can choose to have your computer warn you each time Cookie are being sent or refuse to accept all Cookies through your browser settings.

However, if you choose to completely disable Cookies, some features of the website may not work properly.


Do you gather other web data besides Cookies?

Meowtel may also use pixel tags, web beacons (small pieces of code that communicate when a webpage or content has been viewed), log data (logs created that include IP address, date and time of activity), clear GIFs and JavaScript on our website. We use third-party analytics providers such as Google Analytics and Inspectlet on the Site. Google Analytics uses cookies and similar technologies to collect and analyze information about the use of the Services and report on activities and trends. Google Analytics may also collect information regarding the use of other websites, apps, and online resources. You can learn about Google's practices by going to www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/. We have also engaged Inspectlet to analyze the activities of visitors to the Meowtel App and website, and Inspectlet's authorized use of cookies and other tracking technologies enables it to have access to Personal Information of visitors to Meowtel's app and website. Such access to and use of Personal Information by Inspectlet is governed by Inspectlet's privacy policy, available at https://www.inspectlet.com/legal#privacy.


How can I opt out?

There are several ways you can opt out of advertising, tracking and other web data collection. First, with regard to emails you may receive from us, you can always opt out of emails that are not essential to Services (such as a booking confirmation, for example) within the email itself. For online advertising, you can look for an AdChoices logo (the blue triangle) in the corner of the ad. Click the logo to learn more about interest-based advertising and who served the ad as well as to manage your ad options. If you would like more information about your options with regard to digital advertising, including opting out, the Digital Advertising Alliance ("DAA"), Network Advertising Initiative ("NAI"), and CCPA Opt-Out Tool provide more information. For your mobile device, click here.


VIII. CHILDREN'S ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION ACT NOTICE

Per our Terms, persons under the age of 18 are not allowed to access or use our website or Services. We do not knowingly collect any information from persons under the age of 18. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected such information, we will delete that information as soon as possible. If you believe that we may have such information, please contact us at [email protected] or by calling 1-844-MEOWTEL.


IX. CALIFORNIA CONSUMER PRIVACY ACT STATEMENT AND SPECIAL RIGHTS OF CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA"), residents of California have the additional rights outlined in this Section IX regarding Meowtel's collection, use, retention, and sharing of their Personal Information. These rights apply to information we collect through our website or provision of Services, whether online or offline; however, Personal Data we collect from our employees, job applicants, or service providers in the course of provision or receipt of business-related services is exempted (so long as such information is collected in those capacities).


Sale of Personal Information:

Meowtel does not sell your Personal Information to third parties and will not do so in the future without providing you with notice and an opportunity to opt out of such sale as required by law. If the term "sell" under the CCPA is determined to include advertising activity as described in this Policy, then Meowtel will comply with any related legal requirements.


Notice of Collection:

This Policy provides full information on our collection and use of Personal Data. Meowtel will collect or has collected the following CCPA-specific categories of information for the purposes of providing our Services, marketing, and advertising:

  1. Identifiers, such as name, postal address, email address, account name, government-issued identification or tax numbers, and a unique, user-specific ID number;
  2. Personal Information under the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code Section 1798.80(e)), such as education and employment history of Cat Sitters;
  3. Protected classification characteristics, such as age or gender, which is protected under California or federal law;
  4. Commercial information, such as purchases or consuming histories or tendencies;
  5. Internet or electronic activity, including history of visiting and interacting with our website, browser type, browser language and other information collected automatically;
  6. Geolocation data, including location enabled services such as WiFi and GPS;
  7. Professional or employment-related information;
  8. Education Information for Cat Sitters or if provided voluntarily by users; and
  9. Inferences, including information about user characteristics, interests, behavior, and preferences.


Rights Specific to California Residents:

California residents may take advantage of the following rights:

  1. You may request, up to two times each year, that we disclose to you the categories and specific pieces of Personal Information that we have collected about you, the categories of sources from which your Personal Data is collected, the business or commercial purpose for collecting your Personal Information, the categories of Personal Information that we disclosed for a business purpose, any categories of Personal Information about you that we sold, the categories of third-parties with whom we have shared your Personal Information, and the business or commercial purpose for selling your Personal Data, if applicable.
  2. You may request that we disclose any financial incentives provided to you.
  3. An authorized agent may be designated by you to submit requests on your behalf; however, Meowtel requires verification of such permission as well as your identity.
  4. You may request that we delete any Personal Information that we have collected from or about you, except in certain circumstances where we may have legal grounds to keep such data. And, in some cases, complying with your request may mean that we no longer have the necessary information required to provide you with future Services. You can send your request to [email protected].
  5. We value your privacy and will not discriminate in response to your exercise of privacy rights.


X. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

We periodically review and update this Policy and reserve the right to make changes. Whenever we make a change that is substantive or retroactive, we may provide you with notice by email (if you have provided us with your email address and not opted out of such communications) or through our website. We encourage you, however, to review this Policy periodically to check for updates. Whenever we make a change to this policy, you shall be deemed to have notice of those changes, and to agree if you thereafter use our website or Services.


XI. HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have any questions or comments regarding this Policy, including complaints or requests about how we collect, use, or retain your Personal Data, you can contact us via these methods:

Website: Contact Us page

Address: Meowtel Inc., 1111B S Governors Ave #3554, Dover, DE, 19904

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 1-844-MEOWTEL

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