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Privacy Notice

THE AMERICAN KENNEL CLUB MUSEUM OF THE DOG

PRIVACY NOTICE

We have updated our Privacy Notice, effective from February 5, 2025, to:

  • Clarify how we collect, use, disclose and otherwise process personal information in connection with our services; and
  • Identify state-specific rights and disclosures. If appropriate.

If you have any questions about these changes, do not hesitate to contact us at info@museumofthedog.org.

Last Updated: [DATE]

Welcome! We are the American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving, interpreting and celebrating the role of dogs in society and educating the public about the human-canine bond through our collection of art and exhibits that inspire engagement with dogs. This Privacy Notice (this “Privacy Notice”) explains how the American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog (“AKC Museum of the Dog”, “we”, “us” or “our”) collects, uses, discloses, and otherwise processes personal information (as defined below) in connection with our websites (the “Sites”) and other websites we own and operate that link to this Privacy Notice, and the related content, platform, services, products, and other functionality offered on or through our online services (collectively, the “Services”). It does not address our privacy practices relating to AKC Museum of the Dog job applicants, employees and other personnel. It also does not apply to data that is deidentified or to publicly available information.

We may also choose or be required by law to provide different or additional disclosures relating to the processing of personal information about residents of certain countries, regions, or states. Please refer to the State-Specific Disclosures section below for additional disclosures that may be applicable to you. 

Table of Contents

OUR COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

When we use the term “personal information” in this Privacy Notice, we mean information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to an individual. It does not include aggregated or deidentified information that is maintained in a form that is not reasonably capable of being associated with or linked to an individual. We collect personal information in a variety of ways. For example, we may link or combine your activities and information collected from you on our Services or that we receive from third parties, as well as information we collect automatically through tracking technologies (defined below). This allows us to provide you with a personalized experience regardless of how you interact with us.

Personal Information Collected from You

We may collect the following personal information through the Services:

  • Contact Information, including first and last name, email address, mailing address, employer, job title, company name, phone number and communication preferences. We use this information primarily to fulfill your request or transaction, to communicate with you directly, and to send you marketing communications in accordance with your preferences.
  • Inquiry and Communications Information, including information provided in custom messages sent through the forms, to one of our email addresses, or via phone. This also includes information provided in order to subscribe to any of our newsletters (such as email address), or contact information provided on our Services.
  • Account Information, including first and last name, date of birth, email address, phone number, username, profile information, AKC Museum of the Dog membership information, interests, account balances, payment and purchase history information, awards, and any other information you provide to us. We use this information primarily to administer your account, provide you with our products and services, communicate with you regarding your account and your use of our products and services, and for customer support purposes.
  • Online Shop Information, including first and last name, email address, mailing information, location, payment history, and products and services considered or purchased. Please note we utilize a third-party provider to process payments on our behalf and do not accept payment directly through our Services.
  • Community-Related Information, including first and last name, company, mailing address, videos watched, any comments you provide on any blog posts or any blog posts you “Like”, information you type into any “search” or “question” field, information entered into any forms available on the Services, and contact information.
  • Contest, Sweepstakes, and Survey Information, including information provided when you enter a contest or sweepstakes, or information included in any questions submitted through surveys or content of any testimonials.
  • Donation Information, including first and last name, postal address, donation type, donation amount, donation frequency, phone number, email address, billing information and payment history.
  • Event Information, including registration information, membership information, attendee badge information, and contact information.
  • Volunteer Information, including first and last name, postal address, phone number, email address, date of birth, interests, references, availability, and any other information you choose to provide to us.

If you choose to contact us, we may need additional information to fulfill the request or respond to your inquiry. We may provide additional privacy disclosures where the scope of the request we receive or personal information we require fall outside the scope of this Privacy Notice. In that case, the additional privacy disclosures will govern how we may process the information you provide at that time.

Personal Information Automatically Collected

As is true of most digital platforms, we and our third-party providers may also collect personal information from an individual’s device, browsing actions and website usage patterns automatically when visiting or interacting with our Services, which may include log data (such as internet protocol (IP) address, operating system, browser type, browser id, the URL entered and the referring page/campaign, date/time of visit, the time spent on our Services and any errors that may occur during the visit to our Services), analytics data (such as the electronic path taken to our Services, through our Services and when exiting our Services, as well as usage and activity on our Services) and location data (such as general geographic location based on the log data we or our third-party providers collect). Please note that our systems may also record personal information that you type into our Sites and other online services even if you do not choose to submit it.

We and our third-party providers may use (i) cookies or small data files that are stored on an individual’s computer and (ii) other, related technologies, such as web beacons, pixels, embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies and logging technologies (collectively, “cookies”) to automatically collect this personal information. For example, our Sites use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google LLC (“Google”), to collect and view reports about the traffic on our Sites. More information about the use of Google Analytics for these analytical and non-advertising purposes can be obtained by visiting Google’s privacy policy here and Google’s currently available opt-out options are available here.

All of the information collected automatically through these tools allows us to improve your customer experience. For example, we may use this information to enhance and personalize your user experience, to monitor and improve our products and services, to offer communications features such as live and automated chat, and to improve the effectiveness of our products, services, offers, advertising, communications and customer service.  We may also use this information to:  (a) remember information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Sites; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information, including targeted content and advertising; (c) identify you across multiple devices; (d) provide and monitor the effectiveness of the Services; (e) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, usage, and demographic patterns on our Sites; (f) diagnose or fix technology problems; and (g) otherwise to plan for and enhance our products and services.To manage cookies, an individual may change their browser settings to: (i) notify them when they receive a cookie, so the individual can choose whether or not to accept it; (ii) disable existing cookies; or (iii) automatically reject cookies. Please note that doing so may negatively impact an individual’s experience using our Services, as some features and offerings may not work properly or at all. Depending on an individual’s device and operating system, the individual may not be able to delete or block all cookies. In addition, if an individual wants to reject cookies across all browsers and devices, the individual will need to do so on each browser on each device they actively use. An individual may also set their email options to prevent the automatic downloading of images that may contain technologies that would allow us to know whether they have accessed our email and performed certain functions with it.

For more information on our data collection and online advertising practices, as well as the data collection and online advertising practices of the third parties we work with, please see the Third Party Data Collection and Online Advertising section of this Privacy Notice.

Personal Information from Third Parties

We also obtain personal information from third parties; which we often combine with personal information we collect either automatically or directly from an individual.

We may receive the same categories of personal information as described above from the following third parties:

  • Other Members or Individuals who Interact with our Services: We may receive your information from other AKC Museum of the Dog members, volunteers, or other individuals who interact with our Services.
  • Your Employer / Company: If you interact with our Services through your employer or company, we may receive your information from your employer or company, including another representative of your employer or company.
  • Business Relationships: We may receive your information from our business relationships, such as companies that offer their products and/or services on our Services. For example, certain of our products and services allow our customers to integrate third-party services. If you choose to leverage these third-party service integrations, we may receive confirmation from our business partner regarding whether you are an existing customer of their services.
  • Social Media: When an individual interacts with our Services through various social media networks, such as when someone logs in through a social network, “Likes” us on Facebook or follows us or shares our content on Google, Facebook, X, or other social networks, we may receive some information about individuals that they permit the social network to share with third parties. The data we receive is dependent upon an individual’s privacy settings with the social network, and may include your profile information, profile picture, gender, username, user ID associated with your social media account, age range, language, country, and any other information you permit the social network to share with third parties. Individuals should always review and, if necessary, adjust their privacy settings on third-party websites and social media networks and services before sharing information and/or linking or connecting them to other services. We use this information primarily to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of our products and services, as well as to communicate directly with you, such as to send you messages about features that may be of interest to you.
  • Service Providers: Our service providers that perform services solely on our behalf, such as survey and marketing providers and payment processors, collect personal information and often share some or all of this information with us. For example, we receive personal information you may submit in response to requests for feedback to our survey providers.
  • Information Providers: We may from time to time obtain information from third-party information providers to correct or supplement personal information we collect. For example, we may obtain updated contact information from third-party information providers to reconnect with an individual.
  • Third Parties Related to Membership and Volunteer Inquiries and Applications: If you apply for a volunteer position with AKC Museum of the Dog or apply for AKC Museum of the Dog membership, we may receive information from your current or past employers, referrals, references, third-party social media platforms and other third parties we use to obtain information about volunteer and membership applicants.
  • Information from Other Sources: We may also collect personal information about individuals that we do not otherwise have from, for example, publicly available sources, third-party data providers, customers, or through transactions such as mergers and acquisitions. Such information may include contact information, employment-related information, and interest-in-services information. We may combine this information with the information we collect from an individual directly. We use this information to contact individuals, to process membership and volunteer applications and screening, to send advertising or promotional materials or to personalize our Services and to better understand the demographics of the individuals with whom we interact.

OUR USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We use personal information we collect to:

  • Fulfill or meet the reason the information was provided, such as to fulfill our contractual obligations, to deliver the Services you have requested and to process transactions, including facilitating your registrations and membership;
  • Manage our organization and its day-to-day operations;
  • Communicate with individuals, including via email and social media;
  • Request individuals to complete surveys about our organization, organizations we work with, and Services;
  • For marketing and advertising purposes, including to market to you or offer you through email or direct mail, and updates on products or services we think that you may be interested in;
  • Administer, improve and personalize our Services, including by recognizing an individual and remembering their information when they return to our Services;
  • Process payment for our Services;
  • Facilitate member benefits and services, including customer support through our command center services;
  • Identify and analyze how individuals use our Services;
  • Conduct research and analytics on our membership, volunteers, donors, visitor and user base and our Services;
  • Improve and customize our Services to address the needs and interests of our membership base and other individuals we interact with;
  • Test, enhance, update and monitor the Services, or diagnose or fix technology problems;
  • Help maintain the safety, security and integrity of our property and Services, technology assets and business;
  • Evaluate your candidacy for becoming a volunteer, to communicate with you during the application process and to facilitate the onboarding process;
  • To enforce our Terms of Use, to resolve disputes, to carry out our obligations and enforce our rights, and to protect our business interests and the interests and rights of third parties;
  • Prevent, investigate or provide notice of fraud or unlawful or criminal activity;
  • Comply with contractual and legal obligations and requirements;
  • Fulfill any other purpose for which you provide personal information; and
  • For any other lawful purpose, or other purpose that you consent to.

Where you choose to contact us, we may need additional information to fulfill the request or respond to inquiries. We may provide you with additional privacy-related information where the scope of the inquiry/request and/or personal information we require fall outside the scope of this Privacy Notice. In that case, the additional privacy notice will govern how we may process the information provided at that time.

OUR DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We disclose personal information in the following ways:

  • Affiliates. We may share personal information with other companies owned or controlled by AKC Museum of the Dog, and other companies owned by or under common ownership as AKC Museum of the Dog, which also includes, but is not limited to, our subsidiaries (i.e., any organization we own or control) or our ultimate holding company (i.e., any organization that owns or controls us) and any subsidiaries it owns, particularly when we collaborate in providing the Services.
  • Members and Volunteers: If you are a member or a volunteer, we may disclose your public profile information to other members or volunteers, as well as any other information you choose to provide or make public.
  • Contests, Sweepstakes, and Survey Providers: We share personal information with third parties who assist us in delivering our contests, sweepstakes, or survey offerings and processing the responses.
  • Marketing Providers: We coordinate and share personal information with our marketing providers in order to communicate with individuals about the Services we make available.
  • Customer Service and Communication Providers: We share personal information with third parties who assist us in providing our customer services and facilitating our communications with individuals that submit inquiries.
  • Other Service Providers: In addition to the third parties identified above, we engage other third-party service providers that perform business or operational services for us or on our behalf, such as website hosting, infrastructure provisioning, IT services, analytics services, payment processing services and administrative services.
  • Ad Networks and Advertising Relationships: We work with third-party ad networks and advertising organizations to deliver advertising and personalized content on our Services, on other websites and services, and across other devices. These parties may collect information directly from a browser or device when an individual visits our Services through cookies or other data collection technologies. This information is used to provide and inform targeted advertising, as well as to provide advertising-related services such as reporting, attribution, analytics and market research. Please see the section Third Party Data Collection and Online Advertising for more information.
  • Business Relationships: We enter into certain select relationships with companies that provide products or services that we believe may be of interest to users of the Services or in connection with events. We will share personal information, or any information collected through the Services with those organizations in order to help them send you information that we believe will be of interest to you or to facilitate an event.
  • Your Employer / Company: If you interact with our Services through your employer or company, we may disclose your information to your employer or company, including another representative of your employer or company. For example, we may provide information to your employer about your usage of our services in connection with your work for them.
  • Business Transaction or Reorganization: We may take part in or be involved with a corporate business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or financing or sale of company assets. We may disclose personal information to a third party during negotiation of, in connection with or as an asset in such a corporate business transaction. Personal information may also be disclosed in the event of insolvency, bankruptcy or receivership.
  • Legal Obligations and Rights: We may disclose personal information to third parties, such as legal advisors and law enforcement:
    • in connection with the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;
    • to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process;
    • to protect our rights and property and the rights and property of others, including to enforce our agreements and policies;
    • to detect, suppress, or prevent fraud;
    • to protect the health and safety of us and others; or
    • as otherwise required by applicable law.
  • With Your Consent: We may disclose personal information about an individual to certain other third parties or publicly with their consent or direction. For example, with an individual’s consent or direction we may post their testimonial on our Sites or service-related publications.

THIRD-PARTY DATA COLLECTION AND ONLINE ADVERTISING

We participate in interest-based advertising and use third party advertising companies to serve you targeted advertisements based on your browsing history. We permit third party online advertising networks, social media companies and other third-party services, to collect information about your use of our online services over time so that they may play or display ads on our Services, on other websites or services you may use, and on other devices you may use. Typically, though not always, the information used for interest-based advertising is collected through tracking technologies, such as cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies, and similar technology, which recognize the device you are using and collect information, including click stream information, browser type, time and date you visited the Sites, AdID, precise geolocation and other information. We may share a common account identifier (such as a hashed email address or user ID) with our third-party advertising providers to help identify you across devices. We, and the third parties we work with, use this information to make the advertisements you see online more relevant to your interests, as well as to provide advertising-related services such as reporting, attribution, analytics and market research. We may also use services provided by third parties (such as social media platforms) to serve targeted ads to you and others on such platforms. We may do this by providing a hashed version of your email address or other information to the platform provider. Please see Online Ads of the Control Over Your Information section below, to learn how you can opt out of interest-based advertising.

Social Media Widgets and Advertising. Our Services may include social media features, such as the Facebook “Like” button, Pinterest, Instagram, X or other widgets. These social media companies may recognize you and collect information about your visit to our Services, and they may set a cookie or employ other tracking technologies. Your interactions with those features are governed by the privacy policies of those companies.

We display targeted advertising to you through social media platforms, such as Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn and other social media forums. These companies have interest-based advertising programs that allow us to direct advertisements to users who have shown interest in our services while those users are on the social media platform, or to groups of other users who share similar traits, such as likely commercial interests and demographics. We may share a unique identifier, such as a user ID or hashed email address, with these platform providers or they may collect information from our website visitors through a first-party pixel, in order to direct targeted advertising to you or to a custom audience on the social media platform. These advertisements are governed by the privacy policies of those social media companies that provide them. If you do not want to receive targeted ads on your social networks, you may be able to adjust your advertising preferences through your settings on those networks.

Third Party Relationships. We work with a variety of third-party ad networks and advertising organizations to provide advertising services. For example, we use Google Analytics to recognize you and link the devices you use when you visit our Services on your browser or mobile device, log in to your account on our Services, or otherwise engage with us. We share a unique identifier, like a user ID or hashed email address, with Google to facilitate the service. Google Analytics allows us to better understand how our users interact with our Services and to tailor our advertisements and content to you. For information on how Google Analytics collects and processes data, as well as how you can control information sent to Google, review Google’s website, “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps” located at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/. You can learn about Google Analytics’ currently available opt-outs, including the Google Analytics Browser Ad-On here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/.

We may also utilize certain forms of display advertising and other advanced features through Google Analytics. These features enable us to use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as Google advertising cookie) or other third-party cookies together to inform, optimize, and display ads based on your past visits to the Services. You may control your advertising preferences or opt-out of certain Google advertising products by visiting the Google Ads Preferences Manager, currently available at https://google.com/ads/preferences, or by visiting NAI’s online resources at http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices.

CONTROL OVER YOUR INFORMATION

The following privacy choices are made available to all individuals with whom we interact. You may also have additional choices regarding your personal information depending on your location or residency. Please refer to our State-Specific Disclosures below for information about additional privacy choices that may be available to you.

You may control your information in the following ways:

  • Email Communications Preferences. You can stop receiving promotional email communications from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link provided in such communications. You may not opt-out of service-related communications (e.g., account verification, transactional communications, changes/updates to features of the Services, technical and security notices).
  • Modifying or Deleting Your Information. If you have any questions about reviewing, modifying, or deleting your information, you can contact us directly at privacy@museumofthedog.org. We may not be able to modify or delete your information in all circumstances.
  • Cookies: For information about our and third parties’ use of cookies and related technologies to collect information automatically, and any choices you may have in relation to cookies, please see the Personal Information Automatically Collected section above.
  • Online Ads: To learn more about interest-based advertising and how you may be able to opt-out of some of this advertising, you may wish to visit the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) resources and/or the Network Advertising Initiative’s (NAI) online resources, at www.aboutads.info/choices or http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ and you can opt-out of receiving some interest-based advertisements on mobile apps by visiting http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices. You may also be able to limit interest-based advertising through the settings menu on your mobile device by selecting “limit ad tracking” (iOS) or “opt-out of interest-based ads” (Android). You may also be able to opt-out of some — but not all — interest-based advertising served by mobile ad networks by visiting http://youradchoices.com/appchoices and downloading the mobile AppChoices app.

Please note that when you opt out of receiving interest-based advertisements, this does not mean you will no longer see advertisements from us or on our online services. It means that the online ads that you do see from DAA program participants should not be based on your interests. We are not responsible for the effectiveness of, or compliance with, any third-parties’ opt-out options or programs or the accuracy of their statements regarding their programs. In addition, third parties may still use cookies to collect information about your use of our online services, including for analytics and fraud prevention as well as any other purpose permitted under the DAA’s Principles.

CHILDREN’S PERSONAL INFORMATION

Our Services are not directed to, and we do not intend to, or knowingly, collect or solicit personal information from children under the age of 13. If an individual is under the age of 13, they should not use our Services or otherwise provide us with any personal information either directly or by other means. If a child under the age of 13 has provided personal information to us, we encourage the child’s parent or guardian to contact us to request that we remove the personal information from our systems. If we learn that any personal information we collect has been provided by a child under the age of 13, we will promptly delete that personal information.

LINKS TO THIRD-PARTY WEBSITES OR SERVICES

Our Services may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Except where we post, link to or expressly adopt or refer to this Privacy Notice, this Privacy Notice does not apply to, and we are not responsible for, any personal information practices of third-party websites and online services or the practices of other third parties. To learn about the personal information practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy notices.

RETENTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

Our policy is to retain the personal information we collect about you for no longer than reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, and in accordance with our legitimate business interests and applicable law. However, if necessary, we may retain personal information for longer periods of time as required under applicable law or as needed to resolve disputes or protect our legal rights.

To determine the appropriate duration of the retention of personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of personal information and if we can attain our objectives by other means, as well as our legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, and other applicable obligations.

Once retention of the personal information is no longer reasonably necessary for the purposes outlined above, we will either delete or deidentify the personal information or, if that is not possible (for example, because personal information has been stored in backup archives), we will securely store the personal information and isolate it from further active processing until deletion or deidentification is possible.

STATE-SPECIFIC DISCLOSURES

We may choose or be required by law to provide different or additional disclosures relating to the processing of personal information about residents of certain countries, regions or states.

  • California – Your California Privacy Rights: If you are a California resident, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 – also known as California’s “Shine the Light” – permits you to request information regarding the disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the immediately preceding calendar year. To opt out of having your information shared in this manner, please email us at privacy@museumofthedog.org.
  • Nevada: If you are a resident of the State of Nevada, Chapter 603A of the Nevada Revised Statutes permits a Nevada resident to opt out of future sales of certain covered information that a website operator has collected or will collect about the resident. Although we do not currently sell covered information, please contact us at privacy@museumofthedog.org to submit such a request.
  • Colorado: If you are a resident of the State of Colorado, Colorado Revised Statutes §§ 6-1-1301 (effective 7/1/2023) – also known as the Colorado Privacy Act – provides you the right to access, correct, and delete your personal information, and the right to opt out of the sale, collection and use of your personal information. To request access, correction, or deletion of your personal information, or to opt out of the sale, collection and use of your personal information, please contact use at privacy@museumofthedog.org.

UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

We will update this Privacy Notice from time to time. When we make changes to this Privacy Notice, we will change the date at the beginning of this Privacy Notice. If we make material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify individuals by email to their registered email address, by prominent posting on our Services, or through other appropriate communication channels. All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions or requests in connection with this Privacy Notice or other privacy-related matters, please send an email privacy@museumofthedog.org.

Alternatively, inquiries may be addressed to:

The American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog
Attn: Digital Media Manager
101 Park Avenue, First Floor New York, NY 10178