Privacy Policy
Last Updated: April 12, 2023
Welcome to Brian Makarewicz and Mark Osborn! We are located at 129 Commercial Street Boothbay Harbor, ME 04538. Brian Makarewicz and Mark Osborn(“Company”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) has prepared this Privacy Policy to describe to you our practices regarding the Personal Information (as defined below) that we collect from users of our website, located at https://boothbayvacationhomes.com (the “Website”) and through the use of certain third party booking engines (the “Web Application”), the Website and Web Application together are collectively referred to as the “Services.” This Privacy Policy applies to your use of the Services but does not apply to any website, offering, product or service of any third party company, even if such third party website links to our Services. We do not control any such third party websites, offerings, products or services so please always review those applicable privacy policies before deciding to provide any information. If you do not consent to any of the terms included in this Privacy Policy, please do not use, or if you are already using, immediately discontinue your use of the Services. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS PRIVACY POLICY ONLY APPLIES TO USERS WHO ARE 13 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER. IF YOU ARE A USER UNDER THE AGE OF 13, PLEASE DO NOT VISIT OR USE THE SERVICES.
Website and Web Application. As a part of the Services, you may access and login into the Web Application. The Web Application allows you to access certain features of the Services, including but not limited to, those features specific to booking and the vacation guides made available by Company from time to time. You may also share ideas, feedback and other content and materials through your use of the Services, as further described herein. The Website provides users with the chance to learn more about Company, and the ability to post their thoughts and comments to the Website blog. Through the Website, users may view the various services offered by Company, learn more about the Web Application and post comments and thoughts on the Website blog.
How the Services Work. Our Services provide vacation-planning information, in addition to access to third party reservation engines made available via the Web Application.
So we are clear about the terminology we are using, when we use the phrase “Personal Information” in this Privacy Policy, we mean information that allows someone to identify or contact you, including, for example, your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, as well as any other non-public information about you that is associated with or linked to any of the foregoing information. When we use the phrase “Anonymous Information” in this Privacy Policy, we mean information that is not associated with or linked to your Personal Information. Anonymous Information does not enable identification of or contact with individual persons.
Children. Protecting the privacy of children is very important to us. We do not collect or maintain Personal Information from people we actually know are under 13 years of age. If you are under 13 years of age, please do not use the Services.
California Privacy Rights. Subject to certain limits under California Civil Code § 1798.83, California residents may request certain information regarding our disclosure of information to third parties or their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please contact us as specified below in this Privacy Policy.
A Note to Users Outside of the United States. Company is based in the U.S. If you are a non-U.S. user of the Services, by visiting the Website and/or using the Web Application, you acknowledge and agree that your Personal Information may be processed for the purposes identified in the Privacy Policy. In addition, your Personal Information may be processed in the country in which it was collected and in other countries, including the United States, where laws regarding processing of Personal Information may be less stringent than and less protective of Personal Information than the laws in your country. By providing your information and agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy, you consent to such transfer.
Information We Collect
Personal Information
In general, the Personal Information we gather enables us to provide the Services to you and helps us learn more about the use of the Services.
Specifically, we collect the following types of Personal Information:
- Voluntary Information. We also collect other types of Personal Information that you provide to us voluntarily, such as information that you provide directly to us in order to enable us to provide you with the Services. We may also receive requested information if you contact us via e-mail regarding support for the Website.
- Bookings Made Online. When you make an online booking with us through the Services, your information is transmitted securely into our property management software. The property management software stores this information on our behalf for purposes of facilitating your reservation with us.
- Usage/Account Information. We collect Personal Information that you submit to us voluntarily at registration and in the course of your use of the Website. To use our Services, we may require you to create an “Account” and we will collect your name, mailing/billing address, email address, phone number and location information, where applicable.
- Indexing/Third Parties. We may obtain information about you from third parties or through our indexing and analytics tools.
- Communications. When you communicate with us by sending us an email, we will collect and store any information that is contained in your communications with us.
- Information You Provide to Facebook and other Social Networking Sites. The Services may allow users to access Facebook to interact with friends and to share on Facebook through Wall and friends’ News Feeds. If you are already logged into the Services and Facebook or another SNS, when you click on “Connect with Facebook,” or a similar connection on another SNS, you will be prompted to merge your profiles. If you are already logged into the Services but not logged into Facebook or another SNS that we support, when you click on “Connect with Facebook,” or a similar connection on another SNS, you will be prompted to enter your SNS credentials or to “Sign Up” for the SNS. By proceeding, you are allowing the Services to access your information and you are agreeing to the Facebook or other SNS’ Terms of Use in your use of the Services. Conversely, if you are not currently registered as a user of the Services, and you click on “Sign in” using Facebook or another SNS that we support, you will first be asked to enter your Facebook or SNS credentials and then be given the option to register for the Services. In this case, we may receive information from Facebook or another SNS to make it easier for you to create an Account on the Site and show our relevant content from your Facebook or SNS friends. Once you register on the Site and connect with Facebook or another SNS, you will be able to automatically post recent activity back to Facebook or the other SNS. Any information that we collect from your Facebook or other SNS account may depend on the privacy settings you have with that SNS, so please consult the SNS’ privacy and data practices. You have the option to disable Facebook Connect at any time by logging into your Account through the Site and going to settings, “About Me,” “Linked Accounts,” and then unselecting “Facebook.” Further, you can edit privacy settings for the reviews that appear on Facebook or disconnect your Services activity stream by visiting the Facebook Applications Settings page.
- Location Information. If you have enabled location services on your phone, we collect your location information to make a map available to the recipients of your messages showing your location. If you do not want this information collected by us, you can disable location services on your phone.
- Email Subscribe Forms. To help keep you informed about our latest news, area information, specials and promotions, we may offer the opportunity to subscribe to our email list via various subscription forms throughout the Services. By subscribing you are requesting follow-up information from us and you agree that we will use your provided contact information for marketing purposes. You may unsubscribe to these emails at any time by following the unsubscribe link in the footer of all such communications.
- Other: We may also collect Personal Information at other points through our Services that state that Personal Information is being collected.
Anonymous Information
We collect the following types of Anonymous Information:
Information Collected by Our Servers. To make our Website a more useful to you, our servers (which may be hosted by a third party service provider) collect information from you, including your browser type, operating system, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address (a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the Internet, which may vary from session to session), domain name, and/or a date/time stamp for your visit.
Log Files. As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (“ISP”), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data. We use this information to analyze trends, administer the Website, track users’ movements around the Website, gather demographic information about our user base as a whole, and better tailor our Website to our users’ needs. For example, some of the information may be collected so that when you visit the Website again, it will recognize you and the information could then be used to serve advertisements and other information appropriate to your interests.
Cookies. Like many online services, we use cookies to collect information. “Cookies” are small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer’s hard drive while you are viewing the website. We may use both session Cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent Cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience on our Website. This type of information is collected to make the Website more useful to you and to tailor the experience with us to meet your special interests and needs.
Pixel Tags. In addition, we use “Pixel Tags” (also referred to as clear Gifs, Web beacons, or Web bugs). Pixel Tags are tiny graphic images with a unique identifier, similar in function to Cookies, which are used to track online movements of Web users. In contrast to Cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, Pixel Tags are embedded invisibly in Web pages. Pixel Tags also allow us to send e-mail messages in a format users can read, and they tell us whether e-mails have been opened to ensure that we are sending only messages that are of interest to our users. We may use this information to reduce or eliminate messages sent to a user. We do not tie the information gathered by Pixel Tags to our users’ Personal Information.
Collection of Data by Advertisers. We may also use third parties to serve ads on the Services. Certain third parties may automatically collect information about your visits to this and other websites, your IP address, your ISP, the browser you use to visit our Site (but not your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number). They do this by using Cookies, Pixel Tags, or other technologies. Information collected may be used, among other things, to deliver advertising targeted to your interests and to better understand the usage and visitation of our Site and the other sites tracked by these third parties. This policy does not apply to, and we are not responsible for, Cookies or Pixel Tags in third party ads, and we encourage you to check the privacy policies of advertisers and/or ad services to learn about their use of Cookies and other technologies. You may opt out of receiving interest-based advertising from some of our partners by visiting https://boothbayvacationhomes.com. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here: http://www.aboutads.info/choices or http://www.networkadvertising.org.
Disclosure – Analytics.
We may use third party analytics services (including, but not limited to, Google Analytics) to help analyze how users use the Services. Analytics services use Cookies to collect information such as how often users open the page(s) of the Website and what features they use in the Services. We use this information to improve the Services. The analytics services’ ability to use and share information collected by them is restricted by their terms of use and privacy policy, which you should refer to for more information about how these entities use this information, and how you can opt-out of their use of such information.
Information Collected from You About Others. If you decide to invite a third party to create an Account, we will collect your and the third party’s names and e-mail addresses in order to send an e-mail and follow up with the third party. We rely upon you to obtain whatever consents from the third party that may be required by law to allow us to access and upload the third party’s names and e-mail addresses as required above. You or the third party may contact us by phone at 207-350-3660 or by email at [email protected] to request the removal of this information from our database. As part of your use of the Services, we provide you the opportunity to connect automatically with your friends. We employ various techniques in order to facilitate friends finding each other on our service, including offering contact importer tools to facilitate adding to your contacts (including Facebook Friends and contacts in your address book) so that you can more readily ask your contacts to join the Services. With your permission, we will access your address book, call log and SMS log, and import your contacts’ names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, image, geographic location and Facebook IDs to facilitate automatic connection with your friends. We do this only for contact matching to help your friends and you find each other. Also, when you invite friends to the Services, we will access your Address Book and we will import your contacts names and phone numbers in order to facilitate the invitation. The e-mail that is sent to your friends will come from your e-mail address so that your friends know that you want to invite them to visit the Site. We do not store any passwords you provide as part of the contact import process. We also collect some settings that help us to interpret your data, such as the language and keyboard settings that you have established, and the phone’s carrier, mobile network code and mobile country code.
How We Use Information
Personal Information
We will use your Personal Information to:
- Identify you as a user in our system;
- To provide you with the online booking system made available via our property management system;
- Facilitate the creation of and administration of your Account;
- Allow you to communicate with other users of the Services;
- Provide you with the Services and complete your transactions;
- Provide you with customer support;
- Help understand your needs and tailor the features and content of the Services to you;
- Respond to and, as applicable, fulfill your requests, resolve disputes and/or troubleshoot problems;
- Verify your compliance with your obligations in our Terms of Service;
- Send you administrative e-mail notifications, such as security, or support and maintenance advisories;
- Send newsletters, surveys, offers, and other promotional materials related to our Services and for other marketing purposes;
- Improve the quality and functionality of the Services;
- Share with our third party software and services providers in order to facilitate our communications; and
- Communicate with you about the Services.
We may also use your Personal Information to create Anonymous Information records by excluding information that makes the information personally identifiable to you.
Anonymous Information
We use the Anonymous Information we collect to analyze trends, administer and improve the Services, gather demographic information about our user base as a whole, and better tailor the Services to our users’ needs. However, we reserve the right to use Anonymous Information for any purpose, and to disclose Anonymous Information publicly without restriction. We provide analytics based upon our customer’s use of the Services to prospective partners, other customers, advertisers and other third parties. We may also disclose, on an anonymous basis, actual statements, verbatim, as made by our customers.
How We Disclose Information
Personal Information
We may also disclose certain Personal Information:
- Third Parties Designated by You. When you use the Services, the Personal Information you provide will be shared with the third parties that you authorize to receive such information (e.g., other individuals that you wish to connect with via the Services).
- Third Party Partners & Property Management Software. We will share the information you provide with us through your use of the Services to make an online booking with the third party that provides our property management software. This information, including your contact information, stay dates and any other information that you share with us via the property management system, may be used for future marketing purposes and as necessary to facilitate current and future bookings through our property management software.
- Third Party Service Providers. We may share your Personal Information with our third party service providers who provide services such as data analytics, website hosting, payment processing (e.g., Stripe), information technology, customer service, email delivery, auditing, and other services.
- Social Networking Sites. Some of our Services may enable you to post content to SNS (e.g., Facebook or Twitter). If you choose to do this, we will provide information to such SNS’ in accordance with your elections. You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for your use of those websites and that it is your responsibility to review the terms of use and privacy policy of the third party provider of such SNS’. We will not be responsible or liable for: (i) the availability or accuracy of such SNS’; (ii) the content, products or services on or availability of such SNS’; or (iii) your use of any such SNS’
- Public Profile. Certain portions of the information you provide to us may also be displayed in your Profile. As an essential element of the Services, most of the Personal Information you explicitly provide to us when you register or update your Profile is displayed on your Profile. In order for your Profile to be made public, you must go to your profile settings and then to profile visibility. By default, your Profile is not for public viewing. Your photos, posts, friends, and other content you post through the Services are also meant for public consumption. We may display this content through the Services and further distribute it to a wider audience through third party sites and services. Once displayed on publicly viewable web pages, that information can be collected and used by others. We cannot control who reads your postings or what other users may do with the information that you voluntarily post, so it is very important that you do not put Personal Information in your posts. Once you have posted information publicly, while you will still be able to edit and delete it on the Site, you will not be able to edit or delete such information cached, collected, and stored elsewhere by others (e.g., search engines).
- Affiliates. We may share some or all of your Personal Information with our parent company, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under a common control (“Affiliates”), if we have such Affiliates in the future, in which case we will require our Affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy.
- Corporate Restructuring. We may share some or all of your Personal Information in connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition or dissolution, transaction or proceeding involving sale, transfer, divestiture, or disclosure of all or a portion of our business or assets. In the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership, Personal Information may also be transferred as a business asset. If another company acquires our company, business, or assets, that company will possess the Personal Information collected by us and will assume the rights and obligations regarding your Personal Information as described in this Privacy Policy.
- Other Disclosures. Regardless of any choices you make regarding your Personal Information (as described below), we may disclose Personal Information if it believes in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to (a) resolve disputes, investigate problems, or enforce our Terms and Conditions; (b) comply with relevant laws or to respond to requests from law enforcement or other government officials relating to investigations or alleged illegal activity, in which case we can (and you authorize us to) disclose Personal Information without subpoenas or warrants served on us; or (c) protect and defend our rights or property or the rights and property of you or third parties; and/or (d) investigate or assist in preventing any violation or potential violation of the law, this Privacy Policy, or our Terms and Conditions.
Your Choices Regarding Your Information
- Email Communications. We will communicate with you primarily in the form of emails. You can manage the frequency and/or opt out of receiving these communications by changing your settings in your Account and/or clicking the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each email. Please note that even if you unsubscribe or opt-out, we may still send you Website-related communications (e.g., emails related to your Account).
- Cookies. If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to accept cookies from our Services for any of the purposes described above, then you can instruct your browser, by changing its settings, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. Consult your browser’s technical information. If you do not accept cookies, however, you may not be able to use all portions of the Services or all functionality of the Services.
- De-Linking SNS. If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to have your SNS account (e.g., Facebook) linked to your Account, then you may de-link the SNS account in the “preferences” section in your account settings. You may also manage the sharing of certain Personal Data with us when you connect with us through an SNS, such as through Facebook Connect. Please refer to the privacy settings of the SNS to determine how you may adjust our permissions and manage the interactivity between the Services and your social media account or mobile device.
- Changing or Deleting Your Personal Information. You may review, change, update, correct or delete the Personal Information in your Account by logging into your Account or by contacting us by phone at 207-350-3660 or by email at [email protected]. You authorize us to use and disclose any new or modified information that you provide in accordance with this Privacy Policy, and you agree that we are under no obligation to delete or modify information that you have previously chosen to provide us. If you completely delete all of your Personal Information, then your account may become deactivated, although your profile and any content associated therewith will remain on the Services unless you have deleted them. We may also retain an archived copy of your records as required by law or for legitimate business purposes. Please remember, however, if we have already disclosed some of your Personal Information to third parties, we cannot access that Personal Information any longer and cannot force the deletion or modification of any such information by the parties to whom we have made those disclosures. Certain information is necessary in order for us to make the Services available; therefore, if you delete such necessary information you may not be able to use the Services. Please note that even though you may request the deletion of your Personal Information by us, we may be required (by law or otherwise, such as to prevent fraud, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, or enforce our Terms of Service) to keep this information and not delete it (or to keep this information for a certain time) in which case we will comply with your deletion request only after we have fulfilled such requirements. When we delete Personal Information, it will be deleted from the active database, but may remain in our archives.
- Applications. You can stop all collection of information by the Web Application by no longer using or accessing the Web Application. You may use the standard uninstall processes as may be available as part of your mobile device or via the mobile application marketplace or network. You may at any time opt-out from further allowing us to have access to your location data.
Feedback
If you provide feedback to us, we may use and disclose such feedback in accordance with the terms in our Terms of Service, provided we do not associate such feedback with your Personal Information. We may publish user feedback from time to time, provided that we will obtain your consent prior to posting any feedback that is associated with your Personal Information. We will collect any information contained in such feedback and will treat the Personal Information in it in accordance with this Privacy Policy, provided that we may contact you in regards to such feedback.
Information Disclosed to Third Parties
This Privacy Policy addresses only our use and disclosure of information we collect from and/or about you on the Website. If you disclose information to others, including any users that you meet through the Services and decide to continue interacting with separate from or outside of your use of the Services, or authorize us to do the same under this Privacy Policy, the use and disclosure restrictions contained in this Privacy Policy will not apply to any third party. We do not control the privacy policies of third parties, and you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties where applicable.
The Services may contain content or links to other websites that are not owned or controlled by us. We have no control over, do not review and are not responsible for the privacy policies of or content displayed on such other websites. When you click on such a link, you will leave our Website and go to another site. During this process, another entity may collect Personal Information or Anonymous Information from you. Please review the privacy policy of any new site you visit.
Web Application & Services, Specifically. We may also collect non-personal information from your mobile device if you access our Services from your mobile device. This information is generally used to help us deliver the most relevant information to you. Examples of information that may be collected and used include your geographic location, how you use the Services and information about the type of device you use. In addition, in the event the Services crash on your mobile device, we will receive information about your mobile device model software version and device carrier, which allows us to identify and fix bugs and otherwise improve the performance of our Services. This information is sent to us as aggregated information and is not traceable to any individual and cannot be used to identify an individual.
How We Respond to Do Not Track Signals
We do not currently respond to “do not track” signals or other mechanisms that might enable consumers to opt out of tracking on the Website.
INTERNATIONAL DATA TRANSFERS
Data Protection Officer.
To communicate with our Data Protection Officer, please contact us by phone at 207-350-3660 or by email at [email protected].
Identifying the Data Controller and Processor.
Data protection law in certain jurisdictions differentiates between the “controller” and “processor” of information. In general, you are the controller of all data and information submitted through the Services, including all Personal Information. In general, Company is the processor of all such data and information, including Personal Information, and the controller of all other information made available through the Services. Company may provide the Services in different parts of the world but is established in the United States of America and operates out of the United States of America.
Your Rights.
Users located in certain countries, including the European Economic Area, have certain statutory rights in relation to their personal data. Subject to any exemption provided by law, you may have the right to request access to information, as well as to seek to update, delete or correct any such information. If you are unable to locate or use the applicable settings, please contact us for additional assistance by phone at 207-350-3660 or by email at [email protected].
Company may also process any other information that constitutes your Personal Information for direct marketing purposes and you have a right to object to Company’s use of such Personal Information for this purpose at any time.
Information Choices and Changes; Data Protection Authority.
You can prevent the further collection or use of your personal information by terminating your use of the Services.
Opting Out of Marketing Emails. Our marketing emails explain how to “opt-out.” If you opt out, we may still send you non-marketing emails. Non-marketing emails include emails about your accounts and our business dealings with you. You may send requests about your personal information to our Contact Information below such as to change contact choices, opt-out of our sharing of your personal information with others, and review, update, correct or delete your personal information. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to honor your request, provided, however, that videos can only be removed per the procedures outlined above. We may retain an archived copy of your records as required by law or for legitimate business purposes. You can typically remove and reject cookies from our Site with your browser settings. Many browsers are set to accept cookies until you change your settings. If you remove or reject our cookies, it could affect how our Site works for you.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time for any reason. We will notify you of any changes to our Privacy Policy by posting the new Privacy Policy here https://boothbayvacationhomes.com/privacy-policy/ and we will change the “Last Updated” date above. We will also send an email with a link to the updated Privacy Policy to the email address that we have on file for you. You should consult this Privacy Policy regularly for any changes.
Contacting Company
We are here to help answer any questions you have about the Services and how we use your Personal Information. If you have any questions or concerns or complaints about our Privacy Policy or our data collection or processing practices, or if you want to report any security violations to us, please contact us by phone at 207-350-3660 or by email at [email protected].