CauseCircle Privacy Policy

Updated on January 10th, 2025

Zesty.io Platform, Inc. and CauseCircle.org (“Zesty,” “we,” “our,” and/or “us”) value the privacy of individuals who use our websites, platform, and related services (collectively, our “Services”). This privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy”) explains how we collect, use, and share information from users of our website https://www.zesty.io and https://causecircle.org/(the “websites”) and Services. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the extent we process information in the role of a service provider or processor on behalf of our customers. By using our Services, you agree to the collection, use, disclosure, and procedures this Privacy Policy describes. Beyond the Privacy Policy, your use of our Services is also subject to our End User License Agreement (https://causecircle.org/terms-of-service/).

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We may collect a variety of information from or about you or your devices from various sources, as described below. For the purpose of this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual. Where applicable, we indicate whether and why you must provide us with your Personal Information, as well as the consequences of failing to do so. If you do not provide Personal Information when requested, you may not be able to benefit from our Services if that information is necessary to provide you with it or if we are legally required to collect it.

A. Information You Provide to Us.

• User Information. When you create a user account, sign up for notifications or updates, participate in our surveys, or otherwise interact with our websites, we may ask you for Personal Information such as your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, and information related to your business such as the number of employees and industry type.  If you sign up for our Services using a third-party account, we will also receive Personal Information from that third party such as your name and email address.
• Communications. If you contact us directly, we may receive additional Personal Information about you. For example, when you contact our Customer Support Team, we will receive your name, email address, job title, phone number with country code, information about your particular use case for the Services, the contents of a message or attachments that you may send to us, and other information you choose to provide. When we send you emails, we may track whether you open them to learn how to deliver a better customer experience and improve our Services.
• Payment Information. If you make a purchase through our Services, your payment-related information, such as credit card or other financial information, is collected by our third-party payment processor on our behalf.

 B. Information We Collect When You Use Our Services.

• Device Information. We receive information about the device and software you use to access our Services, including IP address (which may tell us your general location), web browser type, operating system version, phone carrier and manufacturer, application installations, device identifiers, mobile advertising identifiers, and push notification tokens.
• Usage Information. To help us understand how you use our Services and to help us improve them, we automatically receive information about your interactions with our Services, like the pages or other content you view, the searches you conduct, and the dates and times of your visits.
• Information from Cookies and Similar Technologies. We and our third-party partners collect information using cookies, pixel tags, or similar technologies. Our third-party partners, such as analytics and advertising partners, may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across different services. Cookies are small text files containing a string of alphanumeric characters. We may use both session cookies and persistent cookies. A session cookie disappears after you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains after you close your browser and may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to our Services. Please review your web browser’s “Help” file to learn the proper way to modify your cookie settings. Please note that if you delete or choose not to accept cookies from the Service, you may not be able to utilize the features of the Service to their fullest potential.

HOW WE USE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We use the Personal Information we collect for the purposes described below:

• Provide the Services. We may use your Personal Information to provide, maintain our Services, including to facilitate transactions and payments;
• Understand usage and improve the Services. We may use your Personal Information to understand and analyze how you use our Services and develop new products, services, features, and functionality and to improve, and enhance our Services;
• Personalize your experience. We may use your Personal Information to personalize your experience on our Services such as by providing tailored content and recommendations;
• Communicate. We may use your Personal Information to communicate with you, provide you with updates and other information relating to our Services, provide information that you request, respond to comments and questions, provide customer support, and send you text messages and push notifications;
  Marketing. We may use your Personal Information for marketing and advertising purposes, such as developing and providing promotional and advertising materials that may be relevant, valuable or otherwise of interest to you (with your consent, where legally required);
• Reporting. We may use your Personal Information to generate anonymized, aggregate data containing only de-identified, non-Personal Information that we may use to publish reports;
• Security, compliance, and legal purposes. We may use your Personal Information to find and prevent fraud, and respond to trust and safety issues that may arise and for compliance purposes, including enforcing our EULA or other legal rights, or as may be required by applicable laws and regulations or requested by any judicial process or governmental agency; and
• Other Purposes. For other purposes for which we provide specific notice at the time the information is collected. 

Our use of European Personal Information

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom, or Switzerland (altogether “Europe”), we process your Personal Information only on one of the following grounds:

• You have consented to the use of Your Personal Information;
• We need your Personal Information to provide you with the Services, including for account registration or to respond to your inquiries;
• We have a legal obligation to use your Personal Information;
• We or a third party, have a legitimate interest in using your Personal Information. In particular, we have a legitimate interest in using your Personal Information to personalize our Services and provide you with tailored content, conduct business analytics, and otherwise improve the safety, security, and performance of our Services. We only rely on our or a third party’s legitimate interests to process your Personal Information when these interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.

HOW WE SHARE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

• Developer Chat. If you sign up for the Zesty.io or CauseCircle developer chat, Slack will receive your email so that it can invite you to join the appropriate Slack channel. Any content you post within that chat will be visible to other members of that Slack channel.
• Affiliates. We may share any Personal Information we receive with our affiliates for any of the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
• Vendors and Service Providers. We may share any Personal Information we receive with vendors and service providers retained in connection with the provision of our Services.
• Analytics Partners. We use analytics services such as Google Analytics to collect and process certain analytics data. These services may also collect information about your use of other websites, apps, and online resources. You can learn more about Google’s practices by visiting https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics cookies, please visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and download the browser add-on.
• Advertising Partners. We work with third-party advertising partners to show you ads that we think may interest you. Some of our advertising partners are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (https://optout.networkadvertising.org) or the Digital Advertising Alliance (https://optout.aboutads.info). If you do not wish to receive personalized ads, please visit their opt-out pages to learn about how you may opt out of receiving web-based personalized ads from member companies. You can access any settings offered by your mobile operating system to limit ad tracking, or you can install the AppChoices mobile app to learn more about how you may opt out of personalized ads in mobile apps.
• As Required By Law and Similar Disclosures. We may access, preserve, and disclose your Personal Information if we believe doing so is required or appropriate to: (a) comply with law enforcement requests and legal process, such as a court order or subpoena; (b) respond to your requests; or (c) protect your, our, or others’ rights, property, or safety. For the avoidance of doubt, the disclosure of your Personal Information may occur if you post any objectionable content on or through the Services.
• Merger, Sale, or Other Asset Transfers. We may transfer your Personal Information to service providers, advisors, potential transactional partners, or other third parties in connection with the consideration, negotiation, or completion of a corporate transaction in which we are acquired by or merged with another company or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our assets. The use of your Personal Information following any of these events will be governed by the provisions of this Privacy Policy in effect at the time the applicable information was collected.
• Consent. We may also disclose your Personal Information with your permission.

YOUR RIGHTS AND CHOICES

Marketing Communications. You can unsubscribe from our promotional emails via the link provided in the emails. Even if you opt-out of receiving promotional messages from us, you will continue to receive administrative messages from us.

Your European Privacy Rights

If you are located in Europe, you have the right to:

• Request access to and receive information about the Personal Information we maintain about you, update and correct inaccuracies in your Personal Information, restrict or object to the processing of your Personal Information, have the information anonymized or deleted, as appropriate, or exercise your right to data portability to easily transfer your Personal Information to another company. In addition, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, including in your country of residence, place of work or where an incident took place.
• Withdraw any consent you previously provided to us regarding the processing of your Personal Information, at any time and free of charge. We will apply your preferences going forward and this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before your consent withdrawal.

You may exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details as indicated in the Contact Information section below. Before fulfilling your request, we may ask you to provide reasonable information to verify your identity. Please note that there are exceptions and limitations to each of these rights, and that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases instantly or within a reasonable period of time, we may retain Personal Information for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligations, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so.

THIRD PARTIES

Our Services may contain links to other websites, products, or services that we do not own or operate. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties. Please be aware that this Privacy Policy does not apply to your activities on these third-party services or any Personal Information you disclose to these third parties. We encourage you to read their privacy policies before providing any information to them.

RETENTION

Where required by applicable law, we take measures to delete your Personal Information or keep it in a form that does not permit identifying you when this information is no longer necessary for the purposes for which we process it, unless we are required by law to keep this information for a longer period. When determining the retention period, we take into account various criteria, such as the type of Services provided to you, the nature and length of our relationship with you, possible re-enrolment with our Services, the impact on the Services we provide to you if we delete some information from or about you, and mandatory retention periods provided by law and the statute of limitations.

ACCOUNT DELETION AND DATA DELETION

At CauseCircle, we respect your right to control your personal information. You may choose to delete your CauseCircle account or request the deletion of your personal data at any time. Below, we explain how you can do so and what happens to your information afterward.

How to Delete Your Account

To delete your CauseCircle account via web:

1. Log in to your account on our website at causecircle.org.
2. Navigate to the "Account Settings" section in your profile.
3. Select the "Delete My Account" option and follow the prompts to confirm your request.

To delete your CauseCircle account via mobile app:

1. Log in to your account on our mobile app.
2. Navigate to the "Profile" icon at the bottom right in the app.
3. Select the "Delete Account" option and follow the prompts to confirm your request.

Upon submitting your deletion request, your account will be deactivated immediately, and you will have a 30-day grace period during which you can reactivate your account by logging back in. If you do not reactivate within 30 days, your account and associated personal data will be permanently deleted from our systems, except as noted below. We will begin the deletion process after the 30-day period, and it may take up to 90 days to fully remove your data from our backups and archives.

How to Request Data Deletion Without Deleting Your Account
If you wish to keep your account but request the deletion of specific personal data, you may contact us at accounts@causecircle.org with your request. Please include your full name, email address associated with your account, and a description of the data you want deleted. We will process your request within 30 days and notify you once completed, subject to any legal obligations we must meet.

What Information We Keep After Deletion
After your account is permanently deleted or a data deletion request is fulfilled, CauseCircle may retain certain information for limited purposes:

• Legal Compliance: We may keep anonymized data or specific records (e.g., transaction logs) as required by applicable laws or regulations, such as tax or financial reporting obligations. This data will not be linked to your identity.
• Content Shared with Others: If you’ve shared content (e.g., messages, posts, or donations) with other users or organizations through CauseCircle, that content may remain visible to them or stored in their accounts, even after your account is deleted. We cannot control or delete such content on your behalf.
• Operational Purposes: Limited metadata (e.g., login timestamps) may be retained in an anonymized form for up to 180 days to ensure the security and integrity of our platform.

SECURITY

We make reasonable efforts to protect your Personal Information by using physical and electronic safeguards designed to improve the security of the Personal Information we maintain. However, as no electronic transmission or storage of Personal Information can be entirely secure, we can make no guarantees as to the security or privacy of your Personal Information.

CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

We do not knowingly collect, maintain, or use Personal Information from children under 16 years of age, and no part of our Services is directed to children. If you learn that a child has provided us with Personal Information in violation of this Privacy Policy, then you may alert us at support@causecircle.org.

INTERNATIONAL VISITORS

Our Services are hosted in the United States and intended for visitors located within the United States. If you choose to use the Services from the European Union or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, then please note that you are transferring your Personal Information outside of those regions to the United States for storage and processing. Also, we may transfer your Personal Information from the U.S. to other countries or regions in connection with storage and processing of data, fulfilling your requests, and operating the Services. By providing any information, including Personal Information, on or to the Services, you consent to such transfer, storage, and processing.

UPDATE YOUR INFORMATION

You can request an update to any Personal Information you have submitted through our website by emailing support@causecircle.org.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We will post any adjustments to the Privacy Policy on this page, and the revised version will be effective when it is posted. If we materially change the ways in which we use or share Personal Information previously collected from you through the Services, we will notify you through the Services, by email, or other communication.

CONTACT INFORMATION

CauseCircle is the entity responsible for the processing of your Personal Information.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about our processing activities, please email us at support@causecircle.org or write to us at ATTN: Zesty Platform, Inc., 550 West B Street, 4th Floor, San Diego, CA 92101.