Privacy policy - Pacific Crest Trail Association

Updated April 28, 2024

The Pacific Crest Trail Association (“PCTA,” “we,” us,” or “our”) is concerned about privacy issues and wants you to be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose information. This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we collect through the website located at www.pcta.org (the “Site”) and all subdomains, through our social media pages and apps, including those located at https://www.facebook.com/PCTAFan/, https://www.instagram.com/pctassociation/, and https://x.com/PCTAssociation, https://www.linkedin.com/company/3914532, (collectively, our “Social Media Pages”), through any application, website, or HTML-formatted email messages that we send to you that link to this Privacy Policy, through speaking engagements and outreach events, or when you make a donation over the phone, in person, or through the mail (“Offline Events”) (collectively, including the Site, Social Media Pages, email messages, and Offline Events, the “Platforms”). The Platforms provide information and resources to users and is also intended to raise awareness, recruit volunteers and solicit funding for PCTA and the Pacific Crest Trail. By providing Personal Information to us, you agree to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy.

Personal Information

Personal Information We May Collect

“Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable person, including:

Name
Postal address (including billing and shipping addresses)
Telephone number
Email address
Credit and debit card number
Social media account ID

We may use a third-party payment service to process payments made through the Platforms. If you wish to make a payment through the Platforms, your Personal Information may be collected by such third party and not by us, and will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, this third party’s collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information.

How We May Collect Personal Information

We and our service providers may collect Personal Information in a variety of ways, including:

Through the Platforms: We may collect Personal Information through the Platforms, such as when you register on the Site or purchase merchandise.
Offline: We may collect Personal Information from you offline, such as when you attend a speaking engagement or outreach event; or make a donation in person, over the phone, or through the mail.
From Other Sources: We may receive your Personal Information from other sources, such as public databases, joint marketing partners, social media platforms, from people with whom you are friends or otherwise connected on social media platforms, and from other third parties.

How We May Use Personal Information

We may use Personal Information:

For customized web and application experiences, such as synchronized and saved settings in PCTA Connect or applications on smartphones or websites.
To respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests, such as to send you newsletters.
To send administrative information to you, such as information regarding the Platforms and changes to our terms, conditions, and policies.
To complete and fulfill your purchase or order, including to process your payment, have your order delivered to you, communicate with you regarding your purchase, and provide you with related customer service.
To send you marketing communications that we believe may be of interest to you.
To allow you to participate in sweepstakes, contests and similar promotions and to administer these activities.
To personalize your experience on the Platforms by presenting products and offers tailored to you.
To support programs and fill agency and grant reporting requirements as they relate to programs such as our volunteer and permit programs.
To distribute receipts for donations, thank donors for their donations, and solicit future donations.
For our business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, fraud monitoring and prevention, internal record keeping, developing new products, enhancing, improving or modifying our Platforms, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, and operating and expanding our business activities.
As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

How Personal Information May Be Disclosed

Your Personal Information may be disclosed:

To our affiliates, volunteer crew leaders, partner agency volunteer crew leaders, and government agency partners such as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
To our third party service providers who provide services such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, order fulfillment, information technology and related infrastructure provision, customer service, email delivery, auditing, sweepstakes and contest administration, and other services.
To relevant U.S. and state agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service or Franchise Tax Board, to report donation information.
To list brokers and like-minded third-party nonprofit organizations, to permit them to send you fundraising communications, consistent with your choices.
To third-party sponsors of sweepstakes, contests and similar promotions.
By you, on message boards and other services to which you are able to post information and materials, including, without limitation, our Social Media Pages. Please note that any information you post or disclose through these services may be available to other users of the Platforms and to the general public. We urge you to be very careful when deciding to disclose any information on the Platforms.
In our Annual Report, our member publications, or on our website, unless the donor requests anonymity for his or her donation.
To a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, or assets (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).
As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

OTHER Information

Other Information We May Collect

“Other Information” is any information that does not reveal your specific identity or does not directly relate to an individual, such as:

Browser and device information
Information collected through cookies, pixel tags and other technologies
Demographic information and other information provided by you
Aggregated information

How We May Collect Other Information

We and our third party service providers may collect Other Information in a variety of ways, including:

Through your browser or device: Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device, such as your Media Access Control (MAC) address, computer type (Windows or Macintosh), screen resolution, operating system name and version, device manufacturer and model, language, Internet browser type you are using. We use this information to ensure that the Platforms function properly and to make our Site more useful to visitors.
Using cookies: Cookies are pieces of information stored directly on the computer that you are using. Cookies allow us to collect information such as browser type, time spent on the Platforms, pages visited, language preferences, referring website, and other anonymous traffic data. We and our service providers use the information for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, to display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience while using the Platforms. We also gather statistical information about use of the Platforms in order to continually improve their design and functionality, understand how they are used, and assist us with resolving questions about them.

If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to automatically decline cookies or be given the choice of declining or accepting the transfer to your computer of a particular cookie (or cookies) from a particular site. You may also wish to refer to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html. If, however, you do not accept cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of the Platforms. For example, we may not be able to recognize your computer, and you may need to log in every time you visit the applicable Platforms. We do not respond to browser do-not-track signals.

We use Google Analytics, which uses cookies and similar technologies to collect and analyze information about use of the Platforms and report on activities and trends. This service 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/, and opt out of them by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

We use MailChimp, an email marketing tool that helps us send emails to our customers. You can learn more about MailChimp’s collection and use practices by visiting https://mailchimp.com/legal/.

Using pixel tags and other similar technologies: Pixel tags (also known as web beacons and clear GIFs) may be used in connection with some Platforms to, among other things, track the actions of users of the Platforms (including email recipients), measure the success of our marketing campaigns, and compile statistics about use of the Platforms and response rates.
IP Address: Your IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to the computer that you are using by your Internet Service Provider. An IP address may be identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user accesses the Platforms, along with the time of the visit and the page(s) that were visited. Collecting IP addresses is standard practice and is done automatically by many websites, applications, and other services. We use IP addresses for purposes such as calculating usage levels of the Platforms, helping diagnose server problems, and administering the Platforms.
From you: We may collect information that you voluntarily provide when filling out forms, such as trail completion requests, permit requests, volunteer applications, or donation forms. This information may include dietary and medical information, physical abilities and experiences, and anything else you choose to provide.
By aggregating information: Aggregated Personal Information does not personally identify you or any other user of the Platforms (for example, we may aggregate Personal Information to calculate the percentage of our users who have a particular telephone area code).

How We May Use and Disclose Other Information

We may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose, except where we are required to do otherwise under applicable law. If we are required to treat Other Information as Personal Information under applicable law, then we may use it for all the purposes for which we use and disclose Personal Information.

We may combine Other Information with Personal Information. If we do, we will treat the combined information as Personal Information as long as it is combined.

THIRD PARTY SERVICES

The Site may contain links to other sites. This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any site or service to which the Platforms link. The inclusion of a link on the Platforms does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us or by our affiliates. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of every website they visit.

In addition, we are not responsible for the information collection, use, disclosure or security policies or practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM or any other app developer, app provider, social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider or device manufacturer, including with respect to any Personal Information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with our Social Media Pages.

Security

PCTA takes the following measures to ensure that information collected on PCTA’s website is kept secure and is used as intended. All data is stored on secure, firewall-protected servers either at PCTA offices or those of business partners and is only accessible to authorized PCTA and partner staff.

Sensitive data, such as credit card and other financial information, is collected on secure forms and transmitted using industry-standard Secure Socket Layer Encryption (SSL) technology. Online credit card information is retained only as long as necessary to complete the donation or purchase request of the user.

We seek to use reasonable organizational, technical, and administrative measures to protect Personal Information within our organization. Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contacting Us” section below.

CHOICES AND ACCESS

Your choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information

We give you choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information for marketing purposes. You may opt-out from:

Receiving electronic marketing communications from us: If you no longer want to receive marketing or fundraising-related emails from us on a going-forward basis, you may opt-out by following the instructions contained in each such email.
Receiving direct mail or telephone communications from us: If you no longer want to receive marketing or fundraising-related direct mail or telephone communications from us on a going-forward basis, you may opt-out by e-mailing [email protected] or calling (916) 285-1846.
Our sharing with list brokers and third-party nonprofit organizations for their own fundraising purposes: If you would prefer that we not share your personal information with list brokers or with third-party nonprofit organizations for their own fundraising purposes on a going-forward basis, you may opt-out of this sharing by checking the appropriate box on our online donation forms, calling (916) 285-1846, or e-mailing us at [email protected].

We will try to comply with your request(s) as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that if you opt-out of receiving marketing- or fundraising-related emails from us, we may still send you important administrative messages, from which you cannot opt out.

How you can access, change or suppress your Personal Information

If you would like to review, correct, update, suppress, or delete Personal Information that you have provided to us, you may call us at (916) 285-1846 or e-mailing us at [email protected].

In your request, please make clear what Personal Information you would like to have changed, whether you would like to have your Personal Information suppressed from our database, or otherwise let us know what limitations you would like to put on our use of your Personal Information. For your protection, we may only implement requests with respect to the Personal Information associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable.

Please note that we may need to retain certain information for recordkeeping purposes and/or to complete any transactions that you began prior to requesting such change or deletion. There may also be residual information that will remain within our databases and other records, which will not be removed.

If you are a resident of California, under 18 and a registered user of the Platforms, you may ask us to remove content or information that you have posted to the Platforms by writing to [email protected]. Please note that your request does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content or information, as, for example, some of your content may have been reposted by another user.

use of PLATFORMS by MINORS

The Platforms are not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and we request that these individuals not provide Personal Information through the Platforms.

CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER

The Platforms are controlled and operated by us from the United States and are not intended to subject us to the laws or jurisdiction of any state, country, or territory other than that of the United States. Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and, by using the Platforms, you consent to the transfer of information to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have different data protection rules from those of your country.

UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

Since offerings and technologies change, we reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If we do, we will post those changes on this page. The “Last Updated” legend at the top of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Platforms. Your use of the Platforms following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

CONTACTING US

If you have any questions, please write to us at [email protected] or Pacific Crest Trail Association, 2150 River Plaza, Suite 155, Sacramento, CA 95833.

Because email communications are not always secure, please do not include credit card or other sensitive information in your emails to us.