Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy (GDPR Compliant)

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in the ‘www.DitchtheBlackDog.com’ site belonging to Maria McFarlane. (“Maria McFarlane”, “we,” or “us”) and (the “Site” or ‘Sites’) and all related web sites, downloadable software, mobile applications (including tablet applications), and other services provided by us and on which a link to this Privacy Policy is displayed, and all other communications with individuals though from written or oral means, such as email or phone (collectively, together with the Site, our “Service”).

This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) describes the information that we gather on or through the Service, how we use and disclose such information, and the steps we take to protect such information.

By visiting the Site, or by purchasing or using the Service, you consent to the privacy practices described in this Policy.

This Policy is incorporated into, and is subject to, the Ditch the Black Dog Terms of Service. Maria McFarlane and The Gaian Group (“us”, “we”, or “our”) operates the www.ditchtheblackdog.com website (the “Service”, “Services”). We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy.

Definitions

“Client” means a customer of Ditch the Black Dog and Maria McFarlane. “Client Data“ means personal data, reports, addresses, and other files, folders or documents in electronic form that a User of the Service stores within the Service. “Personal Data” means information that specifically identifies an individual or that is linked to information that identifies a specific individual.

“Public Area” means the area of the Site that can be accessed both by Users and Visitors, without needing to use a login ID and a password.

“Restricted Area” means the area of the Site that can be accessed only by Users, and where access requires the use of a login ID and a password.

“User” means an employee, agent, or representative of a Client, who primarily uses the restricted areas of the Site for the purpose of accessing the Service in such capacity.

“Visitor” means an individual other than a User, who uses the public area, but has no access to the restricted areas of the Site or Service.

The Information We Collect on the Service:

We collect different types of information from or through the Service.

User-provided Information.

When you use the Service, as a User or as a Visitor, you may provide, and we may collect Personal Data.

Examples of Personal Data include name, email address, mailing address, mobile phone number, and credit card or other billing information.

Personal Data also includes other information, such as geographic area or preferences, when any such information is linked to information that identifies a specific individual.

You may provide us with Personal Data in various ways on the Service. For example, when you register for an Account, use the Service, post Client Data, interact with other users of the Service through communication or messaging capabilities, or send us customer service-related requests. We may also request medical history details or the contact details of your therapist or General Practitioner (if applicable.)

“Automatically Collected” Information.

When a User or Visitor uses the Service, we may automatically record certain information from the User’s or Visitor’s device by using various types of technology, including cookies, “clear gifs” or “web beacons.”

This “automatically collected” information may include IP address or other device address or ID, web browser and/or device type, the web pages or sites visited just before or just after using the Service, the pages or other content the User or Visitor views or interacts with on the Service, and the dates and times of the visit, access, or use of the Service.

We also may use these technologies to collect information regarding a Visitor or User’s interaction with email messages, such as whether the Visitor or User opens, clicks on, or forwards a message. This information is gathered from all Users and Visitors.

Integrated Services.

You may be given the option to access or register for the Service through the use of your user name and passwords for certain services provided by third parties (each, an “Integrated Service”), such as through the use of your Google account, or otherwise have the option to authorise an Integrated Service to provide Personal Data or other information to us.

By authorising us to connect with an Integrated Service, you authorise us to access and store your name, email address(es), date of birth, gender, current city, profile picture URL, and other information that the Integrated Service makes available to us, and to use and disclose it in accordance with this Policy.

You should check your privacy settings on each Integrated Service to understand what information that Integrated Service makes available to us, and make changes as appropriate.

Please review each Integrated Service’s terms of use and privacy policies carefully before using their services and connecting to our Service.

Information from Other Sources.

We may obtain information, including Personal Data, from third parties and sources other than the Service, such as our partners, advertisers, credit rating agencies, and Integrated Services. If we combine or associate information from other sources with Personal Data that we collect through the Service, we will treat the combined information as Personal Data in accordance with this Policy.

Information Collection And Use

While using our Service(s), we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you. Personally identifiable information may include but is not limited to, your email address, name (“Personal Information”). We collect this information for the purpose of providing the Service(s), identifying and communicating with you, responding to your requests/inquiries, servicing your purchase orders, and improving our services.

Log Data

We collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Service (“Log Data”). This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service(s) that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics. In addition, we may use third-party services such as Google Analytics that collect, monitor, and analyze this type of information in order to increase our Service’s functionality. These third-party service providers have their own privacy policies addressing how they use such information.

Cookies and Tracking Technologies

Cookies are files with a small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and transferred to your device.

We use cookies to collect information in order to improve our services for you to:

(i) personalize our Service, such as remembering a User’s or Visitor’s information so that the User or Visitor will not have to re-enter it during a visit or on subsequent visits;

(ii) provide customized advertisements, content, and information;

(iii) monitor and analyze the effectiveness of Service and third-party marketing activities;

(iv) monitor aggregate site usage metrics such as total number of visitors and pages viewed; and

(v) track your entries, submissions, and status in any promotions or other activities on the Service.

You can obtain more information about cookies by visiting http://www.allaboutcookies.org. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. The Help feature on most browsers provides information on how to accept cookies, disable cookies or notify you when receiving a new cookie. If you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some features of our Service(s) and we recommend that you leave them turned on.

Behavioral Remarketing

Maria McFarlane does NOT use remarketing services to advertise on third-party websites to you after you visited our Service(s).

However, our third-party vendors, use cookies to inform, optimize and serve ads based on your past visits to our Service(s).

Google

We use Google Analytics to measure and evaluate access to and traffic on the Public Area of the Site, and create user navigation reports for our Site administrators.

Google operates independently from us and has its own privacy policy, which we strongly suggest you review.

Google may use the information collected through Google Analytics to evaluate Users’ and Visitors’ activity on our Site.

For more information, see Google Analytics Privacy and Data Sharing.

We take measures to protect the technical information collected by our use of Google Analytics. The data collected will only be used on a need-to-know basis to resolve technical issues, administer the Site and identify visitor preferences; but in this case, the data will be in non-identifiable form.

We do not use any of this information to identify Visitors or Users.

Google AdWords remarketing service is provided by Google Inc. You can opt out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize the Google Display Network ads by visiting the Google Ads Settings page: http://www.google.com/settings/ads

Google also recommends installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on – https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout – for your web browser.

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on provides visitors with the ability to prevent their data from being collected and used by Google Analytics. For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/ –

Facebook

We DO NOT use pixel tags or ads from Facebook or any other social media site.

Do Not Track Disclosure

We support Do Not Track (“DNT”). Do Not Track is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked. You can enable or disable Do Not Track by visiting the Preferences or Settings page of your web browser.

Operations

We use the information – other than Client Data – to operate, maintain, enhance and provide all features of the Service, to provide the services and information that you request, to respond to comments and questions and to provide support to users of the Service. We process Client Data solely in accordance with the directions provided by the applicable Client or User.

Improvements

We use the information – other than Client Data – to understand and analyze the usage trends and preferences of our Visitors and Users, to improve the Service, and to develop new products, services, features, and functionality.

Service Providers

We may employ third-party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service(s), to provide the Service(s) on our behalf, to perform Service-related services and/or to assist us in analyzing how our Service(s) is/are used. These third parties have access to your Personal Information only to perform specific tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use your information for any other purpose.

Communications

We may use a Visitor’s or User’s email address or other information – other than Client Data – to contact that Visitor or User (i) for administrative purposes such as customer service, to address intellectual property infringement, right of privacy violations or defamation issues related to the Client Data or Personal Data posted on the Service or (ii) with updates on promotions and events, relating to products and services offered by us and by third parties we work with. You have the ability to opt-out of receiving any promotional communications as described below under “Your Choices.”

Communications Via Email

We may use your Personal Information to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials, and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt-out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send. We will not sell, donate, or give your Personal Information to other marketers or businesses.

Compliance With Laws To Whom We Disclose Information

Except as described in this Policy, we will not intentionally disclose the Personal Data or Client Data that we collect or store on the Service to third parties without the consent of the applicable Visitor, User or Client. We may disclose information to third parties if you consent to us doing so, as well as in the following circumstances:

Unrestricted Information

Any information that you voluntarily choose to include in a Public Area of the Service, such as a public profile page, will be available to any Visitor or User who has access to that content.

Service Providers

We work with third-party service providers who provide website, application development, hosting, maintenance, and other services for us. These third parties may have access to, or process Personal Data or Client Data as part of providing those services for us. We limit the information provided to these service providers to that which is reasonably necessary for them to perform their functions, and our contracts with them require them to maintain the confidentiality of such information.

Non Personally Identifiable Information

We may make certain automatically collected, aggregated, or otherwise non-personally-identifiable information available to third parties for various purposes, including:

(i) compliance with various reporting obligations;

(ii) for business or marketing purposes; or

(iii) to assist such parties in understanding our Clients’, Users’, and Visitors’ interests, habits, and usage patterns for certain programs, content, services, and/or functionality available through the Service.

Law Enforcement, Legal Process, and Compliance

We may disclose Personal Data or other information if required to do so by law or in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with applicable laws, in response to a facially valid court order, judicial or other government subpoena or warrant, or to otherwise cooperate with law enforcement or other governmental agencies.

We also reserve the right to disclose Personal Data or other information that we believe, in good faith, is appropriate or necessary to (i) take precautions against liability,

(ii) protect ourselves or others from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful uses or activity,

(iii) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations,

(iv) protect the security or integrity of the Service and any facilities or equipment used to make the Service available, or

(v) protect our property or other legal rights, enforce our contracts, or protect the rights, property, or safety of others.

Change of Ownership

Information about Users and Visitors, including Personal Data, may be disclosed and otherwise transferred to an acquirer, successor, or assignee as part of any merger, acquisition, debt financing, sale of assets, or similar transaction, as well as in the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership in which information is transferred to one or more third parties as one of our business assets and only if the recipient of the User or Visitor Data commits to a Privacy Policy that has terms substantially consistent with this Privacy Policy.

Client Data may be physically or electronically transferred to an acquirer, successor, or assignee as part of any merger, acquisition, debt financing, sale of assets, or similar transaction, as well as in the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership in which information is transferred to one or more third parties as one of our business assets, for the sole purpose of continuing the operation of the Service, and only if the recipient of the Client Data commits to a Privacy Policy that has terms substantially consistent with this Privacy Policy.

We will disclose your Personal Information where required to do so by law or subpoena or if we believe that such action is necessary to comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement or to protect the security or integrity of our Service(s).

Security

The security of your Personal Information is important to us, and we strive to implement and maintain reasonable, commercially acceptable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information we store, in order to protect it from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure. However, please be aware that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and we are unable to guarantee the absolute security of the Personal Information we have collected from you.

International Transfer

Your information, including Personal Information, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ from those of your jurisdiction.

If you are located outside Spain and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the information, including Personal Information, to Spain and process it there. Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.

Links To Other Sites

Our Service(s) may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third party’s site. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.

Children’s Privacy

Only persons age 18 or older have permission to access our Service(s). Our Service(s) do not address anyone under the age of 16 (“Children”) without express parental permission. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 16. If you are a parent or guardian and you learn that your Children have provided us with Personal Information, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Information from children under the age of 16 without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.

Data Retention

We only retain the Personal Data collected from a User for as long as the User’s account is active or otherwise for a limited period of time as long as we need it to fulfill the purposes for which we have initially collected it unless otherwise required by law. We will retain and use information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements as follows:

(i) billing information is retained for a period of 10 years as of their provision to Ditch the Black Dog & Maria McFarlane in accordance with accounting and taxation laws

(ii) information on legal transactions between Client and Ditch the Black Dog & Maria McFarlane is retained for a period of 10 years as of their provision to Ditch the Black Dog & Maria McFarlane in accordance with the general limitation period set for civil claims.

Your Choices Access, Correction, Deletion

We respect your privacy rights and provide you with reasonable access to the Personal Data that you may have provided through your use of the Services.

If you wish to access or amend any other Personal Data we hold about you, or to request that we delete any information about you that we have obtained from an Integrated Service, you may contact us using the contact box below.

At your request, we will have any reference to you deleted or blocked in our database.

You may update, correct, or delete your Account information and preferences at any time by accessing your Account settings page on the Service.

Please note that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases instantly or within a reasonable period of time, we may retain all information you submit for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, the satisfaction of legal obligations, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so.

You may decline to share certain Personal Data with us, in which case we may not be able to provide you with some of the features and functionality of the Service. At any time, you may object to the processing of your Personal Data, on legitimate grounds, except if otherwise permitted by applicable law.

Privacy Settings

Although we may allow you to adjust your privacy settings to limit access to certain Personal Data, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable.

We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures on the Service. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users with whom you may choose to share your information.

Further, even after information posted on the Service is removed, caching and archiving services may have saved that information, and other users or third parties may have copied or stored the information available on the Service.

We cannot and do not guarantee that information you post on or transmit to the Service will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.

Data Transfer

We may transfer, process, and store Personal Data we collect through the Services in centralized databases located in the E.U. The E.U may not have the same data protection framework as the country from which you may be using the Services.

When we transfer Personal Data to the E.U, we will protect it as described in this Privacy Policy. We will comply with applicable legal requirements providing adequate protection for the transfer of personal information from the U.S to Europe.

Foreign Visitors

The Service is hosted in the European Union. If you choose to use the Service from the United States or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from E.U law, then please note that you are transferring your Client Data and Personal Data outside of those regions to the E.U for storage and processing.

Also, we may transfer your data from the E.U to other countries or regions in connection with the storage and processing of data, fulfilling your requests, and operating the Service. By providing any information, including Client Data and Personal Data, on or to the Service, you consent to such transfer, storage, and processing.

Changes To This Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy is effective as of March 11th, 2024, and will remain in effect except with respect to any changes in its provisions in the future, which will be in effect immediately after being posted on this page.

We reserve the right to update or change our Privacy Policy at any time and you should check this Privacy Policy periodically. Your continued use of the Service(s) after we post any modifications to the Privacy Policy on this page will constitute your acknowledgment of the modifications and your consent to abide and be bound by the modified Privacy Policy.

If we make any material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you either through the email address you have provided us or by placing a prominent notice on our website.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact me at [email protected]