Charm City Virtual Tours Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy

JUNE 6, 2018

CHARM CITY VIRTUAL TOURS knows that your privacy is important, and that’s why we took the time to create this Privacy Policy for you. But that’s not all, because we’ve also got a Cookie Policy because, honestly, who doesn’t love cookies?!!

Who are we?

Our Site, www.charmcityvirtualtours.com, is owned and operated by CHARM CITY VIRTUAL TOURS, a photography company registered in the United States of America, whose registered address is 4010 Spring Meadow Dr., Ellicott City, MD 21042, and whose main trading address is the same.  Our registered business number is 410-707-3306.

Just so I don’t have to keep repeating myself, whenever I say Our Site I’m referring to the website at this URL - www.charmcityvirtualtours.com.

Let me just be clear about things, though - your acceptance of Our Site’s Privacy Policy is deemed to occur upon your first use of Our Site. So if you don’t like this Privacy Policy, then you should stop using our site immediately. I don’t know who’s going to do that, because this is about as basic as websites go, but if that’s your thing and you want to get in touch with CHARM CITY VIRTUAL TOURS then give us a call on the phone or something instead. Our phone number is 410-707-3306.

Personal data we collect:

Let’s just be clear here that we’re only going to collect and use information in a way that’s useful to you. We’re not going to sell your information to Wikileaks (or anyone else for that matter), and we’re not going to harass you with unnecessary spam. That would be kind of rude, and that’s definitely not our thing. 

If you’re just visiting this insanely awesome website then we don’t need anything else from you, so kindly look around at our amazing images, and marvel at our design, but we definitely don’t need you to register or anything just to look at our drop dead gorgeous photography. Our web hosting system may collect information from your system when they’re talking to each other (I never hear them, so they must whisper when they do it), such as IP address, web browser type and version, and operating system. But the IP address is anonymized (pretty cool!) so you can’t be identified and so as far as the analytics goes it’s like you’re completely silent, like a web ninja. 

If you want to work with us then we’re probably going to need some details from you like your name, your phone number, and probably your email address because email is how the kids are sending stuff these days. We haven’t used our team of courier pigeons in years and frankly we’re pretty happy about that because they can get rather messy.

Storage of personal data:

We’ll be storing your details in our super secure client database, which is accessible in our office and in an online CRM system which is fully GDPR compliant and controlled by us, so you know everything is safe. 

We have several quote request forms on Our Site that asks you for details about your photo shoot, and any information you submit there is not stored online anywhere but gets sent straight to our office as an email that’s stored on our  main computer.  This email is also sent to our business cell phone so that we are able to respond to you quickly.

Just so you know, some or all of your data may be stored or transferred outside of the European Economic Area (known to its friends as the EEA, or just The Big E), and given that I’m based in the United States then that should give you some clues as to where any data or contact details you voluntarily submit will be stored. But I’m guessing you already knew that, because you’re a smart cookie. No pun intended. 

If you’re in Europe you should also probably know that there will be a helluva travel fee for us to do a photo shoot in Europe, so keep that in mind before sending us a message. But wherever you’re located you can be sure that we take all reasonable steps to ensure your data is treated safely and securely. Pinky promise.

How do we use your personal data?

First of all, if you contact us to inquire about a photo shoot, or if you book us to do a shoot, then you’re giving us consent to call you and send you emails in response to your inquiry or in regards to that photo shoot. In other words, we use your contact details to do what it says on the box – to contact you about stuff that matters if you’re working with us. 

Secondly, if you work with us as a client of CHARM CITY VIRTUAL TOURS, then we may occasionally need to share an update regarding our company or some super cool new service we’re doing. So just the normal stuff that businesses do, and definitely not something we do a lot. But as always, if you ever want us to stop keeping you updated on what we do then send us a message via email or text and, using a nice voice, say something like, “I love you guys, but I don’t want to hear about that new service you’re offering that is achieving unbelievable results for your photography clients.” 

Thirdly, depending on the services you’ve requested from us we may need to share some information with our subcontractors.  Information we share is limited and provided only as necessary for the provision of services to us on your behalf.

Fourthly, we do send out newsletters occasionally to current and former clients, but if for any reason you want us to remove your data from our records, or you don’t want any more newsletters or emails from us, then contact us via the contact details mentioned above. We’ll be weeping for days, but if you submit a request then we can fully remove your contact details from our records. Sad face.

How can you find out what data we have?

If you’d like to know what information we have about you in our records then send us an email or call our office at 410-707-3306 and I’ll write something up for you with full details on everything we’ve got. It won’t take long, because seriously the only information we have is the stuff you’ve probably already got on your business card. We like to keep things simple, we don’t spy, and we don’t have the ability to do any mind reading shenanigans. But I see you already know that. 

If you want us to remove your details from our system we can certainly do that for you, but if you can wait until after your photo shoot that would be great because if we’re working together then we're going to need to send you stuff, like, photos. That’s what photographers do.

Blog commenting:

We have a blog on our website where we  talk about photography, and marketing, and recent photo shoots. If you leave a comment there then it’s public and everyone can see it, so make sure you don’t post anything there that you don’t want everyone to know.

What about the cookies?

I love cookies! In fact, here’s my favorite cookie recipe of all time -- 

No Bake Cookies

1/4 lb. (1 stick) margarine
1/2 C. milk
2 C. sugar
1/2 C. peanut butter
1/4 C. cocoa
1 tsp. vanilla
3 1/2 C. Quaker Oats

Melt margarine on medium heat.  Add sugar, cocoa, milk and peanut butter.  Bring to a slow boil and boil for 4 minutes.  Remove from heat and add vanilla and oatmeal.  Drop by spoonful onto waxed paper until firm.  Enjoy!

That has nothing to do with accessing Our Site, but those cookies are da bomb!

Seriously, we do use cookies here at the site. Some are placed by us, and some are placed here by other companies like YouTube because we have YouTube videos embedded on our site. All Cookies used by and on Our Site are in accordance with current United States and EU Cookie Law, because we’re the good guys not the bad guys.

Here are the cookies we handle:

Google Analytics – This is used to help us see how many people come to Our Site, what pages they visit, and how long they stay. But the data is anonymized, which means we don’t know who you are, and Google doesn’t know who you are, so we’re only looking at general data.  Sound cool?  If you’re really interested, you can head over to https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies to read all about Google’s Privacy & Terms.

Here are the cookies that are handled by other businesses, so you’ll need to go to their links to check out their privacy policy because that isn’t something we can do. If you don’t like what they do they’ll provide you with a way to turn it off:

Facebook – We use the Facebook Pixel on Our Site because we sometimes run Ads on Facebook because we have to pay The Bills.

This tool allows us to follow the actions of users after they are redirected to a provider’s website by clicking on a Facebook advertisement. We are thus able to record the efficacy of Facebook advertisements for statistical and market research purposes. The collected data remain anonymous. This means that we cannot see the personal data of any individual user. However, the collected data are saved and processed by Facebook. Facebook is able to connect the data with your Facebook account and use the data for their own advertising purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Use Policy found under: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.

If you want to switch this off visit https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/komando/2015/10/09/stop-facebook-targeted-ads-and-tracking/73588820/ for instructions on how to do that.

YouTube – They have cookies called GPS, and PREF, and YSC, and what they do is things like look at the user’s bandwidth to ensure the right video quality is shown, and monitor what videos are watched and by how many people, and also track what videos visitors watch on different websites. To see what you can do with your data at YouTube visit https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801895?hl=en .

Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy as necessary from time to time, and you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Privacy Policy on your first use of Our Site following the alterations. We recommend that you check this page regularly to keep up-to-date, if, you know, you want to see if we ever change anything here or if you’re just having trouble getting to sleep one night and you need something to make you drowsy. 

These are some of the steps CHARM CITY VIRTUAL TOURS has taken to meet the data transparency goals of the GDPR.  These steps continue our practice to protecting your data and providing secure handling of your business information.

Contact details:

If you want to contact us about any of this then you’ll find full details at our contact page: https://charmcityvirtualtours.com/contact-us.

…..

The Privacy & Cookie Policy: Template created by www.buildaphotographybusiness.com 
but full responsibility for maintaining and authorizing this Policy remains with CHARM CITY VIRTUAL TOURS.