Privacy Policy

A Virtual Vegan found at https://avirtualvegan.com/ (“Website”) is governed by the following privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”).

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it. The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to inform you about what personally identifiable information we may collect and how it may be used. This statement only applies to this Website.

What information do we collect and how is it used?

Information You Voluntarily Submit to the Website: We may collect personal information from you such as your name or email address. For example, you may voluntarily submit information to the Website by leaving a comment, subscribing to a newsletter, or submitting a contact form. In addition, you are able to create a user profile in order to save your favourite recipes, which allows you to submit your email address and create a password. We will store the email address, but your password will not be visible in our records.

Automatically-Collected Information: We automatically collect certain information about you and the device with which you access the Website. For example, when you use the Website, we will log your IP address, operating system type, browser type, referring website, pages you viewed, and the dates/times when you accessed the Website. We may also collect information about actions you take when using the Website, such as links clicked.

Cookies: The Website uses cookies to store visitors’ preferences, record user-specific information on what pages users access or visit, ensure that visitors are not repeatedly sent the same banner ads, customize Website content based on visitors’ browser type or other information that the visitor sends. Cookies may also be used by third-party services, such as Google Analytics, as described herein.

Users may, at any time, prevent the setting of cookies, by the Website, by using a corresponding setting of your internet browser and may thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Furthermore, already set cookies may be deleted at any time via an Internet browser or other software programs. This is possible in all popular Internet browsers. However, if users deactivate the setting of cookies in your Internet browser, not all functions of our Website may be entirely usable.

We may log information using cookies, which are small data files stored on your browser by the Website. We may use both session cookies, which expire when you close your browser, and persistent cookies, which stay on your browser until deleted, to provide you with a more personalized experience on the Website.

We may use the information collected in the following ways:

To operate and maintain the Website;
To identify you as a user of the Website, and customize the Website for you;
To create your account, identify you as a user of the Website, and customize the Website for your account;
To send you promotional information, such as newsletters. Each email promotion will provide information on how to opt-out of future mailings;
To send you administrative communications, such as administrative emails, confirmation emails, technical notices, updates on policies, or security alerts;
To respond to your comments or inquiries;
To provide you with user support;
To track and measure advertising on the Website;
To protect, investigate, and deter against unauthorized or illegal activity.
To improve my products and services.
To run a promotion, contest, survey or other Site feature

Third-party use of information

We may share your information with third parties when you explicitly authorize us to share your information.

Additionally, the Website may use third-party service providers to service various aspects of the Website. Each third-party service provider’s use of your personal information is dictated by their respective privacy policies.

The Website currently uses the following third-party service providers:

Advertising

This Site is affiliated with CMI Marketing, Inc., d/b/a CafeMedia ("CafeMedia") for the purposes of placing advertising on the Site, and CafeMedia will collect and use certain data for advertising purposes. To learn more about CafeMedia's data usage, click here www.cafemedia.com/publisher-advertising-privacy-policy

Affiliate Program Participation

The Website may engage in affiliate marketing, which is done by embedding tracking links into the Website. If you click on a link for an affiliate partnership, a cookie will be placed on your browser to track any sales for purposes of commissions.

A Virtual Vegan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and links to Amazon.com. As part of this Amazon Associates program, the Website will post customized links, provided by Amazon, to track the referrals to their website. This program utilizes cookies to track visits for the purposes of assigning commission on these sales.

Google Analytics – this service tracks Website usage and provides information such as referring websites and user actions on the Website. Google Analytics may capture your IP address, but no other personal information is captured by Google Analytics. Data will be retained by Google Analytics for a total of 26 months after which time it will be deleted.

AWeber – this service is used for delivery of email updates and newsletters. We store your name and email address for purposes of delivering such communications. Please refer to Aweber’s privacy policy for further information. By opting into this subscription, we will also use your email address for targeted advertising. You can opt-out of email-based targeted advertising here.

Wordfence - this service is used to keep the Website secure. It is powered by a constantly updated Threat Defense Feed, and helps stop the Website from getting hacked. Constant scanning leverages the same proprietary feed, alerting us quickly in the event the site is compromised. The Live Traffic view gives us real-time visibility into traffic and hack attempts on the website.

Cloudflare - this service is used for website security and caching. Any personal information obtained by Cloudflare is not shared with any third parties.

Slickstream - Used to personalize your website experience and recommend recipes you may like. Slickstream also allows you to save your favourite recipes. Favourites are saved in your browser temporarily by default, but if you input your email address when prompted, your favorites will then save and sync across all of your devices (phone, desktop, tablet etc) so that you can access them anywhere and at any time. Please refer to Slickstream's privacy policy for further information.

At this time, your personal information is not shared with any other third-party applications. This list may be amended from time to time in the Website’s sole discretion.

Except when required by law, we will not sell, distribute, or reveal your email addresses or other personal information without your consent; however, we may disclose or transfer personal information collected through the Website to third parties who acquire all or a portion of our business, which may be the result of a merger, consolidation, or purchase of all or a portion of our assets, or in connection with any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding brought by or against us.

Anonymous Data

From time to time, we may use anonymous data, which does not identify you alone, or when combined with data from other parties. This type of anonymous data may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Examples of this anonymous data may include analytics or information collected from cookies.

Publicly Visible Information

If you leave a comment on the website, certain information may be publicly visible. At your option, you may add an avatar and a link to your website.Your email address will never be available publicly.

Users may see your name, avatar and website information.

Newsletters

On the Website, you may subscribe to our newsletter, which may be used for advertising purposes. All newsletters sent may contain tracking pixels. The pixel is embedded in emails and allows an analysis of the success of online marketing campaigns. Because of these tracking pixels, we may see if and when you open an email and which links within the email you click. Also, this allows the Website to adapt the content of future newsletters to the interests of the user. This behavior will not be passed on to third parties.

Opt-out – You may opt-out of future email communications by following the unsubscribe links in our emails. You may also notify us at mel@avirtualvegan.com to be removed from our mailing list.

Access – You may access the personal information we have about you by submitting a request to mel@avirtualvegan.com.

Amend – You may contact us at mel@avirtualvegan.com to amend or update your personal information.

Forget – In certain situations, you may request that we erase or forget your personal data. To do so, please submit a request to mel@avirtualvegan.com.

Please note that we may need to retain certain information for record-keeping purposes or to complete transactions, or when required by law.

Sensitive personal information

At no time should you submit sensitive personal information to the Website. This includes your social security number, information regarding race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, health information, criminal background, or trade union memberships. If you elect to submit such information to us, it will be subject to this Privacy Policy.

Children's information

The Website does not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 16. If a parent or guardian believes that the Website has personally identifiable information of a child under the age of 16 in its database, please contact us immediately at mel@avirtualvegan.com and we will use our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

Copyright and Trademark

Unless otherwise specified, all materials appearing on this site, including the text, site design, logos, graphics, icons, and images, as well as the selection, assembly and arrangement thereof, are the sole property of Melanie McDonald and A Virtual Vegan, Copyright © 2021, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You may use the content of this site only for the purpose of reading the information on this site, for your own education, for shopping on this site or for placing an order through this site and for no other purpose. No materials from this site may be copied, reproduced, modified, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without our prior written permission. All rights not expressly granted herein are reserved. Any unauthorized use of the materials appearing on this site may violate copyright, trademark and other applicable laws and could result in criminal or civil penalties.

My images are protected by Pixsy who work to resolve cases of unauthorized image use. PIXSY can and will request royalties for commercial, institutional and certain organizational uses of images and will take legal action on my behalf if a resolution cannot be met.

I do not allow republication of my post or recipe text without consent. If my recipes are copied and pasted then republished onto other websites, it can negatively affect how A Virtual Vegan gets displayed in search results, which just isn't fair to me. Plus, there are copyright issues too. If you have a question about a recipe, please feel free to email me on mel@avirtualvegan.com.

You are welcome to share a photograph with credit to me and a link to this website, however using a photograph without credit and no link, or re-publishing the recipe in its entirety is strictly forbidden. Many, many hours of work go into creating each of my recipes and I ask that you respect that. By making simple substitutions you do not make it an original recipe, so please refrain from adapting the recipes without properly linking back to my original recipe.

No Advice Given

The beneficial low and no-cost advice shared on our site has been provided for general educational purposes only and for no other purpose and has not been evaluated by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Nothing we provide for you here is intended to replace any form of competent professional advice. If you are in need of professional advice, including medical, nutrition, mental health, legal, accounting or tax advice, or any other form of professional advice, then you should seek out a competent professional in that area who can ensure you are provided help that is specific to your particular situation and circumstances.

Headings

The headings for sections herein are for convenience only and shall not affect the meaning of the provisions of this privacy policy.

Additional Rights of EEA (European economic area) Residents

If you are a resident of a country in the EEA, you have the rights, among others, to:

(i) access your personal data
(ii) ensure the accuracy of your personal data
(iii) the right to have us delete your personal data
(iv) the right to restrict further processing of your personal data, and
(v) the right to complain to a supervisory authority in your country of residence in the event that data is misused

If you believe that our processing of your personal information infringes data protection laws, you have a legal right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority responsible for data protection. You may do so in the EU member state of your residence, your place of work or the place of the alleged infringement.

The California Consumer Privacy Act

California Consumer Privacy Act (hereafter, “CCPA”) is a California privacy law that will be effective as of January 1, 2020.

Under CCPA, California consumers have several added rights and privileges that serves to protect their personal information being used in a way that the consumer does not agree with. This notice is in place to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) of 2018) that goes into effect as of January 1, 2020.

The consumer has the right to request and know what categories of information, what personal information we collect, how we collect it, and for what purpose.

CONSUMER’S RIGHT TO DEMAND DISCLOSURE

You have the right to demand that we disclose what categories of information we have or are collecting on you, and what personal information we have collected or are collecting on you.

In an effort for full compliance, we are disclosing the categories of information we are generally collecting on and/or about consumers.

As a consumer, you are free to request disclosure of your information at no extra charge to you if you make such requests no more than twice (2) during a 12-month period.

General Information We Collect

We generally collect personal information, as listed under CCPA, in the form of NAME, EMAIL ADDRESS, GOOGLE ANALYTICS, IP ADDRESS,

We collect the information on consumer stated above through, OPT-IN FORMS, GOOGLE ANALYTICS, FACEBOOK PIXEL, EMAIL, NEWSLETTER.

You have the right to request disclosure of your collected personal information from us by contacting us at Jere’ Cassidy @One Hot Oven, jere@onehotoven.com,

CONSUMER’S RIGHT TO REQUEST DELETION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

Under CCPA, a consumer has the right to contact the business that collected personal information on consumer and request deletion of that information.

There are certain limited circumstances when the business does not have comply and delete the information.

To provide and complete the transaction for which purpose the information was collected in the first place (example: selling and delivering goods and services);
In compliance with a legal obligation;
To carry out and be compliant with another legal requirement;
To keep it for internal use that is reasonable to the consumer.

CONSUMER’S RIGHT TO DEMAND DISCLOSURE IN CASE OF SALE

As a consumer, you have the right to request full disclosure if the business sells or transfers your personal information for a business purpose. You have the right to know what information specifically has been sold or transferred, to whom, and for what business purpose.

We DO NOT SELL INFORMATION personal information we collect from consumers.

However, in the event we do so within the next 12 months, you will be given the option to opt-out of that if you don’t wish for your personal information to be sold.

The consumer has the right to request that we disclose what category of information we sold, the specific pieces of information we sold, to whom we sold it, and for what business purpose.

CONSUMER’S RIGHT TO REQUEST BUSINESS NOT SELL INFORMATION

Under CCPA, the consumer has the right to request that a business that collects personal information on consumers does not sell that information to anyone.

You have the right to opt out and can do this by emailing us at [mel@avirtualvegan.com]. Therefore, you can be sure that your personal information and in general data collected on you will never be sold.

BUSINESS WILL NOT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST CONSUMER

If you choose to exercise your right and request that we never sell your information, in accordance to CCPA, we will not and cannot discriminate against you for choosing to exercise your right.

You will have access to the same services, at the same prices as everyone else. The quality and conditions of products and services you receive will be the same as everyone else, regardless if exercised your CCPA right to forbid selling your information.

SECURING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Under CCPA, a business that collects or receives personal information about the consumer must implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices.

If a business experiences a data breach, then it will be held liable if it did not implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices.

We DO our due diligence, and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices to make sure that the consumer data and private information we collected is safe and secure.

Here are the security practices we have in place to protect consumer data:

All the systems containing the consumer information (such as the email service provider) are password protected.
- The passwords are considered very strong and are not easy to figure out.
Only 2 people know the password.
To make our Email Service Provider database even more secure, we change the password every 3 months.
Our computers are protected from third-party access by having an additional password layer before they can start working on the computer.
An endpoint firewall is active and there is a real time malware scanner.
Aside from what’s stated above, we take reasonable precautions on a daily basis to protect consumers and their information from unauthorized use, modification, destruction, and disclosure.

CONTACT US

If you wish to exercise your rights under CCPA and make requests for disclosure, deletion or disclosure about sale of information, you can contact us directly and make such requests. You can also contact us at anytime if you’re not happy about the way we’re handling your data.

We will respond as quickly as reasonably possible. Please have in mind that we don’t have to comply with requests if you make them more than twice during a 12-month period.

You may exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal data by written notice to us addressed to the following:

CCPA REQUESTS
A VIRTUAL VEGAN
PO BOX 99900 UE 786 036 RPO
COLWOOD CORNERS COLWOOD BC
V9B 0P8 CANADA

YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS

You may exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal data by written notice to us addressed to the following:

EU PRIVACY COMPLAINTS/INFORMATION
A VIRTUAL VEGAN
PO BOX 99900 UE 786 036 RPO
COLWOOD CORNERS COLWOOD BC
V9B 0P8 CANADA

By using this Site, you signify your acceptance of this privacy policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our Site. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes to this policy will be deemed your acceptance of those changes.

Contact Information

For questions related to this Privacy Policy contact [mel@avirtualvegan.com]. You may exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal data by written notice to us addressed to the following:

A VIRTUAL VEGAN
PO BOX 99900 UE 786 036 RPO
COLWOOD CORNERS COLWOOD BC
V9B 0P8 CANADA

Last updated: February 1st, 2021.