Privacy policy
Offbeat Photography Inc.
Personal Information Protection Policy
Offbeat Photography Inc. is committed to safeguarding the personal information entrusted to us by our customers and subscribers. We manage your personal information in accordance with Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act, Federal privacy laws and other applicable laws. This policy outlines the principles and practices we follow in protecting your personal information.
This policy applies to Offbeat Photography Inc. and its subsidiaries, offbeatphoto.ca and any online community platform. The policy also applies to any person providing services on our behalf.
Offbeat Photography Inc. will make readily available to you specific information about our policies and practices relating to the management of personal information. For example, the most recent version of this Privacy Policy will always be available on the Offbeat Photography Inc. website at offbeatphoto.ca.
What is personal information?
Personal information means information about an identifiable individual. This includes an individual’s name, home address and phone number, email address, age, sex, marital or family status, an identifying number, financial information, and educational history.
What personal information do we collect?
Offbeat Photography Inc. collects only the personal information that we need for the purposes of providing services to our customers and subscribers, including personal information needed to:
deliver requested products and services
enroll a client in a subscription or workshop
deliver our e-newsletter
send out membership information
follow up with clients to determine satisfaction with products and services
notify clients of upcoming events of interest
administer our loyalty program
conduct surveys to help us better assist our customers and subscribers
collect data and statistics for our media and advertising kits
We normally collect client information directly from our clients. We may collect your information from other persons with your consent or as authorized by law.
We inform our clients, before or at the time of collecting personal information, of the purposes for which we are collecting the information. However, we don’t provide this notification when a client volunteers information for an obvious purpose (for example, producing a credit card to purchase a membership or subscription when the information will be used only to process the payment).
Collection of Personal Information for Customers and Subscribers Outside Canada
Offbeat Photography Inc. collects only the personal information that we need for the purposes of providing services to our customers and subscribers outside of Canada (such as the USA and UK), including personal information needed to:
deliver requested products and services
enroll a client in a subscription or workshop
deliver our e-newsletter
send out membership information
follow up with clients to determine satisfaction with products and services
notify clients of upcoming events of interest
administer our loyalty program
conduct surveys to help us better assist our customers and subscribers
collect data and statistics for our media and advertising kits
Consent
We ask for consent to collect, use or disclose customer and subscriber personal information, except in specific circumstances where collection, use or disclosure without consent is authorized or required by law. We may assume your consent in cases where you volunteer information for an obvious purpose.
We ask for your express consent for some purposes and may not be able to provide certain services if you are unwilling to provide consent to the collection, use or disclosure of certain personal information. Where express consent is needed, we will normally ask customers and subscribers to provide their consent in writing (by signing a consent form or by checking a box on a form, or electronically (by clicking a button).
A client may withdraw consent to the use and disclosure of personal information at any time unless the personal information is necessary for us to fulfill our legal obligations. We will respect your decision, but we may not be able to provide you with certain products and services if we do not have the necessary personal information.
We may collect, use or disclose client personal information without consent only as authorized by law. For example, we may not request consent when the collection, use or disclosure is reasonable for an investigation or legal proceeding, to collect a debt owed to our organization, in an emergency that threatens life, health or safety, or when the personal information is from a public telephone directory.
How do we use and disclose personal information?
We use and disclose client personal information only for the purposes for which the information was collected, except as authorized by law.
We may disclose your personal information to other companies that provide services on our behalf, including label printers, invoice printers, fulfillment contractors, auditors, our software developers (including website developers and hosts), data processing, document management and office services.
Offbeat Photography Inc. may be involved in the sale or transfer of some or all of its business. As part of that sale or transfer, Offbeat Photography Inc. may disclose your personal information to the acquiring organization, but will require the acquiring organization to agree to protect the privacy of your personal information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy.
Offbeat Photography Inc. may disclose your personal information to a government institution that has asserted its lawful authority to obtain the information or where Offbeat Photography Inc. has reasonable grounds to believe the information could be useful in the investigation of unlawful activity, or to comply with a subpoena or warrant or an order made by a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information, or to comply with court rules regarding the production of records and information, or to Offbeat Photography Inc.’s legal counsel.
Occasionally, we may use your personal information to detect and protect Offbeat Photography Inc. and other third parties against error, fraud, theft and other illegal activity, and to audit compliance with Offbeat Photography Inc. policies and contractual obligations; to obtain audited statements regarding numbers of subscribers per publication; to engage in business transactions, including the purchase, sale, lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, securitization or financing involving Offbeat Photography Inc.; for any other purpose we may indicate to you from time to time.
If we wish to use or disclose your personal information for any new business purpose, we will ask for your consent.
If you would prefer for us NOT to share your information as described above, simply inform us (see “Contact Us” below).
Privacy on Websites, Email Communications, and Social Media Channels
Offbeat Photography Inc. sometimes collects personal information through its various websites. In this section, we provide you with additional information regarding such collection.
Cookies – When an individual visitor accesses the Offbeat Photography Inc. websites, we may use a browser feature called a “cookie” to collect information such as the type of Internet browser and operating system the visitor uses, the domain name of the websites from which the visitor came, date and duration of the visit, number of visits, average time spent on our websites, pages viewed and number of cookies accumulated. A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that identifies the visitor’s browser, but not necessarily the visitor, to our computers each time our websites are visited. Unless a visitor specifically informs us (e.g. by enrolling for our services or sending us correspondence from the websites), we will not know who the individual visitors are.
In addition to the identified purposes described in our Privacy Policy, we may use this website information and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial relationship to measure the use of our websites and to improve the functionality and content of the websites. Visitors can reset their browsers either to notify them when they have received a cookie or refuse to accept cookies. However, if a visitor refuses to accept cookies, he or she may not be able to use some of the features available on our websites.
Online Communications – In order to provide our website visitors with a product, service or information, visitors may voluntarily submit personal information to us for purposes such as asking a question, obtaining information, subscribing to, reviewing or downloading a publication, participating in contests and surveys. If you are known to Offbeat Photography Inc. as a registered user of an online service, we may combine and store personal information about your use of our websites and the online information you have provided with certain other online and offline information we may have collected.
Email Communications – Any official OFFBEAT e-newsletters will only be sent to subscribers who have expressed consent to receiving them. No personal information should be submitted by individuals under 18 years of age without their parent’s or guardian’s permission. Also, if you send us an email message, we may retain that message and your email address, as well as any response we send you.
Advertisers – If you submit some of your personal information on any Offbeat Photography Inc. website to request information from a third party (such as an advertiser), we are not responsible for any use of your personal information by such third party. Hence, we suggest that you first learn more about such third party’s privacy policies prior to submitting your personal information by visiting its website or contacting it by postal mail or telephone.
Opinion Polls – Opinion polls on our websites are anonymous. We do not correlate votes submitted via such polls with names or individual email addresses, unless otherwise disclosed at the point of collection.
Social Media Channels – Offbeat Photography Inc. operates a number of social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The voluntary disclosure of personal information on any of these platforms is not governed by this Privacy Policy. Any communications which are part of these social media networks are public and not private and you provide such information at your own risk. Although it is prohibited to use our platforms as a source of email addresses for sending unfounded or unsolicited messages or spamming, others may still capture your email address and send you email messages if you post your email address and we cannot control such actions by others. We advise you to remain prudent and attentive at all times when you are online on the Internet.
Hyperlinks – For your convenience, Offbeat Photography Inc.’s websites sometimes contain hyperlinks to websites managed by third parties. By activating these hyperlinks, you will leave OFFBEAT Inc’s websites for those of the third parties, which may have different privacy policies and practices than Offbeat Photography Inc. Offbeat Photography Inc. cannot be held liable for the use of such third party websites.
Advertising to Children – We believe that none of Offbeat Photography Inc.’s websites appeal directly to children of 13 years old or less. We do not knowingly direct our advertising at children under the age of 13, except as permitted by law.
Individuals Under 18 – No personal information should be submitted or posted on our website or social media channels by individuals under 18 years of age without their parent’s or guardian’s permission. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child is using our website, please contact us. We may ask for proof of identification before we remove any information to prevent malicious removal of account information. If we discover on our own that an unauthorized child is accessing our website, we will delete the information as soon as we discover it, we will not use the information for any purpose, and we will not disclose the information to third parties. You acknowledge that we do not verify the age of our users nor do we have any liability to do so. If you are a child, please seek the permission of a parent or guardian before accessing our website.
How do we safeguard personal information?
Your personal information is stored in secured locations and on servers controlled by Offbeat Photography Inc., located either at our offices or at the offices of our service providers.
We make every reasonable effort to ensure that client information is accurate and complete. We rely on our customers and subscribers to notify us if there is a change to their personal information that may affect their relationship with our company. If you are aware of an error in our information about you, please let us know and we will correct it on request wherever possible.
In some cases, we may ask for a written request for correction.
We protect client personal information in a manner appropriate for the sensitivity of the information. We make every reasonable effort to prevent any loss, misuse, disclosure or modification of personal information, as well as any unauthorized access to personal information.
We operate secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Credit card information is processed using industry-standard encryption and security. We do not collect personal information from bulletin boards or forums. However, we cannot guarantee that personal information voluntarily disclosed in chat rooms or discussion boards will not be collected and used by others, which may result in unsolicited messages to you from other parties.
We will notify the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, without delay, of a security breach affecting personal information if it creates a real risk of significant harm to individuals.
We retain client personal information only as long as is reasonable to fulfill the purposes for which the information was collected or for legal or business purposes.
We render client personal information non-identifying, or destroy records containing personal information once the information is no longer needed.
We use appropriate security measures when destroying client personal information, including shredding paper records and permanently deleting electronic records.
Access to records containing personal information and changes to personal information
Customer and subscribers of Offbeat Photography Inc. have a right of access to their own personal information in a record that is in our custody or under our control, subject to some exceptions.
For example, organizations are required under the Personal Information Protection Act to refuse to provide access to information that would reveal personal information about another individual. Organizations are authorized under the Act to refuse access to personal information if disclosure would reveal confidential business information. Access may also be refused if the information is privileged or contained in mediation records.
If we refuse a request in whole or in part, we will provide the reasons for the refusal. In some cases where exceptions to access apply, we may withhold that information and provide you with the remainder of the record.
You may make a request for access to your personal information by writing to Erin Boyle. You must provide sufficient information in your request to allow us to identify the information you are seeking.
You may also request information about our use of your personal information and any disclosure of that information to persons outside our organization. You may also request a correction of an error or omission in your personal information.
E-mail communications will always include an identification of the sender and an “Unsubscribe” option.
We will respond to your request within 45 calendar days, unless an extension is granted. We may charge a reasonable fee to provide information, but not to make a correction. We will advise you of any fees that may apply before beginning to process your request.
Contact Us
If you have any requests, questions or comments about your personal information or this Privacy Policy, you may contact us in one of the following ways:
By email: support@offbeatphoto.ca
By mail: Offbeat Photography Inc., Box 1543, Banff, AB, T1L 1B5 [Attention: Erin Boyle]
This Privacy Policy may be changed from time to time without notice. Revisions will be posted on OffbeatPhoto.ca. This Privacy Policy is dated December 5, 2021.