Youthful Cities’ Data usage and Privacy Policies

Youthfulcities (“we”, “us”, “our”) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This privacy policy (the “Policy”) describes how we collect, protect, use and share information gathered about you, including on our website (the “Site”). We hope that this disclosure will help increase your confidence in how we collect, protect, use and share information including on the Site, and enhance your experience on the Internet. Please note that by visiting Youthful Cities at the Site, you are accepting the practices described in this Policy.

Youthful Cities may review this Policy to ensure that it is relevant and remains current with changing laws, regulations and technologies, and reserves the right to change this Policy at any time. Our updated Policy will be posted on the Site, and will be current as of the “Last modified date” set out above. However, while the Policy may change, Youthful Cities will treat your personal information in a manner consistent with the Policy under which it was collected, unless Youthful Cities has your consent to treat it differently.

The types of personal data we may collect include:

3.1 Personal Information: Personal information is any information about an identifiable person. This includes information such as your name, email address, postal address, phone number, and other identifiers that can be used to identify you. This policy applies to personal information about individuals and does not apply to the information collected, used or disclosed with respect to corporate or commercial entities. Also, this policy does not impose any limits on our collection, use or disclosure of information exempted under applicable privacy legislation, including business contact information and certain publicly available information.

3.2 Demographic Information: Including but not limited to age, gender, income level, education level, employment status.

3.3 Research Data: Responses to Survey Questions and Interview Questions, including opinions, experiences, and other information provided directly by the participant.

3.4 Indicator Data: Publically available data and/or information obtained from local experts.

3.5 Aggregate information: Standard web server/visitor traffic information, commonly referred to as ‘aggregate information’, regarding overall website traffic patterns. Web servers normally collect this type of basic information as part of their web log processes. This aggregate information does not identify you and thus does not constitute personal information.

In addition to information provided by our visitors we use the normal Internet tracking tools associated with standard Internet protocols and web–based systems. This system information is typically stored in log files and the information is used for aggregate reporting. Aggregate reporting includes total number of visitors, most visited sections, peak traffic times, etc. Log files are simply transaction records web servers maintain. Those logs are used for recording information, such as:

• service provider IP addresses;
• browser versions;
• referring websites;
• search terms used;
• average number of pages requested;
• average duration of visit;
• total visitor traffic.

We use aggregate information gathered from your visit to better design our website. This information supplies us with a broad picture of how people use our website in order to help the management of our systems and to better serve our audience.

Youthful Cities will not collect information indiscriminately and will limit collection of information to that which is reasonable and necessary for the purposes outlined in this privacy policy. We will also collect information as is otherwise authorized by law.

Youthful Cities collects your data through various methods, including but not limited to:

4.1. Direct Input: We collect information that you provide directly to us when you create an account, complete forms, participate in surveys, or interact with our services. This may include your name, contact information, and other personal details. To do so, we may use software tools including, but not limited to, Typeform or contact forms on our website.

4.2. Automated collection of aggregate information.

4.3. Third Parties: We may receive information from third-party sources, such as analytics providers or marketing partners.

A cookie is a small text file sent from a Web server and placed on your computer’s hard drive. A cookie is generally used to enhance your browsing experience. If you choose to refuse cookies, you may not be able to access some of the interactive features on our Web sites.

Cookies used by Youthful Cities do not give us access to anything on your hard drive and cannot do anything to your computer. Youthful Cities uses two types of cookies: session cookies (temporary) or persistent cookies (longer–term continuing use).

Session cookies may be used to support on-line feedback/discussion, forms and registration and ‘e-commerce/shopping cart’ transactions. They are used only during your online session and expire when you close your browser. Without session cookies, moving around the Site could be much slower. Persistent cookies are different from session cookies because they are stored on your computer’s hard drive for some length of time. They are usually used if you want us to remember information about your Web preferences and passwords for automatic log-in purposes.

In addition to the cookie uses described above, Youthful Cities may also use cookies to serve our remarketing campaigns so that third-party vendors, including Google and Facebook, show our ads on sites across the Internet. Youthful Cities may also use targeted advertising services to tailor Youthful Cities advertisements (both on the Site and on other sites) to your interests. You can opt out of these remarketing campaigns by turning off cookies in your browser, as described above.

Youthful Cities may also disclose some of your personal information (such as your gender, age, location and interests) to the providers of targeted advertising services to help adjust the advertisements to your preferences; however, in that case, Youthful Cities will contractually obligate the service providers to maintain the security of your information and only use it for the purpose of targeting Youthful Cities’s ads to you. You can opt out of participating in these targeted ad programs by contacting our Privacy Officer.

How to manage your cookies: Cookies are widely used and most web browsers are configured initially to accept cookies automatically. You can choose to set your browser to detect and reject cookies, to accept cookies from all sites, or to prompt you whenever a site wants to send you a cookie. Check your browser’s “Help” files to learn how to do this. Please note, however, if you disable cookies, you may not experience optimal performance on our website. You can review our cookie policy and manage your preferences by visiting the “Manage cookies” link found in the footer of every page.

Youthful Cities will not disclose personal information to other persons, other than as follows:

1. to the extent required for the Identified Purposes, as described to you at the time of collection.
2. to other third parties, such as sponsors and website content partners, but only where and to the extent you give us your permission to do so.
3. as required or permitted by law.

Youthful Cities collects, uses and discloses your personal information for the following purposes:

• to authenticate your identity;
• to operate, customize and improve our website, social media sites, mobile applications, advertisements, products and services;
• to allow you to use portions of our website such as our forums;
• to allow you to participate in our contests, and to administer those contests;
• to monitor your compliance with any of your agreements with us;
• to administer our provision of, and your payment for, products or services you request from us;
• to provide newsletters, electronic messages and information you request from us;
• to provide other information to you regarding our products and services or third party products and services, unless you opt out of receiving that information;
• to manage or transfer our assets or liabilities, for example in the case of an acquisition, disposition or merger;
• to protect us, yourself and others from fraud and error and to safeguard our business interests;
• to collect debts owed to us;
• to comply with legal and regulatory requirements; and
• for other purposes we may inform you about from time-to-time.

We may transfer your personal information across provincial or national borders to fulfil any of the above purposes (including both the necessary and the optional purposes), including to service providers located in the United States and other jurisdictions outside of Canada who may be subject to applicable disclosure laws in those jurisdictions. You may contact our Privacy Officer (whose contact information is provided below) to obtain information about our policies and practices regarding our use of service providers outside of Canada, or to ask questions about the collection, use, disclosure or storage of personal information by our off-shore service providers.

When your personal information is to be used for a purpose not previously identified, the new purpose will be disclosed to you prior to such use, and your consent will be sought unless the use is authorized or required by law.

We may work with other companies to provide services on our behalf, such as website hosting services, payment processing services and product delivery services. Those service providers will be permitted to obtain only the personal information they need to deliver the service in question, and they will be required to maintain the confidentiality of that information.

We may use aggregated and anonymized data to create “data-derivative” products. Some examples include, but are not limited to:

5.1 Open Data: We may process and release anonymized user-submitted data on our open data portal for public access and research purposes. This data is under the Open Data Common Open Database License unless otherwise specified.

5.2 Research and Report/Service Generation: Research data, when processed and anonymized, may be used to generate reports and insights that inform stakeholders, funders, and the community to evaluate and improve our programs and services.

5.3 Training Data-Driven Models: We may use anonymized data to train data tools, such as AI models, to derive deeper insights and improve our services.

We use industry-standard encryption protocols to protect your data both in transit and in rest when stored in public cloud services. This includes the use of third-party service providers for data storage and processing. These providers are selected based on their data security measures and compliance with applicable regulations. The servers currently used by Youthful Cities are managed by Amazon Web Services and/or Google Cloud Services and are physically located in the United States and/or Canada.

In order to prevent unauthorized access to your personal information, maintain the accuracy of your personal information, and to ensure your personal information is used and disclosed only pursuant to this Policy, Youthful Cities employees who have access to personal information strive to maintain physical, electronic, contractual and administrative safeguards to protect personal information collected with an appropriate level of physical or electronic security. Access control measures, including user authentication and role-based permissions, are in place to ensure the confidentiality of your information.

Personal Information will only be retained for the period of time required to fulfill the purpose for which we collected it or as may be required by law. We will keep personal information used to make a decision affecting you for at least one year after using it to make the decision, unless otherwise permitted or required by law.

We will destroy, erase or make anonymous documents or other records containing personal information as soon as it is reasonable to assume that the original purpose is no longer being served by retention of the information and retention is no longer necessary for legal or business purposes.

We will take due care when destroying personal information so as to prevent unauthorized access to the information.

Our website may contain links to other third party sites that are not governed by this privacy policy. Although we endeavor to only link to sites with high privacy standards, our privacy policy will no longer apply once you leave our website. Additionally, we are not responsible for the privacy practices employed by third party websites. Therefore, we suggest that you examine the privacy statements of those sites to learn how your information may be collected, used, shared and disclosed.

Youthful Cities will make a reasonable effort to ensure that personal information we are using or disclosing is accurate and complete. In some cases, we rely on you to ensure that certain information, such as your address or telephone number, is current, complete and accurate.

If you demonstrate the inaccuracy or incompleteness of personal information, we will amend the information as required. If appropriate, we will send the amended information to third parties to whom the information has been disclosed.

When a challenge regarding the accuracy of personal information is not resolved to your satisfaction, we will annotate the personal information under its control with a note that the correction was requested but not made.

We may update this policy to reflect changes in our data practices and the updated version will be available on our website. We will notify you of any material changes and, where required, obtain your consent for new processing activities.

Under CPPA, you have specific rights regarding your personal data:

9.1. Access: Upon written request and authentication of identity, Youthful Cities will provide you with your personal information under our control, information about the ways in which that information is being used and a description of the individuals and organizations to whom that information has been disclosed. We will make the information available within 30 days or provide written notice where additional time is required to fulfil the request.

In some situations we may not be able to provide access to certain personal information. This may be the case where, for example, disclosure would reveal personal information about another individual, the personal information is protected by solicitor/client privilege, the information was collected for the purpose of an investigation or where disclosure of the information would reveal confidential commercial information that, if disclosed, could harm our competitive position. We may also be prevented by law from providing access to certain personal information.

Where an access request is refused, we will notify you in writing, document the reasons for refusal and outline further steps which are available to you.

9.2. Rectification: You can request that inaccurate or incomplete data be corrected.

9.3. Erasure: You may request the deletion of your personal data under certain circumstances.

9.4. Restriction of Processing: You have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data in specific situations.

9.5. Data Portability: You can request your personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format for transmission to another data controller.

9.6. Objection: You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data.

9.7. Withdraw Consent: Where processing is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.

For all inquiries as to your personal information, including requests to access or correct personal information, please send a written request to:

Youthful Cities
37 Fairview Blvd
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
Canada

Or send an e-mail to: info@youthfulcities.com.