Privacy Policy

Effective November 1, 2011

1. SoCal Food Tours Commitment to Your Privacy

Your privacy is very important to us. As part of the normal operation of our services we collect and, in some cases, disclose information about you. We do not sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. Please read this Privacy Policy to learn more about the ways in which we use and protect your personal information. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to the Terms of Use and all terms not defined here are defined in the Terms of Use.

If you have additional questions, you may send email to socalfoodtour@gmail.com.

The privacy practices of this statement apply to our services available under the domain and subdomains of www.socalfoodtour.com (“Site”), as well as all of SoCal Food Tours online and offline services (collectively with the Site, the “Service”), including without limitation SoCal Food Tours phone call center. By visiting this website, calling SoCal Food Tours call center, or using the Service you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy, and expressly consent to our collection, use and disclosure of the information that you provide as described in this policy. If you do not agree please do not use or access our Service.

Please note that your personal information is processed in the United States, where laws regarding the processing of personal information may differ from the laws of your home country.

2. An Important Note About Children

The Service is neither directed towards nor intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from individuals under 13. If you are under 13, do not register or provide personal information to us. If you are the parent or guardian of a child whom you believe has disclosed personal information, please contact us at socalfoodtour@gmail.com so that we may delete that information.

3. Information We Collect

Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. This allows us to provide services and features that are most likely to meet your needs, and to customize our service to make your experience safer and easier. We only collect personal information about you that we consider necessary for achieving these purposes.

a. Information You Voluntarily Provide To Us
In general, you can browse the Site without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself.

However, if you choose to use our Services, we may require you to provide contact and identity information, billing information, and other personal information as indicated on the forms throughout the Site. Once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous to us. You always have the option to not provide information by choosing not to use a particular service or feature.

If you choose to use any Services that require registration, such as signing up as a member, buying or selling, we will collect additional information, which might include the following:

• Your name or the name of persons for whom you are buying Activities;
• Information about your business (eg, business name, mailing address and contact information; etc), if you are using SoCal Food Tours to sell Activities;
• Your email address and telephone number so we can contact you as necessary;
• A member name and password to use to update your information or use SoCal Food Tours Services in the future;
• Credit card information to complete your transactions. (We currently do not store credit card numbers after the session in which you are using them to purchase terminates.)

In specific situations, we may, but are not obligated to, collect other types of information including without limitation the following:

• If you post User Content on the Site, we will collect that information you provide to us. For more information about User Content, see the Terms of Use.
• If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails or letters, or contact us, including using the SoCal Food Tours phone call center, we may collect such information in a file specific to you. We retain this information as necessary to provide, among others, customer support and troubleshoot problems as permitted by law.

b. Information We Collect Automatically
As you use the Site, we may also collect certain information passively. Through technologies like cookies, pixels, beacons, log files and certain software tools such as Javascript, we may collect information about how you use the Site. For example, when you browse through our Site we collect:

• Basic information about your computer, browser and connection to make sure that we can give you proper information and customer service and for security purposes. This information may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on the Site or not), which URL you next go to (whether this URL is on the Site or not), and your IP address.
• Information on what pages you access or visit, in order to do internal research and to improve our Services.

c. Cookies and Other Technologies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. Most of our cookies are session cookies, meaning that they are automatically deleted from your computer at the end of a session. Like most websites, the Site uses cookies to help it keep track of your purchases and other activity on the Site and enhance your experience on the Site. We also use cookies on certain pages of the Site to help analyze our web page flow and measure promotional effectiveness.

You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits. If you decline a cookie, you will still be able to browse our site; however you will not be able to buy or sell.

We may also use pixels, “Web Beacons” (which are usually small, transparent graphic images) and navigational data like URLs to gather information as to whether a page of the Site has been viewed and, if so, when and how many times. This type of information is collected to make the Site and Service more useful to you and to help us meet our Users interests and needs.

During some visits we may use software tools such as JavaScript to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

d. Log Files
Like most standard Web site servers we use log files, or similar devices to gather information. This includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring pages, platform type, date/time stamp. IP addresses, etc. are linked to personally identifiable information. In order to administer and optimize the Site for you and to diagnose problems with our Site, we use your IP address, etc. to help identify you and to gather broad demographic information about you.

4. Our Use of Your Information

SoCal Food Tours uses your personal information to provide you with the information you request about our Services, to ensure smooth buying, selling and delivery of Activities, to confirm your purchases and to ensure that Buyers are correctly charged and SoCal Food Tours is correctly paid. The personal information we collect from you will be shared with our service partners who are involved in fulfilling the purchases you have made from us.

a. Transactions, Customer Service, Credit Card Issuers & Quality Assurance
We use contact information to help us efficiently conduct transactions, to deliver the services you have requested, to perform quality assurance, sales analyses and other business analyses, and to contact you in connection with Activities for which you purchased Tickets (including without limitation event confirmations, changes and cancellations). Users who buy or sell Activities may receive a number of emails throughout the transaction process and they may sometimes receive phone calls from our Customer Service department to ensure smooth transactions.

In some cases we may use service providers to help us perform some of these tasks, and consequently we may share your contact information with these service providers. We may also provide your personal information to your credit card issuer, bank, or to credit card processors for their purposes.

We use your personal information to facilitate the services you request. We use your personal information in the file we maintain about you, and other information we obtain from your current and past activities on the Site to: resolve disputes; troubleshoot problems; help promote safe buying and selling; collect fees owed; measure consumer interest in our products and services, inform you about online and offline offers, products, services, and updates; customize your experience; detect and protect us against error, fraud and other criminal activity; enforce our Terms of Use; and as otherwise described to you at the time of collection. At times, we may look across multiple users to identify problems or resolve disputes, and in particular we may examine your personal information to identify users using multiple member names or aliases. We may compare and review your personal information for errors, omissions and for accuracy.

We use your email address to contact you regarding administrative notices, new product offerings, and communications relevant to your use of the Site.

b. Improving SoCal Food Tours Service
You agree that we may use personal information about you to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyze site usage, improve our content and product offerings, and customize the Site’s content, layout, and services. These uses improve the Site and better tailor it to meet your needs, so as to provide you with a smooth, efficient, safe and customized experience while using the Site. We may use your demographic information to perform business analyses or to tailor the Site and communications to your interests.

c. Contacting You for Offers and Promotions
You agree that we may use your personal information to contact you and deliver information to you that, in some cases, are targeted to your interests, such as targeted banner advertisements, administrative notices, product offerings, and communications relevant to your use of the Site.

d. Service Announcements
On rare occasions it may be necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications.

5. Our Disclosure of Your Information

As a matter of policy, we do not sell or rent any of your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. However, the following describes some of the ways that your personal information may be disclosed in the normal scope of business to provide our Services.

a. Aggregate Information (e.g., Advertisers)
We may share anonymous, aggregated (grouped across all user accounts) demographic information (eg, country, zip code) with business partners and other third parties so that they can make informed decisions on working with SoCal Food Tours and tailor their communications to the appropriate audience. However, in these situations, we do not disclose to these entities any information that could be used to personally identify you.

b. Service Providers & Third Party Intermediaries
We may use third party suppliers and service providers to facilitate our services – we may outsource the operations of one or more aspects of our Service to a supplier or service provider who performs services according to our requirements (e.g., search technology, discussion boards, reward programs). For example, in order for this site to properly fulfill its obligation to protect all of its users, it is necessary for us to verify your credit card information with a third party. Therefore we may need to provide some of your personal information directly to these service providers.

c. Legal Disclosure and Business Transfer
We may disclose specific contact information when we determine that such disclosure is necessary to comply with laws, to enforce intellectual property rights, to cooperate with or seek assistance from law enforcement or to protect the interests or safety of SoCal Food Tours or other visitors to the Site or Users of services or services provided by SoCal Food Tours. Therefore, intellectual property and other rights owners, and local, state, federal and international law enforcement can request and may receive your personally identifiable information.

Due to the existing regulatory environment, we cannot ensure that all of your private communications and other personal information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Privacy Policy. By way of example (without limiting the foregoing), we may be forced to disclose personal information to the government or third parties under certain circumstances, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, or users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the Site. Therefore, although we use industry standard practices to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private.

Also, your personal information may be passed on to a third party in the event of a transfer of ownership or assets of SoCal Food Tours. For instance, in the event SoCal Food Tours goes through a business transition, such as a merger, an acquisition by another company, or a sale of a portion of its assets, users’ personal information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred.

6. Other Information Collectors

Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties, whether they are browsers, buyers or sellers on our Site or other sites throughout the Internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Since SoCal Food Tours does not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy policies of that third party. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

7. Security

We strive to take all reasonable steps to keep secure any information which we hold about you. We use procedural and technical safeguards to protect your personal information against loss or theft as well as unauthorized access and disclosure to protect your privacy. Your information may be transferred to and maintained in whole or in part on computer networks which may be located outside of the state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction in which you reside, and may be stored on equipment or in facilities leased or licensed from third parties.

We treat data as an asset that must be protected against loss and unauthorized access. We employ many different security techniques to protect such data from unauthorized access by users inside and outside the company. However, “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet. No data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. SoCal Food Tours will not be held responsible for events arising from unauthorized access to your personal information.

All of our users’ information is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information.

8. Contacting SoCal Food Tours Regarding Privacy Policy

If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy policy or would like to contact us regarding the information you have submitted to us, please contact us by sending an email to socalfoodtour@gmail.com stating your questions or concerns.

9. Changes To This Statement

Due to our commitment to serving all of our users’ needs, and the business changes this commitment may require, we may review and amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. Changes will be effective immediately upon posting. After changes are posted, your continued use of the Services shall constitute acceptance of the amended Privacy Policy. We encourage you to check this site regularly for changes.

10. Notice

Any notices sent to you pursuant to any provisions contained in this SoCal Food Tours Privacy Policy shall be directed to the electronic mail address on file with SoCal Food Tours at the time of the notice. Any notice sent by electronic mail shall be deemed received by you on the date sent from SoCal Food Tours. Any notice to SoCal Food Tours shall be sent by electronic mail to socalfoodtour@gmail.com.