Effective Date: January 17, 2025
1.Introduction
The California Travel & Tourism Commission (the “Commission”, “Visit California”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is a 501c6 organization and we recognize that our members, visitors, users, and others (collectively or individually “Users”) who use www.visitcalifornia.com (the “Website”) value your privacy. This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) details important information regarding the use and disclosure of User personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) collected on the Website and when you make use of our services or contact us. The Commission provides this Notice to help you make an informed decision about whether to use or continue using the Website or our services. Please read this Notice to learn what we are doing with your Personal Information, how we protect it, and what privacy rights you may have under applicable data protection and privacy laws, such as the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (“PIPL”).
This Notice is incorporated into and is subject to our Terms of Use. Your use of the Website and any Personal Information you provide on the Website remains subject to the terms of this Notice and our Terms of Use.
2.Scope of the Notice
The scope of this Notice includes, but is not limited to, the following principles:
(a) Personal Information may only be obtained through lawful means.
(b) The purposes for which Users’ Personal Information is collected shall be specified at or prior to the time of collection, and any subsequent use of the Personal Information shall be limited to and consistent with the fulfillment of those purposes previously specified.
(c) Personal Information may not be disclosed, made available, or otherwise used for any purpose other than those specified, except with the consent of the Users, or as required by law or regulation.
(d) Personal Information collected shall be relevant to the purpose for which it is needed.
(e) The general means by which Personal Information is protected against loss, unauthorized access, use, modification, or disclosure shall be posted, unless the disclosure of those general means would compromise legitimate agency objectives or law enforcement purposes.
(f) Users have certain privacy rights regarding their Personal Information and can exercise these privacy rights.
(g) The Commission does not sell personal information.
This Notice does not apply to the following:
(a) Personal Information of employees, job applicants, contractors, business owners, directors, and officers of the Commission; and
(b) Information that does not identify, relate to, describe, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could be reasonably linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular individual or household, as such information is not considered Personal Information (i.e. anonymized data or non-personally identifiable information).
3.The Commission’s Role With Respect to Users’ Personal Information
Within the scope of this Notice, the Commission acts as a processor or handler of your Personal Information. This means that we decide how and why Personal Information is collected and processed.
4.Why the Commission Collects Your Personal Information
We must have a valid reason to use your Personal Information. We may process your Personal Information on the basis of:
(a) your consent — we may rely on your consent when you visit our Website and agree to the use of cookies and other trackers. By accepting cookies and other trackers, you allow us and other third parties to track your browsing behavior and collect data for various purposes such as analytics, personalization, and targeted advertising;
(b) the need to conclude or perform a contract with you;
(c) the need to comply with the law; or
(d) any other ground, as required or permitted by law.
Where we process your Personal Information based on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of our processing before you withdrew your consent. It will also not affect the validity of our processing of Personal Information performed on other lawful grounds.
Where we receive your Personal Information as part of our services to fulfill a contract, we require such Personal Information to be able to carry out the contract. Without that necessary Personal Information, we will not be able to provide our services.
5.The Personal Information Collected by the Commission
1.User Provided Personal Information / Profile Information: In order to operate the Website and to provide you with information about services that may be of interest to you, we may collect the following Personal Information:
a. “Identifiers” such as full name, postal address, phone number or email address, and any other identifier that permits the physical or online contacting of a specific user;
b. “Demographic information” such as your gender, username, age/birth date, and occupation;
c. “Geolocation information” such as you zip code, postal code, and hometown;
d. “Internet or other similar network activity information” such as your interests and the content of communications between you and other members over the Websites.
2.User Content: When you post Content (as defined in Section 16 of this Notice) in accordance with Section 16 of this Notice, we process the Content you generate using the Visit California Social Media Platforms (as defined in Section 16 of this Notice). The Personal Information we collect and process in relation to Content includes photographs, audios and videos you upload or create, comments, hashtags, feedback, and reviews you make, and the associated metadata, such as when, where, and by whom the Content was created.
3.Cookies Information: When you visit the Website, we may send one or more cookies, a small text file containing a string of alphanumeric characters, to your computer or mobile device that uniquely identifies your browser.
4.Log File Information: When you use the Website, our servers automatically record certain information that your web browser sends whenever you visit the Website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, browser language, referring / exit pages and URLs, platform type, number of clicks, domain names, landing pages, pages viewed and the order of those pages, the amount of time spent on particular pages, the date and time of your request, and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.
5.Clear GIFs Information: When you use the Website, we may employ “clear GIFs” (a.k.a. Web Beacons) which are used to track the online usage patterns of our Users anonymously (i.e., in a non-personally-identifiable manner). In addition, we may also use clear GIFs in HTML-based emails sent to our Users to track which emails are opened by recipients.
6.Privacy of Children: Nowhere on the website do we knowingly collect personal information from minors under the age of fourteen.
It may be necessary in some circumstances for us to collect some forms of sensitive Personal Information about you in order to provide specific services to you. Sensitive Personal Information refers to the Personal Information that is likely to result in damage to the personal dignity of any natural person or damage to his or her personal or property safety once disclosed or illegally used, including such information as biometric identification, religious belief, specific identity, medical health, financial account and whereabouts and tracks, as well as the Personal Information of minors under the age of fourteen. We will process your sensitive Personal Information only when there is a specific purpose, when it is of necessity, and under the circumstance where strict protective measures are taken.
6.The Way the Commission Uses Your Personal Information
1.User Provided Personal Information / Profile Information: If you submit Personal Information to us through the Website, then we will use your Personal Information as follows:
a. We use your Personal Information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the Website, including supporting your activities on the Website.
b. We also use your email address and your other Personal Information in order to contact you in connection with the provision of our services and/or with your activities on the Website (including, but not limited to, confirmation emails, important news about the Website and so on). We do not use your email address or other Personal Information to send commercial or marketing messages without your consent or except as part of a specific program or feature for which you will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out. We may, however, use your email address without further consent for non-marketing or administrative purposes (such as notifying you of major changes to the Website or for customer service purposes).
c. We may share your Personal Information with our agents, representatives, contractors and service providers so they can provide us with support services such as email origination, receipt or support services and customer relationship management services.
d. Any video recordings that you submit to the Website may be viewed by the general public.
e. We may use your Personal Information to fulfill legal obligations and to enforce our rights.
f. We may also use your Personal Information to respond to your requests or questions.
2.User Content: We use your Content:
a. To allow you to participate in interactive features of the Social Media Platforms we use, such as enabling your Content to be used in other Users’ Content.
b. As part of our advertising and marketing campaigns to promote the Commission, to invite you to participate in an event, and to promote popular topics, hashtags and campaigns on the Commission’s Social Media Platforms.
c. To infer additional information about you, such as your age range, gender, and interests.
d. To help us detect and combat abuse, harmful activity, fraud, spam, and illegal activity on our Social Media Platforms.
3.Cookies Information, Log File Information and Clear GIFs Information: We use both your Personal Information and certain anonymized data to improve the quality and design of the Website and to create new features, promotions, functionality, and services by storing, tracking, and analyzing User preferences and trends. We use cookies, clear gifs, and log file information to:
a. remember information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Website;
b. provide custom, personalized content and information;
c. monitor the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns;
d. monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, pages viewed, etc.; and
e. track your entries, submissions, and status in promotions, sweepstakes, and contests.
7.Cookies and Similar Technology
Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behavior information. We may use cookies to provide basic relevant ads, website functionality, authentication (session management), usage analytics (web analytics), to remember your settings, and to generally improve our websites and services. When you visit our websites, we may collect information from you automatically through cookies or similar tracking technology.
The Commission uses both session cookies and persistent cookies. A persistent cookie remains after you close your browser, but it has an expiration date. Persistent cookies may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to the site. Persistent cookies can be removed by following your web browser help file directions. A session cookie is temporary and disappears after you close your browser. You can reset your web browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some features of the Website may not function properly if the ability to accept cookies is disabled.
If you wish to opt out of cookies that allow us to serve advertisements while you are in California and collect aggregate information on website features influence visitation, go to: Cookie 偏好.
For further information about how we use cookies, visit our Cookie Notice. For further information about cookies in general, visit allaboutcookies.org.
8.How Long We Keep Your Personal Information
We will retain your Personal Information for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purpose for which we collected your Personal Information and any other permitted linked purpose and in compliance with our data retention policies. For example, we will retain and use your Personal Information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.
Generally, we retain usage data for a shorter period, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our Website, or we are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.
If your Personal Information is used for more than one purpose, we will retain it until the purpose with the longest retention period expires; but we will stop using it for the purpose with a shorter retention period once that period expires. Our retention periods are also based on our business needs and good practice.
Your Personal Information may need to be retained in our backup systems and will only be deleted or overwritten at a later time. This may be the case even when you or a data protection authority has validly asked us to delete your Personal Information or when we no longer have a legal basis for processing such Personal Information. Please note that our backups are protected, and we have implemented a system to remind us to delete again the data when we restore a backup to production systems.
9.When the Commission Discloses Your Personal Information
1.Entrusting the Processing of Your Personal Information
We may entrust our affiliated companies and third-party service providers who provide products and/or services to us and partners to process your Personal Information on our behalf, for example:
a. Disclosure to professional consultants and advisors to ensure our compliance with the applicable laws.
b. Disclosure to third-party service providers, agents or independent contract employees who provide services in support of our business.
c. Disclosure to our other suppliers, service providers and other partners.
The Commission securely stores your Personal Information via third-party vendors. We will sign written agreements with these respective third parties that we entrust to process your Personal Information, requiring them to process Personal Information in accordance with our requirements, this Notice and the requirements of the applicable data protection laws and regulations. Our third-party vendors are:
• PFC: Personal Information shared to receive a California Visitor Guide or International Visitor Guide is stored by third-party vendor PFC.
• Zeta: Personal Information shared to receive e-newsletters is stored by third-party vendor Zeta.
• Auth0: Personal Information shared to create a log-in to VisitCalifornia.com is stored by third-party vendor Auth0.
2.Sharing Your Personal Information With Third Parties
We do not share your Personal Information (such as name or email address) with other, third-party companies for their own purposes, such as their commercial or marketing use without your consent or except as part of a specific program or feature for which you will be informed and will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out.
We may disclose Personal Information if required to do so by law, or in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with state and federal laws or respond to a court order, subpoena, or search warrant.
The Commission also reserves the right to disclose Personal Information that the Commission believes, in good faith, is appropriate or necessary to enforce our Terms of Use, in order to take precautions against liability, to investigate and defend the Commission against any third-party claims or allegations, to assist government enforcement agencies, to protect the security or integrity of our web site, and to protect the rights, property, or personal safety of the Commission, our Users or others.
In the event that the Commission is acquired by or merges with a third-party entity, we reserve the right, in any of these circumstances, to transfer or assign the information we have collected from our Users as part of such merger, acquisition, sale, or other change of control. In the unlikely event of our bankruptcy, insolvency, reorganization, receivership, or assignment for the benefit of creditors, or the application of laws or equitable principles affecting creditors’ rights generally, we may not be able to control how your Personal Information is treated, transferred, or used.
3.Third-party Advertisers, Links to Other Sites
The Commission allows other companies, called third-party ad servers or ad networks, to serve advertisements within the Website. These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to send, directly to your browser, the advertisements and links that appear on the Website. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also use other technologies (such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons) to record your general location, measure the effectiveness of their advertisements, and to personalize the advertising content you see including serving you advertisements.
The Commission does not provide any Personal Information to these third-party ad servers or ad networks without your consent or except as part of a specific program or feature for which you will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out. However, please note that if an advertiser asks the Commission to show an advertisement to a certain audience or audience segment and you respond to that advertisement, the advertiser or ad server may conclude that you fit the description of the audience they are trying to reach. The advertiser may also use information regarding your use of the Website, such as the number of times you viewed an ad (but not any Personal Information), to determine which ads to deliver to you.
You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers or ad networks (see links below) for more information on their practices and for instructions on how to opt-out of certain practices. The Commission’s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.
Currently, the Commission has relationships with the following third-party ad servers or ad networks: Google Ad Manager.
4.Storage and Cross-Border Transfers of Your Personal Information
The Commission has affiliates, subsidiaries, and operations globally. To operate our business and for purposes described in this Notice, we may transfer your Personal Information to our global entities or other third parties outside of China. In such cases, we will take all necessary and appropriate safeguards to ensure the security of your Personal Information during the transfer and require the recipients of your Personal Information to provide adequate protection and security, such as concluding appropriate data processing agreements or standard contractual terms when necessary with the recipients.
When required by applicable laws and regulations, we will inform you of the matters related to the cross-border transfer of your Personal Information to the respective third parties, including the identity of the recipient of your Personal Information, contact information, the purpose of processing, the manner of processing, the type of Personal Information shared and the manner and procedure of exercising your data protection rights with the respective third-party recipient; as well as obtain your separate consent for such cross-border transfers of your Personal Information.
10.Our Commitment to Data Security
The Commission uses commercially reasonable physical, managerial, and technical safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of your Personal Information. We cannot, however, ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to the Commission and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission of Personal Information, the Commission makes commercially reasonable efforts to ensure the security of our systems. However, please note that this is not a guarantee that such information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards.
If the Commission learns of a security systems breach, then we may attempt to notify you electronically so that you can take appropriate protective steps. The Commission may post a notice on the Website if a security breach occurs. Depending on where you live, you may have a legal right to receive notice of a security breach in writing. To receive a free written notice of a security breach (or to withdraw your consent from receiving electronic notice) you should notify us as provided in the section below, under the heading “Contact Information”.
11.Special Note to International Users
The Website is hosted in the United States and is intended for and directed to Users in the United States. If you are a User accessing the Website from the European Union, Asia, or any other region with laws or regulations governing Personal Information collection, use, and disclosure that differ from United States laws please be advised that, through your continued use of the Website, which is governed by U.S. law, this Notice, and our respective Terms of Use, you are transferring your personal information to the United States and you consent to that transfer.
12.Your Data Protection Rights
In accordance with the relevant laws, regulations and standards of the People’s Republic of China as well as the common practices in other countries and regions, the Commission would like to make sure you are fully aware of all your data protection rights, and how you can exercise such rights. Every User is entitled to the following:
• The right to be informed – You have the right to know about how we collect and use your Personal Information, how long we will keep it, and who it will be shared with, among other things. We are informing you of how we process your Personal Information with this Notice.
• The right to access – You have the right to request the Commission for copies of your Personal Information.
• The right to rectification – You have the right to request that the Commission correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request the Commission to complete the information that you believe is incomplete.
• The right to erasure – You have the right to request that the Commission erase your Personal Information, under certain conditions.
• The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that the Commission restrict the processing of your Personal Information, under certain conditions.
• The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the Commission’s processing of your Personal Information, under certain conditions. You may also object at any time to the processing of your Personal Information for direct marketing purposes.
• The right to data portability – You have the right to request that the Commission transfer the Personal Information we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.
• The right related to automated decision-making – In instances where we may make decisions based solely on non-human and automated decision-making mechanisms, including information systems, algorithms, etc., and where these decisions significantly affect your legal rights, you have the right to request an explanation from us, and we will also provide appropriate remedies.
• The right to withdraw your consent – You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, where you have consented to us processing your Personal Information. If you have given consent for your Personal Information to be shared with a third party and wish to withdraw this consent, please also contact the relevant third party in order to change your preferences.
In terms of deceased individuals, their next of kin may, for the sake of their own lawful, legitimate interests, exercise the rights to consult, copy, correct, delete, etc., of the deceased in regard to the deceased person’s Personal Information, except where the deceased individual has other arrangements before their death.
In order to correctly respond to your privacy rights requests, we need to confirm that you made the request, and we may ask you to verify your identity before processing your request. If you are submitting a request on behalf of somebody else, we will need to verify your authority to act on behalf of that individual.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at our email: privacy@visitcalifornia.com. Please allow us up to a month to reply to your requests from the day we received your request.
13.Privacy Policies of Other Websites
The Commission’s Website contains links to other websites. This Notice applies only to our Website, so if you click on a link to another website, you should read their respective privacy notice.
14.How to Change Your Personal Information
After registering a profile with the Commission, you may review and request to make changes to your Personal Information at any time. You may review and/or make changes to your Personal Information by emailing privacy@visitcalifornia.com.
15.Changes and Updates to this Notice
This Notice may be revised periodically, and this will be reflected by the “effective date” above. When we make any changes to our Notice, we will send a notice to your account informing you that certain changes have been made and encouraging you to revisit this web page.
In general, we only use your Personal Information in the manner described in the Notice in effect when we received the Personal Information you provided. Your continued use of the Website constitutes your agreement to this Notice and any future revisions.
For revisions to this Notice that may be materially less restrictive on our use or disclosure of the Personal Information you have already provided to us, we will attempt to obtain your consent before implementing such revisions with respect to such information. To protect your privacy and security, we take reasonable steps (such as requesting a unique password) to verify your identity before granting you profile access or making corrections. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your unique password and account information at all times.
Please contact the Commission with any questions or comments about this Notice, your Personal Information, your consent, or your opt-in or opt-out choices using this contact form.
Contact Information: Please contact the Commission with any questions or comments about this Privacy Notice using the contact information found at www.visitcalifornia.com.
Visit California will not sell your Personal Information to outside parties. If you have questions about how your data was captured, please contact us at the below address.
Email: privacy@visitcalifornia.com
Address: 555 Capitol Mall, Suite 1100, Sacramento, CA. 95814
16.User-Generated Content
IF YOU DO NOT WANT US TO USE OR REPUBLISH YOUR POSTED TEXT, PHOTO, VIDEO OR OTHER MATERIALS (collectively “CONTENT”) AS CONTEMPLATED BELOW, THEN PLEASE DON’T RESPOND TO OUR QUESTIONS/POSTS OR OTHERWISE POST CONTENT ON OR VIA OUR OFFICIAL BRAND PRESENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. EXAMPLES OF OUR OFFICIAL BRAND PRESENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS INCLUDE THE VISIT CALIFORNIA FACEBOOK PAGE VISIT CALIFORNIA PINTEREST PAGE, VISITCALIFORNIA INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT, AND THE VISITCA TWITTER ACCOUNTS.
By posting or otherwise making available any Content, or otherwise responding to or communicating with us on or via our official brand presence on social media platforms/sites and branded hashtags (including, without limitation, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Instagram, Google+, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest, collectively “Social Media Platforms”) you represent and warrant that you are eighteen (18) years of age or older and that you agree to the following terms and conditions:
You irrevocably grant us, and our affiliates, licensees and assigns, a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted right and license to copy, reproduce, modify, edit, adapt, translate, create derivative works of, publish, post, distribute, publicly perform, sublicense, or otherwise provide to others, your Content in any and all media, formats and channels (now in existence or hereinafter developed) for any purpose, including advertising and commercial purposes.
Important Note: we may also use any ideas, suggestions, developments, and/or other material embodied in your posted Content as we see fit without any compensation or attribution to you. We will, however, attempt to credit you as the author/source of the Content and you agree that we may identify you as the author/source of the Content by referring to your Social Media Platform handle or identifier as we see appropriate.
You represent and warrant that the Content does not violate or infringe any rights of any third party, including, but not limited to, copyright, trademark, and\or rights of publicity and privacy.
Important Note: If any third-party content is included in your posted Content you must obtain permission from the content owner and attribute/credit such content to the owner. By posting Content you represent and warrant that you have the permission of the content owner to do so.
• Don’t post any Content that is disruptive, abusive, vulgar, profane, obscene, hateful, threatening, harassing, defamatory, or which discloses Personal Information or private or personal matters concerning any person;
• Don’t post any Content that you don’t have the right to post/transmit (and grant us the rights above) under applicable law or under contractual or fiduciary relationship;
• Don’t impersonate any person, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
• You represent that all testimonials, endorsements and/or advertisements contained in your posted Content are truthful, accurate and represent your opinion and personal experience.
• You agree to hold the Commission (sometimes referred to herein as “us” or “our”) and our affiliates, agents and licensees (collectively, “Indemnitees”) harmless, and defend and indemnify the Indemnitees from any claim, disputes, demands, proceedings, cause of action, judgments, damages, liabilities, losses, costs or expense of any kind and nature, known and unknown, suspected and unsuspected, disclosed and undisclosed which may arise out of or are in any way connected with your posted Content and/or your use of our official brand presence on Social Media Platforms.
• These terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California without giving effect to principles of conflict of laws. In no event will we be liable hereunder for extraordinary, consequential, indirect or punitive damages, including lost profits.