Who we are

Dominican Abroad, https://www.dominicanabroad.com. We are a website offering tours, itineraries and a travel blog.

Owner contact email: dpo@dominicanabroad.com

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

What personal information do we voluntarily collect?
When visiting and using this website we may collect personal information such as your name, or e-mail address. This information is submitted to us voluntarily when submitting information such as a contact form, leaving comments, registering for the website or subscribing to a newsletter.
When you purchase from us, we’ll ask you to provide information including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number, credit card/payment details and optional account information like username and password. We’ll use this information for purposes, such as, to:
  • Send you information about your account and order
  • Respond to your requests, including refunds and complaints
  • Process payments and prevent fraud
  • Set up your account for our store
  • Comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes
  • Improve our store offerings
  • Send you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them

If you create an account, we will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders.

We generally store information about you for as long as we need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it, and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, we will store order information for 5 years for tax and accounting purposes. This includes your name, email address and billing and shipping addresses.

We will also store comments or reviews if you choose to leave them.

Who on our team has access

Members of our team have access to the information you provide us. For example, both Administrators and Shop Managers can access:

  • Order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be sent, and
  • Customer information like your name, email address, and billing and shipping information.

Our team members have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you.

What we share with others

We share information with third parties who help us provide our orders and store services to you; for example —

Tour guides if required to operate your tour
Accomodation suppliers for your tour
Airlines if required to operate your tour
Companies operating excursions as part of a tour

Payments

We accept payments through PayPal and Stripe. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to PayPal or Stripe, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information.

Please see the PayPal Privacy Policy for more details. Please see the Stripe Privacy Policy for more details.

 

What personal information do we automatically collect?
When visiting and using this website, we automatically collect information about you and the device being used to access the website. Such as your IP address, browser type, operating system, referring website, pages you accessed, date and time you accessed these pages, and links clicked. We may also record other information about how you use the website and actions performed such as time spent on each page.
What are cookies and how are they used?
Cookies are a small data file that is stored in your browser’s settings by websites. Cookies allow websites to log information on your computer.
We use two different types of cookies to log information. Session cookies, which expire when you close your browser and persistent cookies which remain on your computer until deleted. Session cookies contain limited information relating to your current visit to our website. Persistent cookies help provide you with a more personalised experience on the website.
They are used to help us understand your preferences based on previous or current site activity, which enables us to provide you with improved services. We also use cookies to help us compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future.
We use cookies to:
      • Help remember and process the items in the shopping cart.
      • Understand and save user’s preferences for future visits.
      • Keep track of advertisements.
      • Compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interactions in order to offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may also use trusted third-party services that track this information on our behalf.
You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You do this through your browser settings. Since browser is a little different, look at your browser’s Help Menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies.
If users disable cookies in their browser:
If you turn cookies off, Some of the features that make your site experience more efficient may not function properly.Some of the features that make your site experience more efficient and may not function properly.

How do we use your information?

We may use the information we collect from you when you register, make a purchase, sign up for our newsletter, respond to a survey or marketing communication, surf the website, or use certain other site features in the following ways:

      • To operate, maintain and improve the website.
      • To fulfil your order
      • To send you administrative communications such as confirmation emails, technical notices, policy updates, security alerts, and account recovery information.
      • To send periodic promotional emails such as newsletters. Promotional emails will provide information on how to opt-out of receiving future emails.
      • To follow up with them after correspondence (e-mails, contact form submissions, your comments).
How do we protect your information?

Our website is scanned on a regular basis for security holes and known vulnerabilities in order to make your visit to our site as safe as possible.

We use regular Malware Scanning.

Your personal information is contained behind secured networks and is only accessible by a limited number of persons who have special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential. In addition, all sensitive/credit information you supply is encrypted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.
We implement a variety of security measures when a user enters, submits, or accesses their information to maintain the safety of your personal information.
All transactions are processed through a gateway provider and are not stored or processed on our servers.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Google Analytics will retain your data for up to 26 months.

We will retain data for newsletter subscriptions until you either opt-out or the newsletter ceases to be a service we offer.

Third-party disclosure

Unless legally required to do so, we do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your Personally Identifiable Information unless we provide users with advance notice. This does not include website hosting partners and other parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or serving our users, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release information when it’s release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property or safety.

Anonymous Data

Non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. The anonymous data we use cannot be used to identify you when the data is alone, or combined with data from other parties.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Google Adsense
Google’s advertising requirements can be summed up by Google’s Advertising Principles. They are put in place to provide a positive experience for users. https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/1316548?hl=en
We use Google AdSense Advertising on our website.
Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to our users based on previous visits to our site and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt-out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google Ad and Content Network privacy policy.
We have implemented the following:
      • Remarketing with Google AdSense
      • Google Display Network Impression Reporting
      • Demographics and Interests Reporting
      • DoubleClick Platform Integration
We, along with third-party vendors such as Google use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookies) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) or other third-party identifiers together to compile data regarding user interactions with ad impressions and other ad service functions as they relate to our website.
Opting out:
Users can set preferences for how Google advertises to you using the Google Ad Settings page. Alternatively, you can opt out by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative Opt Out page or by using the Google Analytics Opt Out Browser add-on.
Google Analytics – This Google service tracks a visitor to our website, and how the website is used by providing information such as referrals and links clicked. Google Analytics may capture your IP address, but no other personal information is captured by Google Analytics. We have opted into anonymizing IP addresses collected by Google Analytics, which removes the personal identifier from your IP address. All information stored by Google Analytics is deleted after 26 months.
Facebook Pixel –  Facebook Pixel tracks user behaviour after the user was redirected to Dominican Abroad by clicking on a Facebook or Facebook partner ad. This allows Dominican Abroad to measure the effectiveness of Facebook advertisements for marketing and statistical purposes. The data collected is anonymous, Dominican Abroad cannot see any personal data of any user. However, the data is collected, saved and processed by Facebook. Facebook may be able to link this data to your Facebook account and may use this data for their own promotional purposes in accordance with the Facebook Data Use Policy available at: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/. Facebook has ultimate control over all data gathered. You can choose to opt-out of Facebook collecting your data through Facebook Pixel, and/or using your data for displaying Facebook ads at the following Facebook web page: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads.

Akismet – We collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).

Affiliate Program Participation

Dominicabroad.com may carry out affiliate marketing which is done by embedding tracking links to our website. When clicking on links to a company we have an affiliate partnership with, a cookie will be placed into your browser that will track any sales for the purpose of tracking commissions for sales generated through our affiliate link.

Amazon Associates

The owner of this website 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 linking to Amazon properties including, but not limited to, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com.

You can view the Amazon.co.uk privacy policy here,  Amazon.com here, and Amazon.ca here.

California Online Privacy Protection Act

CalOPPA is the first state law in the nation to require commercial websites and online services to post a privacy policy. The law’s reach stretches well beyond California to require any person or company in the United States (and conceivably the world) that operates websites collecting Personally Identifiable Information from California consumers to post a conspicuous privacy policy on its website stating exactly the information being collected and those individuals or companies with whom it is being shared. – See more at http://consumercal.org/california-online-privacy-protection-act-caloppa/#sthash.0FdRbT51.dpuf
According to CalOPPA, we agree to the following:
Users can visit our site anonymously.
Once this privacy policy is created, we will add a link to it on our homepage or as a minimum, on the first significant page after entering our website.
Our Privacy Policy link includes the word ‘Privacy’ and can easily be found on the page specified above.
You will be notified of any Privacy Policy changes:
      • On our Privacy Policy Page
Can change your personal information:
      • By emailing us
      • By logging in to your account
How does our site handle Do Not Track signals?
We honour Do Not Track signals and Do Not Track, plant cookies, or use advertising when a Do Not Track (DNT) browser mechanism is in place.
Does our site allow third-party behavioural tracking?
It’s also important to note that we allow third-party behavioural tracking

Rights related to your personal information

Opt-out:

You can choose to opt-out of any future email communications by following the unsubscribe links in any newsletter emails received, which will remove you from our mailing list(s). You may also notify us at dpo@dominicanabroad.com to be removed from the mailing list(s).

Request access:

You can request access to any data held on you by submitting a request to dpo@dominicanabroad.com or by filling out the form located here.

Amend your data:

You can amend your e-mail subscription(s) by using the link contained at the bottom of e-mails received from us or by contacting us at  dpo@dominicanabroad.com

Have your data forgotten:

Certain situations allow for your data to be forgotten. You may request that we erase any personal data stored. To do this, please contact us dpo@dominicanabroad.com or submit a request by filling out the form located here.

Please note that we may be legally required to retain certain information, or for the purpose of record keeping or to complete transactions.

Plugins

Dominicanabroad.com uses a variety of plugins to help maintain the website.

Updraft Plus: please view the creator’s privacy policy here

WP Rocket: View their privacy policy here

Shareaholic: View their privacy policy here

 

COPPA (Children Online Privacy Protection Act)

When it comes to the collection of personal information from children under the age of 13 years old, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) puts parents in control. The Federal Trade Commission, United States’ consumer protection agency, enforces the COPPA Rule, which spells out what operators of websites and online services must do to protect children’s privacy and safety online.

We do not specifically market to children under the age of 13 years old.
Do we let third-parties, including ad networks or plug-ins, collect PII from children under 13?
Fair Information Practices

The Fair Information Practices Principles form the backbone of privacy law in the United States and the concepts they include have played a significant role in the development of data protection laws around the globe. Understanding the Fair Information Practice Principles and how they should be implemented is critical to comply with the various privacy laws that protect personal information.

In order to be in line with Fair Information Practices we will take the following responsive action, should a data breach occur:
We will notify you via email
      • Within 7 business days
We will notify the users via in-site notification
      • Within 7 business days
We also agree to the Individual Redress Principle which requires that individuals have the right to legally pursue enforceable rights against data collectors and processors who fail to adhere to the law. This principle requires not only that individuals have enforceable rights against data users, but also that individuals have recourse to courts or government agencies to investigate and/or prosecute non-compliance by data processors.