Privacy policy.

Last updated: March 20, 2020

Miracle Messages (“us,” “we,” or “our”) operates the Miracle Messages website (https://miraclemessages.org and any other affiliated sites, collectively “Website”) and a mobile application (the “Application,” together with the Website, the “Service”). We are committed to protecting your privacy. We provide this privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy” or “Policy”) to explain the types of personal information we collect, the purposes for collection, and the manner and method in which we may use or disclosure your personal information when you use our Service.

In addition to this Privacy Policy, we have established Terms and Conditions that set forth the general rules and policies governing your use of the Service. A copy of the Terms and Conditions can be found here.

By using our Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. Unless otherwise defined in this Policy, terms used in this Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms and Conditions. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Policy. This Policy may change periodically, so please check back from time to time for the most current version.

I. Information we may collect

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Service, which may include information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked with, directly or indirectly, a particular consumer or device (“Personal Information”).

In particular, the Application collects the following categories of Personal Information from its users:

A. Information You Give to Us

While using our Service, we may ask you to provide us with certain Personal Information that can be used to contact or identify you, or set up an account. Personal Information may include, but is not limited to, identifiers such as your email address, name, phone number, and postal address. If you use a third party service (such as Google) to register for an account, the third party service may provide us with your third party service account information on your behalf, such as your name and email address (we do not store passwords you use to access third party services). Your privacy settings on the third party service normally control what they share with us. Make sure you are comfortable with what they share by reviewing their privacy policies and, if necessary, modifying your privacy settings directly on the third party service.

In addition, we also collect certain Personal Information in order to provide our family reunification services. Pursuant to verbal consent, we collect your Personal Information, including but not limited to identifiers such as name, date of birth, address, phone number, family members’ names, family members’ age or date of birth, and audio, visual, and electronic information via audio and video recordings.

B. Information We Automatically Collect About You 

As you navigate through and interact with our Service, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

1. Log Data

When you access the Website and Application by or through a mobile device, we may collect certain information automatically, including, but not limited to, the type of mobile device you use, your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of your mobile device, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser you use and other statistics (“Log Data”).

In addition, we may use third party services, such as Google Analytics, that collect, monitor, and analyze this type of information to increase our Service’s functionality. These third party service providers have their own privacy policies addressing how they use such information. Please see the following section on Geolocation Data below regarding the use of your location information and your options.

2. Geolocation Data

We may use and store information about your location depending on the permissions you have set on your device. We use this information to provide features of our Service and to improve and customize our Service for you. You can enable or disable location services when you use our Service at any time through your mobile device settings.

3. Cookies

We may store cookies on your computer’s hard drive when you use our Services. Cookies are files with a small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are small text files that are stored by your browser when you visit a webpage. We use cookies to collect information in order to improve our Services for you. We use the following types of cookies and technologies:

  • Necessary cookies:  These cookies are essential to enable basic functions on the website and make the website usable. Once you close your browser, these cookies disappear.

  • Functional cookies:  These cookies enable the website to save information that has already been entered so that we can offer you more personalized functions. These cookies collect information which generally cannot identify you and cannot track your movements on other websites.

  • Performance cookies:  These cookies are used for collecting information about the use of our website, including the number of unique visitors to our website, the number of views for a webpage, the amount of time a user spends on a webpage, and other website statistics. These cookies are used only to improve the performance of the website and the user experience. For example, we use Google Analytics to collect information regarding your use of the Services. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit the Website and Application, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they visit prior to or after coming to this site. The data collected through these tools is not tied to any personally identifiable information about you. The collected information is aggregated and made anonymous.

Most browsers are set up to accept cookies, but you can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent (except those we need to use to provide the Services properly, such as for performance or security related reasons). You can manage or disable cookies at any time by adjusting your browser settings. Each browser is different; therefore, please refer to the settings menu of your browser for instructions on how to change your cookie preferences. The ‘Help’ feature on most browsers provides information on how to accept cookies, disable cookies or notify you when receiving a new cookie.

To know more about data collected by Google, visit https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/. You may prevent the use of Google Analytics by disabling cookies as described above. You may also prevent Google from recording the data generated by the cookie and pertaining to your use of our Services (including your IP address), or processing these data, by downloading and installing the following browser plug-in available through Google at the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

If you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some features of our Service.

4. Do Not Track Disclosure

We support Do Not Track (“DNT”). DNT is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked. You can enable or disable DNT by visiting the ‘Preferences’ or ‘Settings’ page of your web browser.

II. How we use and share the information

We may use the Personal Information we collect for one or more of the following reasons:

A. Consent

We use your Personal Information according to the consent you provided when your Personal Information was first collected. For example, we may ask for your Personal Information for the purpose of setting up an account, identifying and communicating with you, responding to your requests or inquiries, and improving our Service. Regardless of when you consent, you can change your mind at any time.

B. Provide Services

We use your Personal Information to provide our family reunification services that you requested.

C. Communications

We may use your Personal Information to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send.

D. Compliance with Laws

We will disclose your Personal Information when and where we are required to do so by law or subpoena or if we believe that such action is necessary to comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement or to protect the security or integrity of our Service.

III. To whom do we disclose and share the information

We may share or disclose the Personal Information we collect with or to the following entities:

A. Partner Organizations

We may share Personal Information with partner organizations to assist in providing our Services to you. In those instances, we only share your Personal Information for the express and sole purpose of performing our reunification services.

B. Service Providers

We may also share your Personal Information with third party companies and individuals, including volunteers, to facilitate our service, to provide the Service on our behalf, and/or to assist us in analyzing how our Service is used. These service providers include our case worker volunteers who collect your Personal Information on our behalf and have access to the audio and video recordings. They also include our volunteers who use your Personal Information to help locate family and loved ones, deliver messages, and reunite families (“Digital Detectives”). These Digital Detectives use this Personal Information pursuant to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

These third parties have access to your Personal Information only to perform specific tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use your information for any other purpose.

C. Social Media Services

As part of providing our services, we may post your Personal Information on social media websites such as Facebook or YouTube. However, such Personal Information will only be uploaded for the express and sole purpose of performing our reunification services.

IV. Security

The security of your Personal Information is important to us, and we strive to implement and maintain reasonable, commercially acceptable security procedures, and practices appropriate to the nature of the information we store, in order to protect it from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure.

However, please be aware that no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and we are unable to guarantee the absolute security of the Personal Information we have collected from you.

V. Children’s privacy

Only persons age 13 or older have permission to access our Website and Application. Our Website and Application do not collect Personal Information for anyone under the age of 13 (“Child” or “Children”).

We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from Children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and you learn that your Child has provided us with Personal Information, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Information from a Child without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.

VI. Changes to this privacy policy

This Policy is effective as of March 20, 2020, and will remain in effect except with respect to any changes in its provisions in the future, which will be in effect immediately after being posted on this page.

We reserve the right to update or change our Policy at any time, and you should check this Policy periodically. Your continued use of the Service after we post any modifications to the Policy on this page will constitute your acknowledgment of the modifications and your consent to abide and be bound by the modified Policy.

If we make any material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you either through the email address you have provided us or by placing a prominent notice on our website.

VII. Contact information

If you have any questions about this Policy, please contact us at hello@miraclemessages.org.