Speak Safely NY Privacy Policy

Effective Date: February 3rd, 2025

Scope of Our Privacy Policy

The website is operated by Speak Safely NY, a nonprofit, multi-disciplinary team of practitioners, researchers and mental health professionals based in the state of New York (“we,” “us,” or “our”).

Website visitors are offered the opportunity to talk with and get support from responders who work under the auspices of Speak Safely NY. These consultations (our “services”) are free-of-charge, voluntary, and confidential.

Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on how and why we, processes your personal information in connection with your use of speaksafelyny.com (“website”) and our services (both the website and our services are collectively referred to as our “Services”). This privacy policy also contains information about how to contact us if you have questions.

Information We Collect

Certain personal information about you may be collected when you use and engage with our Services. We define “personal information” as any information that identifies or could be used to identify you, either directly or indirectly. The information we collect includes:

  • Personal Identifiers including your name, email address, telephone number, device IDs, and IP address.
  • Usage Data including information about how you use and interact with our Services.
  • Marketing and Communications Data including your preferences in receiving communications from us and/or selected third parties, as well as information that you may provide to us via our chatbot messaging feature.
  • Technical Data including information about your browser, method of reaching the website, and device features, such as the type of device used to access the website.  If you access the Services via a mobile device such as a smartphone, the collected data will also include, where permitted, your phone’s unique device ID, and other similar mobile device data.
  • Demographic and Location Data including information that can be used to determine your physical location, including your IP address or postal address.
  • Additional Volunteered Data including any additional information you choose to volunteer about yourself or another individual through the Services, such as the chat plug-in, email, text service, contact forms, or when you call one of our consultants. This may include personal identifiers and health data consisting of preliminary information relating to your health or the health of another individual that a consultant may request.

How We Collect Your Information

Information you Provide. We collect information that you provide voluntarily when engaging with our Services, or that someone contacting us on your behalf may provide.

Information Automatically Collected. Whenever you visit or interact with the Services, we, as well as third-party advertisers and/or service providers, may use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, or other technologies to automatically or passively collect information about your online activity. As you interact with our Services, we may automatically collect technical information about your device as well as usage information through these and other similar technologies. Technologies we use may include the following:

  • Log Files are files that record events that occur in connection with your use of our Services.
  • Web beacons/Pixels are tiny images that we can place on our website or in our emails. They can be used, for example, to anonymously track how many times a particular page has been visited by a user or whether an email has been read.
  • Cookies are small data files that are commonly stored on your device when using websites and online services. They are used for the efficient operation of websites and can provide information and help customize Services as well as to advertise our Services on third-party websites. We and our third-party partners collect the information provided by cookies.

Purposes for which We Collect Your Information:

The information we collect may be used to:

  • Operate and manage our Services.
  • Facilitate and perform direct communications with you, including via phone, text, or email, and booking Services you request.
  • Provide an appropriate Service offering to you based on the information you provide or preferences you
  • Customize the website and its content to ensure the most relevant and appropriate user
  • To advertise our Services to you on different third-party websites.
  • To understand and analyze demographic and geographic reach and other trends in the usage of our Services.
  • Identify and disclose your location in order to ensure you are located in a region where we provide services, in the event of an emergency, or if we believe that you or another person may be at risk of harm.
  • Complying with our professional, legal, and regulatory obligations. 

To Whom We Disclose Your Information

We disclose the information that we collect to the following entities:

  •  We may share your information with our related entities, now or in the future, including Speak Safely NY. For example, we may share your information with our affiliates for customer support, marketing, and technical operations.
  • Service Providers. We disclose your information to service providers and vendors who assist us in providing the Services. Service Providers assist us with services such as data analytics, marketing, website hosting, and technical support.
  • Analytics and Advertising Partners.We may use third-party analytics and tracking tools to better understand who is using or how to improve the effectiveness of our Services and related content, and to help us or those third parties serve targeted advertising to you regarding our Services across the Internet, including social media platforms, third-party advertising networks, and other parties that assist us in serving and optimizing our advertisements. These tools may combine information collected from your interaction with our Services with information collected from other sources.
  • Third parties. We may disclose your information to third parties to protect our rights, in the event of an emergency, if we believe that you or another person may be at risk of physical harm, in response to a valid subpoena or other lawful request, or to comply with a legal obligation.
  • Governmental or Law Enforcement Agencies. We may disclose your information pursuant to a valid request from a government or law enforcement agency, including a court order or warrant. We may also disclose your information in the event of an emergency or if we believe that you or another person may be at risk of physical harm.

Analytics and Advertising

Our Services contain technologies, some of which are owned and operated by other parties. For example, we use technologies from analytics providers, such as Google Analytics, to help us analyze your use of the Service, compile statistic reports on the Service’s activity, and provide us with other services relating to Service activity and internet usage. We also work with ad serving services, advertisers, and other parties to serve advertisements. These other parties may use technologies listed above in the “Information Automatically Collected” section of this policy on our Service (including in emails we send and in advertisements) for purposes of delivering relevant ads and/or other content to you on the Services and other websites after you have left our website.

Your Rights and Choices

Google Analytics

You can opt-out of your data being used by Google Analytics through cookies by visiting https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and downloading the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Targeted Advertising

Some of the parties that collect information from or about you on the Services in order to provide more relevant advertising to you participate in the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. This program offers a centralized location where users can make choices about the use of their information for online behavioral advertising. To learn more about the DAA and your opt-out options for their members for websites, please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices. In addition, some of these other parties may be members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”). To learn more about the NAI and your opt-out options for their members, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/.

Please note that if you opt-out of online behavioral advertising using any of these methods, the opt-out will only apply to the specific browser or device from which you opt-out. Further, opting-out only means that the selected members should no longer deliver certain targeted advertising to you, but does not mean you will no longer receive any targeted content and/or ads (e.g., from other ad networks). We are not responsible for effectiveness of, or compliance with, any other parties’ opt-out options or programs or the accuracy of their statements regarding their programs.

Keeping Your Personal Information Secure

Reasonable security measures are in place to prevent your personal information from being used or accessed in an unauthorized way. Unfortunately, no method of data transmission or storage can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

Access to your personal information is limited to people who have a genuine need to know it. Any use of your personal information will only be by an authorized person who is subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Retention of Your Personal Information

 We will only retain your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements.

Links to Other Websites

This policy does not apply to other third-party websites that may be accessed through links on our site. We are not responsible for those third-party sites, their collection or use of your personal information. Therefore, any personal information you transmit through these sites is subject to the privacy policies of those sites. It is your responsibility to review their privacy policies to ensure the protection of your personal information.

Children’s Information

This page is not intended for use by children under 13 years old and no personal information relating to children is knowingly collected or used.  If you believe we have collected the information of a child please contact us at the email address below.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

This website policy may change from time-to-time and you should check it regularly for updates.

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on this page with a notice that the privacy policy has been updated on the website home page. If we make material changes to how we treat our usersʼ personal information, we will notify you through a notice on the website home page.

Contact information

We welcome your questions and comments regarding this privacy policy and our privacy practices. Please contact us at: hello@speaksafelyny.com