General Information
This Privacy Policy is effective August 21, 2024. For questions about the privacy policy, please contact [email protected].
This privacy policy defines common ways that the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium (“Pittsburgh Zoo”, “Zoo”, “pittsburghzoo.org”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) utilizes information about people who engage with our online services (“you”, “visitors”, “guests”, “users”). This policy should not be considered exhaustive of all methods of information collection and use, and the Zoo reserves the right to update this policy at any time.
The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium owns and operates pittsburghzoo.org.
The Zoo utilizes and contracts with outside services accessed through pittsburghzoo.org for basic operation such as sales and donations, as well as services to improve visitor experience. The most noteworthy services include but not limited to SwipeTrack XTruLink (pghzoo.ticketapp.org) and Blackbaud Altru for online transactions, customer data management, and communications; Google Analytics for pittsburghzoo.org visitor use tracking; and MailChimp for email marketing.
Third Party Interactions
On occasion, the Zoo may provide a link on pittsburghzoo.org to an outside organization’s website, identifiable through a non-pittsburghzoo.org website address, or URL. While the Zoo only provides links to partner sources approved through relevant Zoo departments, the Zoo does not monitor all aspects of these organizations and users should review the privacy policies of these external websites, particularly before entering personally identifiable information. The Zoo does not assume responsibility for visitor information provided to third parties.
The Zoo does not sell any visitor information. Information voluntarily submitted to us is only available to Zoo employees managing this information for purposes of contacting you about Zoo services.
Non-personally identifiable visitation information and demographic trends (ex: total number of visitors to a web page or event by zip code) may be electively shared with Zoo sponsors, advertising partners, and fellow institutions for the purposes of improving guest experience of the Zoo. The Zoo will not track your personal activities beyond the scope of our Zoo operated and partner websites and marketing efforts.
Pages on this site may include embedded content, such as video from YouTube or links to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, or other social media platforms. Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
External 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.
Passive Tracking
Passive tracking (such as utilized by Google Analytics) collects non-personally identifiable/anonymous information, through the use of cookies or by other means. Cookies are small files kept on your device which will gather information about your website use. You may remove your cookies and browsing history at any time; operating systems and browsers have unique settings for accepting or declining cookies. Users should check web browser and operating system settings for directions. Note that removal or rejection of cookies may impact intended website use.
Non-personally identifiable demographic information passively collected during your use of pittsburghzoo.org may include but is not limited to the day and time you visit our site and how long you spend on it, your IP address and general geographic region, and/or the type of browser or operating system you are using. This information is not linked to your name, email address, or real physical address. This information helps the Zoo determine if our messaging is clearly reaching intended audiences and if our website is operating efficiently, among other business use.
Personally Identifiable Information
If you decide to provide personal information on pittsburghzoo.org, pghzoo.ticketapp.org (our sales/donation site), or if you sign up for our MailChimp email newsletter, you are voluntarily electing to participate in active data entry and your personal information will be retained by the Zoo. Once you decide to provide personally identifiable information, your usage throughout our web services may be linked to your name or other voluntarily provided information for internal Zoo use.
Personal information you may be asked to voluntarily provide for transactions such as, but limited to, paid or unpaid Zoo tickets, event signups, Membership, marketing messaging, and/or contests or giveaways include your name, billing address, shipping address, phone number, credit card number, email address and/or other personally identifiable information.
Should you wish to remove your information from the Zoo’s database for any reason, please contact [email protected].
Data Use and Security
Guests providing personally identifiable information should be of legal age. We neither solicit nor knowingly accept any information from children under the age of 13. Guests between age 13 and 18 must attain parental consent before providing information. If a child has provided us with personally identifiable information without parental or guardian consent, the parent or guardian should contact us to remove the information and opt out of promotional opportunities. Should you wish to remove your information from the Zoo’s database for any reason, please contact [email protected].
Forms on pittsburghzoo.org may request personally identifiable registration information, but no credit card or payment information is transferred through pittsburghzoo.org. Voluntarily submitted form data collected through pittsburghzoo.org is emailed to relevant Zoo staff and is not held on the pittsbughzoo.org website servers. Information may, however, be synced with master records in our database.
Personal information entered on pghzoo.ticketapp.org will be hosted in an external Altru master database, which may be synced with our email platform, MailChimp. The information stored on these external sites is password protected, encrypted and is only accessible by the small team of Zoo employees. We will use this information to contact you about the Zoo. You may unsubscribe from Zoo emails by clicking the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email, or by contacting [email protected].