Skip to content

Privacy Policy

Akari Photo Tours, Inc. (Akari Photo Tours) is committed to protecting your privacy. Our Privacy Policy is designed to assist you in the understanding of how we collect, use, and protect the personal information provided to us.

By continuing to access our website (the “Site”), you acknowledge that you have had the chance to review and consider our Privacy Policy and that you agree to its terms, including the use of information and grounds for disclosure as described herein.

THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

When you visit our site, we collect two types of information: personal information you actively choose to disclose (“Active Information”) and information
not visible to you that arises out of your browsing of our Site (“Passive Information”). Please note that Passive Information is collected on an aggregate and anonymous basis.

1. Personally Identifiable Information

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is information that identifies and is reasonably linked to you. We collect the following PII:

  • For newsletter subscriptions: name & email
  • Upon tour registration: Name, email, address, phone, DOB, emergency contact, fitness details, dietary restrictions/allergies, medical conditions/medications, and photography skill level.
  • For some international tours, we will need to collect passport information to fulfill transit requirements. (booking internal flights, ships that require it for passenger manifest, visa applications, etc.)

2. Passive Information

We store and collect various types of passive information on an aggregate and anonymous
basis. This information may include such technical information as usage patterns, pageviews, browser type, device type, OS type, language, geo-location, screen size, and referrer.

3. Aggregate Information

This refers to information that does not, by itself, identify you as a specific individual. Such information would include the Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) of the website that referred you to our Site, your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address (a number automatically assigned to your computer whenever you surf the web), your operating system and browser type, and any search terms that you enter on our Site. Our web server aggregates this information in order to monitor the level of activity on our Site, evaluate its effectiveness, and improve the content of our Site in order to make your visit an easy and enjoyable experience.

We may collect, compile, store, publish, promote, report, or otherwise disclose or use any Aggregate Information, provided that such information does not personally identify you. We do not correlate any Personally Identifiable Information with the Aggregate Information that we collect on our Site. If we do correlate any Aggregate Information to you, it will be protected like any other Personally Identifiable Information under this Privacy Statement.

How We Collect User Info

What is a Cookie?

Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a site. They are small pieces of data stored by a user’s browser to simplify subsequent interactions with the site. This makes it easier for a user to move from site to site and to complete transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.

Our Site utilizes cookies to collect information about how our Site is used. Passive Information gathered may include the date and time of visits, the Site pages viewed, time spent at our Site, and the sites visited just before and just after visiting our Site. You can set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies whenever you like, but please remember if you do choose to reject cookies, your access to some of the functionality and areas of our Site may be restricted. For further information and support, visit the specific help page for the web browser you are using.

Our Site’s servers also automatically identify your computer by its Internet Protocol address, which is a unique string of numbers that are assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. The IP address may be used to address problems with our server or to gather broad demographic information about our users. We passively collect your IP Address.

How We Use the Information Collected

AKARI PHOTO TOURS DOES NOT SELL YOUR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION TO THIRD PARTIES. We may share your Personally Identifiable Information as described below and elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, as permitted or required by applicable law:

Broadly speaking, parties we employ directly, or as contractors or agents at our direction, use Active Information for purposes of administering our core business functions, such as the fulfillment of services and the furnishing of customer care and support.

We use Passive Information to gather information about our users and to enhance our Site to make it easier, faster, and friendlier for users. Additionally, cookies help us better understand the usage patterns of the people who visit our site, which helps us improve our services. Passive Information may result in your viewing of particular advertising based on your user habits.

We reserve the right to use Personally Identifiable Information in order to prevent, detect, and investigate fraud, security breaches, or any other potentially prohibited or illegal activity.

We may use any Personally Identifiable Information provided to contact you about various changes to our Site, new services, features, or products we offer. If at any time you do not wish to receive such information, you may “opt-out” of doing so by emailing us at privacy@akariphototours.com.

Your Information and Hyperlinks

You might be able to access other websites through our Site via hyperlinks. When you do so, you are subjecting yourself to their privacy policies and data collection. Please read the privacy policies of those sites to ensure you agree with the terms before using such sites.

Receiving and Sharing of Information from and with Third Parties

We reserve the right to receive information about you from other third-party sources, which helps us to update, expand, and analyze our records and identify new customers. Furthermore, we may share Personally Identifiable Information necessary for the prevention of fraud, illegal activities, and security breaches. Because of this, it’s possible some of your Personally Identifiable Information may be shared with fraud prevention agencies. If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified, details of this fraud may be passed on to these agencies.

We may disclose your Personally Identifiable Information to enforce our policies or where we are permitted (or believe in good faith that we are required) to do so by applicable law, such as in response to a request by a law enforcement or governmental authority, in connection with actual or proposed litigation, or to protect and defend our property, people and other rights or interests. We may also share your Personally Identifiable Information pursuant to a subpoena or other legal request or as necessary to remit certain taxes in the course of processing payments as required by law or legal process. This applies to information as it relates to both open and closed accounts.

Additionally, third parties who perform services for us as it relates to security, payment, etc. (such as Internet Service Providers, credit card processors, and merchant banks) may also have access to your information in the performance of such necessary services.

We also may share your Personally Identifiable Information in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, assignment, or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy. In the case of any acquisition, we will inform the buyer it must use your Personally Identifiable Information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy.

Finally, we may disclose anonymous information about user habits to third-party advertisers on our Site.

How We Secure Active and Passive Information

We secure your personal information submitted by you by using reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access, disclosure, or accidental loss of Active and Passive Information. These efforts include https encrypting all traffic and requiring complex passwords and two-factor authentication.

Accessing and Correcting Your Information

We take reasonable measures to ensure that any Personally Identifiable Information we collect on our Site is accurate, current, complete, and reliable for its intended use. If you wish to update or otherwise correct Personally Identifiable Information provided to us, you may edit your information by emailing us at privacy@akariphototours.com.

Protecting Your Information

We acknowledge your trust and are committed to taking reasonable steps to protect Personally Identifiable Information provided from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access. We employ physical, electronic, and managerial processes to safeguard and secure your information. It is your responsibility to safeguard the password you use to access our Site and to promptly advise us if you ever suspect that your password has been compromised. We strongly encourage you to change your password regularly to prevent unauthorized access. Because your identification number and password are specific to you, you acknowledge sole responsibility for any and all use of our Site conducted with your identification number and password.

Children’s Privacy Protection

We take special care to protect the privacy needs of children and encourage parents to be active participants in their children’s online activities. Our Site does not target and is not intended for users under the age of 18, and we will not knowingly collect Personally Identifiable Information directly from them. You may learn more about protecting children’s privacy online by visiting www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0031-protecting-your-childs-privacy-online

U.S. State Privacy Rights

a) Nevada Residents: Your Nevada Privacy Rights

Nevada law (SB 220) requires Website operators to provide a way for Nevada consumers to opt out of the sale of personal identifiable information that the Website operator may collect about them. Please note we do not sell your personal information to third parties as defined in Nevada law and will not do so in the future without providing you with notice and an opportunity to opt-out of such sale as required by law. If you have any questions regarding our data privacy practices or our compliance with Nevada data privacy law, please email us at privacy@akariphototours.com.

Rights of European Union Residents Under the GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation on data protection and privacy in the European Union (EU). Under the GDPR, EU residents have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of your data and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of your data. This enables you to ask us to correct any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you.
  • Request erasure of your data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove your data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
  • Object to processing of your data where we are processing it to meet our public interest tasks or legitimate interests (or those of a third party), and there is something about your particular situation that makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your data for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request the restriction of processing of your data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your data, for example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
  • Request the transfer of your data to another party.

Depending on the circumstances and the nature of your request, it may not be possible for us to do what you have asked, for example, where there is a statutory or contractual requirement for us to process your data and it would not be possible to fulfill our legal obligations if we were to stop. However, where you have consented to the processing, you can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing us at the address listed below. In this event, we will stop the processing as soon as we can. If you choose to withdraw consent, it will not invalidate past processing.

If you want to exercise any of the rights described above or are dissatisfied with the way we have used your information, please contact us at privacy@akariphototours.com. The same email address may be used to contact our Data Protection Officer. We will seek to deal with your request without undue delay and, in any event, in accordance with the requirements of the GDPR. Please note that we may keep a record of your communications to help us resolve any issues that you raise.

Do-Not-Track Signals

Some web browsers may transmit “do-not-track” (DNT) signals to sites with which the browser communicates. Because of differences in how web browsers incorporate and activate this feature, it is not always clear whether users intend for these signals to be transmitted or whether users are even aware of them. Until a universal standard for DNT is set, our Site will not support DNT signals.

International Data Transfer

The Personally Identifiable Information we process may be transmitted or transferred to countries other than the country in which you reside. Those countries may have data protection laws that are different from the laws of your country.

We are located in the United States, while third-party service providers operate in many countries around the world. When we collect your Personally Identifiable Information, it may be processed in any of those countries. We have taken appropriate steps and put safeguards in place to help ensure that your Personally Identifiable Information remains protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Record Retention

We will retain your Personally Identifiable Information in accordance with all applicable laws for as long as it may be relevant to fulfill the purposes set forth in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. We will deidentify, aggregate, or otherwise anonymize your Personally Identifiable Information if we intend to use it for analytical purposes or trend analysis over longer periods of time.

The criteria we use to determine our retention periods include:

  • The duration of our relationship with you, including any open accounts, recent bookings, or other transactions you have made
  • Whether we have a legal obligation related to your Personally Identifiable Information, such as laws requiring us to keep records of your transactions with us
  • Whether there are any current and relevant legal obligations affecting how long we will keep your Personally Identifiable Information, including contractual obligations, litigation holds, statutes of limitations, and regulatory investigations

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

Akari Photo Tours may update our Privacy Policy in response to changing laws and/or technical or business developments. You can see when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the bottom of this Policy. It is your responsibility to review Akari Photo Tours’ Privacy Policy each time you provide Personally Identifiable Information to Akari Photo Tours, as the Policy may have changed since the last time you used our services. By using our Site, you acknowledge acceptance of this Privacy Policy in effect at the time of use.

Contacting Akari Photo Tours

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your Personal Information, please contact us via email: privacy@akariphototours.com.

(Last Updated: 10/21/2023)

Sign up for our newsletter.

Photography tips and resources, plus our latest trip announcements. Subcribers receive a free copy of our wildlife photography eBook.

Subscribe