Privacy Policy

Candy's Cats, Inc. ("Candy's Cats," "CCI," "we," "us," or "our") is a 501(c)(3) no-kill cat rescue based in Central Florida. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect through candyscats.org and candyscats.com, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices available to you. It applies to this website and to the forms linked from it; it does not cover the separate websites of RescueGroups.org, Google, PayPal, or the other third-party services described below, each of which has its own privacy policy.

Information We Collect

We only collect information you choose to give us, generally by filling out one of the forms on this site. We don't require visitors to create an account, and simply browsing the site (looking at adoptable cats, reading the blog, checking event dates) doesn't require you to share anything.

Contact Us

Our Contact Us form collects your name, email address, an optional subject line, and your message. Submitting it sends an email directly to our staff inbox — we don't store contact form submissions in a database of our own.

Adoption applications

Our online adoption application asks for a substantial amount of personal information needed to responsibly place a cat: your contact details (name, address, phone numbers, email), household and co-adopter information, landlord or HOA contact information (if you rent), your veterinarian's contact information and pet history, references, and an electronic signature. This form is protected by Google reCAPTCHA and submits directly to our adoption-management platform, RescueGroups.org — it is not stored on our own servers. Before you submit an application, we may run an automated check on your email address's domain (see "Email verification" below).

Fostering & volunteering

Our Foster and Volunteer pages use Google Forms to collect your interest and contact information. Information submitted through those forms is collected and stored by Google, subject to Google's own privacy policy, and shared with us so we can follow up with you.

Rehoming and surrender requests

Our Rehome a Pet page collects contact information (name, email, phone, address) along with details about the animal and, depending on the type of request, may ask you to upload photos, video, or veterinary records. These submissions — including any files you attach — are sent to us by email; we don't store them in a separate database. Candy's Cats does not accept or facilitate trap-neuter-vaccinate-return (TNVR) requests: if you've found a shy or feral community cat, that page points you to an independent, outside organization that handles those situations, and any information you share with them is governed by their own practices, not ours.

Donations

We never collect payment card, bank, or Venmo/PayPal account details on this website. Our Donate page links out to PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle, so that any payment information you provide is handled entirely by that payment provider under its own privacy policy — we only receive confirmation that a donation was made and the information needed to send a receipt. Donations by mail or check are sent directly to our Apopka address and handled by our own staff/volunteers.

Email verification

When you enter an email address in our adoption application, we perform an automated check (a DNS lookup) to confirm that the domain after the "@" can plausibly receive email, to help catch typos. This check only ever sees the domain, not your full address, isn't logged or stored, and never blocks your submission if it fails — it's a courtesy heads-up, not a requirement.

Information collected automatically

This site is hosted on Cloudflare, which — like any web host — automatically logs standard technical information (such as IP address and browser type) for security and performance purposes, under Cloudflare's own privacy policy.

We also use analytics and advertising services to understand how visitors find and use our site and to measure and improve our outreach. These include Google Analytics (website-usage measurement), Google Ads (measuring how our ads perform and showing relevant ads to people who have visited our site), and the Meta (Facebook) Pixel (similar measurement for our social-media outreach). They are loaded through Cloudflare Zaraz, our tag manager, and collect usage information — such as pages viewed, approximate location, device and browser type, and actions like submitting a form — and may set cookies or similar identifiers, as described under "Cookies" below. This is information about how the site is used; it is not combined with the personal details you provide through our application or contact forms.

A few third-party features are embedded for functionality rather than tracking: Google Fonts (loads typefaces), Google Translate (powers the optional language selector, and sets a cookie to remember your chosen language), and, on the adoption application page only, Google reCAPTCHA (spam protection). Loading any of these can cause your browser to contact the provider's servers directly, subject to that provider's own privacy policy.

How We Use Your Information

• To respond to questions, comments, and requests you send us.
• To evaluate adoption applications and coordinate adoptions, including verifying references, landlords, and veterinary history.
• To follow up on foster and volunteer interest.
• To process rehoming and surrender requests.
• To send donation receipts and thank-you communications.
• To keep our site secure and working properly.
• To measure how our website and outreach are performing, and to reach people who may want to adopt, foster, volunteer, or donate — using the analytics and advertising tools described above.

We do not sell the personal information you submit through our forms, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing purposes. Our analytics and advertising tools work from website-usage information (see "Information collected automatically" and "Cookies"), not the personal details you provide in an application or message.

Third-Party Services We Use

Because we're a small, volunteer-run nonprofit, we rely on a handful of established third-party services rather than building and maintaining our own systems. Each acts on our behalf under its own privacy policy:

• RescueGroups.org — hosts our adoption application and animal database.
• SMTP2GO — delivers the emails generated by our Contact Us and Rehome a Pet forms.
• Google (Analytics, Ads, Forms, reCAPTCHA, Fonts, Translate) — measures site usage and ad performance, powers our foster/volunteer signup forms, protects the adoption application from spam, supplies the typefaces used on this site, and provides the optional language translator.
• Cloudflare — hosts this website and, through Cloudflare Zaraz, loads our analytics and advertising tags.
• PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle — process donations made through those methods.
• Facebook/Meta — we display our own public Facebook posts on our Blog page, and we use the Meta (Facebook) Pixel to measure our social-media outreach and reach potential adopters and supporters; the Pixel may send information about your visit to Meta, subject to Meta's own privacy policy.

Cookies

We use a small number of cookies and similar browser storage. For functionality, our site stores a language-preference cookie (set only if you use the translator to choose a language) so your choice is remembered, and a small local flag so a pop-up announcement you've dismissed won't keep reappearing. These are functional and do not track you across other websites.

For analytics and advertising, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and the Meta (Facebook) Pixel — loaded through Cloudflare Zaraz — set cookies or similar identifiers to measure how the site is used, gauge how our ads perform, and show relevant ads to people who have visited us. In addition, some third-party services set their own cookies once you interact with them — including Google reCAPTCHA, Google Forms, and any linked payment provider — governed by that service's own policy.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings at any time. The site will still work, though features such as remembering your chosen language may not.

Children's Privacy

This site isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without a parent or guardian's involvement. Our volunteer program does welcome younger volunteers alongside a parent or guardian, per our Volunteer page. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information without appropriate consent, please contact us and we will delete it.

Data Retention

We keep information only as long as reasonably needed for the purpose it was collected — for example, email correspondence remains in our inbox for our records, and adoption applications are retained in RescueGroups.org per that platform's own practices. We don't maintain a separate marketing database of visitor information.

Your Choices

You can always reach out to us to ask what information we have from you, to correct it, or to ask us to delete it, using the contact information below. Because Candy's Cats is a small Florida nonprofit, formal frameworks like the GDPR or CCPA may not apply to us directly — but we're happy to honor reasonable requests regardless of where you're located.

Security

We take reasonable steps to protect the information submitted to us, including relying on established, reputable third-party services (listed above) rather than building our own systems to store sensitive data. That said, no method of transmission or storage over the internet is completely secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time as our tools or practices change. The "last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.

Contact Us

Questions about this policy or your information? Reach us at our Contact Us page, by phone at (407) 760-2052, or by mail at Candy's Cats, Inc., 307 W. Main Street, Apopka, FL 32712.