1. HIPAA
PetHousingRights connects individuals with mental health professionals to support emotional support animal (ESA) letters and psychiatric service dog (PSD) evaluations.
In doing so, we may collect, share, and store protected health information (PHI) in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ("HIPAA"), acting as a business associate of these mental health providers.
As a business associate, PetHousingRights can only handle PHI in ways the provider is authorized to. For details on how your mental health provider handles your PHI, please refer to their specific privacy notice.
2. The Information We Collect
Depending on how you interact with PetHousingRights, we may collect information through the following ways:
Information You Provide Directly:
- Contact Information: Details you share when communicating with us via email, mail, phone, or chat.
- Account Information: Your name, email, phone number, and authentication information, including email sign-in codes.
- Transactional Information: Payment details and purchase history when using our Services.
- Photographs: If you apply for a PetHousingRights scholarship.
- Health Information: Mental health details submitted through ESA or PSD service questionnaires.
- Animal & Housing Details: Information about your emotional support or service animal and your housing situation that you provide to support a documentation or reasonable-accommodation request.
- Refund-Review Evidence: If you request a refund, information you submit to support your claim — such as landlord or property-manager denial letters, emails, or notices; resident-portal messages or screenshots; lease notices; accommodation-request records; a HUD or state/local fair-housing complaint reference; and related correspondence. Please redact any third-party personal information you do not need to share before uploading.
- Demographic Data: Age, gender, race, or ethnicity when requested by your mental health provider.
- Employment and Educational Information: When relevant for scholarships or ESA/PSD services.
Information Collected Automatically:
- Device and Online Activity Data: Information like your IP address, browser type, device identifiers, visited pages, clicks, and time spent on the Site.
Information from Third Parties:
- Health Information: Shared by your mental health provider to facilitate ESA or PSD evaluations.
- Marketing Data: Information from advertising partners about ads you have seen or clicked, including your email address for targeted marketing.
Note: External vendors (like payment processors) may collect sensitive information like payment data on our behalf. PetHousingRights does not store your full payment card details.
4. How We Use Your Personal Information
We may use the information we gather to:
- Deliver our Services: Facilitate your communication with mental health professionals, manage accounts, process purchases, and send important notices.
- Respond to you: Address your inquiries, support requests, and feedback.
- Review refunds and disputes: Review and decide refund requests under our Refund Policy, verify submitted documentation (reviewed by authorized PetHousingRights personnel and the service providers that host it), and handle payment disputes, fraud prevention, and related compliance.
- Improve and maintain our Services: Diagnose technical problems, monitor system performance, and expand our Services through analysis of consumer behavior and marketing efforts.
- Market our Services: Develop and administer promotional campaigns and personalize the marketing messages and content you see.
- Meet legal obligations: Fulfill legal requirements, enforce our terms, prevent fraud, and protect rights, property, and safety.
- Support relationships with mental health professionals: Manage necessary contracts and perform general business operations.
We may also use aggregated or de-identified data for research, analysis, marketing, or to improve our Services.
6. How We Protect and Store Your Personal Information
We implement a mix of physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect the personal information we collect through our Services.
While we take appropriate measures to protect your information, no system, server, or network is completely secure. We cannot guarantee the absolute security of any information transmitted to or stored by PetHousingRights or its third-party partners.
PetHousingRights operates in the United States. Your information may be processed and stored in the U.S. and by the service providers we use to operate the Services, which may be located in other jurisdictions.
7. Retention of Your Personal Information
We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected or as required by applicable laws. California law requires us to share how we determine retention periods:
- Some personal data is kept for the duration of our relationship to deliver Services.
- After services end, we may retain information for legal, regulatory, or business obligations (for example, for tax purposes or fraud prevention).
- Refund-review evidence you submit is kept only as long as needed to resolve your request and to meet legal, tax, and fraud-prevention obligations, then deleted or de-identified. You may request deletion as described in "Your Privacy Options" and the California section below (subject to legal exceptions).
8. Your Privacy Options
You have several choices regarding how we collect and use your personal information:
Managing Your Account:
Visit your PetHousingRights account settings to view or update your personal information like contact details.
Email Communications:
If you no longer wish to receive marketing emails from us, click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any marketing email.
Cookies and Tracking:
- Use any cookie or privacy controls we provide on the site, where available, to set your cookie preferences.
- Adjust your browser settings to block or limit cookies.
- Note: Disabling cookies may affect certain features on our Services.
- Mobile device users can manage interest-based advertising settings through their device's operating system.
Opt-Out from Interest-Based Ads:
- Visit Network Advertising Initiative or About Ads to opt out of targeted ads.
- Please note: Opting out doesn't eliminate ads; it just stops personalized ads based on your browsing activity.
9. Children's Information
We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe that we have unintentionally gathered a child's personal data, please contact us at support@pethousingrights.com.
A parent or guardian may request that we delete their child's information or stop using it. Upon verification, we will promptly remove any such information from our records.
10. Updates to This Privacy Notice
We may revise this Privacy Notice from time to time. The "Effective Date" at the top of the page reflects when the Privacy Notice was last updated.
If significant changes are made, we may notify you by other methods, such as email or a notice posted on our Services. Your continued use of our Services after updates means you accept the revised Privacy Notice.
11. Additional Notice for California Residents
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) grants California residents rights regarding their personal information. These rights apply whether you are a customer, a visitor to our site, or otherwise interacting with us.
Please note: Personal health information (PHI) managed under HIPAA is not covered by the CCPA.
Collection, Use, and Retention
California residents have the right to know what categories of personal information we collect and for what purposes. Here is a summary:
Scroll across the table to read all five columns.
| Category | Examples | Sources | Purpose | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Identifiers | Name, email, phone number, unique IDs | Directly from you; advertising and analytics partners | Service delivery, marketing, customer service | Retained during active relationship and longer for legal/business needs |
| Customer Records | Telephone number, credit card details | Directly from you | Transactions and service delivery | Retained as required for taxes and fraud prevention |
| Protected Classifications | Race, gender, ethnicity | Directly from you | ESA/PSD Services | Retained as needed for service fulfillment |
| Commercial Information | Purchases, order history | Directly from you | Record-keeping, service improvement | Retained per state legal obligations |
| Internet/Network Activity | Cookies, device ID, browsing history | Automatically from your device; advertising partners | Website analytics, advertising | Regularly deleted once no longer needed |
| Sensitive Information | Login credentials, racial/ethnic origin | Directly from you | Account management, ESA/PSD services | Retained during service relationship |
| Audio/Visual Information | Photograph | Directly from you | Scholarship or service use | Retained during relationship |
We do not collect biometric or precise geolocation data.
Your Rights
As a California resident, you have the following rights:
- Access: Request access to the personal information we have collected about you.
- Delete: Request deletion of your personal information (subject to legal exceptions).
- Correct: Request correction of inaccurate personal information.
- Opt-Out: Opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information.
You or your authorized agent can submit a request by emailing support@pethousingrights.com. Please include enough detail for us to verify your identity and respond to your request.
12. SMS Opt-In Details
By providing your mobile phone number and explicitly opting in through a website form, you consent to receive SMS messages from PetHousingRights related to your ESA intake, form submission confirmations, account notifications, and service-related updates. SMS messages are sent only to users who have voluntarily opted in. Message frequency may vary. Message and data rates may apply. You may opt out at any time by replying STOP.
Mobile Information Sharing Statement
Mobile information will not be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Mobile information may only be shared with service providers necessary to deliver SMS communications, such as messaging platforms or carriers.