Clear boundariesfor personal information.

What happens to your information

Website forms and the private shelter inbox

Adoption applications, volunteer applications, contact messages, and newsletter signup requests are saved in a private shelter inbox on the website server. The record includes your answers, the questions and agreements you accepted, the time received, newsletter consent when given, your selected animal, and your signature where the form asks for one. Only authorized owners and editors can access full submissions. Answers and signatures are not included in public media, analytics, or application logs.

The server forwards these submissions to Shelter Manager. Adoption applications, volunteer applications, and Contact messages also have staff copies delivered through Google Workspace. Newsletter signup notices use the separate newsletter workflow described below. These deliveries are tracked separately and may continue after you close the page. The shelter retains the website copy until an owner deletes it. Deleting that copy does not automatically delete copies in Shelter Manager or staff mailboxes. Encrypted backups follow a retention policy of 7 daily, 5 weekly, and 12 monthly snapshots; older copies may remain until those snapshots expire. Recovery procedures reapply recorded deletions before a restored system is made available.

Draft recovery on your device

The adoption application wizard makes its browser-only draft recoverable for up to seven days after the last edit. While the form is open, it removes the saved draft at expiration; if the site is closed then, it removes the expired draft before restoring anything the next time the form opens. Typed initials and the generated signature are never included in that draft. You can clear it sooner from the form, and a successful submission also clears it. Anyone using the same browser profile may be able to access the local draft, so avoid saving one on a shared device. The volunteer application is different: it is memory-only and does not use localStorage or sessionStorage, so closing or reloading the page clears its answers.

Newsletter service

Newsletter enrollment is sent to Brevo only after you actively consent on the newsletter form or choose the optional checkbox on Contact. The private submission records your name, email, exact consent wording and version, entry point, and the time your request was received. Shelter Manager receives that record too. Brevo receives your name, email, and consent evidence for the mailing list and unsubscribe workflow. Contact message text, phone numbers, adoption answers, and signatures are not sent to the newsletter service. A signup request does not override an existing unsubscribe or mean an email has been delivered. The retained Brevo newsletter workflow sends a staff signup notice for the first qualifying enrollment and prevents repeat workflow entry. It does not send another notice for each repeat website signup; a separately submitted Contact message still has its own staff copy.

Facebook event suggestions

If the shelter enables its event-detection connection, the website monitors only posts published by the official Start Over Rover Facebook Page. It may process the post text, public permalink, publication and edit times, and at most one attached event flyer to suggest event details for staff review. It does not collect Facebook comments, reactions, visitor posts, or personal-profile information, and a suggestion never publishes, cancels, postpones, or reschedules an event automatically.

Explicit details are parsed first. When the separate assisted-extraction setting is enabled, the public Page text and a validated flyer image may also be sent to OpenAI with storage disabled to return structured suggestions. OpenAI may retain API data for limited abuse monitoring unless the shelter's account has an approved zero-data- retention arrangement. Meta and OpenAI process that information under their own terms.

Rejected suggestions and evidence linked to completed events are cleared of retained Page text, flyer evidence, extracted event fields, and warnings after 90 days. The limited metadata kept afterward includes the Page and post identifiers, source hash, Facebook permalink, source timestamps and state, detector classification, review audit, and any link to the canonical event. This prevents duplicate imports and documents staff decisions without retaining the post copy. Staff can also paste official Page-post text and a permalink into the CMS manually; the same review and retention rules apply.

Optional website analytics

When website analytics is configured, Google Analytics 4 is used only after you choose “Allow analytics.” No Google Analytics tag loads before that choice. Choosing “No thanks” keeps analytics disabled. Advertising storage, advertising user data, and advertising personalization remain denied in either case; allowing analytics grants analytics storage only.

Your choice is saved in this browser's local storage under sor.analytics-consent.v1 so you do not have to answer on every visit. Use the “Analytics preferences” link in the footer to reopen the choice at any time. Choosing “No thanks” after previously allowing analytics revokes consent and stops future analytics collection in this browser. The page refreshes during revocation to remove the tag that was loaded after the earlier choice.

Analytics events are limited to actions such as viewing an adoption list, starting an adoption or volunteer form, following a donation link, using a phone, email, or directions link, and successfully joining the newsletter. These events do not include names, email addresses, phone numbers, form answers, message content, or other personal information entered into a form.

Analytics loads only on a fixed set of recognized pages with a clean URL. The sole query-string exception is a numeric Events archive page, which is reported only as/events. It does not load for search terms, filters, application parameters, visitor-created fragments, or unrecognized pages. The fixed accessibility skip-link fragment is removed from the analytics page location, and this site limits referrer information to the site origin. This prevents visitor-created values from becoming analytics page locations.

Contact messages

Contact-form details are saved in the private shelter inbox, forwarded to Shelter Manager, and emailed to the configured shelter staff through Google Workspace. The website does not intentionally log your message body. If you separately check the newsletter option, its enrollment is tracked independently and sent to Brevo; sending a contact message alone does not subscribe you. A problem at one destination does not discard the saved message or repeat a delivery already confirmed at another destination.

Technical logs and abuse protection

The web server and infrastructure providers may process technical details such as IP address, requested URL, timestamp, browser information, and security events for delivery, troubleshooting, and abuse prevention. Application answers and signatures are not intentionally written to local application logs.

Contact, newsletter, adoption, and volunteer forms keep short-lived abuse-prevention counters in the website database. Each counter uses a secret-protected digest of the network address, the form name, an attempt count, and an expiry time. It does not include the plain network address, contact details, or message contents. Limits expire after 15 minutes; expired counters are removed in small batches during later form traffic.

When Cloudflare Turnstile is configured on a form, Cloudflare processes device and network information to determine whether the request appears automated. A form that does not show or invoke Turnstile does not send a Turnstile challenge.

Donations and external links

PayPal, Amazon, Shelter Manager, and any other linked external service process information under their own terms. This website does not collect payment-card details.

Questions

Ask a privacy question, request deletion of retained event-source evidence, or ask the shelter to disconnect Facebook event detection by emailing adoption@startoverrover.org or calling (402) 834-0640.