Privacy policy.

Effective Date: May 1, 2024

Contact information:  hello@higherground.agency 

This document governs the privacy notice of our website www.higherground.agency

This Privacy Policy ("Privacy Policy") and the Cookies Notice ("Cookies Notice") are intended to provide you with information about how Higher Ground Collective uses and protects your personal data ("Personal Data") collected through the website https://higherground.agency ("the Website"). Higher Ground Collective is committed to providing a safe website for visitors of all ages and has implemented the Privacy Policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy. Higher Ground Collective complies with Canadian Federal and Provincial privacy laws and regulations including the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act.

There may be links from our Site to other websites; note that this Privacy Policy applies only to our Site and not to websites of other companies or organizations to which our Site may be linked.  You must check any linked sites for the privacy policy that applies to that site and/or make any necessary inquiries in respect of that privacy policy with the operator of the linked site. The links to third party websites are provided as a convenience and are for informational purposes only. Higher Ground Collective does not endorse and is not responsible for these linked websites.

Higher Ground Collective is a corporation, incorporated under the laws of the Province of Ontario, and is considered as the Data Controller of this Website.

If you have any questions about how your Personal Data is collected, please contact the Higher Ground Collective at hello@higherground.agency

COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

This is information that may be used to identify you as an individual, such as your email address, name, home or work address, or telephone number. We may collect this information in a number of voluntary ways on this Site, including, but not limited to, the newsletter form, survey questionnaires, feedback, as well as the comments form and email messages to any higherground.agency email address.  This information is used to respond to your requests and questions. We may also use this information to communicate with you about other relevant topics that may be of interest.

We take the protection of data privacy very seriously. All Personal Data collected through the Website will be treated as strictly confidential and will only be used as set out in this Privacy Notice. The applicable data protection laws shall be respected in full.  Please review this Privacy Notice thoroughly. If you disagree with the way Personal Data will be used, please do not use this Website nor provide your Personal Data through this Website. 

The website is hosted by Squarespace. Squarespace collects personal data when you this website, including:

  • Information about your browser, network and device

  • Web pages you visited prior to coming to this website

  • Web pages you view while on this website

  • Your IP address

This information may also include details about your use of the Website, including:

  • Clicks

  • Internal links

  • Pages visited

  • Scrolling searches

  • Timestamps

Squarespace needs the data to run this website, and to protect and improve the platform and services. Square space analyzes the data in a de-personalized form. Please not that The Privacy Policy and the Cookie Policy may be modified by Higher Ground Collective as the Website features and the offered services evolve, as well as the laws applicable to the activities of Higher Ground Collective. These changes and updates are binding on the user who must therefore refer regularly to this section and check the documents in force.

How Does Higher Ground Collective Use Information Gathered About Online Visitors?

Before forwarding us any personal information, please be advised that any information gathered on the website may be used in the aggregate for research and development relating to the website and/or for future website development and, if you request it, to send you promotional materials. In particular, we may use information gathered about you for the following purposes: to monitor interest in our range of services and to assist us to tailor the content of the website to your needs by collecting information about your preferences through tracking of patterns page views on the website; to create a profile relating to you in order to show you the content that might be of interest to you and to display the content according to your preferences; and, in circumstances where you have indicated that you wish to receive additional information, to send you information about us and promotional material about our products together with details of any offers we may have available from time to time.

Promotional And Informational Offers

With the permission of an online visitor, information submitted at the time of registration or submission may be used for marketing and promotional purposes by Higher Ground Collective provided notice of this fact is made available online. If a visitor objects to such use for any reason, he/she may prevent that use, either by email request or by modifying the registration information provided. Higher Ground Collective uses reasonable efforts to maintain visitors’ information in a secure environment. If you have submitted personal information and want to change it or opt-out, please contact us as described above.

Disclosure of Information

Higher Ground Collective will not disclose personal information that you provide on the website to any third parties other than to a Company agent except: i) in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy, or ii) to comply with legal requirements such as a law, regulation, warrant, subpoena or court order, and/or iii) if you are reporting an adverse event/side effect, in which case Higher Ground Collective may be required to disclose such information to bodies such as, but not limited to, Canadian and/or international regulatory authorities. Please note that any of these disclosures may involve the storage or processing of personal information outside of Canada and may therefore be subject to different privacy laws than those applicable in Canada, including laws that require the disclosure of personal information to governmental authorities under circumstances that are different than those that apply in Canada.

Cookies

A cookie is a data file that certain websites write to your computer’s hard drive when you visit such sites. A cookie file can contain information, such as a user identification code, that the site uses to track the pages you have visited, but the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can’t read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites.

We may collect information from your web sessions by using cookies, to determine, for example, user traffic patterns, and the effectiveness of our navigational structure.

Most website browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually change your browser settings to display a warning before accepting a cookie, or to refuse all cookies. You don’t need to have cookies turned on to use/navigate through many parts of the website. However, you may have to accept the receipt of cookies to access some resources on the website. Please note that if you choose not to accept cookies, or to delete the use of cookies, you may affect the website experience and render yourself unable to use all of the available features on the website.  The following functional and required cookies are always used, which allow Squarespace, our hosting platform to securely serve this website to you:

Name: _acloggedin

  • Supports login by Acuity Scheduling client if the client has an account

  • Cookie

  • January 1, 2025

_client_acloggedin

  • Supports login by Acuity Scheduling client if the client has an account

  • Cookie

  • January 1, 2025

_dd_cookie_test

  • Tests if cookies are supported

  • Cookie

  • Expires instantly

_dd_s

  • Tracks browser errors

  • Cookie

  • Four hours

_dd_site_test

  • Tests if cookies are supported

  • Cookie

  • Expires instantly

_grecaptcha

  • Helps reduce spam in Acuity Scheduling

  • Local storage

  • No expiry

_ssid

  • Remembers devices for anti-fraud purposes

  • Cookie

  • Four years

CART

  • Shows when a visitor adds a product to their cart

  • Cookie

  • Two weeks

CHECKOUT_WEBSITE

client_username

  • Remembers a logged in Acuity Scheduling client's username between visits

  • Cookie

  • One year

clientUser

  • Stores the Acuity Scheduling client's username, OAuth2 Access Token, and OAuth2 Refresh Token. This cookie is required for functionality of logged-in clients

  • Cookie

  • 30 days

Commerce-checkout-state

  • Stores state of checkout while the visitor is completing their order in PayPal

  • sessionstorage

  • Session

Crumb

hasCart

  • Tells Squarespace that the visitor has a cart

  • Cookie

  • Two weeks

Locked

  • Prevents the password-protected screen from displaying if a visitor enters the correct site-wide password.

  • Cookie

  • Session

orderStatusSessionToken

  • Authenticates a visitor who logs into an order status page.

  • Cookie

  • One year

PHPSESSID

  • Securely authenticates a visitor during their checkout in Acuity Scheduling

  • Cookie

  • One month

RecentRedirect

  • Prevents redirect loops if a site has custom URL redirects. Redirect loops are bad for SEO.

  • Cookie

  • 30 minutes

remember_client

  • Remembers Acuity Scheduling client’s login details if they have an account

  • Cookie

  • 365 days

siteUserCrumb

SiteUserInfo

SiteUserSecureAuthToken

  • Authenticates a visitor who logs into a customer account

  • Cookie

  • Three years

squarespace-announcement-bar

  • Prevents the announcement bar from displaying if a visitor dismisses it

  • localstorage

  • Persistent

squarespace-likes

  • Shows when you've already "liked" a blog post

  • localstorage

  • Persistent

squarespace-popup-overlay

  • Prevents the promotional pop-up from displaying if a visitor dismisses it

  • localstorage

  • Persistent

squarespace-video-player-options

ss_cookieAllowed

  • Remembers if a visitor agreed to placing analytics cookies on their browser if a site is restricting the placement of cookies

  • Cookie

  • 30 days

ss_sd

Test

  • Investigates if the browser supports cookies and prevents errors

  • Cookie

  • Session

TZ

  • Enables a Acuity Scheduling client’s appointments to display correctly based on their time zone preferences.

  • localstorage

  • Persistent

Analytics and performance cookies

We use analytics and performance cookies to collect information on your behalf about how visitors interact with the Website. Storing these cookies is how we populate the data for analytics such as traffic sources, unique visitors and cart abandonment.

Cookie Name

Duration

Purpose

ss_cid

Two years

Identifies unique visitors and tracks a visitor’s sessions on a site

ss_cpvisit

Two years

Identifies unique visitors and tracks a visitor’s sessions on a site

ss_cvisit

30 minutes

Identifies unique visitors and tracks a visitor’s sessions on a site

ss_cvr

Two years

Identifies unique visitors and tracks a visitor’s sessions on a site

ss_cvt

30 minutes

Identifies unique visitors and tracks a visitor’s sessions on a site

 

FONTS

This website serves font files from and reders fonts using Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts. To properly display this site to you, these third parties may receive personal information about you including:

  • Information about your browser, network or device

  • Information about the webiste and the page you’re viewing it on

  • Your IP address

Protection of Children Online

Higher Ground Collective considers the protection of children’s privacy, especially online, to be of the utmost importance. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from children nor do we allow them to become registered users of, or to request information through, the website

Google Analytics

We may use third-party web analytics services to analyze how users use the website. This can include Google Analytics, which uses technologies such as cookies to gather user information. The information collected by the cookies about your use of the website can include your IP address, the URL visited, or page view date and time, and will be transmitted and stored by Google on servers in the United States.

Google may compile reports on the website activity for other website operators who are providing services related to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties when required by law, or when such third parties process information on behalf of Google. 

For more information about Google's privacy policy in respect of Google Analytics, please refer to:

http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html

You may opt-out of Google Analytics by visiting:

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl+en=GB.

Consent

By using the website, you consent to the processing of your personal information as outlined in this privacy Policy.

Protection of Information

Our Commitment to Security
We have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online. Higher Ground Collective applies security safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, such as making personal information accessible only to authorized employees on a need-to-know basis.  Although we take steps to protect your date, by using the website, you consent that the transmission of data is at your own risk. By using the website, you agree to assume all risk in connection with data sent, collected, or store by us.

Storage of Information
Personal information you share with us is stored on our database servers at Higher Ground Collective.  We only keep personal information as long as it is necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected. We also keep any information that is required by law.

Access, updates, and your security choices

At any time, you can ask us to halt any communications by email by clicking on the Unsubscribe link within the marketing email.  If you have provided personal information on the website, you may request, at any time, that it be updated, modified, or deleted. You may complete either of these actions by sending a request to: hello@higherground.agency

You also have the ability to adjust your advertising preferences on social media websites by adjusting your Settings on the individual platform. For example, you can adjust the type of Instagram or Facebook ads you receive through your Facebook Settings or the type of Google ads you receive through your Google Settings.

How to Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, requests, or amendments to make in regards to this Privacy Policy related to our website, please contact us by:

Email: hello@higherground.agency

Telephone: 1 877 977 4478

Mailing Address: Higher Ground Collective, 103 Hilton Ave. Toronto, Ontario Canada M5R 3E8.

You may also contact us at the above addresses at any time to learn more or request a quote.

Changes to this statement

If there are changes or additions to the terms of this Privacy Policy, we will post those changes here prior to implementing the change, as such, Higher Ground Collective encourages you to periodically review this Privacy Policy so you are informed on how your information is being protected and used.

If there are material changes to this Privacy Policy, Higher Ground Collective will notify the users of such changes using the personally identifiable information collected on the website.