Privacy Policy

1. Who are we?

Vetstoria Limited is a company registered in the United Kingdom under number 5896625 and whose registered office is at Matrix House, 12-16 Lionel Road, Canvey Island, Essex, England, SS8 9DE (“Vetstoria” / “we” / “our”). When we refer to ourselves as “we” or “Vetstoria”, we mean our entire company, including our subsidiaries and affiliates.

If you are located in the European Union area or United Kingdom, and you are a veterinary clinic who has subscribed to use one or more of our Products (as defined below) or you choose to browse our Website (as defined below) Vetstoria is the controller for the processing of your personal data and has notified the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) of its processing of personal data. The notification indicates what data is processed by Vetstoria and for what purpose, and to which persons or entities the data will be provided. Click here to consult the notification in the public register of the ICO. Vetstoria’s registration number is Z1523157. Your point of contact if you are located in the European Union area but outside the UK is Vetstoria Technology Limited registered in Republic of Ireland under number 689312 and whose registered office is Trinity House, Charleston Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6, D06C8X. If you are located in the European Union area and you are a veterinary clinic’s customer who is using any of our Products (as defined below) Vetstoria is the data processor in relation to your Personal Data. Whilst this Privacy Policy provides an overview of the Personal Data that we process on your veterinary clinic’s behalf, you should consult your veterinary clinic’s privacy policy for further details as to what data it collects and for what purposes.

If you or any of your customers are a resident of California, U.S.A., the California Supplement below applies to you with regard to our processing of any Personal Data.

If you or any of your customers are residents of the Asia Pacific Region, the Asia Pacific Supplement below applies to you with regard to our processing of any Personal Data.

2. Defined Terms:

Capitalised terms used herein that are not otherwise defined shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the Terms of Use.

3. What is this Privacy Policy for?

Wherever you are located, the aim of this Privacy Policy is to advise all users of the website www.vetstoria.com, and all associated sites linked to www.vetstoria.com, its subsidiaries and affiliates (the “Website”), as well as any veterinary clinic that has subscribed to use one or more of our products, including our online booking software and pre-appointment questionnaire, and any other products of ours which are subscribed to from time to time (together, the “Products”) on how we collect, protect and process the information that is supplied to us, and in particular, Personal Data. We request that you read this Privacy Policy and only if you are satisfied with it should you continue to use the Website or our Products (as appropriate).

4. Updates to this Privacy Policy:

The Privacy Policy may change from time to time, details of any such changes shall be posted on this page of the Website. It is your responsibility to check the Privacy Policy when you visit the Website and/or each time that you use our Products. By using this Website and/or our Products you accept that you are bound by the Privacy Policy in force at that time and displayed on this page.

5. What information does Vetstoria collect?

Vetstoria collects and stores information and data provided by (or otherwise directly or indirectly collected from) you in accordance with this Privacy Policy. We collect information from 5 sources as follows:

i. All users: Users of the Website can access the Website’s homepage and browse some areas of the Website without disclosing any Personal Data. We might track information provided to us by your browser, including any website you came from, the type of browser you use, browser version, plugins installed, the time and date of access, and other information that does not personally identify you. In addition, we might gather information about you that is automatically collected by our web server, internet protocol address, connection information, operating system and platform, operating system version, device information, unique reference number linked to the data entered on the system, cookie number, and activity on the Website including the pages you visit and searches you may have made (collectively all of the foregoing being known as “User Data”). This data would be collected when you interact with our website including, but not limited to when making an appointment.

ii. If you are a veterinary clinic customer: If you are a veterinary clinic customer using our Products, we collect certain Personal Data from you on behalf of your veterinary clinic. This Personal Data includes name, address, telephone number and e-mail address and any other Personal Data that you provide to us about you when using such Products (including, but not limited to when making an appointment), and always based on our instructions from the veterinary clinic (all of the foregoing being “Customer Data”). Your veterinary clinic may also provide the Customer Data directly to us, based on the records that it already holds about you.

iii. If you are a veterinary clinic: If you are a veterinary clinic who enters into our Master Subscription Agreement granting you a licence to use one or more of our Products, we will collect certain Personal Data from you in order to provide such Product(s) to you. This includes a contact name, address, e-mail address and telephone number as well as any other Personal Data that you decide to provide to us during the subscription process (“Veterinary Clinic Data”).

iv. Information from outside sources: We may also legally obtain information from third parties. For instance, if you are a veterinary clinic, we may collect information about you from other sources in order to verify your licensure status and identity; where necessary (for example, to process an order for a purchase), in some cases this information may be Personal Data;

v. Any information that you voluntarily provide to us: We may collect information that you voluntarily provide to us through responses to surveys, search functions, questionnaires, feedback, contact us forms, conversations on the Vetstoria Chat Function and the like or if you make a payment to us. Some of this information may be Personal Data, such as national change of address information.

We do not collect any special categories of personal data about you through our website (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

6. Legal basis for which we will use your personal data:

Vetstoria relies on the legitimate interests processing ground to collect each of the above items of information, excluding the Customer Data for which Vetstoria is a data processor only. The Customer Data is processed by Vetstoria on behalf of your veterinary clinic and therefore is subject to whatever processing ground your veterinary clinic is relying on to process such Personal Data. Please see your veterinary clinic’s privacy policy for details.

It is necessary for Vetstoria to collect such items of Personal Data listed above for the following legitimate interests (and subject to applicable consent requirements): (i) in the case of the User Data, to improve the functionality of the Website and the efficiency of the booking process, to perform internal analytics and improve our service offerings, and to ensure that the Website and the related processes and service offerings run as smoothly as possible; (ii) in the case of the Veterinary Clinic Data and the information in paragraph 5(v), to provide the Products to the veterinary clinic or the applicable survey/questionnaire and so forth; and (iii) in the case of the information listed in paragraph 5(iv), for fraud and security purposes. In each case, the items of Personal Data collected are being limited to “business card” type data, not of a nature whereby your rights and freedoms as a data subject are outweighed by such data collection.

7. Use of cookies:

Vetstoria, like many websites, may use cookies from time to time. A cookie is a small amount of information that is sent to a person’s browser from a web server and stored on that computer’s hard drive so that the Website can remember who they are. A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has been sent, the lifetime of the cookie, and a unique value number. Cookies cannot read your hard drive. For more information about our cookie policy, please visit our cookie policy page.

8. Advertising:

Along with many other internet sites, Vetstoria may use third-party advertisers to fill advertising space on the Website. These third parties may use cookies and other similar technologies to assess information about you. Vetstoria has no access to or control over third party activity which is not covered by this Privacy Policy. Vetstoria is not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites, including your veterinary clinic, even if you access them using links from the Website. You should check the policy of each site you visit and contact its owner or operator if you have any concerns or questions, including, in the case of concerns about the Customer Data, your veterinary clinic. In addition, if you link to the Website from a third-party site or via a social network (e.g. Twitter, Facebook), Vetstoria is not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners or operators of that third party site and recommends that you check the policy of that third party site and contact its owner or operator if you have any concerns or questions.

9. Purposes for which Vetstoria uses the information collected:

Vetstoria may use the information set out in paragraph 5 above for the following purposes:

i. We use cookies or other non-identifying information such as the User Data referred to in paragraph 5(i) above, in order to recognise you when you visit or return to the Website, track anonymised traffic, demographic and usage pattern, to prevent or detect fraud or abuses, internal analytics and help to improve the Website.

ii. We use the Customer Data that is provided to us in accordance with paragraph 5(ii) above to provide the services that your veterinary clinic has subscribed to, such as those services offered by our Products, including facilitating appointments with your veterinary clinic and sending reminders of such appointments to you. We may also use your Customer Data in order to provide you with adverts or other commercial messages that we believe may be of interest to you on behalf of your veterinary clinic, but only where your veterinary clinic confirms that we are entitled to do so in accordance with applicable data protection and direct marketing legislation (which in certain circumstances will require your consent). You may opt-out of this use of your Customer Data at any time by contacting your veterinary clinic.

iii. We use the Veterinary Clinic Data in order to license to you the Products specified under our Master Subscription Agreement with you.

iv. We use the information provided to us or obtained by us under paragraph 5(iv) and 5(v) above as stated therein. For example, if you submit information to us via a survey that you complete, we will use such information to assess the results of the survey in question.

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it as explained above, or as otherwise set out in this policy or in our cookie policy, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

10. Security, Data Storage and International Transfers, and Retention:

i. Security: Vetstoria takes the security of Personal Data (including the Customer Data and Veterinary Clinic Data and all other Personal Data collected by Vetstoria under paragraph 5) very seriously. Precautions are taken to protect Personal Data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access or disclosure, alteration or destruction. Vetstoria maintains stringent safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of Personal Data. Further information about Vetstoria’s security practices is available on request.

ii. Storage and International Transfers: Vetstoria stores Personal Data on a regional basis i.e., if you are based in the EEA or UK then it is stored in the EEA, if you are based in the U.S. then it is stored in the U.S. and if you are based in the Asia Pacific region then it is stored in the Asia Pacific region. If you are based outside of these three regions, then it is stored in one of the above regions, whilst being in compliance with any local data protection regulations. Where Vetstoria transfers and/or stores Personal Data outside the EEA and/or the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

  • We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission (in the case of transfers out of the EEA) or the UK Government (in the case of transfers out of the UK); and
  • Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in by the European Commission (in the case of transfers out of the EEA) or the UK Government (in the case of transfers out of the UK) which gives personal data the same protection it has within the EEA and/or UK as applicable.

iii. Retention: We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for. All Personal Data is stored by us for the period of time for which, if you are a veterinary clinic, you are licensed to use our Products or, if you are a customer, the period of time for which your veterinary clinic is licensed to use our Products. Following the expiry of such licence, the Personal Data is anonymised. It may, however, take us up to three months following the expiry of such licence to fully anonymise your Personal Data. In connection with any data where we are a data controller (Veterinary Clinic Data), we may, even after the expiry of the licence, retain such data for regulatory, record and internal analysis purposes in accordance with applicable law.

11. We may transfer your Personal Data to third parties as follows:

i. Aggregate: We may anonymise the Personal Data collected in accordance with paragraph 5 and aggregate it, without any individually identifying information, to third parties. Aggregate information is obtained from the collection of many individual records; however, any data that could be used to identify an individual is removed before it is used. Any third party that receives aggregate data must agree not to attempt to re-identify the people it belongs to.

ii. Your veterinary clinic: If you are a customer, we will provide the Customer Data and any other information that you voluntarily provide to us (as indicated in paragraph 5(v)) to the veterinary clinic with which you are registered in order for it to process such data in order to e.g., provide you with an appointment. We act as a data processor in connection with the submission of such data by you, relying on your veterinary clinic to have appropriate grounds on which to instruct us to collect such data.

iii. Practice Management System (PMS) Partners: A PMS is a system commissioned by veterinary clinics to help manage day-to-day hospital operations. When Vetstoria shares information with such veterinary clinic as indicated in paragraph 11(ii) above, this is usually done via the technical integration which Vetstoria shares with the Practice Management Systems.

iv. Our group entities: We are part of the Petvisor group and may share the data which we collect under paragraph 5 with any members of this group in order to provide our services to you.

v. Our service providers: We contract with other companies and individuals to help us provide services and in the operation of our business. Using such service providers’ infrastructure means that we store and process information on hardware and/or services owned by them. All of the information, including Personal Data, that we collect as listed in paragraph 5 will be provided to such service providers. A list of infrastructure and other service providers which we use include:

  • Amazon AWS: server and database infrastructure, and outgoing email servers.
  • Our subsidiary in Sri Lanka carrying out all software development and support activities: Vetstoria S.L. (Private) Limited
  • Our internal business applications such as Google Workspace, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, QuickBooks, Jira, Confluence Chargebee, Tableau, Avalara, NetSuite, Earth Class Mail, Slack, Smartsheets  and third-party payment processors like Stripe,  ACI Pay and GoCardless.
  • Our application tools including, Mouse flow, Walk-me, Twilio, Integrowmat.
  • Our e-mail and SMS campaign management and customer relationship management service providers such as Outgrow, Instapage, Sendgrid.
  • Analytics providers (including, but not limited to Google Analytics).
  • Our customer support tools including Hubspot, Freshdesk, Survey Monkey, Smartsheet, Jotform, Teamviewer, Calendly, Telegram, SalesForce and Zoom.
  • Our tools that are used for Secure Access Management: ElasticSearch / Kibana, OpenVPN, Zero Tier.

Service Providers may include our lawyers, accountants or any other professional advisors we may work with from time to time and data aggregators and platform providers as part of an analysis of user metrics or sales performance.

We take your privacy very seriously and to that effect, we require such companies and individuals to comply with the terms of this Privacy Policy, or privacy policies which are substantially similar with the terms of this Privacy Policy, to limit their access to any Personal Data to the minimum necessary to perform their obligations, and not to use the information they may access via Vetstoria for purposes other than fulfilling their responsibilities to us.

vi. Third parties for marketing purposes: If your veterinary clinic has appointed us as a third party marketing service provider we may disclose the Customer Data to third parties with whom we are running promotional offers, including third parties who are responsible for co-ordinating such marketing campaigns for them, only on the instructions of your veterinary clinic and where your veterinary clinic has confirmed to us that we are permitted to do so in accordance with applicable data protection and direct marketing legislation (which in certain circumstances will require your consent). You may opt out of this use of your Customer Data at any time by contacting your veterinary clinic.

vii. Business transfers or combinations: In the case of an actual or proposed sale or merger or business combination involving all or the relevant part of the business or in the case of insolvency, we may disclose all of the information that we collect as listed in paragraph 5 to third parties to the extent necessary in our reasonable judgement. This information may include Personal Data.

viii. Legal: We may disclose all of the information that we collect as listed in paragraph 5 to third parties to enforce Vetstoria’s rights, to protect the public or if it is required by law or regulation or requested by any legal or regulatory authority (including but not limited to the ICO) or law enforcement agency. Again, this information may include Personal Data.

Other than described above, Vetstoria will not release any of the information that it collects as indicated in paragraph 5 to a third party without your consent.

12. You have the right to: (i) access a copy of the Personal Data that we have collected from you in accordance with paragraph 5; (ii) rectify any incorrect or incomplete items of such Personal Data; (iii) have Personal Data anonymised in certain circumstances; (iv) restrict processing of Personal Data in certain circumstances; (iv) object to our processing of such items of Personal Data (subject to Vetstoria not requiring such Personal Data for legitimate business purposes or other legal reasons); and/or (v) in certain circumstances, request to receive a copy of your Personal Data in a commonly used electronic format. You can carry out any of these actions from time to time by contacting dpo@vetstoria.com. Please note that if you are a customer and you wish to exercise any of the foregoing rights in respect of your Customer Data, such rights must be exercised by you contacting your veterinary clinic although we will co-operate with the veterinary clinic if any such request is made.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your Personal Data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your Personal Data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that Personal Data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one calendar month. Occasionally it may take us longer than one calendar month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

You have the right to make a complaint or raise any concerns with your local data protection authority directly. However, we would encourage you to contact us in the first instance as we aim to promptly, efficiently and satisfactorily resolve any concerns or complaints you may have in relation to Vetstoria’s processing of your personal data.

13. How we operate: Vetstoria operates in accordance the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, as well as other applicable privacy legislation such as the Data Protection Act 2018.

14. Your California Privacy Rights: For the 12-month period prior to the date of this Privacy Policy, we have not “sold” (as that term is defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”)) any of your Personal Data.

If you are a California resident, California law also provides you with the following rights with respect to your Personal Data:

  • The right to know what Personal Data we have collected, used, and disclosed about you.  To submit a request to know, you may send us an email at dpo@vetstoria.com or send us a written request to 1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, Delaware, 19801, United States.  You also may designate an authorized agent to make a request for access on your behalf.
  • The right to request that we delete any Personal Data we have collected about you.  To submit a request for deletion, you may send us an email at dpo@vetstoria.com  or send us a written request to 1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, Delaware, 19801, United States.  You also may designate an authorized agent to make a request for deletion on your behalf.

Please note that we are not obligated to respond to more than two access requests for the same individual’s Personal Data within a 12-month period. When you exercise these rights and submit a request to us, we may need to verify your identity. We also may use a third-party verification provider to verify your identity. If we need additional information to verify your identity, we will let you know. We will endeavour to respond to a verified request within 45 days, unless there are grounds for extending our response timeframe by up to an additional 45 days. In the event of an extension, we will explain to you why the extension is necessary. In some cases, your ability to access or delete your Personal Data will be limited, as required or permitted by applicable law, even when the CCPA applies to the Personal Data we have for you. If we cannot fulfil your request because we cannot verify your identity or due to exceptions under the CCPA (or when the CCPA does not apply to the Personal Data, we will let you know in our response).

Your exercise of these rights will have no adverse effect on our Website or our Products.

15. For users from the Asia Pacific Region: Your point of contact if you are located in the Asia Pacific region is Vetstoria Pty Limited registered in Australia under number 645  081 545 and whose registered office is Level 2, 16 McDougall Street, Milton, Queensland, 4064, Australia.  If you are located in the Asia Pacific region and you are a veterinary clinic’s customer who is using any of our Products (as defined below) Vetstoria is the data processor in relation to your Personal Data. Whilst this Privacy Policy provides an overview of the Personal Data that we process on your veterinary clinic’s behalf, you should consult your veterinary clinic’s privacy policy for further details as to what data it collects and for what purposes.

  • The right to know what Personal Data we have collected, used, and disclosed about you.  To submit a request to know, you may send us an email at dpo@vetstoria.com.You also may designate an authorized agent to make a request for access on your behalf.
  • The right to request that we delete any Personal Data we have collected about you.  To submit a request for deletion, you may send us an email at dpo@vetstoria.com. You also may designate an authorized agent to make a request for deletion on your behalf.

16. For users of  the Vetstoria Chat Function: Our chat function utilizes a tool called Twillio which will store conversation information. Twillio does not have the capability to store information in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. Therefore all information stored by Twillio will be stored in Ireland.

17. For users below the age of 16: You must not provide us any personal information if you are under the age of 16 without the consent of a parent, guardian or someone who has parental authority for you. We do not knowingly collect or process the information of Children below the age of 16.

18. Ceasing use of our services: You may at any time stop using the Website or our Products (subject, in the case of our Products where you are a veterinary clinic, to the terms of our Master Subscription Agreement with you governing the use of such Products).

19. Change of details: If you are a veterinary clinic and you change your contact details, please send an email with your new details to support@vetstoria.com.

20. Contact us: If you have any questions or concerns about the information Vetstoria holds about you, you may email Vetstoria at dpo@vetstoria.com or, if you are a veterinary clinic customer, your veterinary clinic.