Privacy

1. Who we are

Top Dog Tricks, LLC, an Arizona limited liability company, operates Top Dog Tricks. This notice explains how we handle information from website visitors, contest entrants, and email subscribers. Contact hello@topdogtricks.com with privacy questions or requests.

We do not sell or rent entrants’ or subscribers’ personal information.

2. Information we collect

Contest entries include the entrant’s name and email address, dog’s name, trick description, uploaded video and its file information, and a signature image documenting permission. Video and audio may contain faces, voices, surroundings, and other information you choose to include.

For email subscriptions, we collect an email address, subscription preferences or consent, and confirmation and unsubscribe records. We also keep communications you send us.

We keep entry-review records, publication status, and information needed to administer prizes. If you are a potential winner, we may request information needed to verify eligibility and meet payment or tax obligations.

Website requests and service logs may contain technical information such as an IP address, browser or device details, timestamps, and errors. The site also supports usage events about newsletter signup and confirmation to help evaluate whether those steps work.

3. How we use information

We use information to receive and review entries, prepare videos, publish approved showcase content, judge contests, contact potential winners, pay prizes, document video-use permission, respond to requests, protect the service, and meet legal obligations.

When you request email updates, we use your address to confirm and manage that subscription and send those updates. You can unsubscribe using the link in our subscription emails. Unsubscribing from updates does not delete an entry or prevent necessary communications about it.

4. Public content and service providers

Approved videos, dog names, trick descriptions, and prepared captions may appear on the website, Facebook, Instagram, and in contest promotions. Information visible or audible inside your video may therefore become public. Do not include private information you do not want shared. Entrant email addresses and signature images are not displayed publicly.

Service providers process information needed for hosting, file storage, contest administration, email delivery, operational notifications, analytics, and video preparation. Our workflow uses Replit hosting and storage, Airtable contest records, Google Drive for permission documents, Slack for internal review and operational notifications, Resend email delivery, and Google Gemini and OpenAI for AI-assisted video preparation. Information needed for these functions may be shared with the relevant provider, including entry details, media, or permission records; this is different from displaying information publicly.

AI-assisted preparation can use video previews and trick descriptions to suggest edits or captions and generate narration. Human judges, not these preparation tools or audience Likes, decide contest prizes.

We may disclose information when required by law or when reasonably necessary to protect rights, safety, or the service. Facebook, Instagram, and other sites you visit have their own privacy practices; this notice does not govern those services.

5. Browser storage and usage measurement

The website uses browser local storage to remember Like selections and a random browser identifier associated with Likes. This identifier is not a signed-in user account.

The newsletter confirmation feature stores the pending email address and resend waiting period in your browser so it can offer another confirmation email without repeated requests. Avoid using a shared browser if you do not want that email address retained there.

Clearing browser site data may reset these features. It does not unsubscribe you from emails or delete information already submitted to us.

The private review workspace uses a sign-in cookie to maintain reviewer access. This is separate from the browser storage used for public Likes and newsletter features.

We use newsletter interaction events to understand signup and confirmation steps when usage measurement is enabled. The website can send these events to an analytics service configured for the site. This notice does not claim that the website is tracking-free or cookie-free.

With your permission, we use Google Analytics 4 on public pages to measure visits and entry-form steps, including video upload attempts and confirmed submissions. Optional Google Analytics stays off until you accept. You can change your choice using Analytics choices on public pages; declining does not prevent contest entry. Google Analytics may use cookies and process device and usage information. Our custom entry events do not include names, email addresses, signatures, video filenames, or video contents. We disable Google advertising signals and ad personalization, and do not enable this tracking when your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. Google describes its data practices at https://policies.google.com/privacy.

For traffic-source measurement, we retain only recognized source and medium tags and the root domains of a limited set of search and social services. We remove referral paths, fragments, other URL parameters, advertising click identifiers, and free-text campaign names or search terms. Unknown sources may not be distinguishable from direct visits.

6. Retention and security

We keep personal information only as long as reasonably needed to run contests, pay prizes, maintain requested email subscriptions, document video-use permission, and meet legal obligations—not every record forever.

For unpublished, nonwinning submissions, the retention period is 90 days from the later of the contest closing or its prizes being finalized. Records needed for an unresolved dispute or legal obligation are retained until that need ends.

This limited 90-day policy does not apply to championship qualifiers, published showcase videos, prize records, video-permission records, or separately requested newsletter subscriptions. Those records remain subject to their respective purposes and applicable legal requirements.

Retention cleanup is handled through a manual review-and-deletion process, not automatic deletion. Before deleting records, we check whether they are still needed for the exceptions described above.

Different records can have different retention needs. Some records may need to remain after a deletion request, including payment records, required legal records, and evidence of video-use permission. Promotional video permission has no expiration date, as explained in the Contest Rules.

We use safeguards intended to limit unauthorized access, but no internet transmission or storage method is completely secure. This notice does not promise immediate removal from backups or copies others have already shared.

7. Your choices and requests

Email hello@topdogtricks.com to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information. Describe your request and the email address associated with your entry or subscription. Do not send sensitive identity documents unless we request them through an appropriate process.

We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request. We review requests under applicable law and explain any retention limits. Deleting personal information does not automatically revoke previously granted video-use permission.

Contest entrants must be adults. If you believe a child has submitted personal information directly to us, contact us so we can review and address it.

8. Updates to this notice

This notice takes effect when Top Dog Tricks opens publicly for entries. We will identify subsequent updates by their effective date and communicate material changes as required by applicable law.