Privacy Policy

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This Privacy Policy discloses the privacy practices for the Chicago Detours Tour Company website (collectively, the “Website” located at www.chicagodetours.com). Chicago Detours, Inc., an Illinois corporation, the provider of the Website (referred to as “us” or “we”), is committed to protecting your privacy online. Please read the following to learn what information we collect from you (the “User” or the “End User”) and how we use that information. If you have any questions about our privacy policy, please email us.

PLEASE READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY. BY ACCESSING OR USING OUR WEBSITE, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ, UNDERSTAND, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND TO ALL THE TERMS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND OUR WEBSITE TERMS OF USE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS, EXIT THIS PAGE AND DO NOT ACCESS OR USE THE WEBSITE.

1. Changes to Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently.

2. Types of Information Collected and Uses of Collected Information

We collect two types of information about our Website Users: Personally Identifiable Information and Non-Personally Identifiable Information.

Personally Identifiable Information. Personally Identifiable Information is information that identifies a specific End User. When you engage in certain activities on the Website, such as but not limited to reserving a tour, submitting content and/or posting content on our blog, requesting information about our services, or applying for a job (collectively, “Identification Activities”), we may ask you to provide certain personal information about yourself, such as your first and last name, mailing address (including zip code), email address, telephone number and date of birth. It is optional for you to engage in an Identification Activity. If you reserve a tour, we may ask you for additional information. Depending on the activity, some of the information we ask you to provide is identified as mandatory and some is identified as voluntary. If you do not provide the mandatory information for a particular activity that requires it, you will not be permitted to engage in that activity. If you purchase a walking or bus tour, we will also direct you to a third party vendor for payment. They will ask you to provide them with your credit card number, expiration date and authentication codes or related information. Please refer to their privacy policy at [insert link] for more details. If you choose to reserve a walking or bus tour for friends, we will ask for and store your friends’ names and email addresses. Your friend may contact us at info at chicagodetours.com to request that we remove this information from our database.

Our Chicago tour company uses Personally Identifiable Information to provide services to you, contact you, enhance the operation of the Website, improve our marketing and promotional efforts, analyze Website use, improve our service offerings, and to tailor your experience with third parties as provided in Item 3 of this Privacy Policy. If you send our customer service an email, we may use your comments and feedback to tell others about our services, and may post your comment in our marketing materials or on our Website. If your comment contains your name, we will obtain consent from you before publishing it along with your comment. We may also use Personally Identifiable Information to troubleshoot, accomplish administrative tasks, enforce our agreements with you, including our Website Terms of Use and this Privacy Policy, comply with applicable law, and cooperate with law enforcement activities. If you reserve a tour for friends, we will send your friends emails with the gifts you bought for them and invite them to visit the site. We may also add their e-mail address to our mailing list. Your friend may contact our Chicago tour company at info at chicagodetours.com to request that we remove this information from our database.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information. Non-Personally Identifiable Information is information that does not identify a specific End User. This type of information may include things like the Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) of the website you visited before coming to our Website, the URL of the website you visit after leaving our tour company Website, the type of browser you are using and your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address. We, and/or our third party service providers and advertisers, may automatically collect this information when you visit our Website through the use of electronic tools like Cookies and Web beacons or Pixel tags, as described in Items 4 and 8 of this Privacy Policy.

We use Non-Personally Identifiable Information to troubleshoot, administer the Website, analyze trends, gather demographic information, comply with applicable law, and cooperate with law enforcement activities. We may also share this information with our Third party service providers and Advertisers to measure the overall effectiveness of our online advertising, content, and programming.

3. Release of Personally Identifiable Information

We will not share, sell, rent, or trade your Personally Identifiable Information with other parties except as provided below:

We may share your information with Third Party Service Providers. We provide some services through third parties. These third party service providers perform functions on our behalf, like sending out and distributing our administrative and promotional emails. We may share your Personally Identifiable Information with such Service Providers to complete reservation orders, send email, remove repetitive information on customer lists, analyze data, provide marketing assistance, provide search results and links, process credit card payments, operate the Website, troubleshoot, and provide customer service.

Third party service providers may also release your information to accomplish our administrative tasks. For example, when you order a service, we direct you to a third party service provider. The third party service provider will then release your credit card information to the card-issuing bank to confirm payment for the service. We encourage third party service providers to adopt and post privacy policies. However, the use of your Personally Identifiable Information by such parties is governed by the privacy policies of such parties and is not subject to our control.

We may share your information in a Business Transfer. As with any other business, we could merge with, or be acquired by another company. If this occurs, the successor company would acquire the information we maintain, including Personally Identifiable Information. However, Personally Identifiable Information would remain subject to this Privacy Policy.

We may share your information for our Protection and the Protection of Others. We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Website; enforce or apply this Privacy Policy, our Website Terms of Use or other agreements; or protect the rights, property or safety of the Website, its Users or others.

4. Release of Non-Personally Identifiable Information

We use third party service providers to track and analyze Non-Personally Identifiable usage and volume statistical information from our Users to administer our Website and constantly improve its quality. We may also publish this information for promotional purposes or as a representative audience for Advertisers. Please note that this is not Personally Identifiable Information, only general summaries of the activities of our Users.

5. Updating and Correcting Information

We believe that you should have the ability to access and edit the Personally Identifiable Information you provide us. You may change any of your Personally Identifiable Information by sending us an email at info at chicagodetours.com. Please indicate your name, address and email address, and what information you would like to update when you contact us.

6. User Choices on Collection and Use of Information

As discussed above, you can always choose not to provide information, although it may be required to engage in a certain activity on the Website.

After you purchase a tour, we will send you Administrative and Promotional emails. You cannot opt-out of Administrative Emails. “Administrative Emails” relate to a User’s activity on the Website. You can opt-out of Promotional Emails. Promotional Emails advertise our products and services, including exclusive sales and other offers, and/or the products and services of our Advertisers and Affiliates. If you do not want to receive Promotional Emails from us, you may elect to opt-out of receiving Promotional Emails at any time by e-mailing us at info at chicagodetours.com or by hitting the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of any of our e-mails. When contacting us, please indicate your name, email address, and what Promotional Emails you do not want to receive.

7. Security of Information

Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we employ commercially reasonable security measures to protect data and seek to partner with companies which do the same, we cannot guarantee the security of any information transmitted to or from the Website, and are not responsible for the actions of any third parties that may receive any such information.

8. Data Tracking

Cookies. To facilitate and customize your experience with the Website, we store cookies on your computer. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a User’s computer for record-keeping purposes which contains information about that User. We use cookies to save you time while using the Website, remind us who you are, and track and target User interests in order to provide a customized experience. Cookies also allow us to collect Non-Personally Identifiable Information from you, like which pages you visited and what links you clicked on. Use of this information helps us to create a more user-friendly experience for all visitors. In addition, we may use Third Party Advertising Companies to display advertisements on our Website. As part of their service, they may place separate cookies on your computer. We have no access to or control over these cookies. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by our Website only and does not cover the use of cookies by any Advertiser. Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but you may be able to modify your browser settings to decline cookies. Please note that if you decline or delete these cookies, some parts of the Website may not work properly.

We may remarket your information. Remarketing allows us to use cookies to track which parts of our website you visited and tailor our ads to your preferences. On subsequent visits to our site, you will be shown ads based on the section(s) of our website you visited previously. For example, if you visited our School Trips Page the first time you went to our website, the second time you went to our website you might see ads for school tours, educational tours, and field trips. Additionally, we may use third party marketing vendors to perform remarketing services. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to Chicago Detours’ website. As a result, third party vendors may show Chicago Detours ads on sites on the internet when you perform searches. Users may opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page.

Other Tracking Devices. We may use other industry standard technologies like pixel tags and web beacons to track your use of our Website pages and promotions, or we may allow our third party service providers to use these devices on our behalf. Pixel tags and web beacons are tiny graphic images placed on certain pages on our Website, or in our emails that allow us to determine whether you have performed a specific action. When you access these pages or open or click an email, pixel tags and web beacons generate a Non-Personally Identifiable notice of that action. Pixel tags allow us to measure and improve our understanding of visitor traffic and behavior on our Website, as well as give us a way to measure our promotions and performance. We may also utilize pixel tags and web beacons provided by our Affiliates and/or Marketing Partners for the same purposes.

9. Privacy Policies of Third Party Websites

This Privacy Policy addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you on www.chicagodetours.com. Other websites that may be accessible through this Website have their own privacy policies and data collection, use and disclosure practices. If you link to any such website, we urge you review the website’s privacy policy. We are not responsible for the policies or practices of third parties.

10. Other Privacy Issues

Minors under the age of 13 may not use the Website. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 13, and no part of the Website is designed to attract anyone under the age of 13. Chicago Detours does not provide services for purchase by anyone under the age of 18. Chicago Detours allows adults to reserve and purchase tour slots for children. If you are a parent or guardian with reason to believe a child 13 years or younger under your care may have contributed Personally Identifiable Information to this Website, please contact us at info at chicagodetours.com, and we will delete this information.

Public Areas. We may provide areas on our Website where you can publicly post information about yourself and communicate with others such as comments on our blog. This information may be accessible by other consumers and companies and may appear on other websites or web searches, and therefore this information could be read, collected, and used by others. For example, if you post your email address along with a public blog comment, you may receive unsolicited messages. We have no control over who reads your postings or what other users may do with the information you voluntarily post, so please use caution when posting any personal information. We do obtain consent from our users to post their name along with their reviews.

Notice of Privacy Rights to California Residents. California law requires that we provide California residents with a summary of their privacy rights under the California Online Privacy Protection Act (the “Act”) and the California Business and Professions Code. As required by the Act, we will provide California residents with the categories of Personally Identifiable Information that we collect through the Website and the categories of third party persons or entities with whom such Personally Identifiable Information may be shared for direct marketing purposes at their request. California law requires us, by request, to inform California residents of: (1) the categories of Personally Identifiable Information we collect and what third parties we share that information with; (2) the names and addresses of those third parties; and (3) examples of the products marketed by those companies. The Act further requires us to allow California residents to control who whom that information is shared. To obtain this information, please send a request by email or standard mail to the address found at [insert link to “contact us”]. When contacting us, please indicate your name, address, email address, and what Personally Identifiable Information you do not want us to share with Affiliated Businesses or Marketing Partners. The request should be sent to the attention of our legal department, and labeled “California Customer Choice Notice.” Please allow 30 days for a response. Also, please note that there is no charge for controlling the sharing of California residents’ Personally Identifiable Information or requesting this notice.

About Chicago Detours Tour Company: We create and exhibit multimedia tour experiences that share the architecture, history and culture of Chicago with visitors and locals. We offer walking tours and bus tours to the public, and specialize in private tours and group travel for company team-building, corporate outings, birthday parties, educational student field trips, family reunions, and other special events. We are said to offer some of the best architectural walking tours in the city. Contact us for corporate team building ideas, too!

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Let’s Connect!

 


Ellen

Private Tour Coordinator and Tour Guide

There is no shortage of things to discover in Chicago—I love being an urban explorer and uncovering its hidden places. I have an MA in Public History from Loyola University Chicago, and I have worked as a museum educator and kindergarten teacher. My desire to learn new things fuels my passion for educating others, which I get to experience every day as a Chicago tour guide. I live in the northern neighborhood of Rogers Park.

“Our guide Ellen was exceptional and gifted with a great personal touch.”
Robert
GetYourGuide

Jen

Tour Guide

Whether you are a first-time visitor or a lifelong resident, the vibrant history and modern majesty of Chicago never ceases to amaze. I’m a graduate of Columbia College with an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Art. I’ve worked for many years as an educator at City Colleges of Chicago. As tour guide at Chicago Detours, I integrate my enthusiasm for culture and architecture with my passion as an educator. West Town/Noble Square area is home for me.

“Jen was a perfect storyteller and kept us spellbound for hours.”
Heather
TripAdvisor

Elyse

Tour Guide

With our Chicago neighborhoods, vibrant cultural institutions and nearly two centuries of larger-than-life stories, there’s never a dull moment here! I’m a fifth generation Chicagoan and a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to guiding tours, I’m a creative writer and amateur genealogist. I also enjoy the city’s dynamic theater scene. You can also read overlooked stories from 19th-century newspapers on my “Second Glance History” blog. I live in River North.

Anthony

Tour Guide

Chicago is unique as it always evolves into the future while holding on to the past. I’m fascinated by how people latch on to old architecture but happily pave over others. My background is in theater and performance and I’ve been a tour guide here for more than 10 years. Currently I’m finishing my Master’s in Public History at Loyola University because I love to teach the history of this scrappy city. I’m in the Edgewater neighborhood.

Marie

Operations Coordinator and Tour Guide

Chicago’s history is so fascinating, you could spend a lifetime uncovering its secrets…I’m willing to give it a try! I have an M.A. in US History from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and then pursued doctoral studies in Urban History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I love to learn new aspects of Chicago’s rich history and then share my knowledge as a tour guide with Chicago Detours. I live in Ravenswood.

“Marie was a bubbling fountain of information and contagious enthusiasm.”
Lorit
TripAdvisor

Sonny

Operations Coordinator and Tour Guide

As a fourth generation Chicagoan, I have been living and loving Chicago by bike, on foot, public transit or automobile. I am a graduate of UIC where through the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, began my eagerness to understand the nature, history and impacts of urban planning and development. It is incredibly rewarding to give back to this wonderful city by helping out in the office of Chicago Detours. I live in the incredibly diverse neighborhood of Albany Park.
“Sonny was extremely knowledgeable about all things Chi-town.”
Wade K
TripAdvisor

Alex

Content Manager and Tour Guide

Chicago has so many neighborhoods, buildings, and by-ways that it’s hard to go long without seeing something new, or something familiar from a new angle. I studied Cinema History for my M.A. from the University of Chicago. I’ve worked as a culture writer for various publications and as an educator of the humanities at the City Colleges of Chicago. I’m thrilled to share my love of this city’s busy past and unique architectural spaces with Chicago Detours. I live in the Chicago neighborhood of Lincoln Park.

“Alex was fascinating to listen to. He clearly knows his history and it shows.”
Katie K
Yelp

Amanda Scotese

Executive Director and Tour Guide

I’m an interpreter of personal stories from the past and the city’s landscape. I love to imagine what originally happened inside old unmarked buildings, and what forces have shaped their design. I studied Chicago history, architectural history, and anything Chicago-related through my M.A. in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. My love for stories was enriched by my B.A. in Literature from the University of Michigan. I’ve written travel articles for publications like Rick Steves’ Italy best-selling travel guides, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and The Chicago Food Encyclopedia. I live in the Chicago neighborhood of West Avondale.
“You can TELL Amanda is hyper-passionate about doing the research and getting the story that nobody’s heard before.”
Shelby F
Yelp