Privacy Policy

What We Collect

We only collect what a festival needs to run. Each activity collects different things, and each one is described in its own section below:

• Voting — your name and email address.
• Tickets and donations — handled by Zeffy.
• Forms and applications — contact details and whatever else the form asks for.
• Photos — gallery uploads, Community Altar portraits and Ofrenda Car Show entries.
• Contact messages — the name, email and message you send us.
• Your IP address and browser type, briefly, to stop abuse and to investigate security problems (see "How We Use It").

Voting

To vote without a ticket you give us your name and email address, and we email you a one-time 6-digit code. We keep that name and email, and your votes are stored with that record. Your vote is therefore linked to your name and email on our side.

We use your name and email only to run the contest and to prevent duplicate voting: each email can vote once per category. You can change your vote in a category until voting closes. We do not use this email to send you marketing.

Individual votes are never published — only totals. Judges score the contestants separately, using their own judge accounts.

When you vote or change a vote, our server logs record the time, your IP address, your browser type and your voter record, as an audit trail against fraud.

Your voting session is kept in your browser's session storage until you close the tab (see "Cookies and Local Storage").

Tickets and Donations

Tickets and donations are sold through Zeffy, a nonprofit payment platform. When you buy, Zeffy collects your name, email and payment details under its own privacy policy and shares the purchase with ACLA. Payment card details never reach our servers. Zeffy's checkout and donate buttons are embedded on our Tickets and Catrina pages and may set their own cookies.

Forms and Applications

We collect what you type into the forms on this site and nothing more. Depending on the form, that can include:

• Volunteer, vendor, food truck, Catrina contest and sponsor forms — name, email, phone, ZIP code, your answers, and any files or images you attach. Some forms ask for a signature, drawn on screen and stored with your answers; a copy may appear in the notification email our team receives. Sponsor forms also ask about your company and the sponsorship tier you are considering.
• Artist registration — contact details, ZIP code, social links, a description of your art and up to 50 photos. If you choose the option, we create a free 806.art artist profile for you: we send 806.art your username, display name, email, phone, ZIP code, discipline, bio, links and photo, and 806.art emails you to set a password. Their privacy policy then applies to that profile.
• Art-piece submissions — the artist's name, contact email and phone, price, dimensions, description and photos. Artist contact details are published on the piece's public page on purpose, so buyers can reach the artist. If a piece is sold, our staff record the buyer's name, email, phone and delivery address to arrange delivery; those buyer details are never shown publicly.
• Contact form — your name, email, optional subject and your message.
• Prospective sponsors — our sponsorship team keeps business contact details and the history of our conversations so we can follow up.
• Judges and staff — name, email and a hashed password, or a Microsoft sign-in for staff. Staff sessions are kept in a cookie (see "Cookies and Local Storage").

The Community Altar and AI

The Community Altar shows portraits you submit on a screen at the festival. You send one portrait photo, an optional display name and tick a consent box. Portraits are often of loved ones who have passed; please only submit a photo you have the right to share, of a person whose family would agree.

Nothing is shown until a festival organiser reviews and approves the photo. Unless we announce otherwise, the altar runs in its basic mode: your photo is only resized to fit the screen, and it is not sent to any AI service or other third party.

If we turn on the optional AI mode, your approved photo is sent to a third-party AI provider, fal.ai, which generates an edited image and then a short animated clip. The consent text on the altar page always says which mode is active. fal.ai may host the generated results on its own servers under its own retention terms. If you do not consent, or an organiser does not approve the photo, it is never sent to any AI service.

Altar photos and clips are kept in storage that is not listed publicly and are served through our own site using long, unguessable addresses. That is not the same as password protection: anyone who has the exact address could open it. You can ask us to remove your submission at any time and we will delete the photo and any clip we generated.

Photos You Submit

When you upload a photo to the gallery you confirm you have the right to share it. You can add a caption and, optionally, your name and email so we can credit or contact you; your email is never shown publicly. Nothing appears publicly until an organiser approves it. Photos are converted to a compressed web format on upload. We do not keep or publish the location data that some phones embed in photos.

To register a car for the Ofrenda Car Show you give us your name, email and phone, the car's year, make and model, and optionally a car name, club and photo. Your contact details are used only to run the show (confirmation, payment and day-of logistics) and are never published. The registration fee is paid on Zeffy, whose own privacy policy applies there. We email you a private link to add or replace your car's photo until the festival ends. Photos may show licence plates; approved cars appear with their photo, name and club in the public voting booth. Tell us if you want your registration or photo removed and our staff will delete it.

Festival badges for volunteers, exhibit artists and staff carry your name and a headshot. We may email you a private link to add the photo and check your name; the link expires after 30 days and stops working when a newer one is sent. Badge photos are used only to print badges, are never published on the site, and are kept in storage that is not listed publicly. Ask us and we will delete yours.

Gallery photos are stored in a public bucket: an approved photo, and its web address, can be seen and saved by anyone. Separately, the festival is a public event and general crowd photography may take place. If you appear in a festival photograph and would like it removed, contact us.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not ask children to create accounts. Some contests include minors, such as the Youth Catrina division. A minor's registration must be completed and signed by a parent or guardian, who can ask us to see or delete it at any time. We do not publish a minor's contact details.

The photo gallery has a kids category. Photos are published only after a person reviews them, and a parent or guardian can ask us to remove a photo of their child at any time. If you believe a child has sent us information without a parent's knowledge, contact us and we will remove it.

How We Use It

• To send you the codes, confirmations and event information you asked for.
• To run the contests fairly — one vote per person per category — and to work out the results.
• To follow up on an application you submitted (artist, vendor, volunteer, sponsor) and to answer your messages.
• To keep the site safe. Your IP address is used as a temporary key to rate-limit abuse (for example, a script submitting a thousand forms). Security events, such as failed sign-ins and vote changes, are also written to our server logs with the IP address and browser type.
• To understand, in aggregate, how many people visit the site, using Umami analytics. Umami does not use cookies and does not build a profile of you across sites.
• We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising. The only mass emails we send are sponsorship invitations to organisations that may want to sponsor; each one carries an opt-out.

Who Else Sees It

We share data only with the services needed to operate the festival:

• Zeffy — ticket and donation payments (see "Tickets and Donations").
• Our email (SMTP) provider, to deliver voting codes, confirmations and notifications.
• fal.ai — only for Community Altar photos, and only if AI mode is on and you consented.
• 806.art — only if you choose to create an artist profile there.
• Umami analytics, which receives page-view data without cookies or personal identifiers.
• OpenStreetMap, whose servers deliver the map tiles on our Map page. Loading the map sends your IP address and the area you are viewing to them.
• Candid (GuideStar), whose transparency seal image loads on our Sponsors page.
• Microsoft, only when staff sign in with their work account.
• Our hosting provider. Uploaded files are kept in a storage service that we run ourselves on that hosting.
• We may disclose information if required by law.

Cookies and Local Storage

We use only what the site needs to work. We set no advertising or tracking cookies. What we store on your device:

• Language choice — a cookie and a local-storage entry (dodfest_lang), kept for one year, so the site opens in the language you picked.
• Session storage, cleared when you close the tab — whether you already saw the intro animation, the header animation and the Catrina corridor entrance, and, while you vote, your voting session and the votes you cast so the booth can show them. Judges' sessions are kept the same way.
• Unsupported-browser notice — a local-storage flag remembering that you dismissed it.
• Staff only — a sign-in cookie (admin_token, httpOnly) plus the staff member's name, role and session token in local storage, and layout preferences.
• A small service worker file that lets the site behave like an installable app. It does not track you.
• Third-party content — Zeffy's checkout and donate widgets, the OpenStreetMap map and the Candid seal — may set their own cookies or read your IP address under their own policies.

Your Location on the Map

The Map page can show where you are if you tap "Where am I?" and allow your browser to share your location. Your position is used on your device only to draw your dot on the map. It is never sent to our servers, never saved and never put in a link.

How Long We Keep It

Right now most data is kept until a person deletes it, because nothing deletes it automatically. ACLA plans to set these periods [PROPOSED — ACLA to confirm]:

• One-time voting codes: 24 hours. Voter records from email voting (name, email and votes): 60 days after results are announced. [PROPOSED — ACLA to confirm]
• Forms and applications, including signatures, art-piece buyer details and sponsor records: 2 years, for accounting and planning the next edition, then deleted. [PROPOSED — ACLA to confirm]
• Rejected gallery, altar and Car Show photos: 30 days. Approved gallery, altar and Car Show photos: until the end of the 2026 edition plus 6 months, or until you ask us to remove them. [PROPOSED — ACLA to confirm]
• Server logs (IP address and browser type on security events): 30 days. [PROPOSED — ACLA to confirm]

Your Choices

To use any of these choices, email [email protected]. Tell us the name and email you used, and we will reply within about 30 days.

• Ask what we hold about you, and we will tell you.
• Ask us to correct something that is wrong.
• Ask us to delete your submission, photo, altar clip, Car Show entry or voter record. Some items, such as Car Show entries, are deleted by our staff by hand when you ask.
• Because your vote is stored with your voter record, we can find and remove it if you ask. Removing it after results are announced may change the totals.
• To stop sponsorship emails, reply "STOP" to any of them or write to the address above.

Security

Passwords are hashed and admin access is restricted by role. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise that one will never fail. We do not keep payment card details on our servers — ticket payments are handled by Zeffy. If a security incident affects your information, we will tell you as the law requires.

Changes

If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top of this page. Continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated policy.