Privacy Policy

Last updated October 29, 2021

Thank you for choosing TellFriends, LLC ("Company", "we", "us", "our"). We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy notice, or our practices with regards to your personal information, please contact us at contact@tellfriends.app.

When you visit our website www.tellfriends.app (the "Website"), use our mobile application, as the case may be (the "App") and more generally, use any of our services (the "Services", which include the Website and App), we appreciate that you are trusting us with your personal information. We take your privacy very seriously. In this privacy notice, we seek to explain to you in the clearest way possible what information we collect, how we use it and what rights you have in relation to it. We hope you take some time to read through it carefully, as it is important. If there are any terms in this privacy notice that you do not agree with, please discontinue use of our Services immediately.

This privacy notice applies to all information collected through our Services (which, as described above, includes our Website and App), as well as, any related services, sales, marketing or events.

Please read this privacy notice carefully as it will help you understand what we do with the information that we collect.

1. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

Personal information you provide to us

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us, such as when you register for our Services or when you contact us. The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the Services, the choices you make and the products and features you use.

We collect the following personal information: your name, username, email address, phone number, and other similar information. We also collect your posted recommendations with related comments. When you create, join or get added to groups lists, such groups will also be associated with your account information.

When you utilize the contact upload feature and provide us, if permitted by applicable laws, with the phone numbers in your address book on a regular basis, including those of users of our Services and your other contacts, in case they decide to accept your invitation and/or join later. If any of your contacts aren’t yet using our Services, we’ll manage this information for you in a way that ensures those contacts cannot be identified by us. We don’t store these these phones numbers and only process them momentarily to create cryptographic hash values which enable us to efficiently connect these contacts when they join TellFriends. You can control the contact upload feature in your device-based settings.

When you contact us for app support or otherwise communicate with us, we will retain the information you provide to us that is related to your use of our Services, including screenshots, any other information you deem helpful, and how to contact you (e.g., an email address). For example, if you may send us an email with information relating to app performance or other issues.

Information automatically collected

We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use or navigate the Services. This information does not reveal your specific identity, such as your name or contact information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Services, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.

Like many businesses, we also collect information through cookies and similar technologies.

The information we collect includes:

• Log and Usage Data. Log and usage data is service-related, diagnostic, usage and performance information our servers automatically collect when you access or use our Services and which we record in log files. Depending on how you interact with us, this log data may include your IP address, device information, browser type and settings and information about your activity in the Services (such as the date/time stamps associated with your usage, pages and files viewed, searches and other actions you take such as which features you use), device event information (such as system activity, error reports (sometimes called 'crash dumps') and hardware settings).
• Device Data. We collect device data such as information about your computer, phone, tablet or other device you use to access the Services. Depending on the device used, this device data may include information such as your IP address (or proxy server), device and application identification numbers, location, browser type, hardware model Internet service provider and/or mobile carrier, operating system and system configuration information.
• Location Data. We collect location data, with your permission when you choose to use location-based services, such as information about your device's location. The location information is collects for diagnostic and troubleshooting purposes. How much information we collect and whether it’s precise or imprecise, depends on how you choose to use the services. For example, we may use GPS and other technologies to collect geolocation data that tells us your current location (based on your IP address). If you wish to change our access or permissions, you may do so in your device's settings.
• Push Notifications. We may request to send you push notifications regarding your account or certain features of the App. If you wish to opt-out from receiving these types of communications, you may turn them off in your device's settings.

This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our App, for troubleshooting and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.

2. HOW DO WE USE YOUR INFORMATION?

We use personal information collected via our Services for a variety of business purposes described below. We process your personal information for these purposes in reliance on our legitimate business interests, in order to enter into or perform a contract with you, with your consent, and/or for compliance with our legal obligations. We indicate the specific processing grounds we rely on next to each purpose listed below.

We use the information we collect or receive:

• To deliver and facilitate delivery of services to the user. We may use your information to provide you with the requested service.
• To respond to user inquiries/offer support to users. We may use your information to respond to your inquiries and solve any potential issues you might have with the use of our Services.

3. WILL YOUR INFORMATION BE SHARED WITH ANYONE?

We may process or share your data that we hold based on the following legal basis:

• Consent: We may process your data if you have given us specific consent to use your personal information for a specific purpose.
• Legitimate Interests: We may process your non-personal information when it is reasonably necessary to achieve our legitimate business interests. TellFriends, LLC will not identify you as an individual or sell your personal data to third parties for business or commercial purposes.
• Performance of a Contract: Where we have entered into a contract with you, we may process your personal information to fulfill the terms of our contract.
• Legal Obligations: We may disclose your information where we are legally required to do so in order to comply with applicable law, governmental requests, a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process, such as in response to a court order or a subpoena (including in response to public authorities to meet national security or law enforcement requirements).
• Vital Interests: We may disclose your information where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potential violations of our policies, suspected fraud, harmful conduct such as potential threats to the safety of any person, suspicious or illegal activities, or as evidence in litigation in which we are involved.

More specifically, we may need to process your data or share your personal information in the following situations:

• Business Transfers. We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.
• Google Maps Platform APIs. We may share your information with certain Google Maps Platform APIs (e.g., Google Maps API, Place API). To find out more about Google’s Privacy Policy, please refer to this link. We obtain and store on your device ('cache') your location. You may revoke your consent anytime by contacting us at the contact details provided at the end of this document.
• Vendors, Consultants and Other Third-Party Service Providers. We may share your data with third-party vendors, service providers, contractors or agents who perform services for us or on our behalf and require access to such information to do that work. Examples include: payment processing, data analysis, email delivery, hosting services, customer service and marketing efforts. We may allow selected third parties to use tracking technology on the Services, which will enable them to collect data on our behalf about how you interact with our Services over time. This information may be used to, among other things, analyze and track data, determine the popularity of certain content, pages or features, and better understand online activity. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. They will also not share your personal information with any organization apart from us. They also commit to protect the data they hold on our behalf and to retain it for the period we instruct them. Unless described in this notice, we do not share, sell, rent or trade any of your information with third parties for their promotional purposes.

We are committed to safeguarding your personal information.

4. WHO WILL YOUR INFORMATION BE SHARED WITH?

We only share and disclose your information with the third parties supporting our operations. If we have processed your data based on your consent and you wish to revoke your consent, please contact us using the contact details provided in the section below titled “How Can You Contact us About This Notice?”.

• User Account Registration and Authentication
• Analytics

5. DO WE USE COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES?

We may use cookies and similar tracking technologies (like web beacons and pixels) to access or store information. Specific information about how we use such technologies and how you can refuse certain cookies is set out in our Cookie Notice.

6. IS YOUR INFORMATION TRANSFERRED INTERNATIONALLY?

Our servers are located in the United States. If you are accessing our Services from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed by us in our facilities and by those third parties with whom we may share your personal information (see "Will Your Information be Shared With Anyone?" above), in and other countries.

If you are a resident in the European Economic Area (EEA) or United Kingdom (UK), then these countries may not necessarily have data protection laws or other similar laws as comprehensive as those in your country. We will however take all necessary measures to protect your personal information in accordance with this privacy notice and applicable law.

7. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION?

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting or other legal requirements). No purpose in this notice will require us keeping your personal information for longer than the period of time in which users have an account with us.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

8. HOW DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SAFE?

We have implemented appropriate technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security, and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our Services is at your own risk. You should take necessary precautions, such as only accessing the Services within a secure environment.

9. WHAT ARE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS?

In some regions (like the EEA and UK), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include the right (i) to request access and obtain a copy of your personal information, (ii) to request rectification or erasure; (iii) to restrict the processing of your personal information; and (iv) if applicable, to data portability. In certain circumstances, you may also have the right to object to the processing of your personal information. To make such a request, please use the the contact information provided below. We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Please note however that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal, nor will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

If you are a resident in the EEA or UK and you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. You can find their contact details here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/bodies/authorities/index_en.htm .

If you are a resident in Switzerland, the contact details for the data protection authorities are available here: https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb/en/home.html .

If you have questions or comments about your privacy rights, you may email us at contact@tellfriends.app.

Account Information

If you would at any time like to review or change the information in your account or terminate your account, you can:

• Log into your account settings and update your user account.

Upon your request to terminate your account, we will deactivate or delete your account and information from our active databases. However, we may retain some information in our files to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our Terms of Use and/or comply with applicable legal requirements.

Cookies and similar technologies: Most Web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove cookies and to reject cookies. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our Services. To opt-out of interest-based advertising by advertisers on our Services visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/.

Opting out of email marketing: You can unsubscribe from our marketing email list at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the emails that we send or by contacting us using the details provided below. You will then be removed from the marketing email list — however, we may still communicate with you, for example to send you service-related emails that are necessary for the administration and use of your account, to respond to service requests, or for other non-marketing purposes. To otherwise opt-out, you may contact us using the contact information provided.

10. CONTROLS FOR DO-NOT-TRACK FEATURES

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track ("DNT") feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy notice. 

11. DO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS HAVE SPECIFIC PRIVACY RIGHTS?

California Civil Code Section 1798.83, also known as the "Shine The Light" law, permits our users who are California residents to request and obtain from us, once a year and free of charge, information about categories of personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes and the names and addresses of all third parties with which we shared personal information in the immediately preceding calendar year. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please submit your request in writing to us using the contact information provided below.

If you are under 18 years of age, reside in California, and have a registered account with a Service, you have the right to request removal of unwanted data that you publicly post on the Services. To request removal of such data, please contact us using the contact information provided below, and include the email address associated with your account and a statement that you reside in California. We will make sure the data is not publicly displayed on the Services, but please be aware that the data may not be completely or comprehensively removed from all our systems (e.g. backups, etc.).

The California Code of Regulations defines a "resident" as:

(1) every individual who is in the State of California for other than a temporary or transitory purpose and

(2) every individual who is domiciled in the State of California who is outside the State of California for a temporary or transitory purpose

All other individuals are defined as "non-residents."

If this definition of "resident" applies to you, we must adhere to certain rights and obligations regarding your personal information.

What categories of personal information do we collect?

We may collect the following categories of personal information:

- Identifiers: Contact details, such as name, alias, phone number, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address and account name;

- Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute: Name, contact information and financial information;

- Geolocation data: Device location.

We may also collect other personal information outside of these categories instances where you interact with us in-person, online, or by phone or mail in the context of:

• Receiving help through our customer support channels;
• Participation in customer surveys or contests; and
• Facilitation in the delivery of our Services and to respond to your inquiries.

How do we use and share your personal information?

TellFriends, LLC does not use or shares your personal information.

More information about our data collection and sharing practices can be found in this privacy notice.

You may contact us by email at contact@tellfriends.app or by referring to the contact details at the bottom of this document.

If you are using an authorized agent to exercise your right to opt-out, we may deny a request if the authorized agent does not submit proof that they have been validly authorized to act on your behalf.

Your rights with respect to your personal data

Right to request deletion of the data - Request to delete

You can ask for the deletion of your personal information. If you ask us to delete your personal information, we will respect your request and delete your personal information, subject to certain exceptions provided by law, such as (but not limited to) the exercise by another consumer of his or her right to free speech, our compliance requirements resulting from a legal obligation or any processing that may be required to protect against illegal activities.

Right to be informed - Request to know

Depending on the circumstances, you have a right to know:

• whether we collect and use your personal information;
• the categories of personal information that we collect;
• the purposes for which the collected personal information is used;
• whether we sell your personal information to third parties;
• the categories of personal information that we sold or disclosed for a business purpose;
• the categories of third parties to whom the personal information was sold or disclosed for a business purpose; and
• the business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling personal information.

In accordance with applicable law, we are not obligated to provide or delete consumer information that is de-identified in response to a consumer request or to re-identify individual data to verify a consumer request.

Right to Non-Discrimination for the Exercise of a Consumer’s Privacy Rights

We will not discriminate against you if you exercise your privacy rights.

Verification process

Upon receiving your request, we will need to verify your identity to determine you are the same person about whom we have the information in our system. These verification efforts require us to ask you to provide information so that we can match it with information you have previously provided us. For instance, depending on the type of request you submit, we may ask you to provide certain information so that we can match the information you provide with the information we already have on file, or we may contact you through a communication method (e.g. phone or email) that you have previously provided to us. We may also use other verification methods as the circumstances dictate.

We will only use personal information provided in your request to verify your identity or authority to make the request. To the extent possible, we will avoid requesting additional information from you for the purposes of verification. If, however, we cannot verify your identity from the information already maintained by us, we may request that you provide additional information for the purposes of verifying your identity, and for security or fraud-prevention purposes. We will delete such additionally provided information as soon as we finish verifying you.

Other privacy rights

• you may object to the processing of your personal data
• you may request correction of your personal data if it is incorrect or no longer relevant, or ask to restrict the processing of the data
• you can designate an authorized agent to make a request under the CCPA on your behalf. We may deny a request from an authorized agent that does not submit proof that they have been validly authorized to act on your behalf in accordance with the CCPA.
• you may request to opt-out from future selling of your personal information to third parties. Upon receiving a request to opt-out, we will act upon the request as soon as feasibly possible, but no later than 15 days from the date of the request submission.

To exercise these rights, you can contact us by email at contact@tellfriends.app, or by referring to the contact details at the bottom of this document. If you have a complaint about how we handle your data, we would like to hear from you.  

12. DO WE MAKE UPDATES TO THIS NOTICE? 

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated "Revised" date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this privacy notice, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this privacy notice frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

13. HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE? 

If you have questions or comments about this notice, you may email us at contact@tellfriends.app.

If you are a resident in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the "data controller" of your personal information is TellFriends, LLC. You may email us to to request the contact information of our appointed representative in the EEA.

14. HOW CAN YOU REVIEW, UPDATE, OR DELETE THE DATA WE COLLECT FROM YOU? 

Based on the applicable laws of your country, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, change that information, or delete it in some circumstances. To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, you may email us at contact@tellfriends.app.