PRIVACY POLICY

Our Commitment to You

At SPEAKoU, your privacy is a top priority. Your privacy is at the core of the way we design and build the services and products you know and love, so that you can fully trust them and focus on building meaningful connections.

We appreciate that you put your trust in us when you provide us with your information and we do not take this lightly.

We do not compromise with your privacy. We design all of our products and services with your privacy in mind. We involve experts from various fields, including legal, security, engineering, product design and others to make sure that no decision is taken without respect for your privacy.

We strive to be transparent in the way we process your data. Because we use many of the same online services you do, we know that insufficient information and overly complicated language are common issues in privacy policies. We take the exact opposite approach: we have written our Privacy Policy and related documents in plain language. We actually want you to read our policies and understand our privacy practices!

We work hard to keep your information secure We have teams dedicated to keeping your data safe and secure. We constantly update our security practices and invest in our security efforts to enhance the safety of your information.

Welcome to SPEAKoU’s Privacy Policy. Thank you for taking the time to read it. We appreciate that you trust us with your information and we intend to always keep that trust. This starts with making sure you understand the information we collect, why we collect it, how it is used and your choices regarding your information. This Policy describes our privacy practices in plain language, keeping legal and technical jargon to a minimum.

This Privacy Policy applies beginning May 25, 2018.

WHO WE ARE

The company that is responsible for your information under this Privacy Policy (the “data controller”) is:
010012 Telecom GmbH
Porschestraße 15
41564 Kaarst
Germany

WHERE THIS PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES

This Privacy Policy applies to websites, apps, events and other services operated by SPEAKoU. For simplicity, we refer to all of these as our “services” in this Privacy Policy. To make it extra clear, we’ve added links to this Privacy Policy on all applicable services.

Some services may require their own unique privacy policy. If a particular service has its own privacy policy, then that policy — not this Privacy Policy — applies.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

It goes without saying, we can’t help you develop meaningful connections without some information about you, such as basic profile details and the types of people you’d like to meet. We also collect information generated as you use our services, for example access logs, as well as information from third parties, like when you access our services through a social media account. If you want additional info, we go into more detail below.

Information you give us

You choose to give us certain information when using our services. This includes:

When you create an account, you provide us with at least your login credentials, as well as some basic details necessary for the service to work, such as your gender and date of birth. When you complete your profile, you can share with us additional information, such details about you, as well as content such as photos and audio. To add certain content, like pictures or audio, you may allow us to access your camera or photo album. Some of the information you choose to provide us may be considered “special” or “sensitive” in certain jurisdictions, for example your racial or ethnic origins, sexual orientation an physical location. By choosing to provide this information, you consent to our processing of that information. Of course, we also process your chats with other users as well as the content you publish, as part of the operation of the services. Information we receive from others

In addition to the information you provide us directly, we receive information about you from others, including:

Other Users
Other users may provide information about you as they use our services. For instance, we may collect information about you from other users if they contact us about you.

Social Media
You may be able to use your social media login (such as Facebook Login) to create and log into your SPEAKoU account. This saves you from having to use your phone number and allows you to share some information from your social media account with us.

Other Partners
We may receive info about you from our partners, for instance where SPEAKoU ads are published on a partner’s websites and platforms (in which case they may pass along details on a campaign’s success). Information collected when you use our services

When you use our services, we collect information about which features you’ve used, how you’ve used them and the devices you use to access our services. See below for more details:

Usage Information
We collect information about your activity on our services, for instance how you use them (e.g., date and time you logged in, features you’ve been using, searches, clicks and pages which have been shown to you, referring webpage address, advertising that you click on) and how you interact with other users (e.g., users you connect and interact with, time and date of your exchanges, number and type of messages and swipes you send and receive).

Device information
We collect information from and about the device(s) you use to access our services, including: hardware and software information such as IP address, device ID and type, device-specific and apps settings and characteristics, app crashes, advertising IDs (such as Google’s AAID and Apple’s IDFA, both of which are randomly generated numbers that you can reset by going into your device’ settings), browser type, version and language, operating system, time zones, identifiers associated with cookies or other technologies that may uniquely identify your device or browser (e.g., IMEI/UDID and MAC address); information on your wireless and mobile network connection, like your service provider and signal strength; Other information with your consent

If you give us permission, we can collect your precise geolocation (latitude and longitude) through various means, depending on the service and device you’re using, including GPS, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connections. The collection of your geolocation may occur in the background even when you aren’t using the services if the permission you gave us expressly permits such collection. If you decline permission for us to collect your geolocation, you cannot use the app. Similarly, if you consent, we may collect your photos and audio (for instance, if you want to publish a photo or audio on the services).

COOKIES AND OTHER SIMILAR DATA COLLECTION TECHNOLOGIES

We use and may allow others to use cookies and similar technologies (e.g., web beacons, pixels) to recognize you and/or your device(s). You may read our Cookie Policy for more information on why we use them (such as authenticating you, remembering your preferences and settings, analyzing site traffic and trends, delivering and measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, allowing you to use social features) and how you can better control their use, through your browser settings and other tools.

Some web browsers (including Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome) have a “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) feature that tells a website that a user does not want to have his or her online activity tracked. If a website that responds to a DNT signal receives a DNT signal, the browser can block that website from collecting certain information about the browser’s user. Not all browsers offer a DNT option and DNT signals are not yet uniform. For this reason, many businesses, including SPEAKoU, do not currently respond to DNT signals.

HOW WE USE INFORMATION

The main reason we use your information is to deliver and improve our services.. Read on for a more detailed explanation of the various reasons we use your information, together with practical examples.

To administer your account and provide our services to you

Create and manage your account
Provide you with customer support and respond to your requests
Complete your transactions
Communicate with you about our services, including billing
To help you connect with other users

Analyze your profile and that of other users to recommend meaningful connections
Show users’ profiles to one another
To improve our services and develop new ones

Conduct research and analysis of users’ behavior to improve our services and content (for instance, we may decide to change the look and feel or even substantially modify a given feature based on users’ behavior)
Develop new features and services (for example, we may decide to build a new interests-based feature further to requests received from users).
To prevent, detect and fight fraud or other illegal or unauthorized activities

Address ongoing or alleged misbehavior on and off-platform
Perform data analysis to better understand and design countermeasures against these activities
Retain data related to fraudulent activities to prevent against recurrences
To ensure legal compliance

Comply with legal requirements
Enforce or exercise our rights, for example our Terms
To process your information as described above, we rely on the following legal bases:

Provide our service to you: Most of the time, the reason we process your information is to perform the contract that you have with us. For instance, as you go about using our service to build meaningful connections, we use your information to maintain your account and your profile Legitimate interests: We may use your information where we have legitimate interests to do so. For instance, we analyze users’ behavior on our services to continuously improve our offerings, we suggest offers we think might interest you, and we process information for administrative, fraud detection and other legal purposes. Consent: From time to time, we may ask for your consent to use your information for certain specific reasons. You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at the address provided at the end of this Privacy Policy.

HOW WE SHARE INFORMATION

Since our goal is to help you make meaningful connections, the main sharing of users’ information is, of course, with other users. We also share some users’ information with service providers and partners who assist us in operating the services, with other companies and, in some cases, legal authorities. Read on for more details about how your information is shared with others.

With other users

You share information with other users when you voluntarily disclose information on the service (including your public profile). Please be careful with your information and make sure that the content you share is stuff that you’re comfortable being publically viewable since neither you nor we can control what others do with your information once you share it.

With our service providers and partners

We use third parties to help us operate and improve our services. These third parties assist us with various tasks, including data hosting and maintenance, analytics, customer care, marketing, advertising, payment processing and security operations.

We follow a strict vetting process prior to engaging any service provider or working with any partner. All of our service providers and partners must agree to strict confidentiality obligations.

When required by law

We may disclose your information if reasonably necessary: (i) to comply with a legal process, such as a court order, subpoena or search warrant, government / law enforcement investigation or other legal requirements; (ii) to assist in the prevention or detection of crime (subject in each case to applicable law); or (iii) to protect the safety of any person.

To enforce legal rights

We may also share information: (i) if disclosure would mitigate our liability in an actual or threatened lawsuit; (ii) as necessary to protect our legal rights and legal rights of our users, business partners or other interested parties; (iii) to enforce our agreements with you; and (iv) to investigate, prevent, or take other action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud or other wrongdoing.

With your consent or at your request

We may ask for your consent to share your information with third parties. In any such case, we will make it clear why we want to share the information.

CROSS-BORDER DATA TRANSFERS

Sharing of information laid out in Section 6 sometimes involves cross-border data transfers, for instance to the United States of America and other jurisdictions. As an example, where the service allows for users to be located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), their personal information is transferred to countries outside of the EEA. We use standard contract clauses approved by the European Commission or other suitable safeguard to permit data transfers from the EEA to other countries. Standard contractual clauses are commitments between companies transferring personal data, binding them to protect the privacy and security of your data

YOUR RIGHTS

We want you to be in control of your information, so we have provided you with the following tools:

Device permissions. Mobile platforms have permission systems for specific types of device data and notifications, such as phone book and location services as well as push notifications. You can change your settings on your device to either consent or oppose the collection of the corresponding information or the display of the corresponding notifications. Of course, if you do that, certain services may lose full functionality. Deletion. You can delete your account by using the corresponding functionality directly on the service. Also, we may not be able to accommodate certain requests to object to the processing of personal information, notably where such requests would not allow us to provide our service to you anymore. For instance, we cannot provide our service if we do not have your date of birth.

Uninstall. You can stop all information collection by an app by uninstalling it using the standard uninstall process for your device. Accountability. In certain countries, including in the European Union, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the appropriate data protection authority if you have concerns about how we process your personal information. The data protection authority you can lodge a complaint with notably may be that of your habitual residence, where you work or where we are established.

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION

We work hard to protect you from unauthorized access to or alteration, disclosure or destruction of your personal information. As with all technology companies, although we take steps to secure your information, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information will always remain secure.

We regularly monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks and regularly review our information collection, storage and processing practices to update our physical, technical and organizational security measures.

We may suspend your use of all or part of the services without notice if we suspect or detect any breach of security. If you believe that your account or information is no longer secure, please notify us immediately here

HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION

We keep your personal information until you delete it.

Keep in mind that even though our systems are designed to carry out data deletion processes according to the above guidelines, we cannot promise that all data will be deleted within a specific timeframe due to technical constraints.

Part of your in-app activity history will be kept indefinitely, paired with a hashed, non human-readable form of your registration method identifier (phone number, email or Facebook identifier), to prevent exploits of new user demo features and the removal of certain in-app penalties (such as bans) applied on your user account.

CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

Our services are restricted to users who are 18 years of age or older. We do not permit users under the age of 18 on our platform and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If you suspect that a user is under the age of 18, please use the reporting mechanism available through the service.

PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES

Because we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to help you build meaningful connections, this policy may change over time. We will notify you before any material changes take effect so that you have time to review the changes.