Privacy Policy

PRIVACY POLICY

Welcome to Social ASL’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 Oct 1^st, 2021.

EFFECTIVE DATE: Oct 1^st, 2021

For California Consumers

Please see the https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/privacy-laws to learn about California privacy rights.

1. WHO WE ARE

If you live in or outside the United States or Canada, the company that is responsible for your information under this Privacy Policy is:

SocialASL.com

2. WHERE THIS PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES

This Privacy Policy applies to websites, apps, events and other services operated by Social ASL. 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.

3. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We 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:

1. 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.
2. When you complete your profile, you can share with us additional information, such as details on your personality, lifestyle, interests and other details about you, as well as content such as photos and videos. To add certain content, like pictures or videos, 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 and religious beliefs. By choosing to provide this information, you consent to our processing of that information.
3. When you subscribe to a paid service or make a purchase directly from us (rather than through a platform such as iOS or Android), you provide us or our payment service provider with information, such as your debit or credit card number or other financial information.
4. When you participate in surveys or focus groups, you give us your insights into our products and services, responses to our questions and testimonials.
5. When you choose to participate in our promotions, events or contests, we collect the information that you use to register or enter.
6. If you contact our customer care team, we collect the information you give us during the interaction. Sometimes, we monitor or record these interactions for training purposes and to ensure a high quality of service.
7. If you ask us to communicate with or otherwise process information of other people (for example, if you ask us to send an email on your behalf to one of your friends), we collect the information about others that you give us in order to complete your request.
8. 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 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. Also, if a user asks us to access contacts from his/her phonebook and you happen to be one of those, we may use it to reach out to you on behalf of the user.

You may be able to use your social media login (such as Facebook Login) to create and log into your Social ASL account. This saves you from having to remember yet another username and password and allows you to share some information from your social media account with us.

We may receive info about you from our partners, for instance when Social ASL accounts can be created through a partner’s websites (in which case they pass along registration information to us) or where Social ASL 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:

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 of messages you send and receive).

We collect information from and about the device(s) you use to access our services, including:

1. 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);
2. information on your wireless and mobile network connection, like your service provider and signal strength;
3. information on device sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and compasses.

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, we will not collect it.

Similarly, if you consent, we may collect your photos and videos (for instance, if you want to publish a photo, video or streaming on the services).

4. 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). 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 Social ASL, do not currently respond to DNT signals.

5. HOW WE USE INFORMATION

The main reason we use your information is to deliver and improve our services. Additionally, we use your info to help keep you safe and to provide you with advertising that may be of interest to you. 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

1. Create and manage your account
2. Provide you with customer support and respond to your requests
3. Complete your transactions
4. Communicate with you about our services, including order management and billing

To help you connect with other users

1. Analyze your profile and that of other users to recommend meaningful connections
2. Show users’ profiles to one another

To ensure a consistent experience across your devices

To serve you relevant offers and ads

1. Administer sweepstakes, contests, discounts or other offers
2. Develop, display and track content and advertising tailored to your interests on our services and other sites
3. Communicate with you by email, phone, social media or mobile device about products or services that we think may interest you

To improve our services and develop new ones

1. Administer focus groups and surveys
2. 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)
3. 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

1. Address ongoing or alleged misbehavior on and off-platform
2. Perform data analysis to better understand and design countermeasures against these activities
3. Retain data related to fraudulent activities to prevent against recurrences

To ensure legal compliance

1. Comply with legal requirements
2. Assist law enforcement
3. Enforce or exercise our rights, for example our Terms

To process your information as described above, we rely on the following legal bases:

1. 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, to make it viewable to other users and recommend other users to you.
2. 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.
3. 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.

6. HOW WE SHARE INFORMATION

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 Social ASL Group companies and, in some cases, legal authorities. Read on for more details about how your information is shared with others.

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 viewed by the pubic since neither you nor we can control what others do with your information once you share it.

If you choose to limit the audience for all or part of your profile or for certain content or information about you, then it will be visible according to your settings.

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 may also share information with partners who distribute and assist us in advertising our services. For instance, we may share limited information on you in hashed, non-human readable form to advertising partners.

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.

We may transfer your information if we are involved, whether in whole or in part, in a merger, sale, acquisition, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, bankruptcy or other change of ownership or control.

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.

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.

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.

We may use and share non-personal information (meaning information that, by itself, does not identify who you are such as device information, general demographics, general behavioral data, geolocation in de-identified form), as well as personal information in hashed, non-human readable form, under any of the above circumstances. We may also share this information with other third parties (notably advertisers) to develop and deliver targeted advertising on our services and on websites or applications of third parties, and to analyze and report on advertising you see. We may combine this information with additional non-personal information or personal information in hashed, non-human readable form collected from other sources. More information on our use of cookies and similar technologies can be found in our Cookie Policy below.

7. 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.

8. YOUR RIGHTS

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

1. Access / Update tools in the service. Tools and account settings that help you to access, rectify or delete information that you provided to us and that’s associated with your account directly within the service. If you have any question on those tools and settings, please contact our customer care team at Support@socialasl.com
2. 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.
3. Deletion. You can delete your account by sending us a request at support@startasl.com.

We want you to be aware of your privacy rights. Here are a few key points to remember:

1. Reviewing your information. Applicable privacy laws may give you the right to review the personal information we keep about you (depending on the jurisdiction, this may be called right of access, right of portability or variations of those terms). You can request a copy of your personal information by putting in such a request at Support@socialasl.com
2. Updating your information. If you believe that the information we hold about you is inaccurate or that we are no longer entitled to use it and want to request its rectification, deletion or object to its processing, please contact at Support@socialasl.com.

For your protection and the protection of all of our users, we may ask you to provide proof of identity before we can answer the above requests.

Keep in mind, we may reject requests for certain reasons, including if the request is unlawful or if it may infringe on trade secrets or intellectual property or the privacy of another user. If you wish to receive information relating to another user, such as a copy of any messages you received from him or her through our service, the other user will have to contact our Privacy Officer to provide their written consent before the information is released.

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.

1. Uninstall. You can stop all information collection by an app by uninstalling it using the standard uninstall process for your device. If you uninstall the app from your mobile device, the unique identifier associated with your device will continue to be stored. If you re-install the application on the same mobile device, we will be able to re-associate this identifier to your previous transactions and activities.
2. 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.

9. RESIDENTS OF CALIFORNIA

If you are a California resident, you can request a notice disclosing the categories of personal information about you that we have shared with third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year. To request this notice, please submit your request to support@socialasl.com Please allow 60 days for a response. For your protection and the protection of all of our users, we may ask you to provide proof of identity before we can answer such a request.

10. 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 at support@socialasl.com.

11. HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION

We keep your personal information only as long as we need it for legitimate business purposes (as laid out in Section 5) and as permitted by applicable law.

In practice, we delete or anonymize your information upon deletion of your account, unless:

1. we must keep it to comply with applicable law;

1. we must keep it to evidence our compliance with applicable law;
2. there is an outstanding issue, claim or dispute requiring us to keep the relevant information until it is resolved; or
3. the information must be kept for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud prevention and enhancing users' safety and security. For example, information may need to be kept to prevent a user who was banned for unsafe behavior or security incidents from opening a new account.

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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, here’s how you can reach us:

If you live in or outside the United States or Canada: support@socialasl.com

Cookie Policy

Introduction

Social ASL is committed to protecting your privacy. We aim to provide trustworthy, industry-leading products and services so that you can focus on building meaningful connections. Our approach to privacy is to provide you with clear information about our data practices. That’s why we've tried to keep legal and technical jargon to a minimum.

This Cookie Policy explains what cookies are, what types of cookies are placed on your device when you visit our website and how we use them.

This Cookie Policy does not address how we deal with your personal information generally. To learn more about how we process your personal information, please see our Privacy Policy above.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are sent to or accessed from your web browser or your device’s memory. A cookie typically contains the name of the domain (internet location) from which the cookie originated, the “lifetime” of the cookie (i.e., when it expires) and a randomly generated unique number or similar identifier. A cookie also may contain information about your device, such as user settings, browsing history and activities conducted while using our services.

Are there different types of cookies?

First-party and third-party cookies

There are first-party cookies and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are placed on your device directly by us. For example, we use first-party cookies to adapt our website to your browser’s language preferences and to better understand your use of our website. Third-party cookies are placed on your device by our partners and service providers. For example, we use third-party cookies to measure user numbers on our website or to enable you to share content with others across social media platforms.

Session and persistent cookies

There are session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies only last until you close your browser. We use session cookies for a variety of reasons, including to learn more about your use of our website during one single browser session and to help you to use our website more efficiently. Persistent cookies have a longer lifespan and aren't automatically deleted when you close your browser. These types of cookies are primarily used to help you quickly sign-in to our website again and for analytical purposes.

What about other tracking technologies, like web beacons?

Other technologies such as web beacons (also calls pixel tags or clear gifs), tracking URLs or software development kits (SDKs) are used for similar purposes. Web beacons are tiny graphics files that contain a unique identifier that enable us to recognise when someone has visited our service or opened an e-mail that we have sent them. Tracking URLs are custom generated links that help us understand where the traffic to our webpages comes from. SDKs are small pieces of code included in apps, which function like cookies and web beacons.

For simplicity, we also refer to these technologies as “cookies” in this Cookie Policy.

What do we use cookies for?

Like most providers of online services, we use cookies to provide, secure and improve our services, including by remembering your preferences, recognizing you when you visit our website and personalizing and tailoring ads to your interests. To accomplish these purposes, we also may link information from cookies with other personal information we hold about you.

When you visit our website, some or all of the following types of cookies may be set on your device.

• Essential website cookies: These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features, such as access to secure areas.
• Analytics cookies: These cookies help us understand how our website is being used, how effective marketing campaigns are, and help us customize and improve our websites for you.
• Advertising cookies: These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, selecting advertisements that are based on your interests and measuring the number of ads displayed and their performance, such as how many people clicked on a given ad.
• Social networking cookies: These cookies are used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on our website through third-party social networking and other websites. These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes too.

How can you control cookies?

There are several cookie management options available to you. Please note that changes you make to your cookie preferences may make browsing our website a less satisfying experience. In some cases, you may even find yourself unable to use all or part of our site.

Browser and devices controls

Some web browsers provide settings that allow you to control or reject cookies or to alert you when a cookie is placed on your computer. The procedure for managing cookies is slightly different for each internet browser. You can check the specific steps in your particular browser help menu.

You also may be able to reset device identifiers by activating the appropriate setting on your mobile device. The procedure for managing device identifiers is slightly different for each device. You can check the specific steps in the help or settings menu of your particular device.

Interest-based advertising tools

You can opt out of seeing online interest-based advertising from participating companies through the Digital Advertising Alliance, the Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance or Appchoices (apps only).

Opting out does not mean you will not see advertising - it means you won’t see personalized advertising from the companies that participate in the opt-out programs. Also, if you delete cookies on your device after you opted out, you will need to opt-out again.

Social Cookies

To allow you to share content on social media, some features of this website use social media plug-ins (e.g., Twitter™ “Share to Twitter” or LinkedIn™ “in” buttons). Depending on your social media account settings, we automatically receive information from the social media platform when you use the corresponding button on our website.

To learn more about social media cookies, we suggest you refer to your social media platform’s cookie policy and privacy policy.

Google™ Cookies

Stuff Google Wants to Make Sure You Know about Google’s Data Collection Technology

Google™ Maps API Cookies

Some features of our website and some Social ASL services rely on the use of Google™ Maps API Cookies. Such cookies will be stored on your device.

When browsing this website and using the services relying on Google™ Maps API cookies, you consent to the storage, collection of such cookies on your device and to the access, usage and sharing by Google of the data collected thereby.

Google™ manages the information and your choices pertaining to Google™ Maps API Cookies via an interface separate from that supplied by your browser. For more information, please see https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/cookies/.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics, which is a Google service that uses cookies and other data collection technologies to collect information about your use of the website and services in order to report website trends.

You can opt out of Google Analytics by visiting www.google.com/settings/ads or by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Microsoft Advertising

We use Microsoft Advertising, which is a Microsoft service that uses cookies and other data collection technologies to collect information about your use of our website and services in order to help us advertise. You can read Microsoft’s Privacy Policy

How to contact us?

If you have questions about this Cookie Policy, here’s how you can reach us: support@socialasl.com