ConvoNation Privacy Policy

Scope. This privacy policy covers all of ConvoNation. It does not, however, apply to entities that ConvoNation does not own or control, such as applications and websites. By using or accessing ConvoNation, you agree to our privacy practices.

No information from children under age 13. If you are under age 13, please do not attempt to register for ConvoNation or provide any personal information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from a child under age 13, please contact us.

Parental participation. We strongly recommend that minors 13 years of age or older ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet and we encourage parents to teach their children about safe internet use practices.


2. Information We Receive

Information you provide to us:

Information About Yourself. When you sign up for ConvoNation you provide us with your name, email, gender, and birth date. During the registration process we give you the opportunity to connect with your friends, leaders, businesses and employers. You will also be able to add a picture of yourself. In some cases we may ask for additional information for security reasons or to provide specific services to you. Once you register you can provide other information about yourself by connecting with, for example, your current city, activities and interests.  You can also provide personal information about yourself, such as your professional information, and political and religious views.

Content. One of the primary reasons people use ConvoNation is to share thoughts with others. Examples include when you update your thought provoker, upload a profile photo, share or Tag a link, create an event, cause or a group, make a comment, write something on someone's conversation or thought provoker, or send someone a message. If you do not want us to store metadata associated with content you share on ConvoNation (such as photos), please remove the metadata before uploading the content.

Transactional Information. We may retain the details of transactions or payments you make on ConvoNation.

Information we collect when you interact with ConvoNation:

Site activity information. We keep track of some of the actions you take on ConvoNation, such as adding connections and followers, creating a conversation, indicating you "Agree" with a post, or connecting with an application. In some cases you are also taking an action when you provide information or content to us. For example, if you share a link, in addition to storing the actual content you uploaded, we might log the fact that you shared it.

Access Device and Browser Information. When you access ConvoNation from a computer, mobile phone, or other device, we may collect information from that device about your browser type, location, and IP address, as well as the pages you visit.

Cookie Information. We use "cookies" (small pieces of data we store for an extended period of time on your computer, mobile phone, or other device) to make ConvoNation easier to use, to make our advertising better, and to protect both you and ConvoNation. For example, we use them to store your login ID (but never your password) to make it easier for you to login whenever you come back to ConvoNation. We also use them to confirm that you are logged into ConvoNation, and to know when you are interacting with ConvoNation applications and websites, our widgets, and our advertisements. You can remove or block cookies using the settings in your browser, but in some cases that may impact your ability to use ConvoNation.

Information we receive from third parties:

Information from other websites. We may institute programs with advertising partners and other websites in which they share information with us:
 

• We may ask advertisers to tell us how our users responded to the ads we showed them (and for comparison purposes, how other users who didn't see the ads acted on their site). This data sharing, commonly known as "conversion tracking," helps us measure our advertising effectiveness and improve the quality of the advertisements you see.
• We may receive information about whether or not you've seen or interacted with certain ads on other sites in order to measure the effectiveness of those ads.
  
  If in any of these cases we receive data that we do not already have, we will "anonymize" it within 180 days, meaning we will stop associating the information with any particular user. If we institute these programs, we will only use the information in the ways we explain in the "How We Use Your Information" section below.
  

3. Sharing information on ConvoNation. 

This section explains how your privacy settings work, and how your information is shared on ConvoNation.  You should always consider your privacy settings before sharing information on ConvoNation.

Name and Profile Picture.  ConvoNation is designed to make it easy for you to find and connect with others.  For this reason, your name and profile picture do not have privacy settings.  If you are uncomfortable with sharing your profile picture, you should delete it (or not add one).  You can also control who can find you when searching on ConvoNation or on public search engines using the Applications and Websites privacy setting.

Contact Information. Your contact information settings control (available when customizing your privacy settings) who can contact you on ConvoNation, and who can see your contact information such as your email.

Personal Information.  Your personal information settings control who can see your personal information, such as your religious and political views, if you choose to add them.  We recommend adding them for better site use and more accurate connections.

Gender and Birth Date.  In addition to name and email address, we require you to provide your gender and birth date during the registration process.  We ask for your date of birth to verify that you are 13 or older, and so that we can better limit your access to content and advertisements that are not age appropriate.  Because your date of birth and gender are required, you cannot delete them.  You can, however, edit your profile to hide all (or part) of such fields from other users.

Other.  Here are some other things to remember:  

• Some of the content you share and the actions you take will show up on your friends' home pages and other pages they visit.
• Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users.
• You understand that information might be reshared or copied by other users.
• Certain types of communications that you send to other users cannot be removed, such as messages.
• When you post information on another user's profile or comment on another user's post, that information will be subject to the other user's privacy settings.
  
  "Everyone" Information. Information set to "everyone" is publicly available information, just like your name, profile picture, and connections.  Such information may, for example, be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into ConvoNation), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported, distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations. Such information may also be associated with you, including your name and profile picture, even outside of ConvoNation, such as on public search engines and when you visit other sites on the internet.  The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on ConvoNation is set to "everyone." You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings. If you delete "everyone" content that you posted on ConvoNation, we will remove it from your ConvoNation profile, but have no control over its use outside of ConvoNation.
  
  Minors.  We reserve the right to add special protections for minors (such as to provide them with an age-appropriate experience) and place restrictions on the ability of adults to share and connect with minors, recognizing that this may provide minors a more limited experience on ConvoNation

4.  Information You Share With Third Parties.

ConvoNation Platform.  As mentioned above, we do not own or operate the applications or websites that use ConvoNation Platform. That means that when you use those applications and websites you are making your ConvoNation information available to someone other than ConvoNation. Prior to allowing them to access any information about you, we require them to agree to terms that limit their use of your information and we use technical measures to ensure that they only obtain authorized information. 

Connecting with an Application or Website.  When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you.  The term General Information includes you and your friends' names, profile picture, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting.  We may also make information about the location of your computer or access device and your age available to applications and websites in order to help them implement appropriate security measures and control the distribution of age-appropriate content.  If the application or website wants to access any other data, it will have to ask for your permission.

You should always review the policies of third party applications and websites to make sure you are comfortable with the ways in which they use information you share with them. We do not guarantee that they will follow our rules. If you find an application or website that violates our rules, you should report the violation to us.

Exporting Information. You (and those you make your information available to) may use tools like RSS feeds, or copy and paste functions, to capture, export (and in some cases, import) information from ConvoNation, including your information and information about you.  For example, if you share your email with your friends, they may use third party applications to sync that information.

Advertisements. Sometimes the advertisers who present ads on ConvoNation use technological methods to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. You may opt-out of the placement of cookies by many of these advertisers. You may also use your browser cookie settings to limit or prevent the placement of cookies by advertising networks.  ConvoNation does not share personally identifiable information with advertisers unless we get your permission.

Links. When you click on links on ConvoNation you may leave our site. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites, and we encourage you to read their privacy statements.


5. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to try to provide a safe, efficient, and customized experience. Here are some of the details on how we do that:

To manage the service. We use the information we collect to provide our services and features to you, to measure and improve those services and features, and to provide you with customer support. We use the information to prevent potentially illegal activities. We also use a variety of technological systems to detect and address anomalous activity and screen content to prevent abuse such as spam. These efforts may on occasion result in a temporary or permanent suspension or termination of some functions for some users.

To contact you. We may contact you with service-related announcements from time to time. We may include content you see on ConvoNation in the emails we send to you.

To serve personalized advertising to you. We don't share your information with advertisers without your consent. (An example of consent would be if you asked us to provide your shipping address to an advertiser to receive a free sample.) We allow advertisers to choose the characteristics and conversation topics of users who will see their advertisements and we may use any of the non-personally identifiable attributes we have collected (including information you may have decided not to show to other users, such as your birth year or other sensitive personal information or preferences) to select the appropriate audience for those advertisements. For example, we might use your interest in healthcare to show you ads for health care options, but we do not tell the health company who you are. Even though we do not share your information with advertisers without your consent, when you click on or otherwise interact with an advertisement there is a possibility that the advertiser may place a cookie in your browser and note that it meets the criteria they selected.

To serve social ads. We occasionally pair advertisements we serve with relevant information we have about you and your friends to make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. For example, if you connect with a brand, we may display your name and profile photo next to an advertisement for that page that is displayed to your friends. We only share the personally identifiable information visible in the social ad with the friend who can see the ad.

To supplement your profile. We may use information about you that we collect from other ConvoNation users to supplement your profile. In such cases we generally give you the ability to remove the content or limit its visibility on your profile.

To help your friends find you. We allow other users to use contact information they have about you, such as your email address, to find you, including through contact importers and search.  You can prevent other users from using your email address to find you using the search section of your privacy settings.

Memorializing Accounts. If we are notified that a user is deceased, we may memorialize the user's account. In such cases we restrict profile access to confirmed friends, and allow friends and family to write on the user's Wall in remembrance. We may close an account if we receive a formal request from the user's next of kin or other proper legal request to do so.


6. How We Share Information

ConvoNation is about sharing information with others — friends, leaders and brands — while providing you with privacy settings that you can use to restrict other users from accessing some of your information. We share your information with third parties when we believe the sharing is permitted by you, reasonably necessary to offer our services, or when legally required to do so. For example:

When you invite a friend to join. When you ask us to invite a friend to join ConvoNation, we will send your friend a message on your behalf using your name.  The invitation may also contain information about other users your friend might know.   We may also send up to two reminders to them in your name.

When you choose to share your information with marketers. You may choose to share information with marketers or electronic commerce providers that are not associated with ConvoNation through on-site offers. This is entirely at your discretion and we will not provide your information to these marketers without your consent.

To help your friends find you. By default, we make certain information you have posted to your profile available in search results on ConvoNation to help your friends find you. However, you can control who can see some of this information, as well as who can find you in searches, through your privacy settings. We also partner with email and instant messaging providers to help their users identify which of their contacts are ConvoNation users, so that we can promote ConvoNation to those users.

To give search engines access to publicly available information. We generally limit search engines' access to our site. We may allow them to access information set to the "everyone" setting (along with your name and profile picture) and your profile information that is visible to everyone. 

To help improve or promote our service. Sometimes we share aggregated information with third parties to help improve or promote our service. But we only do so in such a way that no individual user can be identified or linked to any specific action or information.

To provide you with services. We may provide information to service providers that help us bring you the services we offer. For example, we may use third parties to help host our website, send out email updates about ConvoNation, remove repetitive information from our user lists, or provide search results or links (including sponsored links). These service providers may have access to your personal information for use for a limited time, but when this occurs we implement reasonable contractual and technical protections to limit their use of that information to helping us provide the service.

To advertise our services. We may ask advertisers outside of ConvoNation to display ads promoting our services. We may ask them to deliver those ads based on the presence of a cookie, but in doing so will not share any other information with the advertiser.

To offer joint services. We may provide services jointly with other companies, such as the classifieds services. If you use these services, we may share your information to facilitate that service. However, we will identify the partner and present the joint service provider's privacy policy to you before you use that service.

To respond to legal requests and prevent harm. We may disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests (including criminal and civil matters) if we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law. This may include respecting requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law under the local laws in that jurisdiction, apply to users from that jurisdiction, and are consistent with generally accepted international standards.

Transfer in the Event of Sale or Change of Control. If the ownership of all or substantially all of our business changes, we may transfer your information to the new owner so that the service can continue to operate. In such a case, your information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy.


7. How You Can Change or Remove Information

Editing your profile. You may change or remove your profile information at any time by going to your Dashboard and clicking "Account settings." Information will be updated immediately.

Deactivating or deleting your account. If you want to stop using your account you may deactivate it or delete it. When you deactivate an account, no user will be able to see it, but it will not be deleted. We save your profile information (connections, photos, etc.) in case you later decide to reactivate your account. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and in doing so are asking us to maintain their information until they return to ConvoNation. You will still have the ability to reactivate your account and restore your profile in its entirety. When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted from ConvoNation. You should only delete your account if you are certain you never want to reactivate it.

Limitations on removal. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users. However, your name will no longer be associated with that information on ConvoNation. Additionally, we may retain certain information to prevent identity theft and other misconduct even if deletion has been requested. If you have given third party applications or websites access to your information, they may retain your information to the extent permitted under their terms of service or privacy policies.  But they will no longer be able to access the information through our Platform after you disconnect from them.

Backup copies. Removed and deleted information may persist in backup copies for up to 90 days, but will not be available to others.

Non-user contact information. If a user provides your email address to us, and you are not a ConvoNation user but you want us to delete your address, you can do so. However, that request will only apply to addresses we have at the time of the request and not to any addresses that users provide to us later.


8. How We Protect Information 

Steps we take to keep your information secure. We keep your account information on a secured server behind a firewall. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card numbers and passwords), we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). We also use automated and social measures to enhance security, such as analyzing account behavior for fraudulent or otherwise anomalous behavior, may limit use of site features in response to possible signs of abuse, may remove inappropriate content or links to illegal content, and may suspend or disable accounts for violations.

Risks inherent in sharing information. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your information, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other users with whom you share your information. We cannot guarantee that only authorized persons will view your information. We cannot ensure that information you share on ConvoNation will not become publicly available. We are not responsible for third party circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures on ConvoNation. You can reduce these risks by using common sense security practices such as choosing a strong password, using different passwords for different services, and using up to date antivirus software.

Report Violations. You should report any security violations to us on through your Dashboard Feedback menu.

9. Other Terms

Changes. We may change this Privacy Policy pursuant to the procedures outlined at anytime. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account. If we make changes to this Privacy Policy we will notify you by publication on the ConvoNation blog page or by e-mail. If the changes are material, we will provide you additional, prominent notice as appropriate under the circumstances..

Consent to Collection and Processing in the United States. By using ConvoNation, you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.

Defined Terms. "Us," "we," "our," and "ConvoNation" mean the same as they do in the Terms of Agreement. "Information" and "content" are used more generally and interchangeably here than in the Terms of Agreement unless otherwise limited by the context.