Gayandabout Privacy Policy Principles
Gayandabout was developed in order to provide you with a quick and easy place to share information with your friends, your friends’ friends, and other people in the gay community from all over the world. Clearly, we realize that although we have given you the platform to share and exchange this information with the international community that does not necessarily mean that you wish for all members to see or have the ability to see all of your information. Therefore, Gayandabout also gives you the freedom to control all the content that you choose to display on your profile. By default, your information is displayed to all members of Gayandabout unless you specify your profile as private. We give you the option to display any information as public or private depending on your preference. In order to act responsibly and protect your information, we have put the policy below into place which explains our privacy practice.
How do we gather your information?
Once you have joined Gayandabout, you enter information that serves two purposes:
1. Personal information about yourself that you intentionally decide to reveal and is collected by us and;
2. Gayandabout information that is intended to be used on the website that enables you to network with this social network platform and is collected by us.
While signing up to Gayandabout, you supply us with specific information that is unique and personal to you such as your name, your email address, your gender, the city you live in, your sexual orientation, your birthday and any other optional information that you choose to provide us when editing your profile.
Once you login to Gayandabout, we store your browser type and IP address. Additionally, we collect specific information coming from your browser using “cookies” (data that is stored on a user’s computer which collects information about the user). A session ID cookie allows us to confirm when exactly you are logged into Gayandabout and the moment you logout and close your browser, these session ID cookies are disabled. In order to provide you with the “remember me” login feature, we use a continual cookie that remembers your username but not your password for you to be able to login quickly which just as easily can be disabled or blocked through your browsers settings if you wish to not use this feature.
In order to offer you the most accurate service and provide you with optimized features that suit your personal needs and interests, Gayandabout gathers information that you upload/enter to the website when setting up your personal profile, opening events or groups, entering a travel entry, uploading content to specific location pages, sending messages to other members, adding applications, conducting searches and contributing information or content through other functionalities that are offered by Gayandabout. More often than not, we keep this information for your convenience to allow you to go back to information you have entered, messages that you have sent, or events or groups you may have opened or joined. We keep this information for a sensible time period to give you the opportunity to revise or edit previous versions of information which you contributed to the Gayandabout community.
When you upload content to Gayandabout, you do so at your own risk as mentioned in our Terms and Conditions. We certainly recognize the importance and criticalness of giving you the option of setting your information to private however, if a member that you have allowed to see your information has jeopardized your privacy in any such way; we do not have power over their proceedings. Similarly, we do not have the power over with whom you choose to share your information. We will certainly contact that person if we think that a reasonable complaint has been reported to us through our “Report Abuse” feature. Consequently, we do not and cannot certify, promise or commit that the content that you contribute to Gayandabout will not be accessed by members that you have not authorized. We are not responsible for any members actions that evade any privacy settings provided on our website. With this, you as a member of Gayandabout comprehend and concede that although you may have chosen to remove specific information or content from the site that you posted in the past, this information and content may still be seen on the website if other users have copied or stored your content or on cached and archived pages. Should you come across such instances as described above, please report this to privacy@gayandabout.com as these improper uses of information infringe the Gayandabout Terms and Conditions.
When you invite friends by sending invitations to Gayandabout through our Invite Friends section of the Site, we ask you to provide your friend’s email address which is necessary in order to send the invitation. Instantly, your friend will be sent and automatic invitation email from Gayandabout which clearly states that you are the person inviting them with a link that allows them to view your profile and register to the Site. We collect this information to send this invitation one time only and to link you and your friend as first degree friends on Gayandabout, and in order to check the effectiveness of our viral marketing program. Should your friend decide that they would like to be removed from our database, they can contact us at privacy@gayandabout.com.
Gayandabout reserves the rights to gather information about you from all channels, members, and sources that are directly or indirectly related to the functions Gayandabout services and features in order to optimize information to offer you the most personal, relevant and precise information that you need in order for you to get the most of Gayandabout.
How do we use your information?
Gayandabout uses your information as a guide to make Gayandabout a better service and experience for you. We use your information in the ways listed below:
1. We use your information when you register to become a member of Gayandabout and when needed to administer your membership.
2. We use your information when you have selected options to be notified about from the Notifications section of our site. For example, notifications of when your friends upload new photos, change their profile picture, an event reminder, when your friends have commented on your wall or sent you messages or invitations to different groups and events. Gayandabout gives you the ability to opt out of these notifications from the Notifications section of the website but reserves the right to send you notifications about your account status even if you have opted out of the Notification options in the Notification section.
3. We use your information when you have requested to be updated when we add new services, features, or special promotions to the site or any information about those currently running and available.
4. We use your information to handle and solve any reports, questions or comments sent to us by you or about you.
5. We use your information to publicly announce when you have won a prize or contest or you are one of the winners of a list of winners.
6. We use your information when you have requested to receive information by email from third parties that are promoting products or services that might be interesting to you or that we think may interest you.
7. We use your information when there is suspicion that you have infringed the Terms and Conditions of Gayandabout and to monitor on a random basis that the content that you are posting to the site is appropriate.
8. We use your profile information mostly to allow you to access previously uploaded information for you to edit and for other members that you have allowed to view your profile based on the privacy settings of your choice.
9. We use your profile information in cases that you have set specific information in your profile to public and will be displayed in search results where your information is relevant and will be available for third party search engines. This is for other members to be able to find you or meet you and send you a friend request message. Only members that you allow access to based on your privacy settings or members who are your friends or your friend’s friends will be able to access your profile, anyone else that sees your name in search results will not.
10. We may use the information in your profile without revealing you as an individual to third parties in ways such as totaling the number of members in a group or going to an event in order to target relevant advertisements and promotions to you so that we can continue to make Gayandabout available to you. We believe this to be a contribution to you. For example, if you have joined a group for people who love the newest gadgets, we can serve you advertisements for local gadget stores in your area that are offering a limited time sale. Rest assured, we do not disclose who you are to these companies.
Do we distribute your information to third parties?
Gayandabout takes pride in the way we developed our networks technology and functionality in addition to the privacy settings we offer our members. You have the freedom of choosing with whom you will share your information and to what extent. Without your consent, we will not give out your personal information to third party advertisers/marketers. We will share your information with third party advertisers/marketers if and only if we think that distributing information is essential for either legal matters, the continuation of running Gayandabout services, and if you have approved this distribution. Below are a few circumstances where we may share your information.
1. When or where applicable, your profile name and information that you enter in your profile box will be seen by other members in the Search results section of the site, in areas of the site that they can chose to contact you with the various communication tools that Gayandabout offers.
2. We may share your information with our current or future employees for them to be able to administer your membership when needed.
3. We may supply third party companies that offer site analytics service with your information, however not identifying you as an individual.
4. If need be, we will reveal any, part or all of your personal information to police or regulatory authorities if you there is a reasonable doubt that you are not cohering to Gayandabout’s Terms and Conditions.
How do we work with third party advertisements?
Gayandabout works with third party advertisers directly or through various reputable advertising networks. There are instances that an advertisement may be served to you by either a direct third party advertiser or a third party advertising network. When this occurs, these third parties are given your IP address in order to geo target you and serve you advertisement relevant to your geographic location. These third party advertisers may also drop cookies or use other targeting technologies onto your computer to recognize your computer in order to monitor, optimize and personalize the advertisements that they serve you. Gayandabout cannot know nor control when these cookies are dropped onto your computer by third party advertisers. Rest assured, Gayandabout does not provide your personal information to these third party advertisers nor do they have access to your personal information through these cookies and technologies unless you chose based on your judgment to supply these third parties with your personal information. Gayandabout’s privacy policy does not cover third party usage of cookies or tracking technologies, it only covers Gayandabout’s use of cookies.
How do we secure your information?
Gayandabout attempts to take all measures in order to protect your information. All information is stored on a secure server.
Do we allow teenage users between the ages of 13 and 18?
Gayandabout kindly requests that if you are under the age of 13, you do not register to Gayandabout or supply us with any personal information such as your name, email address, telephone number or the like. Gayandabout does not and will not intentionally aggregate or sell the personal information of any child under the age of 13 nor will Gayandabout permit people under 13 to register to our website. If we are to discover, find, or be told that a child under the age of 13 has registered and is using Gayandabout without their legal guardian knowing, we will immediately take action to delete that user’s information from our servers. If you are a minor over the age of 18, please consult with your parents or legal guardian before registering to Gayandabout. Should you find or discover any user under the age of 13, please send an email specifying that users profile name to privacy@gayandabout.com.
Does our privacy policy cover links to other websites?
Gayandabout would like to call your attention to the possibility that our website may contain links to other websites. Gayandabout does not and will not take responsibility nor will it be held liable to the privacy policies, practices or data security of other website that you may chose to link with through Gayandabout. Gayandabout’s privacy policy only relates to the information that we collect and store on our servers and does not relate to any other website or third party. We advise our users to be conscious with the websites they link into through Gayandabout and to read their privacy policy before entering any personal information into those websites.
Do we allow you to alter or delete your information?
Gayandabout allows you to edit your personal information through the “edit profile” link in your profile. Gayandabout allows you to do this when you are logged into your Gayandabout account. Any change, addition or deletion you may perform will be updated right away and will be stored on our secure servers. It is important to know that when you delete your profile through the “account settings” section of your profile, your profile will not be able to be accessed by you or any other Gayandabout member and you will not show up in search results on the website any longer. Conversely, it is possible that comments that you wrote on other members walls or messages that you left or sent, may still be seen on different pages of the website.
Gayandabout reminds you…
We at Gayandabout highly recommend that you use your better judgment, be careful, and check thoroughly the Gayandabout users that you decide to meet face to face and perhaps set up your meeting in a safe public place. There is no way for us to guarantee that every user of Gayandabout is really who he or she say they are and that they are indeed good moral citizens of humanity. Stay clear of giving out your personal information on the site to users with whom you do not feel comfortable.
Gayandabout is open to hearing any comments, criticisms or new ideas that will make the information exchange process better or more efficient on the site. We are also keen to hear from you any clever thoughts that will improve our services, terms of use and privacy policy that will make your Gayandabout experience more pleasurable. Please contact us at privacy@gayandabout.com with any comments or queries.