Treat one’s private data like you would want others to treat yours!
BBWOnline is committed to maintaining robust privacy protections for its users. Our Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) is designed to help you understand how we collect, use and safeguard the information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when using our Service.
Your Rights
Residents of the European Union and the United Kingdom using the Grokio Services, and submitting personal data to us, have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other laws. Depending on the legal basis for processing your personal data, you may have some or all of the following rights:
The right to be informed
You have the right to be informed about the personal data we collect from you, and how we process it.
The right of access
You have the right to get confirmation that your personal data is being processed and have the ability to access your personal data.
The right to rectification
You have the right to have your personal data corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
The right to erasure (right to be forgotten)
You have the right to request the removal or deletion of your personal data if there is no compelling reason for us to continue processing it.
The right to restrict processing
You have a right to ‘block’ or restrict the processing of your personal data. When your personal data is restricted, we are permitted to store your data, but not to process it further.
The right to data portability
You have the right to request and get your personal data that you provided to us and use it for your own purposes. We will provide your data to you within 30 days of your request. To request your personal data, please contact us using the information at the top of this privacy notice.
The right to object
You have the right to object to us processing your personal data for the following reasons:
- Processing was based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of official authority (including profiling);
- Direct marketing (including profiling); and
- Processing for purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics.
- Rights in relation to automated decision-making and profiling.
Automated individual decision-making and profiling
You will have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.
Filing a complaint with authorities
You have the right to file a complaint with supervisory authorities if your information has not been processed in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation. If the supervisory authorities fail to address your complaint properly, you may have the right to a judicial remedy.
For details about your rights under the law, visit https://goo.gl/F41vAV
What potentially personally identifiable information do you collect?
When browsing BBWOnline, we log the same basic information that most websites do. For each request, we collect your IP address, browser type, language preference, the referring page, the page you requested, the actions you do on the page, and the date and time.
We may collect and process information about your actual physical location. We use several technologies, like GPS and IP tracking, to determine your location. These technologies may also provide us with information about nearby cell towers, Wi-Fi access points, and other devices.
We also track specific events for statistical purposes (like conversion rates and to test new designs).
When you join BBWOnline, we ask you to choose a nickname. If you would like to keep your private life separate from the BBWOnline community, we recommend you choose a distinct nickname to use within the BBWOnline community that’s different from any nickname you may use elsewhere.
We also ask you for your email address, mobile number, and date of birth. We ask you for your email address so that we can send you updates and other essential information. We ask for a potential new member’s mobile number so that we can verify them via a one-time text message, which has resulted in improving the overall health of the community. And we ask for your date of birth to make sure you are of legal age.
We use cookies to keep you logged in, remember your preferences, and improve your experience on BBWOnline. Unlike most other websites, we do not share any information about our members with third parties. Why? Because we respect your privacy!
We send email notifications to the address associated with your account. You can update the email address associated with your profile, as well as review and customize which notifications you receive, at any time through our settings interface.
When you write to BBWOnline with a question or to ask for help, we’ll keep that correspondence, and the email address, for future reference.
We also store any information you volunteer, like surveys, for as long as it makes sense.
What information do we NOT collect?
If you buy products or premium services from us, we may collect all or some of the following information: your first and last name, email address, physical address, credit card or other payment information, phone number, and other information listed.
If you’re under the age of 18, you may not join BBWOnline. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 18, and if we learn that a member is underage, we will delete their account immediately.
How is the information shared?
We do not share, sell, rent, or trade members’ personal information with third parties for their commercial purposes.
We do however sometimes share certain aggregated, non-personally identifying information with others about how the community collectively uses BBWOnline. For example, we may compile statistics on how many daily, weekly, and monthly active members we have. However, we do not sell this information to advertisers or marketers.
The only times we’ll ever share your info is:
- To provide products or services you’ve requested.
- To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our Terms of Service, or as otherwise required by law.
- If BBWOnline is acquired by or merged with another company — we don’t plan on that, but if it happens — we’ll notify you well before any info about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
How do you respond to legal requests for information?
BBWOnline won’t hand your data over to anyone unless a court order says we have to. We reject requests from law enforcement when they seek data without a court order.
If we’re going to share your information in response to legal process, we’ll give you notice so you can challenge it, unless we’re prohibited from doing so by law or court order.
We will object to requests for information about members of our site that we believe to be improper.
For more information, see our Guidelines for Legal Requests.
How is my information stored?
We use third-party vendors and hosting partners for hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology we need to run BBWOnline.
All data is written to multiple disks instantly, backed up daily, and stored in more than one location.
How is my information secured?
Whenever your data is in transit between you and us, everything is encrypted and sent using HTTPS. We are proud to say that BBWOnline was one of the first social networks to make HTTPS mandatory.
Other than your password, data isn’t encrypted while it’s live in our database (since it needs to be ready to send to you when you need it), but we go to great lengths to secure your data at rest.
Our database backups are encrypted using GPG.
Our Use of Cookies
Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a small piece of data or a text file that is downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you access certain websites. Cookies may contain text that can be read by the web server that delivered the cookie to you. The text contained in the cookie generally consists of a sequence of letters and numbers that uniquely identifies your computer or mobile device; it may contain other information as well.
By agreeing to accept our use of cookies, you are giving us, and third parties we partner with, permission to place, store, and access some or all the cookies described below on your computer.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
These cookies are necessary for proper functioning of the website, such as displaying content, logging in, validating your session, responding to your request for services, and other functions. Most web browsers can be set to disable the use of cookies. However, if you disable these cookies, you may not be able to access features on our website correctly or at all.
Performance Cookies
These cookies collect information about the use of the website, such as pages visited, traffic sources, users’ interests, content management, and other website measurements.
Functional Cookies
These cookies enable the website to remember a user’s choices – such as their language, user name, and other personal choices – while using the website. They can also be used to deliver services, such as letting a user make a blog post, listen to audio, or watch videos on the website.
Media Cookies
These cookies can be used to improve a website’s performance and provide special features and content. They can be placed by third parties who provide services to us or by our company.
Advertising or Targeting Cookies
These cookies are usually placed and used by advertising companies to develop a profile of your browsing interests and serve advertisements on other websites that are related to your interests. You will see less advertising if you disable these cookies.
Session Cookies
These cookies allow websites to link the actions of a user during a browser session. They may be used for a variety of purposes, such as remembering what a user has put in their shopping cart as they browse a website. Session cookies also permit users to be recognized as they navigate a website so that any item or page changes they make are remembered from page to page. Session cookies expire after a browser session; thus, they are not stored long term.
Persistent Cookies
These cookies are stored on a user’s device in between browser sessions, which allows the user’s preferences or actions across a site (or, in some cases, across different sites) to be remembered. Persistent cookies may be used for a variety of purposes, including remembering users’ choices and preferences when using a website or to target advertising to them.
We may also use cookies for:
- Identifying the areas of our website that you have visited
- Personalizing content that you see on our website
- Our website analytics
- Remarketing our products or services to you
- Remembering your preferences, settings, and login details
- Targeted advertising and serving ads relevant to your interests
- Affiliate marketing
- Allowing you to post comments
- Allowing you to share content with social networks
Most web browsers can be set to disable the use of cookies. However, if you disable cookies, you may not be able to access features on our website correctly or at all.
What is your data retention policy?
When you delete something from your profile, it will no longer be accessible by another member on the site, but depending on the content type, it will take up to 30 days for it to be permanently deleted from our database.
When you request your account to be deleted, it’s immediately enqueued for deletion. After seven days your account will be permanently deleted from our database.
The only exception is messages sent in group conversations. When your account is permanently deleted, messages sent by you in group conversations will no longer display your nickname or avatar (because it’s been deleted). Messages sent in group conversations are permanently deleted once everyone has deleted or left the group conversation.
Backups and web server logs are permanently deleted within 30 days of their creation.
Google Ad and Content Network Privacy Notice
Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s past visits to our website. Google’s use of the DoubleClick cookie enables it and its partners to serve ads to our users based on their visits to our site and/or other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DoubleClick cookie for interest-based advertising by visiting http://www.aboutads.info/choices/
For European users visit http://www.youronlinechoices.eu
Google Analytics Privacy Notice
Our website uses Google Analytics to collect information about the use of our website. Google Analytics collects information from users such as age, gender, interests, demographics, how often they visit our website, what pages they visit, and what other websites they have used before coming to our website. We use the information we get from Google Analytics to analyze traffic, remarket our products and services to users, improve our marketing, advertising, and to improve our website. We have enabled Google Analytics advertising features such as remarketing with Google Analytics, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit our website, not your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected using Google Analytics with PD. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit our website, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google also uses specific identifiers to help collect information about the use of our website. For more information on how Google collects and processes your data, visit https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/
You can prevent Google Analytics from using your information by opting out at this link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
How do you handle browser “Do Not Track” settings?
“Do Not Track” is a privacy preference you can set in your browser if you do not want online services to collect and share certain kinds of information about your online activity.
We do not track your online browsing activity on other sites, and we do not permit third-party services to track your activity on BBWOnline.
Because we are not in the business of selling our friends (members) out, we don’t believe we need to respond differently to an individual browser’s “Do Not Track” setting.
How can I manage or delete information about me?
You can view and update your personal info at any time from your account’s Edit Profile and Settings screens.
You can download a backup of your data through our data export interface.
You can deactivate or delete your account at any time by logging into BBWOnline and visiting this page.
Use of Your Credit Card
You may have to provide a credit card to buy products and services from our website. We use third-party billing services and have no control over these services. We use our commercially reasonable efforts to make sure your credit card number is kept strictly confidential by using only third-party billing services that use industry-standard encryption technology to protect your credit card number from unauthorized use. However, you understand and agree that we are in no way responsible for any misuse of your credit card number.
How do I contact BBWOnline if I have any privacy questions?
If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, please get in touch with us at privacy@bbwonline.com and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have!