Privacy Policy
Last modified: June 16, 2020
Data Collected and for What Purpose
Here’s a little more detail on each of these categories.
Information You Provide
When you interact with our services, we collect information that you provide to us. For example, most of our services require you to set up a Penless account, so we need to collect a few important details about you, such as your name, username, password, email address, phone number, and possibly date of birth. We may also ask you to provide us with some additional information that will be publicly visible on our services, such as a profile picture. Other services, such as commerce products, may require you to provide us with a debit or credit card number and its associated account information.
Of course, you’ll also provide us whatever information you send through our services, such as Penless video and photo messages and chats. Keep in mind that the users who view your Photos, Videos, and Messages, and any other content can always save that content or copy it outside the app. So, the same common sense that applies to the internet at large applies to Penless as well: Don’t send messages or share content that you wouldn’t want someone to save or share.
When you contact customer support or communicate with us in any other way, we’ll collect whatever information you volunteer or that we need to resolve your question.
Information We Get When You Use Our Services
When you use our services, we collect information about which of those services you’ve used and how you’ve used them. We might know, for instance, that you bookmarked a particular store, saw a specific ad for a certain period of time, and sent a few Penless Messages. Here’s a fuller explanation of the types of information we collect when you use our services:
1. Usage information
We collect information about your activity through our services. For example, we may collect information about:
2. Content Information.
We collect content you create on our services, such as photos and videos, and information about the content you create or provide, such as if the recipient has viewed the content and the metadata that is provided with the content.
3. Device Information.
We collect information from and about the devices you use. For example, we collect:
4. Device Phonebook.
Because Penless is all about communicating with friends, we may—with your permission—collect information from your device’s phonebook.
5. Camera and Photos.
Many of our services require us to collect images and other information from your device’s camera and photos. For example, you won’t be able to send Penless Messages or upload photos from your camera roll unless we can access your camera or photos.
6. Location Information.
When you use our services we may collect information about your location. With your permission, we may also collect information about your precise location using methods that include GPS, wireless networks, cell towers, Wi-Fi access points, and other sensors, such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compasses.
7. Information Collected by Cookies and Other Technologies.
Like most online services and mobile applications, we may use cookies and other technologies, such as web beacons, web storage, and unique advertising identifiers, to collect information about your activity, browser, and device. We may also use these technologies to collect information when you interact with services we offer through one of our partners, such as advertising and commerce features. For example, we may use information collected on other websites to show you more relevant ads. Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually remove or reject browser cookies through the settings on your browser or device. Keep in mind, though, that removing or rejecting cookies could affect the availability and functionality of our services.
Image information (photos and videos).
Our website and application may collect user images for various purposes, such as profile pictures or consent submission. Please be aware that any images submitted to our platform may be stored on our servers for future use (see How Long We Keep Your Information). However, we do not share these images with third parties; they are only used for internal purposes, such as improving our services and user experience. By submitting an image to our platform, you acknowledge and consent to our collection and storage of your images and videos.
Log Information.
We also collect log information when you use our website, such as:
Information We Collect from Third Parties
We may collect information about you from other users, our affiliates, and third parties. Here are a few examples:
How We Use Information (Data Used)
What do we do with the information we collect? Provide you with the best products and services that we are constantly evolving. Here are the ways we do that:
Data Shared and with Whom it’s Shared
We may share information about you in the following ways:
- With other Penless users. We may share the following information with other Snapchatters: Information about you, such as your username, name, and profile image. Information about how you have interacted with our services, the names of Penless users you are friends with, and other. Information that will help Penless users understand your connections with others using our services. For example, because it may not be clear whether a new friend request comes from someone you actually know, we may share whether you and the requestor have Penless friends in common. Any additional information you have directed us to share. For example, Penless will share your information when you connect your Penless account to a third-party app, and if you share information or content from Penless to the third-party app. Content you post or send. How widely your content is shared depends on your personal settings and the type of service you are using.
- With all Penless users, our business partners, and the general public. We may share the following information with all Penless users as well as with our business partners and the general public: Public information like your name, username, and profile pictures. With our affiliates. We may share information with entities within the On My Wave companies.
- With third parties. We may share information about you with service providers who perform services on our behalf, including to measure and optimize the performance of ads and deliver more relevant ads, including on third-party websites and apps. We may share information about you with business partners that provide services and functionality on our services. We may share information about you, such as device and usage information, to help us and others prevent fraud. We may share information about you for legal, safety, and security reasons. We may share information about you if we reasonably believe that disclosing the information is needed to: comply with any valid legal process, governmental request, or applicable law, rule, or regulation. Investigate, remedy, or enforce potential Terms of Service violations. Protect the rights, property, or safety of us, our users, or others. Detect and resolve any fraud or security concerns. We may share information about you as part of a merger or acquisition. If On My Wave gets involved in a merger, asset sale, financing, liquidation or bankruptcy, or acquisition of all or some portion of our business to another company, we may share your information with that company before and after the transaction closes.
We may also share with third parties that provide services to us or perform business purposes for us aggregated, non-personally identifiable, or de-identified information.
Third-Party Content and Integrations
Our services may contain third-party content and integrations. Examples include third-party integrations in camera search, third-party games in Chat, and third-party Penless integrations. Through these integrations, you may be providing information to the third party as well as to Penless. We are not responsible for how those third parties collect or use your information. As always, we encourage you to review the privacy policies of every third-party service that you visit or use, including those third parties you interact with through our services.
How Long We Keep Your Information
Penless lets you capture life moments. That means most messages—like Penless Messages and Chats—sent in Penless will be stored so that they can be revisited after the moment has passed. We store other information for longer periods of time. For example:
If you ever decide to stop using Penless, you can just ask us to delete your account. We’ll also delete most of the information we’ve collected about you after you’ve been inactive for a while—but don’t worry, we’ll try to notify you first.
Keep in mind that, while our systems are designed to carry out our deletion practices automatically, we cannot promise that deletion will occur within a specific timeframe. There may be legal requirements to store your data and we may need to suspend those deletion practices if we receive valid legal process asking us to preserve content, if we receive reports of abuse or other Terms of Service violations, or if your account or content created by you is flagged by our automated systems for abuse or other Terms of Service violations. Finally, we may also retain certain information in backup for a limited period of time or as required by law.
Control Over Your Information
We want you to be in control of your information, so we provide you with the following tools.
Users in the European Union
If you’re a user in the European Union, you should know that On My Wave is the controller of your personal information. Here is some additional information we would like to bring to your attention:
Rights of Access, Deletion, Correction, and Portability
You can exercise your rights of access, deletion, correction, and portability as described earlier.
Bases for Using Your Information
Your country only allows us to use your personal information when certain conditions apply. These conditions are called “legal bases” and, at Penless, we typically rely on one of three:
- Legitimate interest. Another reason we might use your information is because we have—or a third party has—a legitimate interest in doing so. For example, we need to use your information to provide and improve our services, including protecting your account, delivering your Penless Messages, providing customer support, and helping you find friends and content we think you’ll like. Because most of our services are free, we also use some information about you to try and show you ads you’ll find interesting. An important point to understand about legitimate interest is that our interests don’t outweigh your right to privacy, so we only rely on legitimate interest when we think the way we are using your data doesn’t significantly impact your privacy or would be expected by you, or there is a compelling reason to do so.
- Consent. In some cases we’ll ask for consent to use your information for specific purposes. If we do, we’ll make sure you can revoke your consent in our services or through your device permissions. Even if we’re not relying on consent to use your information, we may ask you for permission to access data like contacts and location.
- Legal obligation. We may be required to use your personal information to comply with the law, like when we respond to valid legal process or need to take action to protect our users.
Your Right to Object
You have the right to object to our use of your information. With many types of data, we’ve provided you with the ability to simply delete it if you don’t want us processing it anymore. For other types of data, we’ve given you the ability to stop the use of your data by disabling the feature altogether. You can do these things in the app. If there are other types of information you don’t agree with us processing, you can contact us.
International Transfers
We may collect your personal information from, transfer it to, and store and process it in the United States and other countries outside of where you live. Whenever we share information of EU users outside the EU we make sure an adequate transfer mechanism is in place. For internal transfers, we rely on Model Contractual Clauses or the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield.
Complaints? If you’re based in the EU, you can always file a complaint with the supervisory authority in your Member State. For example, if you’re based in the UK, you can file a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
California Residents
If you’re a California resident, you have certain privacy rights under California law, including the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”).
Children
Our services are not intended for—and we don’t direct them to—anyone under 13. And that’s why we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. In addition, we may limit how we collect, use, and store some of the information of EU users between 13 and 16. In some cases, this means we will be unable to provide certain functionality to these users. If we need to rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your information and your country requires consent from a parent, we may require your parent’s consent before we collect and use that information.
Revisions to the Privacy Policy
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. But when we do, we’ll let you know one way or another. Sometimes, we’ll let you know by revising the date at the top of the Privacy Policy that’s available on our website and mobile application. Other times, we may provide you with additional notice (such as adding a statement to our websites’ homepages or providing you with an in-app notification).
