Effective as of July 1, 2017
The grät Network (“Application”) is a software application operated by The grät Network, PBC (“grät”). grät is committed to respecting your privacy. We are also committed to providing you with the very best experience we can using our Application. In order to do so, we may gather certain personal information about you. Please read the following policy to understand how your personal information will be treated as you make full use of our Application. By using the Application, you consent to the collection and use of your information by grät as described in this Policy, and you signify your agreement to the grät Privacy Policy.
Information submitted by you for inclusion on your grät account page.
Information, pictures and media files you upload to your account (“Submissions”) may be posted on the Application, subject to our Terms and Conditions and accessible by all visitors to the Application (unless you expressly restrict such access through your account settings), and grät has no control over, and shall incur no responsibility for, how such visitors will use such Submissions. grät reserves the right (but not the obligation) to remove or edit Submissions, but does not regularly review Submissions.
We may offer chat, user reviews, bulletin board, or other public functions and any posting by you is considered public information available to other users. Any posting is governed by our Terms of Use. You should take care to not use personal information in your screen name or other information that might be publicly available to other users.
Please remember that if you post any of your personal information in public areas of the Application, such information may be collected and used by others over whom we have no control. We are not responsible for the use made by third parties of information you post or otherwise make available in public areas of the Application.
To facilitate searching and finding friends and acquaintances on the Application, grät may allow users to search for other members using first and last name, email address, and schools or companies users may have attended or worked at.
You may decide to provide grät with another person's contact information so that person may be invited to join the Application or so that grät may facilitate your communication with other people through the Application (such as when you upload an address book or a contact list). You may also provide grät with another person's contact information for purposes of delivering information through social networking applications. grät stores the information that you provide so that the respondents may be added to your network, and also to send reminders of the invitations. All invitees are provided with the option not to receive further invitations from grät.
What information does grät collect?
When you use the Application, we may collect some basic information that does not identify individual users. We then aggregate this information with other pieces of information to improve our Application and make your user experience as valuable and efficient as possible.
We may ask you for personal information at various times, including, but not limited to, when you enter promotions and when you respond to a survey. We will not share that information in a manner that identifies you as an individual with any other entity, unless we let you know that at the time of collection or we have your permission.
We may also collect and accumulate anonymous data which will help us understand and analyze the experience of our users. For instance, we may accumulate visitor data relating to referring domain names, the type of browsers used, operating system software, screen resolutions, color capabilities, browser plug-ins, language settings, cookie preferences, search engine keywords and JavaScript enablement.
For reasons such as improving member experience and providing customized communications to our users, we may receive information about you from third-party sources and our user logs and add it to the information that we have received from you.
We may maintain archives of our user logs, database, and other systems and information. Please note that it is possible some of this information may remain archived after we delete the information from our active database. We may maintain archives for disaster recovery, legal and other non-marketing purposes.
What do we do with the information we collect?
1. It is used to set up and maintain your grät account. If you provide us with your mobile phone information, we may use such information to communicate with you regarding grät by SMS, MMS, text message or other electronic means to a mobile device.
2. Your phone number may be used in the event that our customer service representatives need to contact you and cannot reach you by email.
3. Your personal information will never be sold to any third party. We hate junk mail as much as you. This is why we will only send you email about items that we feel you should know about. This includes special promotional items that grät endorses, membership changes, terms and conditions changes, Holiday cards, and the latest happenings on the Application. When we send you emails that include a link, that link may contain an alphanumeric identifier that allows us to identify the person to whom we sent the message so that we can personalize our content for that individual.
With whom do we share your information and for what purpose?
grät does not sell, rent, or trade any personally identifying information with others. However, when one or more of our business partners co-sponsor a service, promotion and/or contest, we may share some or all of the information collected in connection with such service, promotion or contest with the co-sponsor(s). If we intend to share such information, you will be notified prior to the collection of that information. If you do not want your information to be shared, you will be able to choose not to allow the transfer by not using or signing up for that particular service, promotion or contest.
We may also share aggregate user information in a non-personally identifiable manner with advertisers and other third parties in order to present to users more targeted advertising, products and services. We do not provide any personally identifiable information to third-party advertising companies. Note, however, that if an advertiser asks us to show an advertisement to users with certain characteristics (for example, women ages 18-24) or a segment of that group (for example, women ages 18-24 who have viewed certain categories of content) and you respond to that advertisement, the third-party advertising company may conclude that you have the characteristics of the audience that they are trying to reach. Due to our contractual obligations with these third parties and the need to share information to deliver and support our service, we cannot provide you with the opportunity to opt-out of sharing information with these third parties.
We may contract with third parties to conduct research and marketing on our behalf. Such third parties will be fully bound by an obligation of confidentiality to grät and may not use any personally-identifiable information provided by us other than as expressly instructed by us and in strict compliance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.
Email Opt-out
Users who no longer wish to receive our email updates or other notifications may opt-out of receiving these communications by following the instructions contained in the applicable email or by logging-in and changing their account settings.
COPPA Compliance
We assume products purchased through credit card means are purchased by adults. We have designed this privacy policy in order to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"). We will never knowingly collect any personal information about children under the age of 13. If we obtain actual knowledge that we have collected personal information about a child under the age of 13, that information will be immediately deleted from our database. Because we do not collect such information, we have no such information to use or to disclose to third parties.
If a parent believes that his or her child has submitted personal information to us, he or she can contact us via e-mail or postal mail as listed below. We will promptly delete the information upon learning that it relates to a child under the age of 13. Please note that it is possible some of this information may remain archived in web logs and back-up archives after we delete the information from its active database.
We believe that parents should supervise their children’s online activities and consider using parental control tools available from online services and software manufacturers that help provide a kid-friendly online environment. These tools can also prevent children from otherwise disclosing online their name, address and other personal information without parental permission.
Security
We use reasonable measures to protect member information that is stored within our database, and we restrict access to member information to those employees who need access to perform their job functions, such as our customer service personnel and technical staff.
However, please note that we cannot guarantee the security of users’ information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise the security of our users’ information at any time.
Business transitions
In the event grät goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of a portion of its assets, users' personal information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred.
California User Consumer Rights
In accordance with California Civil Code Sec. 1789.3, California resident users are entitled to know that they may file grievances and complaints with California Department of Consumer Affairs, 400 R Street, STE1080, Sacramento, CA 95814; or by phone at 916-445-1254 or 800-952-5210; or by email to dca@dca.ca.gov. Under California law, California Residents who have an established business relationship with grät or one of its subsidiaries may choose to opt out of grät disclosure of personal information about them to third parties for direct marketing purposes. As detailed above, our policy is not to disclose personal information collected online to a third party for direct marketing purposes without your approval. If you choose to opt-out at any time after granting approval, email privacy@thegrat.net.
Users Located Outside of the United States
We make an effort to protect the personal information of all users of grät. If you are unsure whether this privacy policy is in conflict with the rules applicable where you are located, you should not submit your personal information to grät. IN ADDITION, IF YOU ARE LOCATED WITHIN THE EUROPEAN UNION, YOU SHOULD NOTE THAT YOUR INFORMATION WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO THE UNITED STATES, THE LAWS OF WHICH MAY BE DEEMED BY THE EUROPEAN UNION TO HAVE INADEQUATE DATA PROTECTION. Users of grät located in countries outside of the United States who submit personal information do thereby consent to the transfer of that information to and/or storage of the information in the United States.
Cooperation with law enforcement; fraud protection
grät fully cooperates with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who use our services for illegal activities. We reserve the right to disclose information about members who we believe are in violation of applicable laws or regulations, or as required to respond to a subpoena, court orders or other legal process requiring such disclosure. We also reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we reasonably believe to be unlawful and to exchange information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
Use of information we collect is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is used or collected. From time to time, we may change our Privacy Policy and will notify you of those changes by email or post a notice on the Application. Users are bound by any changes to the Privacy Policy when they use the Application after such changes have been first posted or, if required under applicable law, when we obtain their consent. If you do not agree or consent to these updates or changes, do not continue to use the Application. Please note that if you opt out of receiving legal notices from us, those legal notices will still govern your use of the Application, and you are responsible for reviewing such legal notices for changes, as posted on the Application.
Any questions regarding our Privacy Policy should be directed to privacy@thegrat.net.