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Nearal Privacy Policy

Who we are

Nearal is operated by Nearal Company. Nearal provide a service via different platform (web, mobile) for people to find nearby professionals, can view their hourly rate, reviews, their showcase posts, etc. Also, for professionals it is a place for them to showcase themselves and be able to get nearby clients. Users are able to send messages to each other (format: text, audio, video, etc.), users are able to share location info, files, send invoices and payments to each other.

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What information does Nearal process?

Nearal is a meeting place for adults, and we provide that service by operating a social network site offering users the opportunity to connect to our global community of users. By joining Nearal, you enter a legal agreement with us and we process your data in order to provide your service under the terms of that agreement. You can only become a member of Nearal or use its features if you’re aged 18 or over or the age of majority in the country in which you reside if that happens to be greater than 18.

To join the Nearal network you will have to complete our online registration form, where we may ask you to provide us with information about you such as your name, your phone number, your profession, your hourly rate, and we will collect your location details. You also have the opportunity to provide other details about yourself, tell people what you are looking for or offering, but these are optional. Because you control your user profile, these details are available to you at any time by accessing your “Profile” page, which gives you the chance to correct or update your information at any time by just logging in to Nearal. You can contact Nearal’s Customer Support Team via hi@nearal.com if you need help.

 

Please be careful about posting sensitive details about yourself on your Profile such as your religious denomination and health details. While you may voluntarily provide this information to us when you create your Profile, including your sexual preferences and ethnic background, there is no requirement to do so. Please remember that photographs or any video clips that you post on Nearal may reveal these kinds of sensitive personal data. Where you do upload and choose to tell us sensitive data about yourself, you are explicitly consenting to our processing your information and making this public to other users.

For safety and security and to ensure you have the best possible user experience, we require users to verify their accounts and might ask for your phone number. We want to make sure you are not a robot! And we also want to avoid fake Nearal accounts being created which can be used for malicious activities and cyber crime – they threaten the Nearal network and spoil things for everyone. We use a third party provider for account verification who will keep your phone number for up to 90 days for fraud identification purposes across a range of online platforms and services like Nearal’s. We collect and use your phone number on the basis of our legitimate interests identified above and for the prevention of fraud.

If you decide to purchase any of our premium services, we will process your payment information and retain this securely for the prevention of fraud and for audit/tax purposes. Under data protection law, it is necessary for us to collect and process this payment data to enable us to perform our contract with you and our ongoing retention of this data is justified by our legitimate interests set out above.

To enable Nearal to provide a free non-premium service, we process some limited data (demographics and location) to drive targeted advertising in our legitimate interest including sharing such data with advertising networks. We may also receive data indirectly from such advertising networks. You can stop this within Settings but you will still see adverts though they will be less relevant to you. Through your device’s security settings you also have the option to prevent or limit device identifiers being shared with third party advertisers and what use is made of the device identifiers.

 

Finally, we want to keep in touch with you to make sure you know about the great promotions and offers we have available. If you’ve told us it’s OK, we will use your email address and phone number to send you information on these. You can withdraw this consent at any time via Settings in the app or website.

What does Nearal collect about me if I use the mobile App?

Nearal offers you the opportunity to stay in touch with the friends and contacts you’ve made no matter where you are. You can do this by using your mobile phone or by downloading an application to your desktop that allows you to share your location with other users.

When you use your mobile or the desktop application, we will collect information about WiFi access points as well as other location information about your longitude and latitude. That information helps us identify your physical location so that it can be displayed and shared with other members choosing to view “nearby” posts.

If you have enabled location services, but wish to turn it off, you can do so by the following methods:

  1. iPhone app — settings, privacy, location services, Nearal

  2. Android — profile, privacy, off

We, or our third-party advertising partners, may also collect and use your device identifier to serve relevant ads to you through the App. You can opt out of targeted advertising by (i) becoming payers and/ or (ii) opting not to share data with any partner platforms but still to receive advertisements.

What is the legal basis that allows Nearal to use my data?

We are only permitted to use your data when we have a lawful basis to do so. The table below provides an overview of the legal bases that Nearal relies on to use your data. Where the legal basis is consent, you can withdraw consent at any time. Where the legal basis is legitimate interests, you have a right to object to our use of your data. We explain in the relevant sections in this privacy notice how you can withdraw consent or opt-out of certain data uses (where applicable).

Below are Purpose for which data is used, related Data and Legal Basis.

  1. To provide you with the Nearal social networking service; Name, email address, phone number, hourly rate, profession, location; Contractual necessity

  2. To facilitate networking opportunities on the Nearal site; Optional information that you choose to provide in your profile, which may include information about your job preferences, religion, ethnic background, photos etc.; Consent;

  3. To verify your identity and prevent fraud and to ensure the safety and security of users; Phone number; Legitimate interests – it is in our legitimate interests to ensure that accounts are not set up fraudulently and to safeguard users of the site;

  4. To take payment for premium services, and/or make payments to other and receive payment; bank/payment card details; Contractual necessity and legitimate interests – we have a legitimate interest in receiving payment for our premium services;

  5. To serve targeted advertisements to users of the site; Demographic and location information; Legitimate interests – it is in our legitimate interests to target advertisements so that users see relevant advertisements and to allow us to generate income from advertising revenue

  6. To send you marketing information about our offers and services; Email address and mobile phone number; Legitimate interests – it is in our legitimate interests to promote our products and services;

  7. To show “nearby” location information to you and other users of the site; Wifi access points and location data when you use the mobile app; Consent;

  8. To serve advertisements through the Nearal mobile app; Device ID; Legitimate interests – it is in our legitimate interests and the interests of third party advertisers to deliver advertisements to you to promote their products;

  9. To carry out analysis to help us improve the app; Log and usage data, including IP address, browser type, referring domain, pages accessed, mobile carrier and search terms; Legitimate interests – it is in our interests to analyze the way in which users are accessing and using our services so that we can further develop the app and improve the service

  10. To respond to correspondence and queries that you submit to us; Email address and IP address; Legitimate interests – it is in our legitimate interests to respond to your queries to ensure that we provide a good service to users and troubleshoot problems.

 

How long will Nearal keep my data?

We keep your personal information only as long as we need it for legitimate business purposes (as set out above) and as permitted by applicable law. To protect the safety and security of our users on and off our services, we implement a safety retention window of three months following account deletion. During this period, account information will be retained although the account will of course not be visible on the services anymore.

In practice, we delete or anonymize your information upon deletion of your account (following the safety retention window), unless:

  1. we must keep it to comply with applicable law (for instance, some “traffic data” is kept for one year to comply with statutory data retention obligations);

  2. we must keep it to evidence our compliance with applicable law (for instance, records of consents to our Terms, Privacy Policy and other similar consents are kept for five years);

  3. there is an outstanding issue, claim or dispute requiring us to keep the relevant information until it is resolved; or

  4. the information must be kept for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud prevention and enhancing users’ safety and security. For example, information may need to be kept to prevent a user who was banned for unsafe behavior or security incidents from opening a new account.

What information does Nearal collect about me if I’m under 18?

Nearal does not knowingly collect any information about or market to children, minors or anyone under the age of majority. If we become aware that a child, minor or anyone under the age of 18 has registered with us and provided us with personal data, we will take steps to terminate that person’s registration and delete their Profile information from Nearal. If we do delete a Profile because you violated our no children rules, we may retain your email and IP address to ensure that you do not try to get around our rules by creating a new Profile.

What information does Nearal collect about my friends and contacts?

You can choose to invite your friends to join Nearal to make sure that they also get the benefits of meeting new people. To make it easier to search and find friends and acquaintances on Nearal, users may search for other members by email address. If you want to invite your friends and contacts to Nearal, we will send an email invitation from Nearal in your name or you can send an SMS (if you use our Android or iPhone App) to your friends and contacts encouraging them to sign up to Nearal. If any of the individuals you have invited do not register within a few days, Nearal may occasionally send reminder emails on your behalf to those individuals. You can choose to invite all your friends or only a select few by simply unticking the names of those friends you do not wish to invite, but please remember you must not invite any children to join. You are responsible for ensuring that your friend has agreed to receiving a Nearal invite.

When you import your contacts, we store their name and email address or their mobile number so that we can automatically connect you and your friend. Nearal does not sell these email addresses or mobile numbers or use them to send any other communication besides email invitations. The friend may contact Nearal to request the removal of their information from our database via hi@nearal.com. Any such request will only apply to addresses or mobile numbers we have at the time of the request and not to any addresses or mobile numbers that the member/user provides to us later.

 

Who does Nearal share information with?

We may share aggregated information with such parties as Foursquare that includes your personal data (but which doesn’t identify you directly), together with other information including log data with third parties for industry analysis and demographic profiling and to deliver targeted advertising about other products and services.

We share your data with the following categories of third-parties:

  1. Information technology companies (hardware and software) which provide services to support our products

  2. Fraud prevention and anti-spam providers to protect the service from criminal activity

  3. Moderators to monitor activity on the site/apps and approve content

  4. Advertising partners, market places and providers of targeted advertising,

  5. Law enforcement agencies, where we are required to by law or to protect the vital interests of a person

  6. Payment processing and telecommunications companies to facilitate payments for our premium services

We ensure these parties must adhere to strict data protection and confidentiality provisions that are consistent with this Policy. Measures are taken to ensure that the data shared is non-attributable to the greatest extent possible.

In the event that Nearal or any of its affiliates undergoes a business transition or change of ownership, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, re-organisation, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, or in the event of insolvency or administration, we may be required to disclose your personal data.

How does Showcase work?

Showcase is a place for users to post text, video and/or audio contents, which the purpose is to show their professional portfolio or capabilities, but we cannot prevent customer to post any other contents they think worth sharing.

We respect other people’s rights, and you should too. We recognize that as well as uploading a photo of yourself to find your Showcase, you may wish to upload a photo/text/video/audio of someone else. If you do, then you should get their permission before you upload their photo. You are not permitted to upload photos of children.

Your rights

Under USA and California law, you have the right to lodge a complaint with data protection regulators. Nearal has its main office in the USA.

You have a number of rights under USA Data Protection law if you are an USA citizen.

  1. Right to be informed: what personal data an organization is processing and why (this notice).

  2. Right of access: you can request a copy of your data.

  3. Right of rectification: if the data held is inaccurate, you have the right to have it corrected.

  4. Right to erasure: you have the right to have your data deleted in certain circumstances.

  5. Right to restrict processing: in limited circumstances, you have the right to request that processing is stopped but the data retained.

  6. Right to data portability: you can request a copy of your data in a machine-readable form that can be transferred to another provider.

  7. Right to object: in certain circumstances (including where data is processed on the basis of legitimate interests or for the purposes of marketing) you may object to that processing.

  8. Rights related to automated decision-making including profiling: there are several rights in this area where processing carried out on a solely automated basis results in a decision which has legal or significant effects for the individual. In these circumstances your rights include the right to ensure that there is human intervention in the decision-making process.

If you want to exercise any of your rights listed above, please email us at hi@Nearal.com.

 

How does Nearal protect my personal data?

Nearal has implemented appropriate security measures to protect and prevent the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control, including your personal data. Our technical experts at Nearal work hard to ensure your secure use of our site.

While we take reasonable precautions against possible security breaches of our website, member database and records, no website or internet transmission is completely secure and we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss, or other breaches will never occur. We urge you to take steps to keep your personal data safe (including your password) and to log out of your account after use. If you lose your password or give it out, or another service provider that you use suffers a data breach and you have used the same credentials with that service provider as you have with Nearal, your personal data may be compromised. If that happens, please report it to Support via our Feedback page.

Where is my personal data kept?

 

Does Nearal collect any other personal data about me?

If you contact our Customer Support team via hi@nearal.com, we will receive your email address, and may track your IP address as well as the information you send to us to help resolve your query. We will keep records of our communications with you, including any complaints that we receive from you about other users (and from other users about you) for 6 years after deletion of your account.

 

Does Nearal use my personal data for any other purpose?

We may use material that you post on the open access areas of Nearal in advertising and promotional materials on our partner sites and partner products. We believe these uses are in line with our legitimate interests in enabling us to improve our site and better tailor your online experience to meet your needs. If we intend to do this, we will contact you for your prior approval.

From time to time we may run surveys for research purposes, and we may contact you to find out if you would like to take part. Such surveys are optional, and more information will be provided at the point of contact. If you do not wish to be contacted to take part in a survey, please contact our Customer Support Team at hi@nearal.com.

 

We use your personal data to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems and enforce our Terms and Conditions of Use.

 

What are ‘cookies’ and what ‘cookies’ does Nearal use?

We collect information by placing cookies on your computer or mobile. A cookie is a piece of text stored on your computer or mobile by your web browser. They are basically a tool that stores information about website visits, recognizes you and your preferences each time you visit Nearal, and ensures site functionality and enables us to provide the services our members request.

When you visit the publicly available sections of Nearal, a session ID cookie is placed on your computer that only lasts while you’re visiting. We also place persistent cookies (also known as local storage devices) on members’ computers, so that Nearal remembers them and makes their login experience faster and easier. We may use persistent tracking cookies on your mobile device, mainly for security protection purposes, such as to prevent phishers, scammers, unauthorized login attempts, and to help you access your hacked account. We do not use any information whilst you are logged off.

You may set your browser and your mobile settings to block cookies and local storage devices, but if you do so, you may not be able to access the features that Nearal offers.

Nearal’s use of cookies and local storage devices basically falls into the following categories:

  • those that are strictly necessary to deliver the services and products you have requested, such as, for example purchasing Nearal Premium;

  • cookies related to the performance of Nearal’s site, such as analytics that help us determine how our site is performing and ensuring a smooth and trouble free experience for our members and visitors;

  • cookies related to the functionality of Nearal’s site, such as remembering your preferences at login or your preferred language or allowing you to chat, add photos and instant message Nearal members;

  • third party cookies which link to other social networks and which you request via social plugins; and

  • cookies used to improve and target advertising to you based on what’s relevant to you, to improve reporting on any advertising campaign and to avoid showing you ads you have already seen.

Nearal uses cookies and local storage devices so that we know who you are, what interests you and so that you can do the things online that you want to do, like chat with new people, share your content and buy Nearal Premium knowing that your data will be secure. Below is a table to explain Nearal’s cookie functions and why they’re used.

Below are Cookie Functions and Cookie Purposes:

  1. Analytics and research; Nearal uses Google Analytics to collect information about how visitors use the Nearal site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. For more information about Google’s privacy policy, please visit http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/

  2. Authentication; These cookies help us to identify our members so that when you’re logged in, you can enjoy Nearal’s offerings, experiences and various features, such as uploading photographs, chatting and can localise your experience, such as when you’ve requested to view Nearal’s site in your local language or when you’ve asked Nearal to ‘remember me’. These cookies also help to remember who invited you to join Nearal.

  3. Security and site integrity; We use cookies and other devices, such as CAPTCHAs, to help keep Nearal and our members safe and secure. These cookies do things like protect Nearal users from spam and fraud, by ensuring the safety of your personal data when you shop on Nearal for things like Nearal Premium.

We may use persistent cookies, which will help us to ensure we have identified the same device is logging in to the correct account. These types of cookies also help with our anti-spam measures and may help us to prevent phishers, scammers, unauthorized login attempts to your account and accessing any hacked accounts.

  1. Site features and services; These cookies and local storage devices provide the functionality that our Nearal members enjoy, such as uploading of photographs, chats, instant messaging, your account settings and your request to have Nearal as your homepage or your search preference. We also use cookies to help provide experiences, such as links to other social media sites, social plugins and video content, including making it easier for you to share content between Nearal with your other favorite social networks.

 

In some cases, the site feature you choose may allow a third party to place cookies or local storage devices on your computer. The third party who places cookies on your device is responsible for how they process their data and Nearal recommends that you read their privacy policies. Third parties who place cookies on your device when you use Nearal include, and we have included a link to their privacy policies:

 

  1. Performance; We need to use certain cookies and local storage devices to ensure our members have the best possible experience, such as assisting with your navigation of our site, ensuring pages load up quickly and respond faster to your requests for Nearal services.

  2. Targeted advertising; We sometimes conduct advertising campaigns using DoubleClick, a Google company, who will also place cookies. To find out about DoubleClick cookies and how to control those cookies, go to:https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads.

Our use of cookies and local share devices, including the specific cookie names, may change over time, but will generally fall into the above categories. We will notify you of any important changes to our use of cookies and local storage devices If you would like to know more about cookies, including flash cookies/local storage devices, the following websites provide useful information:

This Privacy Policy was last updated on Jan 1 2019.

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