Privacy Policy
Effective date: 1 January 2018
Hello and welcome to swardu ("swardu," "us," "we" or "our") and its web site http://www.swardu.com (the “Site”). This page shall inform you of our policies regarding the collection, use, storage and disclosure of Personal Information and data, we receive and process from users accessing and enjoying the Site.
swardu provides an innovative, unique and exciting new experience for you to tag and share all kinds and sorts of media through our content-tagging and sharing platform and application.
- Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, disclose, share and protect information in relation to our services, our web site, and any software or applications provided on, or in connection with, the swardu services (collectively, the "swardu Service(s)" or the "Service(s)"), and your choices about the collection and the use of your information and/or data.
- By using the swardu Service, you understand, acknowledge and agree that we are providing a platform for you to post, tag and share with others content, including photos, text, graphics, videos and other materials ("User Content") privately and publicly. This means that other Users may search for, see, use, tag or share any of your User Content that you make, publicly, privately or both, available through the Service, consistent with the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy and such of our Terms of Use (to be found in our Terms of Use section).
- Our Policy applies to all visitors, users, and others, whether if private individuals, businesses, organisations or any other parties, who access the Service (the "Users").
Click on the links below to access each of the specific sections of this Policy:
- Information We Collect
- How We Use Your Information
- Sharing of Your Information
- How We Store Your Information
- Your Choices About Your Information
- Children's Privacy
- Other Websites and Services
- How to Contact Us About a Deceased User
- How to Contact Us
- Changes to Our Privacy Policy
1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT
While using our Site, we may ask you to provide certain personally identifiable information and also data which may be used to contact or identify yourself. Personally identifiable information and data may include, but shall not be limited to, your name, your e-mail address and similarly personal information.
We collect the following types of information and/or data.
Information you provide us directly:
- Your username, if applicable, password and e-mail address when you register as a User for a swardu account.
- Profile information that you provide for your user profile (e.g., first and last name, picture, telephone number). This information allows us to help you or others to be "found" on swardu.
- User Content (e.g., photos, comments, and other materials) that you submit, post or tag to the Service.
- Communications between you and swardu. For example, we may send you Service-related emails (e.g., account verification, changes/updates to features of the Service, technical and security notices). Note that you may not opt out of Service-related e-mails.
Inviting your friends:
- Note about "Invite Friends" feature: If you choose to invite someone to the swardu Service through our E-mail feature, you may select a person directly from the contacts list on your device and send a text or email from your personal account. You understand and agree that you are responsible for any charges that apply to communications sent from your device, and because this invitation is coming directly from your personal account, swardu does not have access to or control this communication.
Analytic Information:
- We use third-party analytic tools to help us measure traffic, frequencies and usage trends for the Service. These tools collect information and data sent by your device or our Service, including without limitation, the web pages you visit, add-ons, and other information or data that assists us in improving the Service. We collect and use this analytic information together with analytics information gathered from other Users in a fashion so that it cannot be used to identify any particular individual User.
Cookies and similar Technologies:
- Cookies are files with small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a web site and are stored on your computer’s hard drive.
- lAs with many other sites, swardu uses “cookies” to collect information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of the Site.
- When you visit the Service, we may use cookies and similar technologies like pixels, web beacons, local and remote storage to collect information about how you use swardu and provide features to you.
- We may ask our partners to add services to your devices, which themselves may use cookies or similar technologies placed by us or by a third party.
Log Data Information:
- Log Data information is automatically reported by your browser each time you make a request to access (i.e., visit) a web page or an application (short also the "App"). It may also be provided when the content of the web page or App is downloaded to your browser or device.
- When you use our Service, our servers automatically record certain log data information, including your web request, Internet Protocol ("IP") address, browser type, referring and exit pages and URLs, number of clicks and the way you interact with links on the Service, domain names, landing pages, pages viewed, and other such information. We may also collect similar information from emails sent to our Users, which then help us track which emails are opened and which links are clicked by recipients. The information allows for more accurate reporting and improvement of the Service.
Device Identifiers:
- When you use a mobile device like a tablet or phone to access our Service, we may access, collect, monitor, store on your device, and/or remotely store one or more "device identifiers." Device identifiers are small data files or similar data structures stored on, or associated with, your mobile device, which uniquely identify your mobile device. A device identifier may be data stored in connection with the device hardware, data stored in connection with the device's operating system or other software, or data sent to your device by swardu.
- A device identifier may deliver information to us or to a third party partner about how you browse and use the Service and may help us or others provide reports or personalized content and ads. Some features of the Service may not function properly if use or availability of device identifiers is impaired or disabled.
Metadata:
- Metadata is usually technical data that is associated with User Content. For example, Metadata can describe how, when and by whom a piece of User Content was collected and how that content is formatted.
- Users can add or may have Metadata added to their User Content including a hashtag (e.g., to mark keywords when you post a photo), geotag (e.g., to mark your location to a photo), comments or other data. This makes your User Content more searchable by others and more interactive. If you geotag your photo, or tag your photo using other's APIs then, your latitude and longitude will be stored with the photo and searchable (e.g., through a location or map feature) if your photo is made public by you in accordance with your privacy settings.
2. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
In addition to some of the specific uses of information we describe in this Privacy Policy, we may use information that we receive to:
- help you efficiently access your information after you sign in
- remember information so you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Service;
- provide personalized content and information to you and others, which could include online ads or other forms of marketing
- provide, improve, test, and monitor the effectiveness of our Service
- develop and test new products and features
- monitor metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, and demographic patterns
- diagnose or fix technology problems
- automatically update the swardu application on your device, and swardu or other Users may run contests, special offers or other events or activities ("Events") on the Service. If you do not want to participate in an Event, do not use the particular Metadata (i.e. hashtag or geotag) associated with that Event.
3. SHARING OF YOUR INFORMATION
We will not sell, rent or otherwise submit your information to third parties outside of swardu (or the group of companies of which swardu is a part) without your consent, except as noted in this Policy.
Parties with Whom We May Share Your Information:
- We may share User Content and your information (including but not limited to, information from cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data, and usage data) with parties which are legally part of the same group of companies that swardu is part of, or that become part of that group ("Affiliates"). Affiliates may use this information to help provide, understand, and improve the Service (including by providing analytics) and Affiliates' own services (including by providing you with enhanced and more customized experiences). These Affiliates will honor the choices you make about who may have access to your User Content.
- We also may share your information and data as well as information from tools like cookies, log files, device identifiers and location data, with third party organizations that help us provide the Service to you ("Service Providers"). Our Service Providers will be given access to your information as is reasonably necessary to provide the Service under reasonable confidentiality terms.
- We may also share certain information such as cookie data with third parties. This information would allow third-party networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you.
- We may remove parts of information and data may identify you and share anonymized information and data with other parties. We may also combine your information with other information in a way that it is no longer associated with you and share that aggregated information on confidential terms.
Parties with Whom You May Choose to Share your User Content:
- Any information or content that you voluntarily disclose for submitting or posting to the Service, such as User Content, becomes available to the public, as controlled by any applicable privacy settings that you set. To change or adjust your privacy settings on the Service, please change your profile setting. Once you have shared User Content or made it public, that User Content may be re-shared also by others.
- Subject to your profile and privacy settings, any User Content that you make public is searchable by other Users and subject to use under our swardu API. The use of the swardu API is subject to our prior consent and the specific API Terms of Use, which incorporates the terms of this Privacy Policy.
- If you remove information that you posted to the Service, copies may remain viewable in cached and archived pages of the Service, or if other Users or third parties having access to the swardu Content using the swardu API have copied or saved that information.
Responding to Legal Requests and Preventing Harm:
- We may access, preserve and share your information in response to a legal request (like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so. This may include responding to legal requests from jurisdictions outside of Switzerland where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law in that jurisdiction, affects users in that jurisdiction, and is consistent with internationally recognized standards. We may also access, preserve and share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to: detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity; to protect ourselves, you and others, including as part of investigations; and to prevent death or imminent bodily harm. Information we receive about you may be accessed, processed and retained for an extended period of time when it is the subject of a legal request or obligation, governmental investigation, or investigations concerning possible violations of our terms or policies, or otherwise to prevent harm.
4. HOW WE STORE YOUR INFORMATION
Storage and Processing:
- Your information collected through the Service may be stored locally or remotely and be processed in Switzerland or in any other country in which swardu, its Affiliates or Service Providers have a presence and/or maintain facilities.
- swardu, its Affiliates, or Service Providers may transfer information, which they collect about you, including your personal information across borders and from your country or jurisdiction to other countries or jurisdictions around the world. If you are located in Switzerland or in the European Union or other regions with laws governing data collection and the use thereof that may differ from Swiss law, please note that we may transfer information, including personal information, to a country and jurisdiction that does not have the same data protection laws as your jurisdiction.<
- By registering for and using the Service you acknowledge and irrevocably consent to the transfer of information and the use and disclosure of information about you to Switzerland or to any other country in which swardu, its Affiliates or Service Providers have a presence and/or maintain facilities as described in this Privacy Policy.
- We use commercially reasonable safeguards to help keep the information collected through the Service secure and take reasonable steps (such as requesting a unique password) to verify your identity before granting you access to your account. However, swardu cannot ensure the security of any information and/or data you transmit, nor guarantee that information or data on the Service may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed.
- Please do your part to help us. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy and confidential nature of your unique password and account information, and for controlling access to and keeping secure any emails between you and swardu, at all times. Your privacy settings may also be affected by changes the social media services make to their services and which you connect with to swardu. We are not responsible for the functionality, privacy, or security measures of any other organization.
5. YOUR CHOICES ABOUT YOUR INFORMATION
Your account information and profile/privacy settings:
- Update your account at any time by logging in, adjusting and changing your profile settings.
- Unsubscribe from email communications from us by clicking on the "unsubscribe link" provided in such communications. As noted above, you may not opt out of Service-related communications (e.g., account verification, purchase and billing confirmations and reminders, changes/updates to features of the Service, technical and security notices).
How long we keep your User Content:
- Following termination or deactivation of your account, swardu, its Affiliates, or its Service Providers may retain information (including your profile information) and User Content for a reasonable time for backup, archival, and/or audit purposes.
6. CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
swardu does not knowingly collect or solicit any information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register for the Service. The Service and its content are not directed at children under the age of 13. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without parental consent, we will delete that information without undue delay. If you believe that, we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at info@swardu.com.
7. OTHER WEB SITES AND SERVICES
We are not responsible for the practices employed by any websites or services linked to or from our Service, including the information or content contained within them. Please remember that when you use a link to go from our Service to another website or service, our Privacy Policy does not apply to those third-party websites or services. Your browsing and interaction on any third-party website or service, including those that have a link on our website, are subject to that third party's own rules and policies. In addition, you agree that we are not responsible for, and do not have control over, any third-parties that you authorize to access your User Content. If you are using a third-party website or service and you allow them to access your User Content you do so at your own personal risk.
8. HOW TO CONTACT US ABOUT A DECEASED USER
In the event of the death of a swardu User, please contact us. We will usually conduct our communication via email; should we require any other information, we will contact you at the email address which you have provided for in your request.
9. HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the Service, please find the appropriate support by contacting us at info@swardu.com.
10. CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY
swardu may modify or update this Privacy Policy as deemed necessary and useful from time to time, so please review it periodically. We may provide you additional forms of notice of modifications or of updates as appropriate under the circumstances. Your continued use of swardu and/or of the Service after any modification to this Privacy Policy will constitute your acknowledgment and acceptance of any such modification(s).