Introduction: This Privacy Policy ("Policy") will help you understand how we collect and use personal information if you visit our website or make use of any of our services, and what we will and will not do with the information we collect. We only collect, store, process and share personal information that is either necessary to provide the service to you, or that you choose to provide to us, and we have processes in place to ensure that you are able to control our use of your data freely and easily.

Changes: To the maximum extent permitted by law, we reserve the right to make changes to this Policy at any given time. If you want to make sure that you are up to date with the latest changes, we advise you to frequently visit this page.

Children and privacy: We do not solicit or target persons under 18 years of age. We do not permit children under the age of 18 to become users and we do not knowingly collect any information relating to children under the age of 18. By submitting information to us you represent that you are over the age of 18, and if you suspect any user is not at least 18, please follow the reporting options within your account to inform us.

1. ABOUT US AND OUR SERVICES

We, Apricot Digitals LLC 83-85 James Bourchier, Sofia, 1407, Bulgaria (“us/we/our”) are the ‘data controller’, meaning that we are company that is responsible for the collection, processing and storage of your data when you use our services.

We operate lots of different social and dating websites and we want to make sure you have access to as many potential matches as possible within our large database. This means that after you sign up to this website and create a dating profile with us, we will share your profile across our other sites and we will market our different products, sites and services to you. We call these sites Partner Sites. You authorise us to reproduce and broadcast the information contained in your dating profile throughout all or part of our Partner Sites and our services for the purposes of delivering our dating services to you. You can opt out at any time by contacting us as described below. For more details please see Sections 5G and 6B of this Policy.

As a large organisation we have a number of subsidiary and sister companies within our business group, that operate some of our sites on our behalf or provide services to us to enable us to provide the Services to you. For data protection purposes, these companies are considered data processors subject to data processing agreements with us, and we remain the controller with responsibility for your data. For more details please see Section 6B of this Policy.

2A. APPLICABLE LAWS

We value our users’ privacy, and we comply with all applicable data privacy laws of the jurisdictions in which we operate, including the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679); the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018; the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC (as updated by Directive 2009/136/EC) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (SI 2003/2426) as amended, collectively the “Data Laws”. The specific law that will apply to you and your data may be determined by the location in which you live, or in which we are based. Any reference to ‘personal data’ within this Policy, has the meaning ascribed to it by the GDPR (or the UK’s Applied GDPR). If you are a resident of California, USA, the California Consumer Privacy Act may be applicable as explained in this Policy at Section 3B.

2B. LAWFUL BASIS FOR PROCESSING DATA

In accordance with the GDPR and the UK’s Data Protection Act, we are required to inform you of the lawful basis for processing your Personal Data. Our lawful basis for processing Personal Data is for the purposes of performing a contract to provide the Services to you, or steps prior to entering into a contract. Where this is not appropriate, we obtain the relevant consents from you and consent is the lawful basis. Where neither contract nor consent is appropriate, legitimate interests is the lawful basis. Our purpose for processing is described in detail in section 5.

3A. YOUR RIGHTS

International Data Laws give users a number of rights which you are free to exercise at any time regarding any personal data that you have provided to us however we apply the same standards to all users as we want to ensure that you have open access to your data and control over its use.

(a) Right to access personal data we hold about you
You can request a copy of the personal data that we hold about you and we aim to respond within 14 to 30 days. To obtain a copy of your data, simply email our data protection team at [email protected] attaching a photo or scan of your photo ID (passport or driving licence) and a utility bill (to provide proof of your address). We need to make sure you are who you claim to be when requesting copies of data, and once we are satisfied about your identity we will email or post a copy of your data to you. Your identification documents will be viewed for the purpose of verifying your identity prior to us making any personal data disclosures to you, and will the identification documents will not be stored for any period of time longer than this, nor will they be used for any purpose whatsoever other than facilitating your request for access.

(b) Right to amend/correct the data we hold on you
We want to make sure we have everything right in our database so please simply contact us at to make any amendments to our records by emailing [email protected]

(c) Opting out / restricting our processing
It’s ok to change your mind about what personal data you are allowing us to use and keep and what you don’t want us to use or keep. You can amend your settings through your account at any time, or contact [email protected] We have to advise you however, that opting out of some personal data processing/storage will result in a loss of functionality of the services and a reduced user experience.

(d) Right to “be forgotten” / right of erasure
You have the right to have all of your personal data erased when you stop using the services and close your account. Sometimes we need to keep a record of some data for security purposes (for example to assist law enforcement agencies with any criminal investigations) or for payment processing (to prove to banks that we were authorised to take payments from you if you pay to use the services). There’s more about how long we keep data for below at Section 9 of this Policy. To request erasure of all of your personal data please contact [email protected]

3B. YOUR RIGHTS IF YOU ARE A RESIDENT OF CALIFORNIA, USA

We act in compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and this section applies to you as an individual if you are a resident of California, USA, with references to personal information having the meaning given in that Act.

We collect the following categories of Personal Information, as defined by the CCPA: Inferences, Identifiers, Commercial Information, Employment Information, all of which is described at Section 4 of this Policy. This information is collected for the purposes described in Section 5 of this Policy and shared as described in Section 6.

  • You have the right to obtain from us access to the information we hold on you, and you are entitled to know if we have shared that information with any third parties. If you would like to request this information, please submit your request by emailing [email protected] or by calling 1 (800) 845-6091. It is important to protect you that we ensure the person making the request is really you and we will contact you to let you know what else we need from you before we send you a copy of your personal information, which currently involves providing us with photographic identification (which is used for the purpose of verifying your identity and is not otherwise used or stored by us). You are entitled to receive a response from us within 45 days.
  • You have the right to ask us to delete all the personal information we hold on you. If you would like to request the deletion of your information, please submit your request by emailing [email protected] or by calling 1 (800) 845-6091. It is important to protect you that we ensure the person making the request is really you and we will contact you to let you know what else we need from you before we send you a copy of your personal information, which currently involves providing us with photographic identification (which is used for the purpose of verifying your identity and is not otherwise used or stored by us). You are entitled to receive a response from us within 45 days.
  • Please note that Your Right to Access and Right to Deletion are not absolute and are subject to certain exceptions. For instance, we cannot disclose specific pieces of Personal Information if the disclosure would create a substantial, articulable, and unreasonable risk to the security of the Personal Information, your account with us or the security of the business’s systems of networks.
  • You have the right to understand how we share/sell your personal information (as described in this Privacy Policy), and importantly you have the right to opt out of having your Personal Information sold as defined in the CCPA. Please follow the instructions on our dedicated opt out page here. We must act upon your opt-out request within 15 days and we must inform any third parties that you have opted out. Your right to opt-out of the sale of information is not retroactive, and we will not undo, reverse, or otherwise attempt to alter any previous sharing.
  • You have the right to appoint an authorized agent to submit a request to opt-out of the sale of personal information on your behalf if you provide the authorized agent written permission to do so. If you use an authorized agent to submit a request, he or she must provide their name, email address, phone number, and written permission from you that includes your contact information. We will contact you using the information provided and verify your identity directly with us. We cannot respond to your request to provide additional disclosures or delete any personal information if we cannot verify your identity and the authorized agent’s authority to make the request on your behalf. Written permission is not required if the agent provides proof of power of attorney.
  • 4. WHAT INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

    This section explains the types of data we collect about you, and when it may be collected. Please read this section carefully, together with Sections 5 and 6 which explain how we then use that data.

    (a) We collect data when you sign up and create/edit/maintain a user profile

    (b) We collect data when you communicate with us

    (c) We collect data when you visit or otherwise make use of the services

    If you’re just browsing our site, editing your profile, speaking to other users, making payments to upgrade your membership, or doing any other activity within our services we will collect different data as you do it, some of which may be considered personal data:

    Some of these activities are a bit more detailed so please read below about the specifics of some of these data types and how we collect them from you.

    (d) We collect information about you from other social networks that you use

    Some of our services have the ability to link your use of our services to other social networks you might have access to, if you choose to link. If you have an account with another social network e.g. Facebook, you can choose to share the data you have on our site with that network. To enhance your experience and create a personalised service we may ask you to login to your Facebook account. By doing so you grant us access to your information stored on your Facebook profile including without limitation your personal information, photographs, videos, interests and locations. When you login to the other network or install our app, we will receive basic information from you including but not limited to your name, photos, gender, networks, user ID, friends list and any other information you make public (and your email address). If you have logged into other social networks and linked them to any of your profiles or accounts you hold with us, you grant permission for us to post updates, including location information, on your behalf.

    (e) We collect information about your location when you use our services

    We can collect location data from your computer and/or mobile device. When accessing the services from a mobile device you will be given the option to allow location sharing with our application. If you do not wish to share your location data with us please turn off this feature by following your mobile device instructions to do so. We can track your IP address if you are using a computer to access the services. If you are using a mobile device we use GPS with an accuracy range of 20 to 100 metres. Although location data is anonymous and can’t identify you, it can be shown to other users so please exercise caution if you do not wish to publicise your location. If you choose to change or turn off location sharing, in order to provide you with a more localised service and localised matches, we will show you as being at a randomly generated location within the postal code area that you have provided. We also use your location data to research our own services, develop new products and improve our services, including using third parties to help us either provide the Services to you or develop new ones, and target advertising to suit your user experience. Your devices can give us lots of information about the device including the brand, model, version of operating system, installed app details, email accounts, mobile carrier and so on. We may also connect your account with location data from Foursquare and can show your Foursquare check ins on our map within some of our services.

    (f) We collect information about your contacts, if you choose to share it with us

    Some features of the Services allow you to choose to share your user experience with people you know (“your Contacts”), or to invite them to join the Services. When given the option to do so you can choose to upload your Contacts information; we will request their name and email address. If you give us your password to upload these Contacts through a web based email provider we shall not store your password after you have uploaded your Contacts’ addresses. You may also choose to invite friends through your connected social networks. You assume all responsibility for ensuring that when you select a friend to be invited by email, application or SMS that the person wants to receive that invite from you and has consented to receiving the communication.

    5. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA AND INFORMATION

    In summary, we process data, including personal data and photographs, that we collect from you for the following legitimate purposes:

    The following sections provide more detail on how we use your information, including personal data.

    5A. Providing our products and services

    We use the information we collect about you:
    (1) to fulfil your requests for our products, programs, and services;
    (2) to respond to your enquiries about our offerings;
    (3) to provide, personalize, and improve our offerings; and
    (4) to offer you other products, programs, or services from us and our affiliates, business partners, and selected third parties that we believe may be of interest to you.

    We may also use information that we collect about you to
    (1) perform research and analysis about your use of, or interest in, our products, services, or content, or products, services, or content offered by others; or
    (2) develop and display content and advertising tailored to your interests on our Website and other websites, including providing our advertisements to you when you visit other websites.

    We use the information we collect for our online forums and communities to provide an inter-active experience. We use this information to facilitate participation in these online forums and communities and, on one or more occasions, to offer you products, programs, or services.
    If you choose to submit content, we may publish your screen name and other information you have provided to us on our Website, the Internet, or elsewhere.

    5B. Profiling

    To suggest matches to you we perform “profiling” on your data which means our system analyses your data and works out who best to match you with, and suggests those matches to you. Profiling and associated automated decision making is conducted on the lawful basis of being necessary to provide the Services to you, or, where not appropriate, your consent.

    5C. Communications

    We use information about you to communicate with you, including:
    (1) to notify you when we make changes to our terms;
    (2) to otherwise enforce or exercise any rights in our terms;
    (3) to fulfil a request by you for an online newsletter;
    (4) to confirm purchasers you have made through our Website; or
    (5) to contact you about your account with us (including managing your account and providing you with customer support).

    If offered, you may also choose to receive push notifications from us on your mobile device. Please note that any communications from other users are through our internal systems, which we use to match the message to you and generate an email notice without disclosing any information aside from your chosen screen name and the information contained in your profile.
    We use the information that you provide about others to allow us to send them invitations, gifts, cards, or other content on your behalf or through our Website. Occasionally, we also may use this information to offer products, programs, or services to them.

    5D. Mobile device data usage

    When you access our Website on a mobile device, we may use the information collected for any purpose stated in this privacy policy.

    5E. Use of non-personal information

    We use aggregate information about our users and non-personal information that we collect to improve the design, functionality, and content of our Website and to allow us to personalize your experience with our Website and offerings. We use this information
    (1) to provide, maintain, personalize, protect, improve, and develop our products, programs, and services and to operate our business;
    (2) to analyze usage and performance of our Website (including to perform ad tracking and website or mobile application analytics); and
    (3) for us and our affiliates, business partners, and selected third parties to offer you products, programs, or services.

    5F. Safety and security

    We may monitor your activity to ensure that you and other users are complying with our terms and conditions, and our privacy policy, and to monitor any suspicious activity on our sites. This may include monitoring your photos, content, profiles, message and chat histories and other activities you perform on the site.

    5G. Creation of duplicate profiles across our network of sites and services

    When you sign up to any one of our Services we will send you an email shortly afterwards advising that we have created a duplicate profile on our Partner Sites to enhance your chance of finding a suitable match. When we email you about this you will have the option to decline this service, which costs nothing extra.

    5H. Important notice about how we use your photographs

    As we explain in our terms and conditions, which you choose to accept when signing up to, and then continuing to use our services, when you upload a photo to any of our Services you are allowing us to use that photo for advertising and other commercial purposes, royalty free. For full details please refer to our terms and conditionsLicence to My Content. This may include your image, likeness, name, age and closest city, being used in marketing materials such as promotional emails to members, or social media advertisements. You have the right to revoke this licence at any time as explained in the terms and conditions.

    5J. How we use your information about your Contacts

    If you choose to upload your Contact’s name and email address and/or mobile number you are allowing us to send an email or social network or mobile invitation on your behalf, inviting your Contact to join the Services. We will store your Contact’s name and email address solely for the purposes of inviting them to sign up to our Services and for associating your Contact with you and other people they may know. If your Contact does not want us to store their email address which you uploaded to our Services, they can ask us to remove it by contacting our support team. We will not store your Contacts information after invitations (up to a maximum of 3) have been sent. Your Contacts will then only receive future emails from us if they choose to accept the invitation and join our Services, or if you use any of our tools to share experiences with your Contacts and you input their email address for us to use again.

    6. SHARING YOUR INFORMATION

    6A. Legal disclosures

    We may be required by law e.g. through potential or actual litigation, court order, public or governmental authorities, or rules and regulations within or out with your country of residence to disclose all or part of your information to third parties. We may also deem it necessary to make such a disclosure in the event of an issue of national security, law enforcement or other such similar situations as we deem necessary including, for example, allegations of alleged infringement of copyright, trade marks or other third parties’ rights by users or any criminal activity.

    6B. Within our Partner Sites and our own business group

    As previously stated, to increase your chances of meeting other users, we may make your profile visible on our Partner Sites. In doing so, we will comply with all applicable laws, and you have the opportunity to decline this service. This means that their may be personal data shared with other entities, each of which has a privacy policy to protect your data in terms no less than this policy.

    Within our corporate family of companies, we may require to share your information to allow us to provide the services to you, as our companies support us in the context of being service providers, which may include, data hosting, server maintenance, customer support, data analytics, marketing, legal and financial services, payment processing and safety and security services.

    6C. Change of ownership of the business

    As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy assets or ownership. In such transactions, the information we have collected about you will generally be one of the transferred business assets. We may share information about you with:

    6D. Third Party Service Providers

    We share your personal information with third party service providers in order to provide the Services to you including third parties who assist us with information processing, credit and payment processing, fulfilment of your subscription order, managing and hosting data, conducting consumer research or satisfaction surveys. These disclosures relate to providing our Services, improving our Services and delivering targeted advertising to you. We do not provide your contact details to third parties for direct marketing by them to you without your express consent. We do not store credit card details nor do we share customer details with any 3rd parties.

    6E. Business partners

    When you register or make purchases on our Website or click-through our advertisements offered on third-party websites or applications, we may share your personal information with the businesses with which we collaborate to offer you the applicable products, services, or any advertisements. When you elect to engage in a particular merchant’s offer or program, you authorize us to provide your email address and other information to that merchant.

    6F. Advertisement servers

    On our services, third parties may present or serve advertisements, provide us with data collection, reporting, ad response measurement, and website analytics, as well as assist with delivery of relevant marketing messages and advertisements. These third parties may view, edit, or set their own cookies. The use of these technologies by these third parties is subject to their own privacy policies and governed by this privacy policy. They may also obtain information about other applications that you have downloaded to your mobile device, the mobile websites you visit, and other information about you or your device in order to help analyze and serve anonymous targeted advertising on the Website and elsewhere.

    6G. Aggregated or non-personal information

    We may share your non-personal information we collect under any of the above circumstances. We may also share it with other companies and third parties to develop and deliver targeted advertising on our Website and on websites or applications of third parties, and to analyze and report on advertising you see. We may combine non-personal information we collect with additional non-personal information collected from other sources.

    7. MARKETING

    (a) When we market to you directly about our products and services
    We may share your information with our Partner Sites to develop and deliver targeted advertising to you of our Partner Sites and products and services, or to help us to prepare marketing reports. We may send you information about our Partner Sites products and services, news and offers, and selected third party products and services that we think may be of interest to you. We may do this by contacting you through your email address or mobile phone number that you have provided. Any communication received from us will clearly state that it is being sent by us. You have the option to opt-out of our marketing communications at any time (see below).

    (b) When third parties market to you (Our “third party Partner Services”)
    If you have consented to receive marketing communications from third parties, referred to as Partner Services, your data may be passed on to such third parties as we enter into data sharing agreements with, from time to time, for marketing and analytical reporting purposes. We cannot be held liable for the content of the third party’s communications or products/services they are promoting. If you have provided this consent, but change your mind, you can opt-out at any time (see below). Please be advised that you will also require to contact the individual third parties who have been marketing to you if you wish to stop receiving their communications directly.

    (c) Opting Out of Marketing
    If you change your mind about the marketing consent you have granted to us, you can amend your preferences under the “My Account” section of your chosen Site or emailing us at [email protected]

    8. WHERE WE STORE YOUR DATA

    The personal data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a location which is different to where you ordinarily reside, in particular, if you are a resident of the European Economic Area ('EEA') we may transfer your data outside of the EEA to countries including but not limited to Canada where our servers are located. By submitting your personal data to us, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy and we enter into appropriate binding processor agreements with any such parties in compliance with Data Laws.

    9. HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR DATA FOR

    Generally speaking, we only store data for as long as it is necessary to provide products and Services to you and others, with information typically being held until you cancel your membership.

    For data storage purposes however our users are considered as either being:
    (a) Active Users; this means you regularly log on to our Services and use the Services in any way;
    (b) Inactive Users: this means that you have not cancelled your account but you haven’t logged in for 9 months, or conducted any activity on our Services in that time;
    (c) Cancelled: this means that you have followed our cancellation process and actively cancelled your membership.

    (a) Active Users
    If you are an Active User we will store your data until you cancel your account.

    (b) Inactive Users
    If you are an Inactive User, you should be aware that we will continue to store your data until you cancel you account, including continue to market to you. Just because you haven’t logged on for a few months, we hope you will return to use the Services regularly and we want your information to be there for your convenience so you should be aware that you will still appear in our search results for other users, and your profile will remain visible. The responsibility to change your preferences or cancel your account lies with you.

    (c) Cancelled Users
    If you are a Cancelled User, we will delete all of your data 9 months after the date of cancellation. It is important that we retain your data for this short period after cancellation to ensure that we can answer any payment or other account related queries, or provide information to third parties in line with our disclosure provisions outlined in this policy e.g. assisting police investigations. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may still be viewable and/or accessed on the Internet to the extent such information has been previously shared with others, or copied or stored by other users or to the extent such information has been shared with search engines. We cannot control this, nor do we accept any liability for this. If you have given third party applications or websites access to your personal information they may retain such information to the extent permitted under their terms of service or privacy policies.

    (d) Storage of activity data
    Whilst we retain your Personal Data, Sensitive Personal Data and Anonymous Data as outlined at (a) to (c) above, there are some features of our Services that we store data in respect of, for different periods of time. For example, messages are only stored for 30 days, winks and other similar activities are stored for 10 days. All other profile and activity information including photographs, blocked list, search histories etc. are stored until 9 months after your account is cancelled.

    (e) Banned and terminated users
    If your account is ever terminated by us, or you are detected as a potential or actual scammer, or a potential or otherwise threat to our business or our users, your email address will be retained on our internal blacklist for as long as we deem necessary to protect the business and its users.

    10. SECURITY

    Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to the Site; any transmission is at your own risk. We take reasonable administrative, physical, and electronic measures designed to safeguard and protect your information from unauthorized access or disclosure. This includes using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts the personal information you input, and storing your information in encrypted form behind a firewall designed to block access from outside our network. Although we use commercially reasonable efforts to safeguard the privacy of your information, transmissions on the Internet cannot be made absolutely secure. Moreover, we cannot assure you that your personal information that we collect will not be used or disclosed inconsistently with this privacy policy. We assume no responsibility or liability for disclosure of any of your information due to errors in transmission, unauthorized third-party access, or other causes beyond our reasonable control. We recommend and encourage you (and all our members) to think carefully about the information they disclose about themselves.