This Policy applies to all Personal Data that is collected in relation to our Services.

We may apply individual privacy policies or additional provisions to terms of use or this Policy (collectively, “Individual Policies”) to specific services. The Individual Policies explain what kind of Personal Data we will collect, and how we will use and share such Personal Data, for such specific services, and the other policies that are applicable to such specific services. If there is any inconsistency between the subject matter of the Individual Policies and this Policy, the Individual Policies shall prevail.

In connection with the application of this Policy, LINE is the controller of the processing of Personal Data.

We will process Personal Data only to the extent permitted under the Applicable Laws according to this Policy and only within the scope described in this Policy.

While we may provide various translations of this Policy as a reference, to the extent permitted under Applicable Laws, the Japanese version applies to users using our Services in Japan, the Korean version applies to users using our Services in Korea, and the English version applies to users using our Services in other countries or regions.

3.a.i.Information to be registered at the time of creating an account

Before you start using our Services, we may ask you to provide your contact information for creating a LINE account (“Account”).

For example:
● In order to create an Account, you need to register your phone number.

Please note that we assign an internal identification code (“Internal Identifier”) to each Account created by our users.

3.a.ii.Information to be registered for accessing your Account from multiple devices or transferring your Account from one device to another

If you wish to access your Account from multiple devices, or wish to transfer your Account from one device to another, you may need to register your phone number or email address in addition to the information that you registered at the time that you created your Account.

3.a.iii.Information required for communication and transaction

When you wish to use a specific service to purchase a product, make an inquiry or participate in a promotional event or survey, we may ask you to provide information required for communicating with you and conducting transactions with you depending on the nature of the transaction, and collect and store such information.

For example:
● In order for us to answer any requests or questions that you send to our customer support, we may ask you to provide information required for identifying and investigating the event or resolving the problem, such as your contact information including your phone number or email address, and details of the trouble that you have encountered.
● If you choose to participate in surveys or promotional events, we may ask you to provide information such as your name, address, phone number, email address, gender, and date of birth in order to verify your identity, enable you to participate in a drawing, and to deliver any prizes you may win.
● If you purchase a product or a service, you will be required to provide information for making the payment of such product or service. Since credit card settlements are processed by appropriate third-party payment agencies, we will not retain your credit card number or security code.

3.a.iiii.Profile and information related to your friend relationship

When you use our Services, we will collect the profile that you set, and information related to your friend relationship.

Profile information
Profile information includes information such as the icon image, display name, status message, search ID (“LINE ID”) and birthday that you set or disclose in order to connect to other users. Profile information (excluding information that you set as “private”) will be disclosed and made available to other users and third parties such as companies operating an official account. A LINE ID is an identification name set in your Account to make it easier for your friends to find you in our Services, and your friends can find you through your LINE ID. You may also choose not to allow other users to contact you using your LINE ID.

Address book
We offer an “Auto Add Friends” feature which automatically adds other users as your friends in our Services when you upload information of your friend in your address book on your device. We will access only the phone numbers registered in your mobile device’s address book only when you have enabled this feature.
We will use the phone numbers in your address book only for automatically adding your friends, recommending possible friends, and preventing unauthorized use.

3.b.i.Status of use of our Services

We automatically collect information related to when and how you used our Services. The collected information includes the status of use of various features such as the date and time that you activated our individual apps, length of time that you used our individual services, results of searches conducted in the apps, additional services that were purchased, and contents and ads that were viewed or tapped.

3.b.ii.Location information

We may collect the location information of your device when you share your location information with your friends, or in order for us to provide optimized search results to you. When you do not accept sending your location information by your mobile device settings, location information will not be sent to us.

Furthermore, in certain countries or regions (*2), when we provide customized contents or ads to you, such as weather forecasts and local news near the areas where you are located, we may separately ask you to generally provide your location information. In the foregoing case, you may at any time choose not to provide your location information by your LINE App settings.

Even when you do not accept sending your location information, we may estimate your approximate location from network information such as your IP address.

3.b.iii.Apps, browsers, devices and network information

We will collect information related to the device, browser and the app that you are using (ad identifier for identifying the device/browser, Cookie ID and device type, OS, language/time zone setting, browser type, app version, etc.), and network information (telecommunications carrier’s name, IP address, etc.).
We may also associate the collected ad identifier with the Internal Identifier.

We may collect Personal Data from third parties including our group companies (referring to our subsidiaries or affiliates, wherein the definition thereof includes domestic and overseas subsidiaries and affiliates according to the “Regulation on Terminology, Forms, and Preparation Methods of Financial Statements” of Japan; hereinafter the same).
For example, we will collect Personal Data from third parties in the following cases.

3.c.i.Personal Data collected from group companies

We may collect your Personal Data from our group companies according to their terms or policies. For the privacy policy that is applicable to the individual services provided by our group companies, please confirm the same in the individual services.

3.c.ii.Personal Data collected from business partners

We may collect your Personal Data from our business partners. There are cases where we collect Personal Data from a business partner operating its own service, and from a business partner operating a service that is linked to our Services such as an official account or LINE App login. For example, when you create your Account using an external SNS account, we will collect the identifier of that external SNS account.
In addition, we may obtain information such as your identifier (Internal Identifier, ad identifier etc.), one-way encrypted (hashed) email address and telephone number, IP address, part of your device information (OS, etc.), your attribute information and your action history, including your purchase and browsing history, from our business partners, in order to use the same for both sending official account messages from our business partners and distributing ads, as well as measuring ad effectiveness, creating and providing statistical information and for other purposes.

We may collect login records from plug-ins of third-party websites and apps equipped with a plug-in feature such as “Send by LINE” or “Like”, and URL information of websites equipped with a plug-in feature that you visited while being logged onto the LINE app on your browser by associating such login records and URL information with your LINE Account. Such collected data will be used for understanding how you are using our Services, as well as for the maintenance and improvement, security, and prevention of unauthorized or fraudulent use or abuse, of such Services. When you are logged out of the LINE App, the foregoing information will be used only for the purpose of security and prevention of unauthorized or fraudulent use or abuse in a form where individuals cannot be specified.

Furthermore, in certain countries or regions, when our business partner uses our Services, we may collect the following Personal Data.

When we directly collect Personal Data from services operated by a third party such as when our business partner uses our Services as described above, we request our business partner to take lawful and proper measures.

We will use information required for providing services that you requested, answering your inquiries, and hosting promotional events.
For example, in the following cases, we will use Personal Data for the provision and maintenance of services.

● To verify your identity, through comparison with your registered information, when you log onto the LINE App or succeed your Account in changing your device;
● To post messages or convey the status of “read” of posted messages;
● To confirm the history of messages viewed with a certain device on a different device;
● To set or disclose profiles for building and managing connections between users, and to search for other users using the registered information, or enable such search;
● To process invoices when a user purchases a product or uses a paid service;
● To examine your status of use of our Services in order to reply to your inquiry to our customer support;
● To deliver any prizes you may have won in a promotional event to your designated address; and/or
● To notify you of important changes to our Services such as the revision of terms, planned discontinuation of services, or change of features.

We will use Personal Data for the development and improvement of our Services for providing better services, products and contents to users toward the future.
For example, in the following cases, we will use Personal Data for the development and improvement of services and contents:

● To improve our Services by creating statistics and models related to the use of our Services;
● To develop new services and contents by understanding the trend from the purchase history of stickers;
● To improve the screen design by understanding the frequency that each tab in the app is being used; or
● To conduct surveys related to our services that we are currently providing, or may provide in the future.

We will use Personal Data and promote security measures and measures against unauthorized use to maintain an environment where our Services can be used at all times, and users can use our Services with a sense of security on a daily basis.
For example, in the following cases, we will use Personal Data for the security and prevention of unauthorized use:

● To confirm whether there is any breach of terms of use, any illegal act, unauthorized access or any other unauthorized use;
● To monitor and confirm the details of reports and illegal postings, etc., and to develop tools for preventing unauthorized use by ways such as analyzing the details of such reports and illegal postings, etc.; or
● To verify facts or contact you in the event of any unauthorized use or the possibility of any unauthorized use.

We will utilize Personal Data for providing recommended contents, including ads, to each user.
For example, in the following cases, we will use Personal Data for providing optimized contents to users:

● To display recommendations of other stickers with a strong relevance with the purchased sticker;
● When there is another user who has added as a friend an official account that is the same as the official account that you have added as a friend, to introduce another official account that such user has added as a friend;
● To measure the effectiveness of the distributed ad; or
● To send and distribute official account messages and surveys, etc. to you by ways such as associating or combining information obtained from our business partners, such as your identifier (Internal Identifier, ad identifier, etc.), hashed telephone number and email address, with your Personal Data that we possess.

Furthermore, in certain countries or regions (*3), we will use Personal Data for distributing recommended contents, such as optimized ads, to users. Such use includes the following examples:

● To distribute information of strong relevance to your current location regarding facilities, attractions, coupons, etc. to be provided through an official account;
● To introduce information of events being conducted and valuable coupons that can be used, near your current location or places where you often visit;
● To display ads related to our business partner’s website that you accessed;
● To estimate attributes such as the gender, age group, and interests of users from the official accounts that have been added as a friend, purchased stickers, Services that are often used, contents that were recently posted on LINE VOOM, and history of service use such as search words that were recently used, and distribute our ads or third-party ads that may of interest to users having similar attributes;
● To distribute our ads or third-party ads with Personal Data such as the birthday, phone number and email address registered by users (including cases of distributing ads of our Services on services operated by third parties) as the key;
● To distribute ads to you by ways such as associating or combining information obtained from our business partners, such as your identifier (Internal Identifier, ad identifier, etc.), hashed telephone number and email address, part of your device information (OS, etc.) and IP address, with your Personal Data that we possess;
● To measure the effectiveness of distributed ads by ways such as using your identifier (Internal Identifier, ad identifier, etc.), part of your device information (OS, etc.) and IP address, etc. obtained from our business partners; or
● To provide our business partners with statistical information prepared by ways such as associating or combining information obtained from our business partners, such as your identifier (Internal Identifier, ad identifier, etc.), hashed telephone number and email address, attribute information, and your action history, including your purchase and browsing history, with your Personal Data that we possess, such as your identifier (Internal Identifier, ad identifier, etc.), hashed telephone number and email addresses, attribute information and your status of use of our Services, including your history of accessing ads.

We are offering a detailed explanation to users residing in countries or regions where this feature is available. For details, please refer to “Optimization of services by attributes” (page is provided only in the language of the country that is offering the feature).

In principle, we obtain your consent when we process your Personal Data. If, however, permitted under Applicable Laws, we may process your Personal Data with any of the following legal basis:

(1) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract;
(2) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject (e.g., when following the information disclosure orders based upon laws and regulations announced by government agencies);
(3) processing is necessary in order to protect vital interests of yours or of another individual;
(4) processing is necessary to investigate, prevent and take measures against illegal or suspected illegal acts;
(5) processing is necessary for the legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by your privacy related rights, interests, and freedom (including improvement of operations or systems, prevention of fraud, maintenance of security, marketing, and research performed by us); or
(6) processing is necessary for any purpose related to public benefits or creation of archives of historical documents, or any purpose related to surveys or statistics supported by proper security measures.
For example, when we process your Personal Data for the provision and maintenance of services, development and improvement of services, and security and prevention of unauthorized use, such processing may be pursuant to the legal basis of legitimate interests indicated in (5) above.

The profile information that you registered will be processed as public information. For details, please refer to [Profile information] of 3.a.

Messages that you posted, posts made on LINE VOOM and bulletin boards, and actions such as “Like” and comments to posts of other users will be made available to third parties according to your disclosure setting and address.

The foregoing information may be copied, stored or spread by the recipient, and accessed by an unintended third-party recipient, due to the nature of digital data. When setting your profile or posting on our Services, please pay attention to the contents and scope of disclosure of such post.

We may subcontract certain services required for providing our Services (e.g.: building and operation of infrastructure, settlement, shipping, customer support, etc.) to a third party. In connection with this, we may entrust all or a part of the Personal Data to the subcontractor, including companies located in the following countries or regions.
The subcontractor will access the Personal Data only to the minimum extent required for performing the subcontracted services on our behalf, and will not use the Personal Data beyond the scope of the subcontracted services.
We will: (i) comply with Applicable Laws and sufficiently investigate the qualification as a subcontractor; (ii) take measures to have the subcontractor comply with the eight (8) principles under the OECD Privacy Guidelines by ways such as prescribing matters related to confidentiality and data protection in the contract with the subcontractor; and (iii) thereby establish a system for properly managing Personal Data.

Countries and regions to which Personal Data is transferred: Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines.

With respect to users using our Services in certain countries or regions (*4), we may share, among our group companies, including companies located in the following countries and regions, the Personal Data indicated in “3. Personal Data to be collected”. For example, in order to alleviate the trouble of creating an Account in the services provided by our group companies, our group companies may refer to the information registered with the LINE App.
As the purpose of sharing Personal Data is the same as the purpose of use described in “4. Purpose of use of Personal Data”, for the purpose of use of the party with which the Personal Data was shared, “LINE” shall be replaced with “our group company”, and “Services” shall be replaced with “services provided by our group company”.
LINE is the administrator in sharing Personal Data under the laws of Japan.
We will take measures to have our group companies with which the Personal Data is shared comply with the eight (8) principles under the OECD Privacy Guidelines by ways such as prescribing matters related to confidentiality and data protection in the contract with such group company, and thereby establish a system for properly managing Personal Data.

You can confirm our group companies in “List of Group Companies”.

In addition, please click here for the scope of our group companies to share Personal Data of users in Taiwan.

Countries and regions to which Personal Data is transferred: Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia,Korea and Singapore.

In cases where you use the services of our business partner, we may provide, to that business partner, information to be used by the business partner for identifying you (in certain countries or regions (*5), in addition to the Internal Identifier, including an ad identifier, device information such as the language setting, and attribute information).
For example,

The processing of Personal Data by our business partner shall be pursuant to the terms or policies prescribed by each business partner.

Our business partners receiving Personal Data which are located in the following countries and regions are taking measures in compliance with the eight (8) principles under the OECD Privacy Guidelines.

Countries and regions to which Personal Information is transferred: United States and Israel.

We are taking strict technical and organizational security measures in managing the collected Personal Data for respecting and protecting your privacy and confidentiality of your Personal Data, and preventing unauthorized access to your Personal Data. These measures include safety control measures based on industry standards for preventing unauthorized access to Personal Data, and disclosure, unauthorized use, falsification or destruction of Personal Data.
For example, we are taking the following measures.

● Provision of encryption feature of messages
● Strict access control based on a need-to-know basis
● 24/7 security monitoring
● External authentication for objectively evaluating our security measures
● R&D of new security technologies

Furthermore, we will never provide any means for fraudulently accessing Personal Data to a third party.
For details regarding our security measures, please also read “Security & Privacy”.
However, because no method of electronic transmission or method of data storage is perfect or impenetrable, we cannot guarantee that your Personal Data will be absolutely safe from intrusion during transmission or while stored in our systems.
To help protect your privacy and confidentiality of your Personal Data, we also need your help. Please do not share your password with others, or use the same passwords you use for other services. Also, please notify us in the event you suspect any unauthorized use of your Account or any other breach of security via our Contact Form.

LINE collects and retains Personal Data to provide our Services according to your request, fulfill any of the applicable purposes of use described in this Policy, or to comply with Applicable Laws.
Unless you request the deletion of your Account, in principle, we will retain most of your Personal Data. Once your Account is deleted, we will process your Personal Data properly according to Applicable Laws and our internal rules after retaining such Personal Data for a given period of time for the following purposes:

● to reply to inquiries;
● to resolve disputes or collect fees;
● to detect and deter fraudulent use of, or abuse of, our Services; or
● to comply with Applicable Laws.

Otherwise, we prescribe the storage period of Personal Data according to the following standards.

● We will not in any way use highly private information such as texts, images, videos and audio data sent in a talk room between users for any purpose other than the distribution of messages (including retransmission in the event of a communication failure or synchronization of messages from multiple devices) unless we have obtained your consent or such use is permitted under Applicable Laws. While we will retain the foregoing information for a minimum period, such information will subsequently be automatically deleted from our server.
● The delivery address information that we obtained for shipping the product collected in a promotional event will be deleted after a given period of time, for resolving disputes, after the shipment of the product is complete. Information that we collected for a specific purpose as described above will be promptly deleted after the lapse of a reasonable period once the purpose of such information is fulfilled.
● If you have expressly declared your intent to store your Personal Data, we may respect your intent and store your Personal Data for a long period. For example, we are providing a feature, such as the Keep feature of our LINE App, to users for expressly storing/deleting information.
● If a storage period is prescribed under Applicable Laws or the like, we will store Personal Data according to such storage period.

We may continue to retain Personal Data in a format in which individuals cannot be identified after the lapse of the storage period prescribed pursuant to Applicable Laws and our internal rules.

We may install modules of a third-party software development kit (SDK) in our Services for the following purposes:

● to analyze the status of use of our Services; and
● to distribute ads on our behalf and measure the effectiveness thereof.

With regard to your Personal Data that is processed by a third-party through a module provided by such third party, the privacy policy of such third party will apply. Please click “Embedding modules of other companies” to confirm the details regarding third-party modules.

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer when visiting a website. This text file stores information that can be read by the website operator when visiting the website again at a later date.
We may use cookies and similar web tracking technologies (web beacon, pixel etc.) for the following purposes:

● to store your login state, authenticate visitors, maintain sessions and take security measures;
● to store language settings and latest date and time of access, and improve user-friendliness;
● to provide better services by comprehending the number of accesses and the mode of use;
● to distribute ads that are more interesting to you (*3); and
● to measure the effectiveness of ads.

You can control whether or not to accept cookies based on browser settings or by using other tools. If, however, you deactivate cookies or limit the ability to set cookies, you may not be able to obtain the full benefit of the website or access all of its functions, which may limit your overall user experience.

The Services are intended for a general audience. If a minor is to use our Services and provides Personal Data, the minor must do so with the consent of his/her guardian. You represent and warrant that you have the right capacity and legal capacity required for using our Services. If you are a minor, you represent and warrant that you are using our Services with the consent of your guardian. We have voluntarily imposed age restrictions on certain Services in cases where we are unable to confirm that you are of a certain age.

Other than as referred to herein, we will be the data controller of Personal Data collected through our Services to which this Policy applies. If you have any questions or inquiries about this Policy or have any questions, complaints, concerns or comments about the processing of Personal Data in our Services, please contact us via the Contact Form or by writing to:

LINE Corporation
Attn: Privacy Policy
23rd Floor Yotsuya Tower
1-6-1 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
160-0004 Japan

Person responsible for the handling of personal data
Chief Privacy Officer

If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom, or Thailand, you may contact the Data Protection Officer, our EU representative below, our UK representative below, or Thailand representative below, or you may lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Thailand.

<Data Protection Officer>
LINE Corporation
Attn: Data Protection Officer
23rd Floor Yotsuya Tower
1-6-1 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
160-0004 Japan

<EU Representative>
PLANIT // LEGAL
Attn: LINE Corporation EU Representative
Neuer Wall 54, 20354 Hamburg, Germany
+49(0)40 60944190

<UK Representative>
DP Data Protection Services UK Ltd.
Attn: LINE Corporation
16 Great Queen Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2B 5AH, United Kingdom
[email protected]

<Thailand Representative>
Tilleke & Gibbins Digital Solutions Co., Ltd.
Attn: LINE Corporation
No. 1011 Supalai Grand Tower, 20th-26th Floors, Rama 3 Road, Chongnonsi, Yannawa, Bangkok 10120, Thailand
+662-056-5566
[email protected]

We may modify this Policy from time to time, and the latest version of the privacy policy will always be posted on this site. When we make any material changes to this Policy, we will notify you on our Services, or by other reasonable means. We encourage you to review the contents of the latest version of the privacy policy carefully.

If you do not agree to any of the changes and you no longer wish to use our Services, you may choose to close your Account. Continuing to use our Services after a notice of changes has been notified to you or published on our Services constitutes your acceptance of the changes and consent to the modified version of this Policy. We will seek your consent when required under Applicable Laws.

LINE Corporation
CEO and President - Takeshi Idezawa

Formulated on August 15, 2012
Last revised on June 1, 2022