Privacy Policy

A – Introduction

We take the privacy of visitors to our website very seriously, and we are committed to protecting their privacy. On this Privacy Policy page, our visitors will find a detailed explanation of how we handle their personal information.

When you visit our website for the first time and agree to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy, you consent to our use of cookies every time you visit our website.

B. Collection of Personal Information

The following personal information may be collected, stored, and used:  

• Your geographical location, operating system, and information about your computer, including your IP address, browser type, and version.
• Information about your visits to and use of our website, including the referral source, what you view on the page, navigation paths on the site, and the duration of your visit.
• Information you enter when registering on our website, such as your name and email address.
• Information you enter when creating a profile on our website – for example, date of birth, profile pictures, gender, educational status, and job or experience details.
• Information you enter on our website, such as your email address and name, for the purpose of setting up subscriptions to our email messages and/or newsletters.
• Information you enter while using our services on our website.
• Information that is generated while using our website, including the dates and frequency of your use of our website and the circumstances under which you use our website.  
• Information relating to any services you use from us, or any transaction you conduct through our website, which includes your phone number, address, name, and email address.
• Information you post on our website for the purpose of sharing it online, which includes the content of your posts, your profile pictures, and your username.
• Information contained in any communications you send to us via our website or email, including the metadata and shared content.
• Any other personal information you send to our website or share through our website.

Before you disclose to us the personal information of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that personal information in accordance with this policy.  

C. Using Your Personal Information  

Personal information that you enter and share on our website will be used for the purposes outlined in this policy or on the relevant pages of our website. We may use your personal information for the following purposes:

• Administering and organizing our website and business on the internet.
• Personalizing our website to be more suitable for you on the internet.
• Enabling your use of some of our services available on our website.
• Sending you promotional or non-promotional messages.
• Sending you email notifications that you have specifically requested.
• Sending you our email newsletter if you have requested it from us (you can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time by informing us).  
• Sending you marketing communications relating to our services or carefully selected third-party services that we believe may be of interest to you, by email or similar technology (you can unsubscribe from these communications at any time by informing us).
• Providing third parties with statistical information about our users (however, these third parties will not be able to identify any individual user from that information).  
• Dealing with complaints and inquiries made by you or about you to us on our website.
• Protecting our website from fraud and maintaining its security and the security of its users.
• Verifying your compliance with the terms and laws governing your use of our website (including monitoring private messages sent through our website’s private messaging service).
• Other uses.

If you submit personal information for publication on our website, we will publish it for you and may otherwise use it in accordance with the license you grant to us.  

Your privacy settings can be used to limit the publication of your information on our website and can be adjusted using the privacy controls on our website.  

We will not provide any third party, without your express consent, with your personal information for the purpose of direct marketing by any other party.

D. Disclosure of Personal Information

We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, third-party employees, or any government agency for the purposes set out in this policy.

We may disclose your personal information for the following reasons:

• As required by government request or by law.
• In connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings.
• To defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention).

Except as provided in this policy, we will not provide your personal information to third parties.  

E. International Data Transfers

Information that we collect may sometimes be stored, processed in, or transferred between the countries in which we operate to enable us to use the information in accordance with this policy.  

Information that we collect may be transferred to countries that do not have data protection laws equivalent to those in force in the European Economic Area: these countries are the United States of America, Russia, Japan, China, and India.  

We cannot prevent the use or misuse by others of the personal information that you publish on our website or submit for publication on our website and which is available via the internet worldwide.

You expressly agree to the transfers of personal information described in this Section (E).

F. Retention of Personal Information  

Section (G) sets out our data retention procedures and policies, which are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations regarding the retention and deletion of personal information.

Personal information that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.  

Notwithstanding the other provisions of this Section (F), we will retain documents (including electronic documents) containing personal data:  

• To the extent that we are required to do so by law.
• If we believe that the documents may be relevant to any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings.  
• In order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention).  

G. Security of Your Personal Information

We undertake to take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to protect the security of your personal information and to prevent the loss, misuse, or alteration of your personal information.

We undertake to store all the personal information you provide on our secure servers (password- and firewall-protected).  

You acknowledge your agreement to this policy, and you understand that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our website confidential. We will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our website).

H. Amendments  

We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new and updated version on our website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are familiar with any updates to this policy, and we may notify you of updates to this policy by email or through the private messaging system on our website.  

I. Your Rights

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you, and the provision of such information will be subject to the following:  

• The payment of fees if applicable.
• The provision of appropriate evidence of your identity, such as a copy of your ID card, passport, or a utility bill certified by a notary public.

We may withhold personal information that you request to the extent permitted by law.

You may instruct us at any time not to process your personal information for marketing purposes.

In practice, you will usually expressly agree in advance to our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, and we will subsequently provide you with an opportunity to opt out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes.  

J. Third-Party Websites

Our website contains hyperlinks to and details of third-party websites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.  

K. Updating Information

Please let us know if the personal information that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated so that we can assist you in correcting and updating it.  

L. Cookies

Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies. {Use applicable wording We use only session cookies / only persistent cookies / both session and persistent cookies on our website.}  

Here are the names of the cookies that we use on our website and the purposes for which they are used: We use Google Analytics and AdWords on our website to recognize a user’s computer, their geographical location, and track them as they browse the website in order to improve the website’s usability, analyze website usage, administer the website, prevent fraud, improve website security, personalize the website for each user, and ensure that advertisements are relevant and of interest to the user.  

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies; for example:

• In Internet Explorer (version 10) you can block cookies using the cookie handling override settings available by clicking “Tools,” “Internet Options,” “Privacy,” and then “Advanced.”
• In Firefox (version 24) you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools,” “Options,” “Privacy,” selecting “Use custom settings for history” from the drop-down menu, and unticking “Accept cookies from sites.”  
• In Chrome (version 29), you can block all cookies by accessing the “Customize and control” menu, clicking “Settings,” “Show advanced settings,” “Content settings,” and then selecting “Block sites from setting any data” under the “Cookies” heading.  

Blocking all cookies will have a significant negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features and services on our website. On the other hand, you can delete cookies already stored on your computer; for example:  

• In Internet Explorer (version 10), you can manually delete cookie files (you can find instructions for doing so at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278835).  
• In Firefox (version 24), you can delete cookies by clicking “Tools,” “Options,” and “Privacy”, then selecting “Use custom settings for history”, clicking “Show Cookies,” and then clicking “Remove All Cookies.”
• In Chrome (version 29), you can delete all cookies by accessing the “Customize and control” menu, clicking “Settings,” clicking “Show advanced settings,” clicking “Clear browsing data,” and then selecting “Delete cookies and other site and plug-in data” before clicking “Clear browsing data.”  

Deleting cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of our websites.