A. Introduction
Your service provider is STORYMATRIX PTE. LTD., a company operating under the laws of Singapore, 5001 BEACH ROAD, #07-37, GOLDEN MILE COMPLEX, SINGAPORE(199588). We recognizes that your privacy is very important, and we take it seriously. Your privacy and trust are very important to us, and it is our commitment to being transparent about the use of collected information.
This Privacy Policy describes Gostory’s policies and procedures on the collection, use, disclosure, and sharing of your personal information or personal data, and the choices you can make about how we use this information when you access or use our Site, Application, and/or Services.
Note that Gostory’s Terms of Service apply to this Privacy Policy. By accessing or using the Gostory website and application, you are consenting that you unconditionally accept this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms found on this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Gostory Services.
THIS PRIVACY POLICY IS IMPORTANT. WE HOPE YOU WILL TAKE THE TIME TO READ IT CAREFULLY.
B. Age restrictions
Gostory is not intended for children. Children under the age of 16 must not use our Site, Application, and/or Services for any purpose. Gostory will never knowingly solicit or accept personally identifiable information or other content from a user or visitor who Gostory knows is under 16 years of age. If Gostory discovers that a user under 16 years of age has created an account, or that a user or visitor under 16 years of age has posted personally identifiable information or other content to the Service, Gostory will terminate the account and remove the information or other content.
Users between 16 and 18 (each a “Teen”) may not access or use the Service unless (i) both the Teen and their parent or legal guardian have first agreed to these Terms of Service; and (ii) the Teen uses an account established by their parent or legal guardian, under such parent or guardian’s supervision, and with such parent or guardian’s permission. If you permit a Teen to use the Services, you hereby agree to these Terms of Service on behalf of both yourself and the Teen. You further agree that you are solely responsible for any and all use of the Service by your Teen regardless of whether such use was authorized by you.
C. Data Collection
We want you to understand the types of information we collect as you use our services. We use this information to operate, develop and improve our services– from figuring out basic stuff such as which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the author who matter most to you online or which stories you might like.
When you interact with our Site, Application, and/or Services, we collect information that could be used to identify you (“Personal Data”). Some of the information we collect is stored in a manner that cannot be linked back to you (“Non-Personal Data”).
When you log in, we collect information that we store with your account (typically your nickname, email address, and a password for your account), which we treat as personal information. This log information may include but not limited to your Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your query and cookie data. If you log into Gostory with a social networking credential, such as with a third-party account, we will ask permission to access basic information from that account, such as your name and email address. You can stop sharing that information with us at any time by removing Gostory’s access to that account. When you do not log in to our services, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers tied to the application and device you’re using. This collection helps us do things such as maintain your language preferences across browsing sessions.
We collect your payment information if you are a paying customer. This information is required to complete a commercial transaction on our Applications and our Sites. We use this information to enable and fulfill your transaction. If you choose to use any third-party’s service to finalize and pay for your order, you will provide your credit card number directly to the third-party. The privacy policy of the third-party will apply to the information you provide on its website.
If you choose to participate in our survey, we may request certain Information (including Personal Data and Non-Personal Data) from you, and this information will be used to provide personalized help and instructions.
The information we collect and how that information is used, depends on how you use our services and how you manage your privacy controls.
D. Use of your data
Gostory uses your data as necessary to perform our contract with you and for our legitimate business interests. The purpose of processing and using your data is listed below:
To help us provide and administer our Site, Application, and/or Services, authenticate users for security purposes, provide personalized user features and access, process transactions, conduct research, develop new features, and improve the features, algorithms, and usability of our Site, Application, and/or Services.
To communicate with you about your use of our Site, Application, and/or Services, product announcements, and software updates, as well as respond to your requests for assistance, including providing account verification support if you’re having difficulty accessing your account.
To send you direct marketing information and special offers about our products and services through inbox messages. If you do not want to receive any above-mentioned messages, please contact us through support@gostory.com at the time you create your account or any point thereafter.
To display User Content associated with your account and make sure it is available to you when you use our Services.
To calculate aggregate statistics on the number of unique devices using our Site, Application, and/or Services, and detect and prevent fraud and misuse of those.
To analyze what features or actions are taken within our Site, Application, and/or Service to improve your experience.
To verify parental and guardian consent to use Gostory by an underage minor through a payment procedure.
To facilitate your purchases within our Site, Application, and/or Service and validate your real name to facilitate the creation of your Pay account.
To process your payment using a third-party’s payments platform.
For example, we will know how many users access a specific page on the Site and which links they clicked on. We use this aggregated information to better understand and optimize the Site.
If you choose to use our service or provide your information to us, your information may be transferred to, processed and maintained on servers or databases located outside of the country or jurisdiction where your are located, including Singapore. Such countries or regions may have laws that are less prospective than the country or regions in which you reside. If you do not want your information transferred to or processed or maintained outside of the country or jurisdiction where you are located, you should not use our Site, Application, and/or Services.
E. Cookies
We use cookies to provide, protect, and promote our products.
A “cookie” is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. Cookies can remain on your device for different periods of time. Some cookies are “session cookies”, meaning that they exist only while your browser or the application is open. These are deleted automatically once you close your browser or application. Other cookies are “permanent cookies”, meaning that they survive after your browser or application is closed. The cookies can be used by the Services to recognize your device when you open and use the Services again.
We use cookies to improve our service quality and better understand how people interact with us. We use cookies to:
Verify log-in information.
Track traffic flow and patterns of travel in connection with the Services.
Understand the total number of visitors to the Services on an ongoing basis and the types of devices.
Monitor the performance of the Services and continually improve it.
Customize and enhance your online experience.
Provide customer service to you.
You have the right to choose whether or not to accept cookies. However, please note that if you choose to refuse cookies, you may not be able to use the full functionality of the Services.
Most devices (in the case of mobile applications) and browsers (in the case of web apps and pages) are initially set up to accept cookies and allow you to change your cookie settings. These settings will typically be found in your browser’s “options” or “preferences” menu. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent.
F. Information Sharing
a. Shared information on our Site, Application, and/or Services
Any information that you include in your publicly-visible Gostory profile, which may include your profile ID, nickname, photo and your personal introduction will be shared on our Site, Application, and/or Services to maintain your account in accordance with your instructions and requests.
b. Sharing Your Data outside of our Site, Application, and/or Services
Some Gostory-related features allow you to provide Shared Information to those outside of your Gostory network. For example, publicly accessible blogs and forums, or certain social media features within Gostory (such as "plug-ins" (which create a direct link between two websites)) allow you to re-post and disclose Shared Information. If you share information using these features, third parties unrelated to us may be able to see and use it.
The information we share with such a third party is described to you when you first use that service or feature, and we require that the third party provide the same or equal protection of user data as stated in this policy. You can control which third parties have access to this information in your account. You can withdraw your agreement to the sharing of that information at any time by following the instructions set out here. Please note that if you ask us not to share that information with the third party, you may no longer be able to use that service or feature. We are not responsible for any third party use of any Information provided by you to them.
We do not rent or sell your personal information to other companies or individuals unless we have your consent.
G. Information Security
We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or data destruction.
We restrict access to your personal information to our staff who need to know that information to operate, develop or improve our services.
H. Updating your Information We provide mechanisms for updating and correcting your personally identifying information and non-personal information for many of our services.
You also have the right to access personal information we hold about you, how we use it, and who we share it with. You also have the right to correct that information.
You can access and correct your personal information by logging into your account at any time.
With respect to correction requests, where we agree that the Personal Information is inaccurate or incomplete, we will try to tell any third party to whom we have disclosed the relevant Personal Information so that they can rectify the Personal Information too.
I. Deletion of your data
You can request deletion of your data at any time by contact us at support@gostory.com. We will evaluate such requests on a case by case basic. We may keep some of your data for as long as reasonably necessary for our legitimate business interests, including fraud detection and prevention and to comply with our legal obligations including tax, legal reporting, and auditing obligations. Sometimes, your request will only be satisfied by closing your account.
You have the ability to delete your Account, and you should understand that upon deletion of your Account, you will lose the right to access or use all or part of the Platform.
J. Changes to this policy
We change this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. We always indicate the date when the last changes were published and we offer access to archived versions for your review. If changes are significant, we’ll provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, inbox notification of Privacy Policy changes). Such changes will be used for any and all the information provided by those who have visited, used, or accessed the Service at the time they created their account or any point thereafter. Please note that, by accessing or using the Gostory Platform, you are consenting that you unconditionally accept the updated Privacy Policy.
K. Third-party Advertisers, Links to Other Platforms
Gostory allows other companies, called third-party ad servers or ad networks, to serve advertisements within Gostory’s Platform. These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to send the advertisements and links that appear on Gostory directly to you. They automatically receive your IP address when the advertising happens. They may also use other technologies (such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons) to measure their advertisements’ effectiveness and personalize the advertising content you see.
Gostory does not provide any personally identifiable information to these third-party ad servers or ad networks without your consent or except as part of a specific program or feature for which you will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out.
You should consult these third-party ad servers or ad networks’ respective privacy policies for more information on their practices and instructions on how to opt-out of certain practices. Gostory’s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or websites. Any data obtained by third-party ad servers subsequently shared with Gostory is maintained and dealt with by Gostory under this privacy policy.
L. Contact us
If you have any questions or concerns about this policy, You may email us at the following email addresses: support@gostory.com.