Privacy Policy

Barely Dating (BD) Privacy Policy

This Barely Dating (henceforth 'BD') Privacy Policy describes the personal information that we collect about you, how we use and protect it, when we share it, and the choices you have that keep you in control at all times.

Important definitions

Also called Personal Information, this is information that can be traced back to an individual (contrast with Non-Personal Information and Aggregate Information).  Examples of PII include your name, address, telephone number, and email address.

If other pieces of information are linked to PII, they also become PII.  For example, if you use a nickname to chat online and give out your real name while chatting, your nickname becomes PII when linked with other PII.

Why do we process your personal information?

("Lawful basis")

We process personal information for the following reasons:

• To provide a matchmaking service
• To contact you

What Personally Identifiable Information do we collect and store?

The required personal information that we collect is as follows:

• Simple contact information (email address)
• Nickname (user name)
• Further identifying information (date of birth, gender)

We also collect the following optional personal information:

• Height and weight
• Location (country and region if applicable)
• Number of children
• Education and financial status
• Smoking, drinking, dietary habits
• COVID vaccination status
• Political leaning
• Personal introduction
• Employment and religion
• Photos (profile and/or nude)

Note that your nude photos do not include your face and are not therefore PII unless you have other identifying features such as tattoos.

Protecting your data

BD utilizes industry-standard physical, technical, and administrative security measures to safeguard the personal information that it collects.  Due to the personal nature of dating-related data, all user activity on the BD website takes place over a secure (HTTPS) connection.

Unlike many websites that are built using WordPress, Barely Dating is a dedicated website built from the ground up for efficiency, incorporating robust security measures.  Using code that is unknown to hackers, it also undergoes regular security audits to ensure maximum protection of its users' data.  WordPress, due to its open source nature, is inherently susceptible to hacking attempts and data breaches.

To further protect your data, be careful when forwarding email messages, restrict access to your computer and use passwords where appropriate.

How do we use your personal information?

We use your PII to provide a matchmaking service, to contact you regarding your BD account, and to send occasional email updates if you are accepting them.

Who do we share your personal information with?

BD may share PII with third parties only in the following cases:

1. While approving your profile or testing software, BD operations and development staff have limited access to your personal information;
2. To comply with valid legal requirements such as a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena or court order;
3. In special cases, such as in response to a physical threat to you or others, to protect property or defend or assert legal rights.

In the event that we are legally compelled to disclose your PII to a third party, we will attempt to notify you unless doing so would violate the law or court order.

Choice and consent

("Right to restrict processing")

BD will inform you, give you a choice, and seek your consent at every stage when collecting, disclosing, or otherwise using your personal information.  You may withdraw your consent at any time by clicking a Manage Your Privacy link or contacting us.

Note that if you withdraw your consent to use your personal information, we will no longer be able to provide our products and services to you, or even be able to contact you.  Note also that where we have provided or are providing services to you, your consent will be valid for so long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which consent was given, and you may not be permitted to withdraw consent to certain necessary uses and disclosures (for example, maintaining reasonable business and transaction records).

How can you access your data?

("Right of access")

You may request a copy of your personal information either through our Manage Your Privacy page or by contacting us.

How can you ensure your data is accurate?

("Right to rectification")

You are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the PII that you submit to BD.  Inaccurate information will affect the quality of service you receive, as well as our ability to contact you.  Your email address should be kept current because that it is how we communicate with you.

BD wants to ensure that the information we collect and use about you is accurate for its intended purpose and we have processes to help maintain this accuracy.  Any necessary corrections can be made either by re-entering data on the BD website, or by making specific requests via email.

We will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting you access or enabling you to make corrections.

How can you share your data with others?

("Right to data portability")

You may request a copy of your personal information in XML format either through our Manage Your Privacy page or by sending a request via email.  This XML file will be sent to you as an email attachment, which you can then use or forward as necessary.

How long do we keep your personal information?

BD will retain personal information only for the time period needed for business purposes or as required by law and will securely destroy such information thereafter.  You may request deletion of your personal information at any time through our Manage Your Privacy page.

Deleting your personal information

("Right to erasure")

If you wish to delete from our systems the PII that you have provided us with, there are various ways to accomplish this:

• Visit our Manage Your Privacy page
• Edit your profile
• Delete your account via Account Settings
• Contact us with written instructions
• Click on the appropriate action link in one of our emails to you.

Upon your request, we will delete your PII from our active databases and, where feasible, from our back-up media.  You should be aware that it is not always technologically possible to remove each and every record of the information you have provided to BD from our servers.

Note: When previously-typed data (such as your name) appears on our website, it is being retrieved from one of three sources:

1. Cookies stored on your computer.  These files are only accessible to users of your computer and the website that created them;
2. Encrypted hyperlinks sent in emails from BD to yourself and decrypted only when these links are followed;
3. Barely Dating's database.

Therefore, even after you request removal of your data from our system, you may still see some information on our website.  To remove these items also, remove all BD cookies from your computer and delete any emails that we have sent you.

How BD handles privacy and security internally

Here are some of the security procedures that BD uses to protect your privacy.  We:

• Maintain a complete audit trail of who accessed what information and when
• Only send information to the email address supplied by the user
• Use firewalls to protect information held in our servers
• Ecrypt all passwords, user IDs, and photo IDs
• Store profile and nude photos in separate databases
• Closely monitor the limited number of BD employees who have potential access to your PII
• Require all BD employees to abide by our Privacy Policy and to be subject to disciplinary action if they violate it
• Back up our systems to protect the integrity of your PII
• Limit access to PII to authorized operators of our system
• Allow you to Manage Your Privacy at any time: Request a copy or deletion of all data held about you, make changes to your data, stop all processing of your data, revoke all consents given, or delete all cookies.

Despite BD's best efforts to protect your PII, there is always a very small risk that an unauthorized third party may find a way around our security systems.

Use of the BD website and cookies

("Right to object")

Before collecting any information – even standard technical information such as the type of Internet browser you use, the page from which you came (referring URL), and Google Analytics data – we will first seek your consent.

We store both personal and non-personal information about your use of our website in cookies.  The information stored in cookies (i) helps us dynamically generate content on web pages, (ii) allows us to statistically monitor use of our website, and (iii) facilitates a user's navigation through our website.

Most browser software can be set to reject all cookies.  If you reject our cookies, it will not be possible to use our services.

If you choose to use our services, you will be identified only by the username, email address and date of birth (any or all of which may be fake) that you enter, as well as an internal User ID.

Third Parties Collecting Non-Personal Information

("Right not to be subject to automated decision-making including profiling")

By placing cookies on users' devices, BD and Google (a third party service provider) passively gather information about visitors' use of the system for several reasons including, but not limited to: statistics collection and analysis, system optimization, market research, and targeting of advertisements (for users outside of the European Union).

Note: By refusing to accept cookies, you prevent this information from being gathered.

The information that is tracked with cookies includes, but is not limited to, the type of device, operating system, and browser being used, your Internet protocol ("IP") address, your referrer URL (which is the URL of the website that you were viewing prior to visiting BD), how you were directed to our website, which specific pages you accessed, how long you viewed each page, the time and date of access.

We use this technical information to improve our website, make our website function correctly, and understand how visitors use our website.

You can read more about Google's advertising technology and use of cookies at https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads, and about how Google manages data in its ads products at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

How do we use your email address?

Use of our service, and hence any sending of emails by BD to yourself, can only take place once you have given consent for us to contact you.

Emails that we send include a link to Manage Your Privacy.  Should you decide to revoke your consent, it may take up to a few hours for the changes to take effect and messages sent to you in the interim will be unaffected by your request.

You will not be added to any email list.  Your contact details will never be sold or made available in any way to any third party other than as mentioned in the section Who do we share your personal information with?, above.  Only essential messages will be sent, until either you have requested no further contact or we have fully supplied the service that you requested and responded to any questions.

Emails that you send to BD

This Privacy Policy does not apply to content, business information, ideas, concepts or inventions that you send to BD by email.  If you wish to keep content or business information, ideas, concepts or inventions private or proprietary, do not send them in an email to BD.

Subscription Services

BD does not currently provide any subscriptions or recurring services.  Any service is provided on a one-time basis.

Children

We are committed to protecting the privacy of children.  Neither BD nor any of its services are designed or intended to attract those under the age of 18.

Head Office

If you have a complaint or problem, please use our Contact Us page.  Our customer service department will forward your complaint to the appropriate internal department for a response and/or resolution.  We try to answer every email within 24 business hours but may not always be able to do so.

We will notify you within 30 days of receipt of your request to confirm your PII has been removed.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

PII – We will inform you of any material change to the Privacy Policy, which means a change that expands the permissible uses or disclosures of PII allowed by the prior version of the Privacy Policy.  Your continued use of the BD Website will indicate acceptance of the changes.  BD reserves the right to discontinue or limit functionality in all its products.

Non-Significant Changes – BD may make non-significant changes to the Privacy Policy that do no affect PII.  In these instances, BD will generally not notify you.

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the home page, and other places appropriate throughout our site so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.