Bee City Privacy Policy

Effective October 1, 2021. Last Revised October 1, 2021

We want you to understand how and why Bee City (“Bee City”,“we”or“us” ) collects, uses, and shares information about you when you use our sites, mobile apps, widgets, and other online products and services (collectively, the “Services” ) or when you otherwise interact with us or receive a communication from us. This Privacy Policy applies to all of our Services.

What We Collect (and How it is Used and Shared)

Information You Provide to Us

We collect information you provide to us directly when you use the Services. This includes:

Account information

If you create a Bee City account, we may require you to provide a username and password. Your username is public, and it doesn’t have to be related to your real name. You may also provide other account information, like an email address, bio, or profile picture.

Content you submit

If you create a Bee City account, we may require you to provide a username and password. Your username is public, and it doesn’t have to be related to your real name. You may also provide other account information, like an email address, bio, or profile picture.

Actions you take

We collect information about the actions you take when using the Services. This includes your interactions with content, like voting, saving, hiding, and reporting. It also includes your interactions with other users. We collect your interactions with communities, like your subscriptions or moderator status.

Other information

You may choose to provide other information directly to us. For example, we may collect information when you fill out a form, apply for a job, request customer support, or otherwise communicate with us.

Information We Collect Automatically

When you access or use our Services, we may also automatically collect information about you. This includes:

Log and usage data

We may log information when you access and use the Services. This may include your user-agent string, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, device information (e.g., device IDs), device settings, mobile carrier name, pages visited, links clicked, the requested URL, and search terms.

Information collected from cookies and similar technologies

We may receive information from cookies, which are pieces of data your browser stores and sends back to us when making requests, and similar technologies. We use this information to improve your experience, understand user activity, personalize content, and improve the quality of our Services.

We use information about you to:

  • Provide, maintain, and improve the Services;
  • Research and develop new services;
  • Help protect the safety of Bee City and our users, which includes blocking suspected spammers, addressing abuse;
  • Send you technical notices, updates, security alerts, invoices, and other support and administrative messages;
  • Provide customer service;
  • Communicate with you about products, services, offers, promotions, and events, and provide other news and information we think will be of interest to you (for information about how to opt out of these communications, see Your Choices below;
  • Monitor and analyze trends, usage, and activities in connection with our Services; 
  • Measure the effectiveness of ads shown on our Services; and
  • Personalize the Services, and provide and optimize advertisements, content, and features that match user profiles or interests.

Much of the information on the Services is public and accessible to everyone, even without an account. By using the Services, you are directing us to share this information publicly and freely.

When you submit content (including a post, comment, or chat message) to a public part of the Services, any visitors to and users of our Services will be able to see that content, the username associated with the content, and the date and time you originally submitted the content. Bee City allows other sites to embed public Bee City content via our embed tools. Bee City also allows third parties to access public Bee City content via the Bee City API and other similar technologies. Although some parts of the Services may be private or quarantined, they may become public (e.g., at the moderator’s option in the case of private communities) and you should take that into consideration before posting to the Services.

We do not sell your personal information. However, in addition to the personal information that is displayed publicly as described above, we may share personal information in the following ways:

  • With your consent. We may share information about you with your consent or at your direction.
  • With linked services. If you link your Bee City account with a third-party service, Bee City will share the information you authorize with that third-party service. You can control this sharing as described in. Your Choices below.
  • With our service providers.We may share information with vendors, consultants, and other service providers who need access to such information to carry out work for us. Their use of personal data will be subject to appropriate confidentiality and security measures. A few examples: (i) payment processors who process transactions on our behalf, (ii) cloud providers who host our data and our services, (iii) third-party ads measurement providers who help us and advertisers measure the performance of ads shown on our Services.
  • To comply with the law.We may share information in response to a request for information if we believe disclosure is in accordance with, or required by, any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request, including, but not limited to, meeting national security or law enforcement requirements. To the extent the law allows it, we will attempt to provide you with prior notice before disclosing your information in response to such a request.
  • In an emergency.We may share information if we believe it's necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily harm to a person.
  • Aggregated or de-identified information. We may share information about you that has been aggregated or anonymized such that it cannot reasonably be used to identify you. For example, we may show the total number of times a post has been upvoted without identifying who the visitors were, or we may tell an advertiser how many people saw their ad.

How We Protect Your Information

We take measures to help protect information about you from loss, theft, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. For example, we use HTTPS while information is being transmitted. We also enforce technical and administrative access controls to limit which of our employees have access to nonpublic personal information.

We store the information we collect for as long as it is necessary for the purpose(s) for which we originally collected it. We may retain certain information for legitimate business purposes or as required by law.

Your Choices

You have choices about how to protect and limit the collection, use, and sharing of information about you when you use the Services. Some of these choices are available to everyone who uses Bee City, while others only apply if you have a Bee City account.

Accessing and Changing Your Information

You can access and change certain information through the Services.

Controlling the Use of Cookies

Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject first- and third-party cookies.

Controlling Mobile Notifications

With your consent, we may send promotional and non-promotional push notifications or alerts to your mobile device. You can deactivate these messages at any time by changing the notification settings on your mobile device.

Your Rights

Data Subject and Consumer Information Requests

Requests for a copy of the information Bee City has about your account—including EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) data subject access requests and California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) consumer information requests—can be submitted tobeecityapp@gmail.com

All other data subject and consumer requests under data protection laws should be sent via email tobeecityapp@gmail.comfrom the email address that you have verified with your Bee City account.

Before we process a request from you about your personal information, we need to verify the request via your access to your Bee City account or to a verified email address associated with your Bee City account. You may also designate an authorized agent to exercise these rights on your behalf. Bee City does not discriminate against users for exercising their rights under data protection laws to make requests regarding their personal information.

Additional Information for EEA Users

Users in the European Economic Area have the right to request access to, rectification of, or erasure of their personal data; to data portability in certain circumstances; to request restriction of processing; to object to processing; and to withdraw consent for processing where they have previously provided consent. These rights can be exercised using the information provided under Your Choices above or as described in the Your Rights – Data Subject and Consumer Information Request section above. EEA users also have the right to lodge a complaint with their local supervisory authority.

As required by applicable law, we collect and process information about individuals in the EEA only where we have a legal basis for doing so. Our legal bases depend on the Services you use and how you use them. We process your information on the following legal bases:

  • You have consented for us to do so for a specific purpose;
  • We need to process the information to provide you the Services, including to operate the Services, provide customer support and personalized features and to protect the safety and security of the Services;
  • It satisfies a legitimate interest (which is not overridden by your data protection interests), such as preventing fraud, ensuring network and information security, enforcing our rules and policies, protecting our legal rights and interests, research and development, personalizing the Services, and marketing and promoting the Services; or
  • We need to process your information to comply with our legal obligations.

Additional Information for California Users

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. 

In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

  • Identifiers, like your Bee City username, email address, and cookie information.
  • Audiovisual information in pictures, audio, or video content submitted to Bee City.
  • Professional or employment-related information or demographic information, but only if you explicitly provide it to us, such as by applying for a job or filling out a survey.
  • Inferences we make based on other collected data, for purposes such as recommending content, advertising, and analytics.

You can find more information about (a) what we collect and sources of that information, (b) the business and commercial purposes for collecting that information, and (c) the categories of third parties with whom we share that information in the What We Collect (and How it is Used and Shared) section above.

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, including the right to request access to or deletion of your personal information, and information about our data practices, as well as the right not to be discriminated against for exercising your privacy rights. These rights can be exercised as described in the Data Subject and Consumer Information Requests section above.

Children

Children under the age of 13 are not allowed to create an account or otherwise use the Services. Additionally, if you are in the EEA, you must be over the age required by the laws of your country to create an account or otherwise use the Services, or we need to have obtained verifiable consent from your parent or legal guardian.

Changes to This Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do, we will let you know by revising the date at the top of the policy. If the changes, in our sole discretion, are material, we may also notify you by sending an email to the address associated with your account (if you have chosen to provide an email address) or by otherwise providing notice through our Services. We encourage you to review the Privacy Policy whenever you access or use our Services or otherwise interact with us to stay informed about our information practices and the ways you can help protect your privacy. By continuing to use our Services after Privacy Policy changes go into effect, you agree to be bound by the revised policy.

Contact Us

To send a GDPR data subject request or CCPA consumer request, or if you have other inquiries about your privacy rights, follow the steps in the Your Rights – Data Subject and Consumer Information Request section above.

If you have other questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:beecityapp@gmail.com