Our Commitment To You
At Onion, your privacy is a top priority. Your privacy is at
the core of the way we design and build the services and products you know and
love, so that you can fully trust them and focus on building meaningful
connections.
We appreciate
that you put your trust in us when you provide us with your information and we
do not take this lightly.
We do not
compromise with your privacy. We
design all of our products and services with your privacy in mind. We involve
experts from various fields, including legal, security, engineering, product
design and others to make sure that no decision is taken without respect for
your privacy.
We strive to
be transparent in the way we process your data. Because we use many of the same online services you
do, we know that insufficient information and overly complicated language are
common issues in privacy policies. We take the exact opposite approach: we have
written our Privacy Policy and related documents in plain language. We actually
want you to read our policies and understand our privacy practices!
We work hard
to keep your information secure We have
teams dedicated to keeping your data safe and secure. We constantly update our
security practices and invest in our security efforts to enhance the safety of
your information.
Privacy Policy
Welcome to Onion’s Privacy Policy. Thank you for taking the time to
read it.
We appreciate
that you trust us with your information and we intend to always keep that
trust. This starts with making sure you understand the information we collect,
why we collect it, how it is used and your choices regarding your information.
This Policy describes our privacy practices in plain language, keeping legal
and technical jargon to a minimum.
This Privacy
Policy applies beginning May 25, 2018. The previous version of this Privacy
Policy, available here, will apply until then.
This Privacy
Policy applies to websites, apps, events and other services operated by Onion. For simplicity, we refer to all of these as our
“services” in this Privacy Policy. To make it extra clear, we’ve added links to
this Privacy Policy on all applicable services.
Some services
may require their own unique privacy policy. If a particular service has its
own privacy policy, then that policy -- not this Privacy Policy -- applies.
It goes
without saying, we can’t help you develop meaningful connections without some
information about you, such as basic profile details and the types of people
you’d like to meet. We also collect information generated as you use our
services, for example access logs, as well as information from third parties,
like when you access our services through a social media account. If you want
additional info, we go into more detail below.
Information you give us
You choose to
give us certain information when using our services. This includes:
Information we receive from others
In addition to
the information you provide us directly, we receive
information about you from others, including:
Information collected when you use our services
When you use our services, we collect information about
which features you’ve used, how you’ve used them and the devices you use to
access our services. See below for more details:
3. Cookies and Other Similar Data
Collection Technologies
We use and may allow others to use cookies and similar
technologies (e.g., web beacons, pixels) to recognize you and/or your
device(s). You may read our Cookie Policy for more information on why
we use them (such as authenticating you, remembering your preferences and
settings, analyzing site traffic and trends, delivering and measuring the
effectiveness of advertising campaigns, allowing you to use social features)
and how you can better control their use, through your browser settings and
other tools.
Some web browsers (including Safari, Internet Explorer,
Firefox and Chrome) have a “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) feature that tells a
website that a user does not want to have his or her online activity tracked.
If a website that responds to a DNT signal receives a DNT signal, the browser
can block that website from collecting certain information about the browser’s
user. Not all browsers offer a DNT option and DNT signals are not yet uniform.
For this reason, many businesses, including Onion,
do not currently respond to DNT signals.
The main
reason we use your information is to deliver and improve our services.
Additionally, we use your info to help keep you safe and to provide you with
advertising that may be of interest to you. Read on for a more detailed
explanation of the various reasons we use your information, together with
practical examples.
To administer your account and provide our services to
you
To help you connect with other users
To ensure a consistent experience across your devices
To provide new Onion services
to you
To serve you relevant offers and ads
To improve our services and develop new ones
To prevent, detect and fight fraud or other illegal or
unauthorized activities
To ensure legal compliance
To process
your information as described above, we rely on the following legal bases:
Since our goal
is to help you make meaningful connections, the main sharing of users’
information is, of course, with other users. We also share some users’
information with service providers and partners who assist us in operating the
services, with other Match Group companies and, in some cases, legal
authorities. Read on for more details about how your information is shared with
others.
You share
information with other users when you voluntarily disclose information on the
service (including your public profile). Please be careful with your
information and make sure that the content you share is stuff that you’re
comfortable being publically viewable since neither
you nor we can control what others do with your information once you share it.
If you choose
to limit the audience for all or part of your profile or for certain content or
information about you, then it will be visible according to your settings.
We use third
parties to help us operate and improve our services. These third parties assist
us with various tasks, including data hosting and maintenance, analytics,
customer care, marketing, advertising, payment processing and security
operations.
We may also
share information with partners who distribute and assist us in advertising our
services. For instance, we may share limited information on you in hashed,
non-human readable form to advertising partners.
We follow a
strict vetting process prior to engaging any service provider or working with
any partner. All of our service providers and partners must agree to strict
confidentiality obligations.
Onion is part of
the Match Group family of businesses which, as of the date of this Privacy
Policy, includes websites and apps such as Onion, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Match, Meetic,
BlackPeopleMeet, LoveScout24, OurTime,
Pairs, ParPerfeito, and Twoo
(for more details, click here).
We share your
information with other Match Group companies for them to assist us in
processing your information, as service providers, upon our instructions and on
our behalf. Assistance provided by other Match Group companies may include
technical processing operations, such as data hosting and maintenance, customer
care, marketing and targeted advertising, finance and accounting assistance,
better understanding how our service is used and users’ behavior to improve our
service, securing our data and systems and fighting against spam, abuse, fraud,
infringement and other wrongdoings.
We may also
share information with other Match Group companies for legitimate business
purposes such as corporate audit, analysis and consolidated reporting as well
as compliance with applicable laws. We may also share user information with
other Match Group companies to remove users who violate our terms of service,
or have been reported for criminal activity and/or bad behavior. In some
instances, we may remove that user from all platforms.
We may
transfer your information if we are involved, whether in whole or in part, in a
merger, sale, acquisition, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization,
dissolution, bankruptcy or other change of ownership or control.
We may disclose
your information if reasonably necessary: (i) to
comply with a legal process, such as a court order, subpoena or search warrant,
government / law enforcement investigation or other legal requirements; (ii) to
assist in the prevention or detection of crime (subject in each case to
applicable law); or (iii) to protect the safety of any person.
We may also
share information: (i) if disclosure would mitigate
our liability in an actual or threatened lawsuit; (ii) as necessary to protect
our legal rights and legal rights of our users, business partners or other
interested parties; (iii) to enforce our agreements with you; and (iv) to
investigate, prevent, or take other action regarding illegal activity,
suspected fraud or other wrongdoing.
We may ask for
your consent to share your information with third parties. In any such case, we
will make it clear why we want to share the information.
We may use and
share non-personal information (meaning information that, by itself, does not
identify who you are such as device information, general demographics, general
behavioral data, geolocation in de-identified form), as well as personal
information in hashed, non-human readable form, under any of the above circumstances.
We may also share this information with other Match Group companies and third
parties (notably advertisers) to develop and deliver targeted advertising on
our services and on websites or applications of third parties, and to analyze
and report on advertising you see. We may combine this information with
additional non-personal information or personal information in hashed,
non-human readable form collected from other sources. More information on our
use of cookies and similar technologies can be found in our Cookie Policy
6. Cross-Border Data Transfers
Sharing of
information laid out in Section 6 sometimes involves cross-border
data transfers, for instance to the United States of America and other
jurisdictions. As an example, where the service allows for users to be located
in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), their personal information is
transferred to countries outside of the EEA. We use standard contract clauses
approved by the European Commission or other suitable safeguard to permit data
transfers from the EEA to other countries. Standard contractual clauses are
commitments between companies transferring personal data, binding them to
protect the privacy and security of your data
We want you to
be in control of your information, so we have provided you with the following
tools:
We want you to
be aware of your privacy rights. Here are a few key points to remember:
For your
protection and the protection of all of our users, we may ask you to provide
proof of identity before we can answer the above requests.
Keep in mind,
we may reject requests for certain reasons, including if the request is
unlawful or if it may infringe on trade secrets or intellectual property or the
privacy of another user. If you wish to receive information relating to another
user, such as a copy of any messages you received from him or her through our
service, the other user will have to contact our Privacy Officer to provide
their written consent before the information is released.
Also, we may
not be able to accommodate certain requests to object to the processing of
personal information, notably where such requests would not allow us to provide
our service to you anymore. For instance, we cannot provide our service if we
do not have your date of birth.
If you are a
California resident, you can request a notice disclosing the categories of
personal information about you that we have shared with third parties for their
direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year. To request this
notice, please submit your request here. Please allow 30 days for a
response. For your protection and the protection of all of our users, we may
ask you to provide proof of identity before we can answer such a request.
9. How We Protect Your Information
We work hard
to protect you from unauthorized access to or alteration, disclosure or
destruction of your personal information. As with all technology companies,
although we take steps to secure your information, we do not promise, and you
should not expect, that your personal information will always remain secure.
We regularly
monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks and regularly
review our information collection, storage and processing practices to update
our physical, technical and organizational security measures.
We may suspend
your use of all or part of the services without notice if we suspect or detect
any breach of security. If you believe that your account or information is no
longer secure, please notify us immediately here
In order to
ensure that our systems and your information are protected against unauthorized
access, theft and loss, we implemented a bug bounty program. For more
information about our bug bounty program, please click here.
10. How Long We Retain Your Information
We keep your
personal information only as long as we need it for legitimate business
purposes (as laid out in Section 5) and as permitted by applicable law. To
protect the safety and security of our users on and off our services, we
implement a safety retention window of three months following account deletion.
During this period, account information will be retained although the account
will of course not be visible on the services anymore.
In practice,
we delete or anonymize your information upon deletion of your account
(following the safety retention window) or after two years of continuous
inactivity, unless:
Keep in mind
that even though our systems are designed to carry out data deletion processes
according to the above guidelines, we cannot promise that all data will be
deleted within a specific timeframe due to technical constraints.
Our services
are restricted to users who are 18 years of age or older. We do not permit
users under the age of 18 on our platform and we do not knowingly collect
personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If you suspect that a
user is under the age of 18, please use the reporting mechanism available
through the service.
Because we’re
always looking for new and innovative ways to help you build meaningful
connections, this policy may change over time. We will notify you before any
material changes take effect so that you have time to review the changes.