INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT

We may collect and store information about you when you use the Service. We use the information to fulfill your requests, provide the Service’s functionality, improve the Service’s quality, personalize your experience, track usage of the Service, provide feedback to third party businesses that are listed on the Service, display relevant advertising, market the Service, provide customer support, message you, back up our systems and allow for disaster recovery, enhance the security of the Service, and comply with legal obligations.

Among the information we collect, please note:

Account Information

If you create an account on SparkList, we may store and use your full name, email address, zip code, and other information you may provide with your account, such as your gender and birth date. Your first name and last initial, as well as any photo you submit through the registration process, will be publicly displayed as part of your account profile. You can modify some of the information associated with your account.

Public Content

The information that you contribute through the Service is intended for public consumption, including your sparks, post, reviews, photos, videos, events, lists, and account profile. We may display this information through the Service, share it with businesses, and further distribute it to a wider audience through third party sites and services.

Contacts 

You can invite your friends to join the Service by providing us with their contact information, or by allowing us to access your contacts from your computer, mobile device, or third party sites to select which friends you want to invite. If you allow us to access your contacts, we may transmit that information to SparkList long enough to process your invitations.

Communications

When you sign up for an account or use certain features, you are opting to receive messages from other SparkList users, businesses, and SparkList itself. You can manage some of your messaging preferences, but note that you cannot opt out of receiving certain administrative, transactional, or legal messages from SparkList. For example, if you make a reservation through the Service, we may send you messages about your reservation using the contact information you provide, including SMS text messages to your phone. We may also track your actions in response to the messages you receive from SparkList or through the Service, such as whether you deleted, opened, or forwarded such messages. If you exchange messages with others through the Service, we may store them in order to process and deliver them, allow you to manage them, and we may review and disclose them in connection with investigations related to the operation and use of the Service. We may not deliver messages that we believe are objectionable, such as spam messages or requests to exchange reviews for compensation. If you send or receive messages through the Service via SMS text message, we may log phone numbers, phone carriers, and the date and time that the messages were processed. Carriers may charge recipients for texts that they receive. We may also store information that you provide through communications to us, including from phone calls, letters, emails and other electronic messages, or in person. If you are a representative of a business listed on SparkList, including users of SparkList for Business Owners, we may contact you, including by phone or email, using the contact information you provide us, make publicly available, or that we have on record for your business.

Transactional Information

If you initiate a transaction through the Service, such as a reservation or purchase, we may collect and store information about you, such as your name, phone number, address, email, and credit card information, as well as any other information you provide to us, in order to process your transaction, send communications about them to you, and populate forms for future transactions. This information may be shared with third parties for the same purposes. SparkList does not disclose your personal information to third parties for the purpose of directly marketing their services to you unless you first agree to such disclosure. When you submit credit card numbers, we encrypt that information using industry standard technology. If you write reviews about a person with which you transact through the Service, we may publicly display the fact that you transacted with those businesses.

Activity

We may store information about your use of the Service, such as your search activity, the pages you view, the date and time of your visit, businesses you call using our mobile applications, and reservations and purchases you make through the Service. We also may store information that your computer or mobile device provides to us in connection with your use of the Service, such as your browser type, type of computer or mobile device, browser language, IP address, mobile carrier, phone number, unique device identifier, advertising identifier, location (including geolocation, beacon based location, and GPS location), and requested and referring URLs. You may be able to disallow our use of certain location data through your device or browser settings, for example by disabling “Location Services” for the SparkList application in iOS privacy settings.

THIRD PARTIES

Third parties may receive information about you as follows:

Advertisers

We may allow third parties to use Cookies through the Service to collect the same type of information for the same purposes as SparkList does for itself. In doing so, SparkList adheres to the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising. Third parties may be able to associate the information they collect with other information they have about you from other sources. Please note that opting out does not prevent the display of all advertisements to you. Additionally, we may share non-personally identifiable information from or about you with third parties, such as location data, advertising identifiers, or a cryptographic hash of a common account identifier (such as an email address), to facilitate the display of targeted advertising. You may be able to limit our sharing of some of this information through your mobile device settings, as described in Section 2 above.

Service Providers

We may rely on third party providers to support or provide some of the services that are available through the Service, such as reservations and food delivery. We may also rely on third party providers to perform certain services for us in connection with your use of the Service, such as communications and hosting services, network security, technical and customer support, tracking and reporting functions, quality assurance testing, payment processing, our own marketing of the Service, and other functions. We may share information from or about you with these third party providers so that they can perform their services or complete your requests. These third party providers may share information with us that they obtain from or about you in connection with providing their services or completing your requests. Third party providers may also share this information with their subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control. Some of our web pages utilize framing techniques to serve content to you from our third party providers, while preserving the look and feel of the Service. In such cases, please note that the information you provide is being provided to the third party.

Aggregate Information

We may share user information in the aggregate with third parties, such as advertisers and content distributors. For example, we may disclose the number of users that have been exposed to, or clicked on, advertisements.

Business Transfers: We may share information from or about you with our parent companies, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control, in which case we will require them to honor this Privacy Policy. If another company acquires SparkList or all or substantially all of our assets, that company will possess the same information, and will assume the rights and obligations with respect to that information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Businesses on SparkList

We may share information from or about you (such as your age and gender), your devices, and your use of the Service (such as which businesses you bookmark or call) with businesses listed on SparkList. You may adjust your settings to increase or decrease the amount of information we share. You can view these settings and find more details about what information may be shared. Keep in mind that businesses may see your Public Content (as defined in Section 1(b) above) and receive information about your transactions with them, regardless of your settings. Additionally, if you make a phone call to a business through or in connection with your use of the Service, we may share information about your call with the business that the business would have received had you called them directly, such as the date and time of your call and your phone number. You may be able to limit our ability to collect and share your phone number through your phone’s settings or phone service provider.

Investigations

We may investigate and disclose information from or about you if we have a good faith belief that such investigation or disclosure (a) is reasonably necessary to comply with legal process and law enforcement instructions and orders, such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, judicial proceeding, or other legal process served on us; (b) is helpful to prevent, investigate, or identify possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service; or (c) protects our rights, reputation, property, or that of our users, affiliates, or the public, such as disclosures in connection with our Consumer Alerts program. If you flag or otherwise complain to SparkList about content through the Service, we may share the substance of your complaint with the contributor of that content in order to provide an opportunity for the contributor to respond.

Links

The Service may contain links to unaffiliated third party services. Except as set forth herein, we do not share your personal information with them, and are not responsible for their privacy practices. We suggest you read the privacy policies on or applicable to all such third party services.

Facebook and Twitter

If you sign up for SparkList using your Facebook account or link your SparkList account to your account with a third party service like Facebook or Twitter, we may receive information about you from such third party service. We may use this information to help you create your account on SparkList and connect and share public content with your friends and followers. You can manage how you link your SparkList account to third party services. Please note that if you interact with Facebook, Twitter, or other third party icons through the Service, including "Like," "Share," or similar buttons, those companies may collect information about you, such as your device’s IP address. Your interactions with these and other third parties are governed by the third parties’ privacy policies.

CONTROLLING YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Other users may be able to identify you, or associate you with your account, if you include personal information in the content you post publicly. You can reduce the risk of being personally identified by using the Service pseudonymously, though doing so could detract from the credibility of your contributions to the Service. Users can also use the Find Friends feature to find one another based on their names or email addresses. You can adjust the settings for this feature.

Please also note that the messages you send or receive using the Service are only private to the extent that both you and the person you are communicating with keep them private. For example, if you send a message to another user, that user may choose to publicly post it. Also, SparkList may access and disclose such messages in the course of investigations relating to use of the Service.

DATA RETENTION AND ACCOUNT TERMINATION

You can close your account and we will remove your public posts from view and/or dissociate them from your account profile, but we may retain information about you for the purposes authorized under this Privacy Policy unless prohibited by law. For example, we may retain information to prevent, investigate, or identify possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service or to comply with legal obligations. Please note that businesses cannot remove their business listings, ratings, or reviews by closing their accounts.

CHILDREN

The Service is intended for general audiences and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal information without parental consent, please contact us. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information without parental consent, we take steps to remove such information and terminate the child's account.

SECURITY

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or via mobile device, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

MODIFICATIONS TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time. The most current version of the Privacy Policy will govern our collection, use, and disclosure of information about you. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by email or by posting a notice on the Service prior to the effective date of the changes. By continuing to access or use the Service after those changes become effective, you agree to the revised Privacy Policy.

CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS: YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

SparkList does not disclose your personal information to third parties for the purpose of directly marketing their services to you unless you first agree to such disclosure. If you have any questions regarding this policy, or would like to change your preferences, you may contact us at the address listed above in Section 8.