TasteMatch Privacy Policy
Effective June 1, 2023
See Also: Terms Of Use Community Guidelines
In this privacy policy, we want to help you understand how and why TasteMatch, Inc. (“TasteMatch,” “we,” “us“) collects, uses, and shares information about you when you use our mobile apps, sites, widgets, and other online products and services(collectively, the “Services“) or when you otherwise interact with us or receive a communication from us.
We collect minimal information that can be used to identify you by default. If you want to just browse, you don’t need an account. If you want to create an account to participate in the community, we don’t require you to give us your real name. We don’t automatically track your precise location. You can share as much or as little about yourself as you want. You can update information as you see fit, or ask us to delete your information.
Any data we collect is used primarily to provide our services, which are focused on helping people cook more creatively. If you have questions about how we use your data, you can always ask us for more information.
What Information We Collect
Information You Provide to Us
We collect information you provide to us directly when you use the Services. This includes:
| Account information | You don’t need an account to use TasteMatch. If you create a TasteMatch account, your account will have a username, which you provide. Your username is public, and it doesn’t have to be related to your real name. You may need to provide a password, depending on whether you register using an email address or using a Single Sign-On (SSO) feature (such as Apple or Google). When you use TasteMatch, you may provide other optional information such as a bio, gender, age, location, or profile picture. This information is optional. We also store your user account preferences and settings. We may ask for such information prior to you creating a username or account to help improve your experience exploring TasteMatch. |
| Content you submit | We collect the content you submit to the Services. This includes your posts and comments including saved drafts, images, videos, your messages with other users (e.g., private messages), and any communications with us. Your content may include text, links, images, gifs, audio, and videos. |
| Actions you take | We collect information about the actions you take when using the Services. This includes your interactions with content, likes, saving, and reporting. It also includes your interactions with other users, such as following. |
| Transactional information | If you purchase products or services from us (e.g., a TasteMatch subscription), we will collect certain information from you, including your name, address, email address, phone number, and information about the product or service you are purchasing. TasteMatch uses industry-standard payment processor services (for example, Stripe) to handle payment information. |
| Other information | You may choose to provide other information directly to us. For example, we may collect information when you fill out a form, participate in TasteMatch-sponsored activities or promotions, 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 IP address, device information (e.g., device IDs), device settings, mobile carrier name, user-agent string, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, 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 deliver and maintain our services and our site, improve your experience, understand user activity, personalize content and advertisements, measure the effectiveness of advertising, and improve the quality of our Services. For example, information about your preferred language and other settings. |
| Location information | We may receive and process information about your location. We may receive location information from you when you choose to share such information on our Services, including by associating your content with a location, or we may derive an approximate location based on your IP address. |
Information Collected from Other Sources
We may receive information about you from other sources, including from other users and third parties, and combine that information with the other information we have about you. For example, we may receive demographic or interest information about you from third parties, including advertisers, and combine it with data you have provided to TasteMatch, using a common account identifier such as a hash of an email address or a mobile-device ID.
| Linked services | If you authorize or link a third-party service to access your TasteMatch account, TasteMatch receives information about your use of that service when it uses that authorization. Linking services may also cause the other service to send us information about your account with that service. For example, if you sign in to TasteMatch with a third-party identity provider, that provider may share an email address with us. To learn how information is shared with linked services, see “How Information About You Is Shared” below. |
| Information collected from integrations | We also may receive information about you, including log and usage data and cookie information, from third-party sites that integrate our Services in the future. |
Information Collected by Third Parties
| Audience measurement | We partner with service providers that perform audience measurement to learn demographic information about the population that uses TasteMatch. To provide this demographic information, these companies collect cookie information to recognize your device. |
How We Use Information
We use information about you to:
- Provide, maintain, and improve the Services;
- Personalize services, content, and features that match your activities, preferences, and settings.
- Help protect the safety of TasteMatch and our users, which includes blocking suspected spammers, addressing abuse, and enforcing the TasteMatch User Agreement and our other policies;
- Provide, optimize, target, and measure the effectiveness of any promotions shown on our Services;
- Research and develop new services;
- 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; and
- Monitor and analyze trends, usage, and activities in connection with our Services.
How We Share Information
Much of the information and content 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, chat message, or anything else) 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. TasteMatch may also allow third parties to access public TasteMatch content via an API and other similar technologies.
Your TasteMatch account has a profile page that is public. Your profile contains information about your activities on the Services, such as your username, prior posts and comments, how long you have been a member of the Services as well as content that you have liked.
We may offer social sharing features that let you share content or actions you take on our Services with other media. Your use of these features enables the sharing of certain information with your friends or the public, depending on the settings you establish with the third party that provides the social sharing feature. For more information about the purpose and scope of data collection and processing in connection with social sharing features, please visit the privacy policies of the third parties that provide these social sharing features.
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 TasteMatch account with a third-party service, TasteMatch will share the information you authorize with that third-party service..
- 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.
- To enforce our policies and rights. We may share information if we believe your actions are inconsistent with our Terms Of Use, Community Guidelines, or other TasteMatch policies, or to protect the rights, property, and safety of ourselves and others.
- With our affiliates. We may share information between and among TasteMatch, and any of our parents, affiliates, subsidiaries, and other companies under common control and ownership.
- 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 bookmarked without identifying who the visitors were, or we may tell an partner how many people saw their promotion.
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 Rights & Choices
You have choices about how to protect and limit the collection, use, and sharing of information about you when you use the Services. Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to request access to or ability to port, deletion/erasure of, or correction/rectification of, your personal information, to opt out of certain advertising practices, or to withdraw consent for processing where you have previously provided consent. Below we explain how to exercise each of these rights. TasteMatch does not discriminate against users for exercising their rights under data protection laws.
Information Collected by Third Parties
| Accessing and Changing Your Information | You can access your information and change or correct certain information through the Services via the Edit Profile feature in our mobile apps. You can also request a copy of the personal information TasteMatch maintains about you as follows:
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| Deleting Your Account | You may delete your account information at any time from the user preferences page. You can also submit a request to delete the personal information TasteMatch maintains about you by following the process described below this table. When you delete your account, your profile is no longer visible to other users and disassociated from content you posted under that account. Please note, however, that the posts, comments, and messages you submitted prior to deleting your account will still be visible to others unless you first delete the specific content. After you submit a request to delete your account, it may take up to 90 days for our systems to complete deletion. We may also retain certain information about you as required by law or for legitimate business purposes. |
| 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 Advertising and Analytics | Some analytics providers we partner with may provide specific opt-out mechanisms and we may provide, as needed and as available, additional tools and third-party services that allow you to better understand cookies and how you can opt out. For example, you may manage the use and collection of certain information by Google Analytics via the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. You may also generally opt out of receiving personalized advertisements from certain third-party advertisers and ad networks. To learn more about these advertisements or to opt out, please visit the sites of the Digital Advertising Alliance and the Network Advertising Initiative, or if you are a user in the European Economic Area, Your Online Choices. |
| Do Not Track | Most modern web browsers give you the option to send a Do Not Track signal to the sites you visit, indicating that you do not wish to be tracked. However, there is no accepted standard for how a site should respond to this signal, and we do not take any action in response to this signal. Instead, in addition to publicly available third-party tools, we offer you the choices described in this policy to manage the collection and use of information about you. |
| 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. |
If you have questions or are not able to submit a request to exercise your rights using the mechanisms above, you may contact us by sending an email to support@tastematch.app from the email address that you have verified with your TasteMatch account.
Before we process a request from you about your personal information, we need to verify the request via access to your TasteMatch account or via a verified email address associated with your TasteMatch account. If we deny your request, you may appeal our decision by contacting us at support@tastematch.app.
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 as described in the “Your Rights and Choices 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.
International Data Transfer
TasteMatch, Inc. is based in the United States and we process and store information on servers located in the United States. We may store information on servers and equipment in other countries depending on a variety of factors, including the locations of our users and service providers. By accessing or using the Services or otherwise providing information to us, you consent to the processing, transfer, and storage of information in and to the U.S. and other countries, where you may not have the same rights as you do under local law.
When we transfer the personal data of users in the EEA, UK and/or Switzerland, we rely on the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission for such transfers or other transfer mechanisms deemed ‘adequate’ under applicable laws.
Additional Information for California Users
The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), as amended, requires us to provide California residents with some additional information, which we address in this section.
In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:
- Identifiers, like your TasteMatch username, email address, IP address, and cookie information.
- Commercial information, including information about transactions you undertake with us.
- Internet or other electronic network activity information, such as information about your activity on our Services and limited information about your activity on the services of advertisers who use our advertising technology.
- Geolocation information based on your IP address, or more specific location information if you authorize your device to provide it to us.
- Your messages with other users (e.g., private messages, chats, etc.).
- Audiovisual information in pictures, audio, or video content submitted to TasteMatch.
- 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 in the “Information We Collect” section of this notice, (b) the business and commercial purposes for collecting that information in the “How We Use Your Information” section, and (c) the categories of third parties with whom we share that information in the “How We Share Information” section.
If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, including the right to opt out of any sales or sharing of your personal information, to request access to and information about our data practices, and to request deletion or correction of your personal information, as well as the right not to be discriminated against for exercising your privacy rights. TasteMatch does not “sell” or “share” personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information except to provide you the Services or as otherwise permitted by the CCPA.
You may exercise your rights to access, delete, or correct your personal information as described in the “Your Rights and Choices” section of this notice. When you make a request, we will verify your identity by asking you to sign into your account or if necessary by requesting additional information from you. You may also make a rights request using an authorized agent. If you submit a rights request from an authorized agent who does not provide a valid power of attorney, we may ask the authorized agent to provide proof that you gave the agent signed permission to submit the request to exercise rights on your behalf. In the absence of a valid power of attorney, we may also require you to verify your own identity directly with us or confirm to us that you otherwise provided the authorized agent permission to submit the request. If you have any questions or concerns, you may reach us using the methods described under Your Rights and Choices or by emailing us at support@tastematch.app.
Children
Children under the age of 13 are not allowed to create an account or otherwise use the Services. Additionally, if you are located outside the United States, 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 regularly 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
If you have other questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:
TasteMatch, Inc.
Email: support@tastematch.app