privacy policy | Maka Connect

For Maka Social, Inc.

802 E. Whiting Street, Tampa, FL 33602

(833) 352-4097

Last Updated: June 9, 2023

Maka Social, Inc. DBA Maka Connect (“Maka Social,” “we,” “our,” and/or “us”) values the privacy of individuals who use our websites, www.maka.social, and www.makaconnect.com as well as our mobile app, and related services (collectively, our “Services”). This privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy”) explains how we collect, use, and share information from or about Maka Social users (“Users,” you,” and/or “your”) or their devices. By using our Services, you agree to the collection, use, disclosure, and procedures this Privacy Policy describes. Beyond the Privacy Policy, your use of our Services is also subject to our Terms of Service.

Scope
This Privacy Policy applies to websites, apps, events, and other services we operate under the brands Maka Social & Maka Connect. For simplicity, we refer to all of these as our “services” in this Privacy Policy. This privacy policy can be found on all applicable digital properties.

What we Collect
All of the information we collect serves one of two purposes. Information such as basic profile information, personal photos, and location data contribute to the goal of helping our users easily meet the people around them. Information such as event details, venue photos, and contact information for invited guests are used to amplify the social environments created by our customers. We also collect information about your use of our services such as access logs and usage records to ensure the safety, quality, and stability of our service.

Information you give us
You choose to give us certain information when using our services. This includes:

When you create an account, you provide us with at least your phone number, as well as some basic details necessary for the service to work, such as your favorite conversation topics, occupation, and name.
When you check into a location, we also require access to your camera to add a current temporary photo to your profile
When you complete your profile, you can share with us additional information, such as age, gender, and relationship status.
When you subscribe to a paid service or make a purchase directly from us (rather than through a platform such as iOS or Android), you provide our payment service provider with information, such as your debit or credit card number or other financial information.
When you choose to participate in our promotions, events, or contests, we collect the information that you use to register or enter.
If you contact us (e.g., through our customer care team or on social media), we collect the information you give us during the interaction.

Information we receive from others
In addition to the information you may provide us directly, we receive information about you from others, including:

Users may provide information about you as they use our services, for instance as they interact with you or if they submit a report involving you.
Other Partners - We may receive information about you from our partners, including when Maka Social accounts can be created through a partner’s service (in which case they pass along registration information to us) or where Maka Social ads are published on a partner’s service (in which case they may pass along details on a campaign’s success). Where legally allowed, we can also receive information about suspected or convicted bad actors from third parties as part of our efforts to ensure our users’ safety and security.
We receive photos and videos from our event hosts and hired photographers to show real people using and enjoying our product. Our host will verbally ask if anyone wishes to opt out of photo and video collection. This is verbal acknowledgment is a nonbinding courtesy that we will make every effort to accommodate, but it does not supersede a user's agreement to this policy unless made in writing.

Information generated when you use our services
When you use our services, this generates technical data 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:

Usage Information - Using the services generates data about your activity on our services, for instance how you use them (e.g., when you logged in, features you’ve been using, actions taken, the information shown to you, referring webpages addresses and ads that you interacted with) and your interactions with other users such as viewing another user’s profile or event.
Device Information - We collect information from and about the device(s) you use to access our services, including hardware and software information such as IP address, device ID and type, apps settings and characteristics, app crashes, advertising IDs (which are randomly generated numbers that you can reset by going into your device’s settings), identifiers associated with cookies or other technologies that may uniquely identify a device or browser.
Normal operation of the Maka Connect app requires permission to collect your precise geolocation (latitude and longitude). The collection of your geolocation may occur in the background even when you aren’t using the services if the permission you gave us expressly permits such collection. If you decline permission for us to collect your precise geolocation, we will not collect it, but the app will not function effectively. Normal operation also requires permission to collect photos from the device camera. Similarly, if you consent, we may also collect photos from the gallery though this is not a required feature. Permission to read device contacts is only requested from customers who wish to invite their contacts to an event and used for that purpose. Access to contacts is not used for any other purposes and permission is not required for normal user operation.

COOKIES AND SIMILAR DATA COLLECTION TECHNOLOGIES
We use and may allow others to use cookies and similar technologies (e.g., web beacons, pixels, and SDKs) to recognize you and/or your device(s).
Some web browsers 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 Maka Social, do not currently respond to DNT signals.

HOW WE USE INFORMATION
The main reason we use your information is to deliver and improve our services. Additionally, we use your information 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 for which we use your information, together with practical examples.

To administer your account and provide our services to you

Create and manage your account
Provide you with customer support and respond to your requests
Personalize pricing and complete your transactions
Communicate with you about our services
Administer sweepstakes, contests, discounts, or other offers

To help you connect with other users

Show events occurring in a user’s proximity.
Show users’ profiles to one another
Exchange Phone Numbers with People who Match within the App

To operate advertising and marketing campaigns

Perform and measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns on our services and marketing campaigns promoting Maka Social on and off our services
Communicate with you about products or services that we believe may interest you
Use Photos from real events to create social media posts and ad campaigns to encourage future customers to register.

To improve our services and develop new ones

Administer focus groups, market studies, and surveys
Review interactions with customer care teams to improve our quality of service
Understand how users typically use the services to improve them (for instance, we may decide to change the look and feel or even substantially modify a given feature based on how users react to it)
Develop new features and services.

To prevent, detect and fight fraud and other illegal or unauthorized activities

Find and address ongoing, suspected, or alleged violations of our Terms of Use, notably through the review of reports and interactions between members.
Better understand and design countermeasures against violations of our Terms of Use
Retain data related to violations of our Terms of Use to prevent recurrences
Enforce or exercise our rights, for example, our Terms of Use
Communicate to users what we’ve done as a result of their reports.

To ensure legal compliance

Comply with legal requirements
Assist law enforcement. To ensure the safety of our users, it is our policy to cooperate with law enforcement fully and voluntarily in the event of physical harm, property damage, or theft. For most other matters, we will prioritize the privacy of our users and cooperate to the extent that we are compelled by law.

HOW WE SHARE INFORMATION
Since our goal is to help you make meaningful connections, the main sharing of users’ information is with other users. We also share some users’ information with service providers and partners who assist us in operating the services, and in some cases, legal authorities.

With other users

You share information with other users when you voluntarily disclose information on the service in your public profile. Please be careful with your information and make sure that the content you share is stuff that you’re comfortable with being visible.
If someone submits a report involving you (such as a claim that you violated our Terms of Use), we may communicate to the reporter actions, if any, we took as a result of their report.

We do not share email addresses with other users at this time. We do not share birthdays, but we will share age calculated from provided birthdays. Users may but are not required to show their full legal name in the name field which is shared with other users. Phone numbers are shared only if both users consent to sharing by matching with one another in the app.

With our service providers and partners
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 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.

For corporate transactions
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. Our successors and/or assigns are bound by this policy until legally superceded

With law enforcement / when required by law
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 or their personal property.

To enforce legal rights
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 the 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.

With your consent or at your request
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 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.

YOUR RIGHTS
We want you to be in control of your information, so we want to remind you of the following options and tools available to you:

Access / Update tools in the service.

Tools and account settings can help you access, rectify or remove information that you provided to us and that’s associated with your account directly within the service. If you have any questions about those tools and settings, please contact our customer care team for help at support@maka.social

Device permissions.

Mobile platforms can have permission systems for specific types of device data and notifications, such as phone contacts, pictures, location services, push notifications, and advertising identifiers. You can change your settings on your device to either consent to or oppose the collection or processing of the corresponding information or the display of the corresponding notifications. Of course, if you do that, certain services may lose functionality.

Uninstall

You can stop all information collection by an app by uninstalling it using the standard uninstall process for your device. Remember that uninstalling an app does NOT close your account. To close your account, please use the corresponding functionality on the service

Account closure.

You can close your account by using the corresponding functionality directly on the service.

We also want you to be aware of your privacy rights. Here are a few key points to remember:

Reviewing your information. Applicable privacy laws may give you the right to review the personal information we keep about you (depending on the jurisdiction, this may be called right of access, right of portability, right to know, or variations of those terms). You can exercise this right by emailing support@maka.social
Updating your information. If you believe that the information we hold about you is inaccurate or that we are no longer entitled to use it and want to request its rectification, deletion, object to, or restrict its processing, please contact us at support@maka.social
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, including if we are unable to authenticate you, if the request is unlawful or invalid, or if it may infringe on trade secrets or intellectual property or the privacy or other rights of someone else.
Also, we may not be able to accommodate certain requests to object to or restrict 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 and thus cannot ensure that you are 18 years of age or older.
In certain jurisdictions, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the appropriate data protection authority if you have concerns about how we process your personal information.

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. If you decide to stop using our services, you can close your account and your profile will stop being visible to other users. Note that we will close your account automatically if you are inactive for a period of two years. After your account is closed, we will delete your personal information, as laid out below:

To protect the safety and security of our users, we implement a safety retention window of three months following account closure. During this period, we keep your information in the event that it might be necessary to investigate unlawful or harmful conduct. The retention of information during this safety retention window is based on our legitimate interest as well as that of potential third-party victims.
Once the safety retention window elapses, we delete your data and only keep limited information for specified purposes, as laid out below:

We maintain limited data to comply with legal data retention obligations: in particular, we keep transaction data to comply with tax and accounting legal requirements, credit card information, if any, for the duration the user may challenge the transaction, and “traffic data” / logs for one year to comply with legal data retention obligations. We also keep records of consent users give us for five years to evidence our compliance with applicable law.
We maintain limited information on the basis of our legitimate interest: we keep customer care records and supporting data as well as the precise location of download/purchase for five years to support our customer care decisions, enforce our rights and enable us to defend ourselves in the event of a claim, profile data for one year in anticipation of potential litigation, for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims, and data necessary to prevent users who were banned or people who were found to be under the age of 18 from opening a new account, to ensure the safety and vital interests of our users.
Finally, we maintain information on the basis of our legitimate interest where there is an outstanding or potential issue, claim or dispute requiring us to keep information (in particular if we receive a valid legal subpoena or request asking us to preserve data (in which case we would need to keep the data to comply with our legal obligations) or if data would otherwise be necessary as part of legal proceedings).

CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
Our services are restricted to individuals who are 18 years of age or older. We do not permit individuals under the age of 18 on our platform. If you suspect that a user is under the age of 18, please use the reporting mechanism available on the service.

JOB CANDIDATES, CONTRACTORS, AND VENDOR REPRESENTATIVES
We also process the personal information of our job candidates, contractors, and vendor representatives, as part of our recruitment and talent management operations and our management of the services that contractors and vendors provide to us. If you are a job candidate, contractor, or vendor representative of Maka Social, certain relevant terms of this Privacy Policy apply to our processing of your personal information, including the sections of this Privacy Policy that discuss the entity that is responsible for the processing of your personal information, rights you may have under applicable law, and how to contact us.
If you are a job applicant, the personal information we process about you may vary depending on the job you seek but typically includes what you provide to us as part of your job application as well as professional qualifications, background, and reference information that recruiters or other third parties share with us. We use this information to support the recruitment process, which may lead to an employment contract. For contractors and vendor representatives, we may process identification information and work-related information, as necessary to manage our relationship with you and your employer, which is necessary for the performance of the services agreement, and to establish, exercise, or defend potential legal claims. We may share personal information with service providers that assist us with recruitment and technical data processing operations. We keep your personal information only as long as necessary for those purposes.

PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES
Because we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to help you build meaningful connections and strive to make sure explanations about our data practices remain up-to-date, 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.

HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, you have different options below:
By Email: support@maka.social
By Phone: 833-352-4097
By Mail:
Maka Social Incorporated
802 E Whiting Street
Tampa, FL 33602