Firstbase Privacy And Trust

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU 

At Firstbase, your privacy is our priority. The privacy of your information is one of the key principles of our service offering to you. Trust is very important in any relationship and we will protect the information you trust us with so that you can 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 ask you to keep your personal information updated regularly and to ensure that you only share the information on your profile that you wish to be publicly available. 

Our commitment to 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 our decisions are taken with the utmost respect for your privacy.

Our commitment to transparency. 

 We understand that to earn your trust we need to be open and transparent about our policies and practices. We actually want you to read our policies and understand our practices! We encourage all members to read this document and the links to related documents. 

Our commitment to security.

 We have service providers dedicated to keeping your data safe and secure. We regularly update our security practices and invest in our security efforts to enhance the safety of your information. 

Our commitment to transparency. 

 We understand that to earn your trust we need to be open and transparent about our policies and practices. We actually want you to read our policies and understand our practices! We encourage all members to read this document and the links to related documents. 

Our commitment to you.

We can’t do this without you and ask you to please inform us if you become aware of a data breach involving your personal information, particularly if you consider this originated from our Services.

PRIVACY POLICY

Welcome to Firstbase’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 from 19 October 2022. This is our first privacy policy at Firstbase! 

  1. WHO WE ARE
  2. WHERE THIS PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES
  3. INFORMATION WE COLLECT
  4. COOKIES AND OTHER SIMILAR DATA COLLECTION TECHNOLOGIES
  5. HOW WE USE INFORMATION
  6. HOW WE SHARE INFORMATION
  7. CROSS-BORDER DATA TRANSFERS
  8. YOUR RIGHTS
  9. HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION
  10. CHILDRENS PRIVACY
  11. JOB CANDIDATES, CONTRACTORS AND VENDOR REPRESENTATIVES
  12. PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES
  13. HOW TO CONTACT US

This Privacy Policy applies to Australia only, as this is where our Services are provided. As we expand our Services to other regions we will review and update this Privacy Policy.  

  1. WHO WE ARE

The company responsible for your information is: Firstbase App Pty Ltd. 

The person responsible for the Privacy Policy within Firstbase is the Head of Customer Services who is available on support@firstbaseapp.com.au. 

  1. WHERE THIS PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES

This Privacy Policy applies to the Firstbase website, app and other services we operate under the brand “Firstbase” (“Platform”). For simplicity, we refer to all of these as our “services” in this Privacy Policy. To make things clear, we’ve added links to this Privacy Policy on all applicable services. 

Some services may require their own unique privacy policy. If a service has its own privacy policy, then that policy — not this Privacy Policy — applies. 

  1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

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 about your use of our services such as access logs, as well as information from third parties, like when you access our services through your social media account or when you upload information from your social media account to complete your profile. 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: 

  • When you create an account, you provide us with at least your login credentials and/or phone number, as well as some basic details necessary for the service to work, such as your gender and date of birth 
  • When you complete your profile, you can share with us additional information, such as details on your personality, lifestyle, interests and other details about you, as well as content such as photos or audio clips. To add certain content, like pictures, you may allow us to access your camera or photo album 
  • 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 us or our payment service provider with information, such as your debit or credit card number or other financial information 
  • When you participate in surveys, focus groups or market studies, you give us your insights into our products and services, responses to our questions and testimonials 
  • 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 
  • If you share with us information about other people (for example, if you use contact details of a friend for a given feature, including for our BaseSafe ® feature), we process this information on your behalf in order to complete your request 
  • Of course, we also process your chats with other users as well as the content you publish, as necessary for the operation of the services. 

Information we receive from others 

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

  • Users

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. 

 

  • Social Media

You may decide to share information with us through your social media account, for instance if you decide to create and log into your Firstbase account via your social media or other account (e.g., Facebook, Google or Apple) or to upload onto our services information such as photos from one of your social media accounts (e.g., Facebook, Instagram etc). 

 

  • Affiliates

If you were banned from the service of any one of our strategic partners or affiliates, your information can be shared with us to allow us to take necessary actions, including closing your account or preventing you from creating an account on our services. We do this to protect the interests of our members. 

 

  • Other Strategic Partners

We may receive information about you from our strategic partners or affiliates, where Firstbase 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. 

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 our Services (or the services of our affiliates) 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, information shown to you, referring webpages address and ads that you interacted with) and your interactions with other users (e.g: users you connect and interact with, when you exchanged with them, number of messages you send and receive). 

 

  • 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’ settings), identifiers associated with cookies or other technologies that may uniquely identify a device or browser. 

 

  • Other Information with your Consent

If you give us permission, we can 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. Similarly, if you consent, we may collect photos and videos (for instance, if you want to publish a photo or video or participate in streaming features on our services). The collection of your geolocation information does not mean that we have a duty of care to regularly monitor this information. This geolocation information may be supplied to a law enforcement or other organisation by a warrant or an order of a court of competent jurisdiction. We will lawfully comply with any warrant or order created.   

  1. COOKIES AND OTHER SIMILAR DATA COLLECTION TECHNOLOGIES

This section is only relevant to the website.  The app does not use cookies 

We and our vendors and service providers use cookies and other similar technologies (e.g., web beacons, flash cookies, etc.) (“Cookies”) to automatically collect information, measure and analyse which web pages you click on and how you use our Services, enhance your experience using the Services, improve our Services, and provide you with targeted advertising on the Services and elsewhere across your different devices. Cookies are small files which, when placed on your device, enable the Services to provide certain features and functionality. Web beacons are very small images or small pieces of data embedded in images, also known as “pixel tags” or “clear GIFs,” that can recognize Cookies, the time and date a page is viewed, a description of the page where the pixel tag is placed, and similar information from your computer or device. By using the Services, you consent to our use of Cookies on our Website.  

We may allow others to use cookies and similar technologies (e.g: web beacons, pixels and SDKs) to recognize you and/or your device(s). You may read our Cookie Policy [insert link to Cookie Policy] for more information on why we use them and how you can better control their use. 

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 Firstbase, do not currently respond to DNT signals.  

Additionally, we allow our strategic partners, advertising networks, and other advertising vendors and service providers (including analytics vendors and service providers) to collect information about your online activities through Cookies. We link your contact or subscriber information with your activity on our Platform across all your devices, using your email or other log-in or device information. These third parties may use this information to display advertisements on our Platform and elsewhere online tailored to your interests, preferences, and characteristics. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties, and the information practices of these third parties are not covered by this Privacy Policy. 

You may be able to refuse or disable Cookies by adjusting your browser settings. As each browser is different, please consult the instructions provided by your browser. Please note that you may need to take additional steps to refuse or disable certain types of Cookies. For example, due to differences in how browsers and mobile apps function, you may need to take different steps to opt out of Cookies used for targeted advertising in a browser and to opt out of targeted advertising for a mobile application, which you may control through your device settings or mobile app permissions. In addition, your opt-out selection is specific to the particular browser or device that you are using when you opt out, so you may need to opt-out separately for each of browser or device. If you choose to refuse, disable, or delete Cookies, some of the functionality of the Platform may no longer be available to you. 

  1. HOW WE USE INFORMATION

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 for which we use your information, together with practical examples. 

  1. 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 prices and complete your transactions 
  • Communicate with you about our services 
  • Administer sweepstakes, contests, discounts or other offers 
  1. To help you connect with other users
  • Recommend you other users to meet 
  • Show users’ profiles to one another 
  1. To operate advertising and marketing campaigns
  • Perform and measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns on our services and marketing campaigns promoting Firstbase on and off our services 
  • Communicate with you about products or services that we believe may interest you 
  1. 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 (for example, we may decide to build a new interests-based feature further to requests received from users). 
  1. To prevent, detect and fight fraud and other illegal or unauthorized activities
  • Find and address ongoing, suspected or alleged violations of our Terms [insert link to Terms] notably through the review of reports and interactions between members. 
  • Better understand and design countermeasures against violations of our Terms [insert link to Terms]
  • Retain data related to violations of our Terms[insert link to Terms] [insert link to Terms] to prevent against recurrences 
  • Enforce or exercise our rights, for example our Terms [insert link to Terms]
  • Communicate to users what we have done as a result of their reports. 
  1. To ensure legal compliance
  • Comply with legal requirements 
  • Assist law enforcement 

For information on how we process personal information through profiling and automated decision-making. 

To process your information as described in this Privacy Policy, we rely on the following legal bases: 

  • Provide our service to you: The reason we process your information for purposes A and B above is to perform the contract that you have with us. For instance, as you go about using our service to build meaningful connections, we use your information to maintain your account and your profile, make it viewable to other users and recommend other users to you and to otherwise provide our free and paid features. 
  • Legitimate interests: We process your information for purposes C, D and E above, based on our legitimate interest. For instance, we analyse users’ behaviour on our services to continuously improve our offerings, we suggest offers we think might interest you and promote our own services, we process information to help keep our users safe and we process data where necessary to enforce our rights, assist law enforcement and enable us to defend ourselves in the event of a legal action. 
  • Comply with applicable laws and regulations: We process your information for purpose F above where it is necessary for us to comply with applicable laws and regulations and evidence our compliance with applicable laws and regulations. For example, we retain traffic data and data about transactions in line with our accounting, tax and other statutory data retention obligations and to be able to respond to valid access requests from law enforcement. We also keep data evidencing consents users give us and decisions they may have taken to opt-out of a given feature or processing. 
  • Consent: If you choose to provide us with information that may be considered “special” or “sensitive” in certain jurisdictions, such as your gender, sexual orientation or medical information you’re consenting to our processing of that information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. From time to time, we may ask for your consent to collect specific information such as your precise geolocation or use your information for certain specific reasons. In some cases, you may withdraw your consent by adapting your settings (for instance in relation to the collection of our precise geolocation) or by deleting your content (for instance where you entered information in your profile that may be considered “special” or “sensitive”). In any case, you may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at the address provided at the end of this Privacy Policy and we will undertake reasonable endeavours to remove this special or sensitive information from the Platform. 
  1. HOW WE SHARE INFORMATION

Since our goal is to help you make meaningful connections, the main sharing of users’ information is, of course, with other users of Firstbase. We also share some users’ information with service providers and partners who assist us in operating the services, with our affiliates for specified reasons as described below and, in some cases, legal authorities. Read on for more details about how your information is shared with others. 

  • With other users

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 visible. 

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. 

If someone submits a report involving you (such as a claim that you violated our Terms [insert link to Terms]), we may communicate to the reporter actions, if any, we took as a result of their report. 

  • 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 strategic partner. Our service providers and strategic partners must agree to strict confidentiality obligations. 

  • With our affiliates

We may have affiliates that provide related services to the Services we provide. 

We may share your information with these affiliates for limited legitimate purposes described below: 

  • to make Members safer, by making sure that when a bad actor is found on one of them (for instance on our Services), it is not only addressed there (for instance by banning them), but also on the others. 
  • for them to assist us in data processing operations, as service providers, upon our instructions and on our behalf. Their assistance may include technical processing operations, such as data hosting and maintenance, customer care, marketing and targeted advertising, analytics, finance and accounting assistance, improving our service, securing our data and systems and fighting against spam, abuse, fraud, infringement and other wrongdoings. 
  • in order to improve your chances at building significant connections with others, we may make you visible on the websites or apps of our affiliates or allow you to benefit from cross-platform functionalities. We will of course comply with applicable law and, where relevant, notify you of any such opportunity and allow you to agree or to refuse. Examples of such opportunities may include the creation of a new service with an affiliate or strategic partner, addressing a specific demographic that we think might be interesting to you based on your profile. 
  • for other legitimate business purposes including corporate audit, analysis and consolidated reporting, where and as allowed under applicable laws. 

 

  • 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. 

 

  • 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. 

 

  • 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 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 behavioural 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 our affiliated companies, strategic partners and third parties (notably advertisers) to develop and deliver targeted advertising on our services and on websites or applications of third parties, and to analyse 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 [insert link to Cookie Policy].   

  1. CROSS-BORDER DATA TRANSFERS

Where we transfer personal information outside of Australia we use standard contractual clauses containing commitments between companies transferring personal data, binding them to protect the privacy and security of your data or other appropriate transfer mechanism. We (or our service providers) also require that these companies provide certification of their data security protection for the purposes of confirming that appropriate anti-hacking protocols have been followed by these companies when handling your personal information.  

  1. 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 question on those tools and settings, please contact our customer care team for help: support@firstbaseapp.com.au
  • 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 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 putting in such a request support@firstbaseapp.com.au.
  • 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 support@firstbaseapp.com.ausupport@firstbaseapp.com.au
  • 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. If you wish to receive information relating to another user, such as a copy of any messages you received from them through our service, the other user will have to contact us to submit a separate request for their information. We may also ask them to provide proof of identity before we can answer the request. 

 

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. 

 

  1. HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION

We keep your personal information only as long as we need it for legitimate business purposes (as described 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. After your account is closed, we will delete your personal information, as laid out below: 

  1. 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 conducts. The retention of information during this safety retention window is based on our legitimate interest as well as that of potential third-party victims. 
  2. 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 for 10 years to comply with tax and accounting legal requirements. We may also need to keep “traffic data” / logs for one year to comply with legal data retention obligations. We also keep records of consents 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 imprecise location of download/purchase to support our customer care decisions, enforce our rights and enable us to defend ourselves in the event of a claim, profile data 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). 

 

  1. CHILDRENS 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. 

We encourage all Members not to include images of children in any of the content that is uploaded to our Platform. We do not accept any liability for publishing images of children by a Member as we assume that the Member is the parent or lawful guardian of the child and the Member in this capacity consents to the publication of images containing the child. 

 

  1. 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 Firstbase, 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, transfers of personal information, rights you may have under applicable law. 

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. We keep your personal information only as long as necessary for those purposes. 

 

 

  1. 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. 

 

  1. HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact the Head of Customer Services who is available on support@firstbaseapp.com