Privacy Policy
Effective: September 1st, 2023
Technologies Ndeuchi Bouesse is a technology company. Our products and services — including Storygeny, advertising, commerce, and others that link to this Privacy Policy — provide simple and fun way to express yourself and have fun together!
When you use these services, you’ll share some information with us. So, we want to be upfront about the information we collect, how we use it, how it’s shared, and the controls you have.
Information We Collect
There are three basic categories of information we collect:
Information you provide.
Information we get when you use our services.
Information we get from third parties.
Here’s a little more detail on each of these categories.
Information You Provide
When you interact with our services, we collect information that you provide to us. For example, many of our services require you to set up an account, so we’ll need to collect a few important details about you, such as your name, username, password, email address, phone number, and date of birth. We may also ask you to provide us with some additional information that will be publicly visible on our services, such as a profile picture.
Of course, you’ll also provide us with whatever information you send through our services, such as Story and Chats, conversations with Genius Text AI or Genius Image AI, Public Profile information and more. Keep in mind that the users who view your Stories, Chats, and any other content can always save that content or copy it outside the app. So, the same common sense that applies to the internet at large applies to our services as well: don’t send messages or share content that you wouldn’t want someone to save or share.
When you contact Support or communicate with us in any other way, we’ll collect whatever information you volunteer or that we need to resolve your question.
Information We Get When You Use Our Services
When you use our services, we collect information about which of those services you’ve used and how you’ve used them. We might know, for instance, that you watched a particular Story, mainly created stories with fun topic, saw a specific ad for a certain period of time. Here’s a fuller explanation of the types of information we collect when you use our services:
Usage Information. We collect information about your activity through our services. For example, we may collect information about:
how you interact with our services, such as which Topics you use while creating stories, which Stories you watch, your interactions with Genius Text and Genius Image AI, or which search queries you submit.
how you communicate with other Storygenies, such as their names, the time and date of your communications, the number of messages you exchange with your friends, which friends you exchange messages with the most, and your interactions with messages (such as when you open a message or we detect that you capture a screenshot).
Content Information. When you use our services, you may engage with the camera or AI creative tools and create and share various types of content including Stories and more. We collect information about content you create or provide on our services, and your engagement with the camera and creative tools. For certain content, this may include information based on the content of the image, video, and audio. For example, if you post a Story about broken love, we may show you other Stories about love. We may also collect other information about the content, including metadata — which is information about the content itself like the date and time it was posted and who viewed it.
Device Information. We collect information from and about the devices you use. For example, we may collect:
information about your hardware and software, such as the hardware model, operating system version, device memory, advertising identifiers, unique application identifiers, apps installed, unique device identifiers, device usage data, browser type, keyboards installed, language, battery level, and time zone;
information from device sensors, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses, microphones, and whether you have headphones connected; and
information about your wireless and mobile network connections, such as mobile phone number, service provider, IP address, and signal strength.
Device Phonebook. Because our services are all about communicating with friends, we may — with your permission — collect information from your device’s phonebook, such as your contacts and related information.
Camera, Photos, and Audio. Many of our services require us to collect images and other information from your device’s camera, photos, and microphone. For example, you won’t be able to send Stories or upload photos from your camera roll unless we can access your camera or photos.
Information Collected by Cookies and Other Technologies. Like most online services and mobile applications, we may use cookies and other technologies, such as web beacons, web storage, and unique advertising identifiers, to collect information about your activity, browser, and device. We may also use these technologies to collect information when you interact with services we offer through one of our partners, such as advertising and commerce features. For example, we may use information collected on other websites to show you more relevant ads. Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually remove or reject browser cookies through the settings on your browser or device. Keep in mind, though, that removing or rejecting cookies could affect the availability and functionality of our services. To learn more about how we and our partners use cookies on our services and your choices, please check out our Tracking Tools, Advertising and Opt-Out section.
Log Information. We may also collect log information when you use our website, such as:
details about how you’ve used our services;
device information, such as your web browser type and language;
access times;
pages viewed;
IP address;
identifiers associated with cookies or other technologies that may uniquely identify your device or browser; and
pages you visited before or after navigating to our website.
Other information, with your permission. There may be instances when you interact with our services that we will ask your permission to collect additional information. For example, if you contact our support service or live in a jurisdiction where certain data is considered sensitive we will ask your permission and give you a heads up on what data, including sensitive data, if any, we’re collecting.
Categories of Sources of Personal Data
We collect Personal Data about you from the following categories of sources:
You
When you provide such information directly to us: When you use our Services.
When you provide such information directly to us: When you voluntarily provide information in free-form text boxes through the Services or through responses to surveys or questionnaires.
When you provide such information directly to us: When you send us an email or otherwise contact us.
When you use the Services and such information is collected automatically: Through Cookies (defined in the “Tracking Tools, Advertising and Opt-Out” section below).
When you use the Services and such information is collected automatically: If you use a location-enabled browser, we may receive information about your location.
When you use the Services and such information is collected automatically: If you download and install certain applications and software we make available, we may receive and collect information transmitted from your computing device for the purpose of providing you the relevant Services, such as information regarding when you are logged on and available to receive updates or alert notices.
Third Parties
Vendors: We may use analytics providers to analyze how you interact and engage with the Services, or third parties may help us provide you with customer support.
Advertising Partners: We receive information about you from some of our vendors who assist us with marketing or promotional services related to how you interact with our websites, applications, products, Services, advertisements or communications.
Social Networks: If you provide your social network account credentials to us or otherwise sign in to the Services through a third-party site or service, some content and/or information in those accounts may be transmitted into your account with us.
How We Use Information
What do we do with the information we collect?
The short answer is: provide you with an amazing set of products and services that we relentlessly improve. Here are the ways we do that:
develop, operate, improve, deliver, maintain, and protect our products and services.
provide, personalize, and improve our advertising services, ad targeting, and ad measurement, including through the use of your content and precise location information (again, if you’ve given us permission to collect precise location information), both on and off our services. We may also store information about your use of third-party apps and websites on your device to do this.
personalize our services by, among other things, suggesting friends, place recommendations, profile information, or helping Storygenies find each other in Storygeny, third-party apps and services, inferring your interests based on your content or activity, or customizing the content we show you, including ads.
develop and improve our algorithms and machine learning models, including for personalization, advertising, augmented reality, fairness and inclusivity, and to prevent abuse or other Terms of Service violations.
conduct research to better understand Storygenies and general consumer interests and trends, including the ways our services are used.
use information you provide to communicate with you on other messaging platforms.
enhance the safety and security of our products and services.
verify your identity and prevent fraud or other unauthorized or illegal activity.
use information we’ve collected from cookies and other technology to enhance our services and your experience with them.
enforce, investigate, and report conduct violating our Terms of Service and other usage policies, respond to requests from law enforcement, and comply with legal requirements.
send you communications, including by email, SMS, or other messaging platforms, where permitted. For example, we may use email, SMS, or other messaging platforms to respond to support inquiries or to share information about our products, services, and promotional offers that we think may interest you.
monitor and analyze trends and usage.
How We Share Information
Why do we share the information we collect? Most of the time, it’s because you ask us to. Sometimes we share it because we need to. Here are the ways we may share information about you:
With other Storygenies. We may share the following information with other Storygenies:
information about you, such as your username, name, email and phone number.
information about how you have interacted with our services and content you’ve engaged with, such as your number of followers,” the names of Storygenies you are friends with, the number of contacts you have on Storygeny, the number of stories you have posted, whether you’ve recently been active on Storygeny, and other information that will help Storygenies understand your connections with others using our services. For example, because it may not be clear whether a new friend request comes from someone you actually know, we may share whether you and the requestor have Storygeny friends in common.
information about your device, such as the operating system and device type, to help you receive Chats, Stories, and other content in the optimal viewing format.
any additional information you have directed us to share. For example, Storygeny will share your information when you connect your Storygeny account to a third-party app, and if you share information or content from Storygeny to the third-party app.
content you post or send. How widely your content is shared depends on your personal settings. For example, a Story may be made available to just a single friend you select, but your Story may be seen by any Storygenies you allow to see your Story.
With all Storygenies, our business partners, and the general public. We may share the following information with all Storygenies as well as with our business partners and the general public:
public information like your name, username, profile pictures and Public Profile.
Public Content like your Stories that are set to be viewable by Everyone. This content may be viewed, used, and shared by the public at large both on and off our services, including through search results, on websites, in apps, and in online and offline broadcasts.
With third parties. We may share information with third parties in the following ways:
We may share information about you with service providers who perform services on our behalf, including to facilitate payments and measure and optimize the performance of ads and deliver more relevant ads, including on third-party websites and apps.
We may share information about you with business partners that provide services and functionality on our services. For more information about information collected by third parties on our services, visit our Support Site.
We may share information about you, such as device and usage information, to help us and others prevent fraud.
We may share information about you for legal, safety, and security reasons. We may share information about you if we reasonably believe that disclosing the information is needed to:
comply with any valid legal process, governmental request, or applicable law, rule, or regulation.
investigate, remedy, or enforce potential Terms of Service and Community Guidelines violations.
protect the rights, property, or safety of us, our users, or others.
detect and resolve any fraud or security concerns.
We may share information about you as part of a merger or acquisition. If Technologies Ndeuchi Bouesse gets involved in a merger, asset sale, financing, liquidation or bankruptcy, or acquisition of all or some portion of our business to another company, we may share your information with that company before and after the transaction closes.
Non-personal information. We may also share with third parties that provide services to us or perform business purposes for us aggregated, non-personally identifiable, or de-identified information.
Tracking Tools, Advertising and Opt-Out
The Services use cookies and similar technologies such as pixel tags, web beacons, clear GIFs and JavaScript (collectively, “Cookies”) to enable our servers to recognize your web browser, tell us how and when you visit and use our Services, analyze trends, learn about our user base and operate and improve our Services. Cookies are small pieces of data– usually text files – placed on your computer, tablet, phone or similar device when you use that device to access our Services. We may also supplement the information we collect from you with information received from third parties, including third parties that have placed their own Cookies on your device(s). Please note that because of our use of Cookies, the Services do not support “Do Not Track” requests sent from a browser at this time. We use the following types of Cookies:
Essential Cookies. Essential Cookies are required for providing you with features or services that you have requested. For example, certain Cookies enable you to log into secure areas of our Services. Disabling these Cookies may make certain features and services unavailable.
Functional Cookies. Functional Cookies are used to record your choices and settings regarding our Services, maintain your preferences over time and recognize you when you return to our Services. These Cookies help us to personalize our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
Performance/Analytical Cookies. Performance/Analytical Cookies allow us to understand how visitors use our Services. They do this by collecting information about the number of visitors to the Services, what pages visitors view on our Services and how long visitors are viewing pages on the Services. Performance/Analytical Cookies also help us measure the performance of our advertising campaigns in order to help us improve our campaigns and the Services’ content for those who engage with our advertising.
Retargeting/Advertising Cookies. Retargeting/Advertising Cookies collect data about your online activity and identify your interests so that we can provide advertising that we believe is relevant to you. For more information about this, please see the section below titled “Information about Interest-Based Advertisements.”
You can decide whether or not to accept Cookies through your internet browser’s settings. Most browsers have an option for turning off the Cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new Cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your browser software) allow you to decide on acceptance of each new Cookie in a variety of ways. You can also delete all Cookies that are already on your device. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit our website and some of the Services and functionalities may not work.
To explore what Cookie settings are available to you or to modify your preferences with respect to Cookies, you can access your cookie management settings by clicking here. To find out more information about Cookies, including information about how to manage and delete Cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ or brhttps://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/if you are located in the European Union.
Information about Interest-Based Advertisements:
We may serve advertisements, and also allow third-party ad networks, including third-party ad servers, ad agencies, ad technology vendors and research firms, to serve advertisements. These advertisements may be targeted to users who fit certain general profile categories or display certain preferences or behaviors (“Interest-Based Ads”). Information for Interest-Based Ads (including Personal Data) may be provided to us by you, or derived from the usage patterns of particular users on the Services and/or services of third parties. Such information may be gathered through tracking users’ activities across time and unaffiliated properties, including when you leave the Services. To accomplish this, we or our service providers may deliver Cookies, including a file (known as a “web beacon”) from an ad network to you through the Services. Web beacons allow ad networks to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for us and for advertisers. Web beacons also enable ad networks to serve targeted advertisements to you when you visit other websites. Web beacons allow ad networks to view, edit or set their own Cookies on your browser, just as if you had requested a web page from their site.
We comply with the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising. Through the DAA and Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”), several media and marketing associations have developed an industry self-regulatory program to give consumers a better understanding of, and greater control over, ads that are customized based a consumer’s online behavior across different websites and properties. To make choices about Interest-Based Ads from participating third parties, including to opt-out of receiving behaviorally targeted advertisements from participating organizations, please visit the DAA’s or NAI’s consumer opt-out pages, which are located at http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ or www.aboutads.info/choices. Users in the European Union should visit the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s user information website http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/.
Third-Party Content and Integrations
Our services may contain third-party content and integrations. Examples include third-party integrations in Camera editing tools to provide Scan results, Creative tools such as AI integration, and third-party developer integrations. Through these integrations, you may be providing information to the third party as well as to Storygeny. We are not responsible for how those third parties collect or use your information. As always, we encourage you to review the privacy policies of every third-party service that you visit or use, including those third parties you interact with through our services.
How Long We Keep Your Information
We retain Personal Data about you for as long as necessary to provide you with our Services or to perform our business or commercial purposes for collecting your Personal Data. When establishing a retention period for specific categories of data, we consider who we collected the data from, our need for the Personal Data, why we collected the Personal Data, and the sensitivity of the Personal Data. In some cases, we retain Personal Data for longer, if doing so is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes or collect fees owed, or is otherwise permitted or required by applicable law, rule or regulation. We may further retain information in an anonymous or aggregated form where that information would not identify you personally.
For example:
We retain your profile information and credentials for as long as you have an account with us.
We retain your device/IP data for as long as we need it to ensure that our systems are working appropriately, effectively and efficiently.
We retain your product usage data for as long as you have a paid account with us.
Control Over Your Information
You have certain rights with respect to your Personal Data, including those set forth below. For more information about these rights, or to submit a request, please email us at info @ storygeny.com. Please note that in some circumstances, we may not be able to fully comply with your request, such as if it is frivolous or extremely impractical, if it jeopardizes the rights of others, or if it is not required by law, but in those circumstances, we will still respond to notify you of such a decision. In some cases, we may also need you to provide us with additional information, which may include Personal Data, if necessary to verify your identity and the nature of your request.
Access: You can request more information about the Personal Data we hold about you and request a copy of such Personal Data by emailing info @ storygeny.com. You can also access certain of your Personal Data by logging on to your account.
Rectification: If you believe that any Personal Data we are holding about you is incorrect or incomplete, you can request that we correct or supplement such data by emailing info @ storygeny.com. You can also correct some of this information directly by logging on to your account.
Erasure: You can request that we erase some or all of your Personal Data from our systems.
Withdrawal of Consent: If we are processing your Personal Data based on your consent (as indicated at the time of collection of such data), you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Please note, however, that if you exercise this right, you may have to then provide express consent on a case-by-case basis for the use or disclosure of certain of your Personal Data, if such use or disclosure is necessary to enable you to utilize some or all of our Services.
Portability: You can ask for a copy of your Personal Data in a machine-readable format. You can also request that we transmit the data to another controller where technically feasible.
Objection: You can contact us to let us know that you object to the further use or disclosure of your Personal Data for certain purposes, such as for direct marketing purposes.
Restriction of Processing: You can ask us to restrict further processing of your Personal Data.
Right to File Complaint: You have the right to lodge a complaint about Storygeny’s practices with respect to your Personal Data with the supervisory authority of your country or EU Member State. A list of Supervisory Authorities is available here: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en..
Communicating with other Storygenies. It’s important to us that you stay in control over whom you communicate with. That’s why we’ve built a number of tools in Settings that let you indicate, among other things, who you want to see your Stories, whether you’d like to receive Stories from just your friends, your friends and contacts, or all Storygenies, and whether you’d like to block another Storygenie from contacting you again.
Advertising Preferences. We try to show you ads that we think will be relevant to your interests. If you would like to modify the information we and our advertising partners use to select these ads, you can do so in the app and through your device preferences
Transfers of Personal Data
The Services are hosted and operated in the United States (“U.S.”) through Technologies Ndeuchi Bouesse and its service providers, and if you do not reside in the U.S., laws in the U.S. may differ from the laws where you reside. By using the Services, you acknowledge that any Personal Data about you, regardless of whether provided by you or obtained from a third party, is being provided to Technologies Ndeuchi Bouesse in the U.S. and will be hosted on U.S. servers, and you authorize Technologies Ndeuchi Bouesse to transfer, store and process your information to and in the U.S., and possibly other countries. In some circumstances, your Personal Data may be transferred to the U.S. pursuant to a data processing agreement incorporating standard data protection clauses.
Our Audience
Our services are not intended for — and we don’t direct them to — anyone under 13. And that’s why we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. In addition, we may limit how we collect, use, and store some of the information of users under 18. In some cases, this means we will be unable to provide certain functionality to these users.
Updates to the Privacy Policy
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. But when we do, we’ll let you know one way or another. Sometimes, we’ll let you know by revising the date at the top of the Privacy Policy that’s available on our website and mobile application. Other times, we may provide you with additional notice (such as adding a statement to our websites’ homepages or providing you with an in-app notification).
Contact Information
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, the ways in which we collect and use your Personal Data or your choices and rights regarding such collection and use, please do not hesitate to contact us at:
storygeny.com
info @ storygeny.com
