Privacy Policy
PRIVACY POLICY
When you use our services, you’re trusting us with your information. We understand this is a big responsibility and work hard to protect your information and put you in control. This Privacy Policy is meant to help you understand what information we collect, why we collect it, and how you can update, manage, and delete your information. We are based on the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Introduction
We build a range of services that help our partners to explore and interact with the world in new ways. Our services include:
• BBS
• BBS-EDB
• BBS-Mobile App (iOS and Android)
• Products that are integrated into third-party apps and sites, like ads and embedded social content
You can use our services in a variety of ways to manage your privacy. For example, you can sign up for a BBS Account if you want to make an inquiry. You can use many BBS services when you’re signed out or without creating an account at all, like searching on BBS or watching videos from offers inside BBS.
Information BBS collects
We want you to understand the types of information we collect as you use our services We collect information to stay in contact with you and to provide better services to all our users — from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which offers you might like. The information BBS collects, and how that information is used, depends on how you use our services and how you manage your privacy controls. When you’re not signed in to a BBS Account, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers tied to the browser, application, or device you’re using. This helps us do things like maintain your language preferences across browsing sessions. When you’re signed in, we also collect information that we store with your BBS Account, which we treat as personal information.
Things you create or provide to us
When you create a BBS Account, you provide us with personal information that includes your name and a password . You can also choose to add a phone number and other private information to your account. Even if you aren’t signed in to a BBS Account, you might choose to provide us with information — like an email address to receive updates about our services. Information we collect as you use our services Your apps, browsers & devices We collect information about the apps, browsers, and devices you use to access BBS services, which helps us provide features like automatic product updates and dimming your screen if your battery runs low.
The information we collect includes unique identifiers, browser type and settings, device type and settings, operating system, mobile network information and application version number. We also collect information about the interaction of your apps, browsers, and devices with our services, including IP address , crash reports, system activity, and the date, time, and referrer URL of your request. We collect this information when a BBS service on your device contacts our servers — for example, when you install an app from the Play Store or App Store or when a service checks for automatic updates. If you’re using an Android/iPhone device with BBS apps, your device periodically contacts BBS servers to provide information about your device and connection to our services. This information includes things like your device type, carrier name, crash reports, and which apps you've installed.
Your activity
We collect information about your activity in our services, which we use to do things like recommend different offers you might like. The activity information we collect may include:
• Terms you search
• Videos you watch
• Views and interactions with content and ads
• Voice and audio information when you use audio features
• Purchase activity
• People with whom you communicate or share content
• Activity on third-party sites and apps that use our services
You can visit your BBS Account to find and manage activity information that’s saved in your account.
Your location can be determined with varying degrees of accuracy by:
We collect information about your location when you use our services, which helps us offer features like Targeted offers.
Your location can be determined with varying degrees of accuracy by:
• GPS
• IP address
• Sensor data from your device
In some circumstances, BBS also collects information about you from publicly accessible sources.
We use various technologies to collect and store information, including cookies, pixel tags, local storage, such as browser web storage or application data caches, databases, and server logs.
WHY BBS COLLECTS DATA
We use data to build better services
We use the information we collect from all our services for the following purposes:
Provide our services
We use your information to deliver our services, like processing the terms you search for in order to return results or helping you share content by suggesting recipients from your contacts.
Maintain & improve our services
We also use your information to ensure our services are working as intended , such as tracking outages or troubleshooting issues that you report to us. And we use your information to make improvements to our services — for example, understanding which search terms are most frequently misspelled helps us improve spell-check features used across our services.
Develop new services
We use the information we collect in existing services to help us develop new ones. For example, understanding how people organized their offers, how to improve our search engines to display more relevant offers.
Provide personalized services, including content and ads
We use the information we collect to customize our services for you, including providing recommendations, personalized content, and customized search results. Depending on your settings, we may also show you personalized ads based on your interests. For example, if you search for “Cutting machine,” you may see an ad for Similar Machines when you’re browsing a site that shows ads served by BBS. You can control what information we use to show you ads by visiting your ad settings. We don’t ask and show you personalized ads based on sensitive categories, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or health. We don’t share information that personally identifies you with advertisers, such as your name or email, unless you ask us to.
Measure performance
We use data for analytics and measurement to improve our services. For example, we analyze data about your visits to our sites to do things like optimize product design. And we also use data about the ads you interact with, to help advertisers understand the performance of their ad campaigns. We use a variety of tools to do this, including Google Analytics. When you visit sites that use Google Analytics, Google and a Google Analytics customers >may link information about your activity from that site with activity from other sites that use our ad services.
Communicate with you
We use information we collect, like your email address, to interact with you directly. For example, to send offers to you, or we may send a notification if we detect suspicious activity, like an attempt to sign in to your BBS Account from an unusual location. Or we may let you know about upcoming changes or improvements to our services. And if you contact BBS, we’ll keep a record of your request in order to keep you updated.
Protect BBS, our users, and the public
We use information to help improve the safety and reliability of our services. This includes detecting, preventing, and responding to fraud, abuse, security risks, and technical issues that could harm BBS, our users, or the public. We use different technologies to process your information for these purposes. We use automated systems that analyze your content to provide you with things like customized search results, personalized ads, or other features tailored to how you use our services. And we analyze your content to help us detect abuse such as spam, malware, and illegal content. We also use algorithms to recognize patterns in data. For example, BBS uses Deepl Translate to help people to see the content in different languages. We may combine the information we collect among our services and across your devices for the purposes described above.
If other users already have your email address or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible BBS Account information, such as your name, etc. For example: this helps people identify an email or message coming from you. We’ll ask for your consent before using your information for a purpose that isn’t covered in this Privacy Policy.
YOUR PRIVACY CONTROLS
You have choices regarding the information we collect and how it's used This section describes key controls for managing your privacy across our services. You can also visit the Privacy Checkup, which provides an opportunity to review and adjust important privacy settings. In addition to these tools, we also offer specific privacy settings in our products.
Managing, reviewing, and updating your information
When you’re signed in, you can always review and update information by visiting the services you use. For example, BBS (iOS) and BBS (Android) are both designed to help you manage specific types of content you’ve saved with BBS. We also built a place for you to review and control information saved in your BBS Account.
Your BBS Account includes:
Activity controls
Decide what types of activity you’d like saved in your account.
Ad settings
Manage your preferences about the ads shown to you in BBS or in other apps and platforms.
You can modify your interests, choose whether your personal information is used to make ads more relevant to you, and turn on or off certain advertising services.
About you
Control what others see about you across BBS services.
Shared endorsements
Choose whether your name and sensitive information appears next to your activity, like reviews and recommendations, that appear in ads.
Information you share
Control with whom you share information through your account on BBS.
Ways to review & update your information
My BBS
My BBS allows you to review and control data that’s created when you use BBS services, like searches you’ve done or your visits to BBS Services, Google play and App Store. You can browse by date and by topic, and delete part or all of your activity. My BBS allows manage your contact information, such as your name, email, and phone number.
Removing & deleting your information
You can also request us to remove content from specific BBS services based on applicable law.
To delete your information, you can:
- Delete your content from specific BBS services.
- Search for and then delete specific items from your account using My BBS.
- Delete your entire BBS Account.
There are other ways to control the information BBS collects whether or not you’re signed in to a BBS Account, including:
• Browser settings: For example, you can configure your browser to indicate when BBS has set a cookie in your browser. You can also configure your browser to block all cookies from a specific domain or all domains
• But remember that our services rely on cookies to function properly , for things like remembering your language preferences.
• Device-level settings: Your device may have controls that determine what information we collect. For example, you can modify location settings on your Mobile device.
SHARING YOUR INFORMATION
When you share your information We do not share your personal information with companies, organizations, or individuals
outside of BBS except in the following cases: With your consent We’ll share personal information outside of BBS when we have your consent. For external processing We provide personal information to our affiliates and other trusted partners to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. For example, we use service providers to help us with customer support.
For legal reasons
We will share personal information outside of BBS if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation, or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:
• Meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request. We share information about the number and type of requests we receive from governments in our Transparency Report. Enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
• Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues.
• Protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of BBS , our users, or the public as required or permitted by law.
• We may share
We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners — like publishers, advertisers, developers, or rights holders. For example, we share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services. We also allow specific partners to collect information from your browser or device for advertising and measurement purposes using their own cookies or similar technologies. If BBS is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, we’ll continue to ensure the confidentiality of your personal information and give affected users notice before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
KEEPING YOUR INFORMATION SECURE
We build security into our services to protect your information All BBS products are built with strong security features that continuously protect your information. The insights we gain from maintaining our services help us detect and automatically block security threats from ever reaching you. And if we do detect something risky that we think you should know about, we’ll notify you and help guide you through steps to
stay better protected. BBS work hard to protect your information from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction of information we hold, including:
• We use encryption to keep your data private while in transit
• We offer a range of security features, Security Checkup, and 2 Step Verification to help you protect your account
• We review our information collection, storage, and processing practices, including physical security measures, to prevent unauthorized access to our systems
• We restrict access to personal information just to BBS employees , contractors, and agents who need that information in order to process it. Anyone with this access is subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations and may be disciplined or terminated if they fail to meet these obligations.
DELETING YOUR INFORMATION
You can delete your information from your BBS Account at any time To delete your information,
you can:
• Delete your content from specific BBS services
• Delete specific BBS products, including your information associated with those products
In some cases, we retain data for limited periods when it needs to be kept for legitimate business or legal purposes. You can read about BBS data retention periods, including how long it takes us to delete your information We try to ensure that our services protect information from accidental or malicious deletion. Because of this, there may be delays between when you delete something and when copies are deleted from our active and backup systems.
COMPLIANCE & COOPERATION WITH REGULATORS
Data transfers
We maintain servers around the world and your information may be processed on servers located outside of the country where you live. Data protection laws vary among countries, with some providing more protection than others. Regardless of where your information is processed, we apply the same protections described in this policy. We also comply with certain legal frameworks relating to the transfer of data, such as the EU and Swiss Privacy Shield Frameworks.
When we receive formal written complaints, we respond by contacting the person who made the complaint. We work with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of your data that we cannot resolve with you directly.
European requirements
If European Union (EU) data protection law applies to the processing of your information, we provide the controls described in this policy so you can exercise your right to request access to, update, remove, and restrict the processing of your information. You also have the right to object to the processing of your information or export your information to another service. We process your information for the purposes described in this policy, based on the following legal grounds:
With your consent
We ask for your agreement to process your information for specific purposes and you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. For example, we ask for your consent to provide you with personalized services like ads. We also ask for your consent to collect your voice and audio activity for other features. You can manage these settings in your BBS Account. When we’re pursuing legitimate interests We process your information for our legitimate interests and those of third parties while applying appropriate safeguards that protect your privacy. This means that we process your information for things like:
• Providing, maintaining, and improving our services to meet the needs of our users
• Developing new products and features that are useful for our users
• Understanding how people use our services to ensure and improve the performance of our services
• Customizing our services to provide you with a better user experience
• Marketing to inform users about our services
• Providing advertising to make many of our services freely available for users
• Detecting, preventing, or otherwise addressing fraud, abuse, security, or technical issues with our services
• Protecting against harm to the rights, property or safety of BBS, our users, or the public as required or permitted by law
• Performing research that improves our services for our users and benefits the public
• Fulfilling obligations to our partners like developers and rights holders
• Enforcing legal claims, including investigation of potential violations of applicable Terms of Service
When we’re complying with legal obligations
We’ll process your data when we have a legal obligation to do so, for example, if we’re responding to legal process or an enforceable governmental request.
ABOUT THIS POLICY
When this policy applies
This Privacy Policy applies to all of the services offered by BBS Ltd and its affiliates and services offered on third-party sites, such as advertising services. This Privacy Policy doesn’t apply to services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy.
This Privacy Policy doesn’t apply to:
• The information practices of other companies and organizations that advertise our services
• Services offered by other companies or individuals, including products or sites that may include BBS services, be displayed to you in search results, or be linked from our services
Changes to this policy
We change this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. We always indicate the date the last changes were published and we offer access to archived versions for your review. If changes are significant, we’ll provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of Privacy Policy changes).