OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU
At Helo, your privacy is a top priority. Your privacy is at the core of the way we design and build the services and products you know and love so that you can fully trust them and 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 do not compromise with your 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 no decision is taken without respect for your privacy.
We strive to be transparent in the way we process your data. Because we use many of the same online services you do, we know that insufficient information and overly complicated language are common issues in privacy policies. We take the exact opposite approach: we have written our Privacy Policy and related documents in plain language. We actually want you to read our policies and understand our privacy practices!
We work hard to keep your information secure. We have teams dedicated to keeping your data safe and secure. We constantly update our security practices and invest in our security efforts to enhance the safety of your information.
PRIVACY POLICY
Welcome to Helo’s Privacy Policy. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
We appreciate that you trust us with your information and we intend always to 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 Policy applies to the products and services of Helo, and prior to using the products and services of Helo, you must read this Policy carefully and thoroughly understand this Policy, and use the relevant products or services upon confirming that you fully understand and agree to this Policy. By starting to use the various products or services of Helo, you have fully understood and agreed to this Policy. If you have any questions, opinions, or suggestions concerning the content of this Policy, please use the various contact details provided by Helo to contact us.
This Privacy Policy applies to begin May 6, 2022. The previous version of this Privacy Policy, available here, will apply until then.
EFFECTIVE DATE: October 18, 2022
1. WHERE THIS PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES
2. INFORMATION WE COLLECT
3. COOKIES AND OTHER SIMILAR DATA COLLECTION TECHNOLOGIES
4. HOW TO MANAGE YOUR INFORMATION
5. HOW WE USE INFORMATION
6. HOW WE SHARE INFORMATION
7. HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION
8. HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION
9. CROSS-BORDER DATA TRANSFERS
10. YOUR RIGHTS
11. CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
12. PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES
13. HOW TO CONTACT US
1. WHERE THIS PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES
This Privacy Policy applies to apps operated by Helo. For simplicity, we refer to them as our “services” in this Privacy Policy.
Some services may require their own unique privacy policy. If a particular service has its own privacy policy, then that policy – not this Privacy Policy – applies.
2. 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 generated as you use our services, for example, access logs, as well as information from third parties. 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, 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. To add certain content, like pictures or videos, you may allow us to access your camera or photo album. Some of the information you choose to provide us may be considered “special” or “sensitive” in certain jurisdictions, for example, your racial or ethnic origins, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs. By choosing to provide this information, you consent to our processing of that information.
If you contact our customer care team, we collect the information you give us during the interaction. Sometimes, we monitor or record these interactions for training purposes and to ensure a high quality of service.
If you ask us to communicate with or otherwise process information about other people (for example, if you ask us to send an email on your behalf to one of your friends), we collect the information about others that you give us in order to complete your request.
Of course, we also process your chats with other users as well as the content you publish, as part of the operation of the services.
Information we receive from others
In addition to the information you provide us directly, we receive information about you from other Users. Other users may provide information about you as they use our services. For instance, we may collect information about you from other users if they contact us about you.
Information collected when you use our services
When you use our services, we collect information 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. We collect information about your activity on our services, for instance how you use them (e.g., date and time you logged in, features you’ve been using, searches, clicks, and pages) and how you interact with other users (e.g., users you connect and interact with, time and date of your exchanges, 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, device-specific and apps settings and characteristics, app crashes, and advertising IDs (such as Google’s AAID and Apple’s IDFA, both of which are randomly generated numbers that you can reset by going into your device's settings), browser type, version and language, operating system, time zones, identifiers associated with cookies or other technologies that may uniquely identify your device or browser (e.g., IMEI/UDID and MAC address);
Other information with your consent. If you give us permission, we can collect your exact geographic location (latitude and longitude) based on the services and devices you use. 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 geolocation, we will not collect it.
Similarly, if you consent, we may collect your photos and videos (for instance, if you want to publish a photo or video on the services).
3. COOKIES AND OTHER SIMILAR DATA COLLECTION TECHNOLOGIES
We use and may allow others to use cookies and similar technologies (e.g., web beacons, pixels) to recognize you and/or your device(s). You may read our Cookie Policy for more information on why we use them (such as authenticating you, remembering your preferences and settings, analyzing site traffic and trends, and allowing you to use social features).
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 Helo, do not currently respond to DNT signals.
4. HOW TO MANAGE YOUR INFORMATION
Accessing and Updating Your Information
You can easily access and update your Helo account information directly through our Services in your Account Profile. If you believe any of the information you provided is inaccurate or outdated, and you can provide reasonable evidence to support this claim, you may contact us using the contact information provided at the end of this Privacy Policy.
Deleting Your Information
You may request the deletion of your account at any time in your Helo settings, or by contacting us directly using the contact information provided at the end of this Privacy Policy. After submitting your request, it may take up to three days for us to review and process your account deletion.
Once your account is closed or deleted, you will no longer be able to access your message history, preferences, or other information related to your use of our services. Please note that even after removing information from your account or profile, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere if it has been shared with others, otherwise distributed in accordance with your privacy settings, or copied or stored by other users. Additionally, we may retain your personal information after you close your account if we believe it is reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, maintain security, or prevent fraud or abuse.
Managing Device Permissions
You have the ability to modify your device's system settings to manage permissions for accessing specific device data and notifications. By doing so, you can prevent Helo from accessing your device data and displaying notifications. However, please note that this may cause certain services to lose functionality.
5. 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. Read on for a more detailed explanation of the various reasons 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
Complete your transactions
Communicate with you about our services, including order management and billing
To help you connect with other users
Show users’ profiles to one another
To ensure a consistent experience across your devices
Link the various devices you use so that you can enjoy a consistent experience of our services on all of them. We do this by linking devices and browser data, such as when you log into your account on different devices, or by using partial or full IP addresses, browser versions, and similar data about your devices to help identify and link them.
Conduct research and analysis of users’ behavior to improve our services and content (for instance, we may decide to change the look and feel or even substantially modify a given feature based on users’ behavior)
Develop new features and services (for example, we may decide to build a new interests-based feature further to requests received from users).
To prevent, detect and fight fraud or other illegal or unauthorized activities
Address ongoing or alleged misbehavior on and off-platform
Perform data analysis to better understand and design countermeasures against these activities
Retain data related to fraudulent activities to prevent recurrences
To ensure legal compliance
Comply with legal requirements
Assist law enforcement
Enforce or exercise our rights, for example, our Terms
To process your information as described above, we rely on the following legal bases:
Provide our service to you: Most of the time, the reason we process your information 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, to make it viewable to other users, and recommend other users to you.
6. 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. 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 with being publicly viewable since neither you nor we can control what others do with your information once you share it.
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.
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.
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; and(iv) to promote the refund of your in-App Purchases.
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.
7. HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION
We work hard to protect you from unauthorized access to or alteration, disclosure, or destruction of your personal information. As with all technology companies, although we take steps to secure your information, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information will always remain secure.
We regularly monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks and regularly review our information collection, storage, and processing practices to update our physical, technical, and organizational security measures.
We may suspend your use of all or part of the services without notice if we suspect or detect any breach of security. If you believe that your account or information is no longer secure, please notify us immediately here.
8. 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. To protect the safety and security of our users on and off our services, we implement a one-year safety retention window following account deletion. During this period, account information will be retained although the account will of course not be visible on the services anymore.
In practice, we delete or anonymize your information upon deletion of your account (following the safety retention window) or after two years of continuous inactivity, unless:
we must keep it to evidence our compliance with applicable law (for instance, records of consents to our Terms, Privacy Policy, and other similar consents are kept for five years);
there is an outstanding issue, claim, or dispute requiring us to keep the relevant information until it is resolved; or
the information must be kept for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud prevention and enhancing users’ safety and security. For example, information may need to be kept to prevent a user who was banned for unsafe behavior or security incidents from opening a new account.
Keep in mind that even though our systems are designed to carry out data deletion processes according to the above guidelines, we cannot promise that all data will be deleted within a specific time frame due to technical constraints.
9. CROSS-BORDER DATA TRANSFERS
Sharing of information sometimes involves cross-border data transfers. We use standard contract clauses approved by the suitable regulatory authority to permit data transfers from one jurisdiction to another. Standard contractual clauses are commitments between companies transferring personal data, binding them to protect the privacy and security of your data.
10. YOUR RIGHTS
We want you to be in control of your information, so we have provided you with the following tools:
Access / Update tools in the service. Tools and account settings that help you to access, rectify or delete 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 here.
Device permissions. Mobile platforms have permission systems for specific types of device data and notifications, such as phone book and location services as well as push notifications. You can change your settings on your device to either consent to or oppose the collection of the corresponding information or the display of the corresponding notifications. Of course, if you do that, certain services may lose full functionality.
Deletion. You can delete your account by using the corresponding functionality directly on the service.
We 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 the right of access, right of portability, or variations of those terms). You can request a copy of your personal information by putting in such a request here.
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, or object to its processing, please contact us here.
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 for certain reasons, including if the request is unlawful or if it may infringe on trade secrets or intellectual property, or the privacy of another user. If you wish to receive information relating to another user, such as a copy of any messages you received from him or her through our service, the other user will have to contact our Privacy Officer to provide their written consent before the information is released.
Also, we may not be able to accommodate certain requests to object to 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.
Uninstall. You can stop all information collection by an app by uninstalling it using the standard uninstall process for your device. If you uninstall the app from your mobile device, the unique identifier associated with your device will continue to be stored. If you re-install the application on the same mobile device, we will be able to re-associate this identifier to your previous transactions and activities.
11. CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
Our services are restricted to users who are 18 years of age or older. We do not permit users under the age of 18 on our platform and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If you suspect that a user is under the age of 18, please use the reporting mechanism available through the service.
12. PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES
Because we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to help you build meaningful connections, 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.
13. HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, here’s how you can reach us:
Online: E-mail us at help@heloapp.live
We will respond to your request within 30 days.