Meerchat's Privacy Policy
Effective: October 10, 2023
Top Stuff LDA (parent company of Meerchat) is a messenger company.
Our product, meerchat — provides an easy way to join small chat groups to share a journey toward a common goal.
When you use our service, you’ll share some information with us. So we want to be upfront about the information we collect, how we use it, whom we share it with, and the controls we give you to access, update, and delete your information.
That’s why we’ve written this Privacy Policy. And it’s why we’ve tried to write it in a way that’s easy to understand for all our users and blissfully free of the legalese that often clouds these documents.
Of course, if you still have questions about anything in our Privacy Policy, just contact us.
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 may need to collect a few important details about you, such as your full name, password, email address, phone number, and age. 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 or introduction.
Of course, you’ll also provide us with whatever information you send through our services, such as messages and images. Keep in mind that the users who are part of your community(ies) can always screenshot your messages and any other content you provided and 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 customer support or communicate with us in any other way, we’ll collect whatever information you volunteer or that we need to resolve your question/issue.
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 logged in at a certain period of time, read a message, and reacted to it.
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 messages, and profile information, or which community you joined.
how you communicate with other people on meerchat, such as their names, the time and date of your communications, the number of messages you exchange with them, which one of them you exchange messages with the most, and your interactions with messages (such as when you read a message or save a message).
Content Information. We collect content you create on our services, such as custom stickers, and information about the content you create or provide, such as if the recipient has viewed the content and the metadata that is provided with the content.
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;
From device sensors, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and compasses; and
Information about your wireless and mobile network connections, such as mobile phone number, service provider, IP address, and signal strength.
Camera, Photos, and Audio. Some of our services require us to collect images and other information from your device’s camera and photos. For example, you won’t be able to send photo messages or upload photos from your camera roll unless we can access your camera or photos. Same goes for audio, without having access to the microphone, you won’t be able to send voice notes.
Location Information. When you use our services we may collect information about your location. With your permission, we may also collect information about your precise location using methods that include GPS, wireless networks, cell towers, Wi-Fi access points, and other sensors, such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compasses.
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. Remember, 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 Cookie Policy (https://www.meerch.at/cookie-policy).
Log Information. We 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.
Information We Collect from Third Parties
Here are a few examples:
Advertisers, app developers, publishers, and other third parties may share information with us as well. We may use this information, among other ways, to help target or measure the performance of ads.
If another user uploads their contact list, we may combine information from that user’s contact list with other information we have collected about you.
How We Use Information
What do we do with the information we collect? We provide you with an amazing product and service that we relentlessly improve. Here are the ways we do that:
Develop, operate, improve, deliver, maintain, and protect our products and services.
Send you communications, including by email, SMS or Instant Messengers (such as WhatsApp) where permitted. For example, we may use email, SMS or Instant Messengers to respond to support inquiries or to share information about our products, services or Promotional offers that we think may interest you.
Monitor and Analyze trends and usage.
Personalise our services by, among other things, suggesting friends, profile information, helping people find others on Meerchat, affiliate, and third-party apps and services, or customising the content we show you, including ads.
Provide and improve our advertising services, ad targeting, and ad measurement, including through the use of your precise location information (again, if you’ve given us permission to collect that 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.
Enhance the safety and security of our products and services.
Verify your identity and prevent fraud or other unauthorised 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.
How We Share Information
We may share information about you in the following ways:
With everyone On Meerchat
We may share the following information with other people using Meerchat:
Information about you, such as your name, age, country, profile picture and introduction.
Information about how you have interacted with our services, such as your Meerchat “streak” and “community points”
Information about your device, such as the operating system and device type, to help you receive messages and other content in the optimal viewing format.
Any additional information you have directed us to share.
Content you post or send. How widely your content is shared depends on your personal settings and the type of service you are using.
With everyone on Meerchat, our business partners, third parties and the general public.
We may share the following information with everyone on Meerchat, as well as with our business partners and the general public:
Public information like your name.
To perform services on our behalf, including to facilitate payments, measure and optimise the performance of ads and deliver more relevant ads, including on third-party websites and apps.
We may share information about your device and usage, 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.
Detects and resolves any fraud or security concerns.
We may share information about you as part of a merger or acquisition. If Top Stuff LDA (parent company of Meerchat) 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.
How Long We Keep Your Information
We store your basic account information — like your name, age, country, phone number, and email address — until you ask us to delete them.
We store messages history and conversations on our Google Servers. Once you delete your account we will keep these but they will become unidentifiable.
If you ever decide to stop using Meerchat, you can just ask us to delete your account. We’ll also delete most of the information we’ve collected about you after you’ve been inactive for a while!
Keep in mind that, while our systems are designed to carry out our deletion practices automatically, we cannot promise that deletion will occur within a specific timeframe. There may be legal requirements to store your data and we may need to suspend those deletion practices if we receive valid legal process asking us to preserve content, if we receive reports of abuse or other Terms of Service violations, or if your account, content created by you, or content created with other users is flagged by others or our systems for abuse or other Terms of Service violations. Finally, we may also retain certain information in backup for a limited period of time or as required by law.
Control Over Your Information
We want you to be in control of your information, so we provide you with the following tools.
Access, Correction, and Portability. You can access and edit most of your basic account information right in our apps. You can also ask us to obtain a copy of the information that isn’t available in our apps in a portable format, so you can move it or store it wherever you want. We may also reject your request to access or update your personal information for a number of reasons, including, for example, if the request risks the privacy of other users or is unlawful.
Revoking permissions. In most cases, if you let us use your information, you can simply revoke your permission by changing the settings in the app or on your device if your device offers those options. Of course, if you do that, certain services may lose full functionality. For promotional emails and SMS, you may opt out by clicking on the unsubscribe link or similar mechanism as provided.
Deletion. While we hope you’ll remain a lifelong member of Meerchat, if for some reason you ever want to delete your account, just go into Settings and click delete my account.
Advertising Preferences. We might try to show you ads in the future that we think will be relevant to your interests.
Tracking. If you opt out of tracking on devices running iOS 14.5 or more recent versions, we will not link identifiable information from third-party apps and websites with identifiable information from Meerchat for advertising purposes, except on your device.
International Data Transfers
We may collect your personal information, transfer it to, store and process it in the every country. Whenever we share information outside of where you live, when we are legally required to do so, we make sure an adequate transfer mechanism is in place. We also make sure any third parties we share information with have an adequate transfer mechanism in place, as well.
State and Region Specific Information
You may have specific privacy rights in your state or region. For example, in the United States, residents of California and other states have specific privacy rights. Meerchat users in the European Economic Area (EEA), the UK, Brazil, the Republic of Korea, and other jurisdictions also have specific rights.
Children
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 EEA and UK users between 13 and 16. In some cases, this means we will be unable to provide certain functionality to these users. If we need to rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your information and your country requires consent from a parent, we may require your parent’s consent before we collect and use that information.
Target Audience
By default, our intended user demographic comprises individuals who have attained a minimum age of 17 years. To safeguard compliance with this age requirement, we have implemented security measures, including age restrictions enforced by the respective application store. These measures are designed to enable parents or legal guardians to grant consent for their minor children to access and utilize our application. Consequently, we shall not be held liable for any unauthorized access to our application resulting from any tampering or manipulation of user account settings within the respective application store.
Revisions 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).