Privacy policy
Last updated: September 5, 2022
The privacy of your data — and it is your data, not ours! — is a big deal to us. In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights with respect to your data. We promise we never sell your data: never have, never will.
This policy applies to all products built and maintained by WhatsVegan.
What we collect and why
Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here’s what that means in practice:
Identity & access
When you start using WhatsVegan application, we assign you an anonymous user ID for account management and analytics purposes. We also use an anonymous device ID for account management and analytics purposes.
Billing information
If you sign up for a paid WhatsVegan Premium plan, we collect purchase history for fraud prevention and analytics purposes.
Product interactions
We store the content that you upload in your WhatsVegan product accounts. This is so you can use our products as intended, for example, to analyse products' ingredients, and also to improve the functionality of our product. We keep this content as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we’ll delete the content within 60 days.
Geolocation data
We collect city, region, and country location information. We do not collect granular or real-time geolocation data.
Website and application interactions
We collect information about your website and application activity for analytics and statistical purposes such as conversion rate testing and experimenting with new product designs. This includes, for example, your browser and operating system versions, which web pages you visited and how long they took to load, and which website referred you to us.
Advertising and Cookies
WhatsVegan runs contextual ads on various third-party platforms such as Facebook. Users who click on one of our ads will be sent to the WhatsVegan marketing site. Where permissible under law, we may load an ad-company script on their browsers that sets a third-party cookie and sends information to the ad network to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of our ads, e.g., which ad they clicked and which keyword triggered the ad, and whether they performed certain actions such as clicking a button or submitting a form.
We also use persistent first-party cookies and some third-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our applications, and perform A/B testing as well as support some analytics.
A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser. It may help remember login information and site preferences. It might also collect information such as your browser type, operating system, web pages visited, duration of visit, content viewed, and other click-stream data. You can adjust cookie retention settings and accept or block individual cookies in your browser settings, although our apps won’t work and other aspects of our service may not function properly if you turn cookies off.
Voluntary correspondence
When you email WhatsVegan with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including your email address, so that we have a history of past correspondence to reference if you reach out in the future.
We also store information you may volunteer, for example, written responses to surveys. If you agree to a customer interview, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We will only do so with your express consent.
How we approach mobile app permissions
Our mobile application typically must request your consent before accessing camera and other privacy-sensitive features of your device. Consent is always optional and our app will function without it, though some features will be unavailable.
When we access or share your information
To provide products or services you’ve requested. We use some standard third-party subprocessors like Google Cloud to help run our applications and provide the Services to you. We can provide a detailed list of third-party subprocessors at [email protected].
To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug. If at any point we need to access your content to help you with a support case.
To improve the quality of service. We may use your information to improve the quality of service we provide to you.
When required under applicable law.
Your rights with respect to your information
At WhatsVegan, we strive to apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Some of these rights include:
• Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy.
• Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security and processing of that information.
• Right to Correction. You have the right to request correction of your personal information.
• Right to Erasure / “To Be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, from all of our service providers. Fulfillment of some data deletion requests may prevent you from using WhatsVegan services because our applications may then no longer work. In such cases, a data deletion request may result in closing your account. To exercise this right, please contact us at [email protected].
• Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority.
• Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request restriction of how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of sale of personal information. (Again: we never have and never will sell your personal data.)
• Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
• Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
• Right to not Be Subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object to and prevent any decision that could have a legal or similarly significant effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited if the decision is necessary for performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
• Right to Non-Discrimination. We do not and will not charge you a different amount to use our products, offer you different discounts, or give you a lower level of customer service because you have exercised your data privacy rights. However, the exercise of certain rights may, by virtue of your exercising those rights, prevent you from using our Services.
If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at [email protected]. If an authorized agent is corresponding on your behalf, we will need written consent with a signature from the account holder before proceeding.
If you are in the EU or UK, you can contact your data protection authority to file a complaint or learn more about local privacy laws.
How we secure your data
All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted between our servers and your devices. The database backups are also encrypted.
Changes & questions
We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will refresh the date at the top of this page and take any other appropriate steps to notify users.
Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to try to answer them!