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Privacy Policy

1. Applicability of this Privacy Policy

BlinkStory (ending with "we" in any form) respects the privacy of its users and has created this Privacy Policy to demonstrate its commitment to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy governs your use of BlinkStory and describes the data we collect, how we store it, how we use it, with whom we share it, and your choices regarding such uses and disclosures. Please be sure to read this Privacy Policy in its entirety when using our Services.

Please review BlinkStory's Terms of Use for the meaning of defined words (in capital letters) that are not expressly defined in this Privacy Policy.

2. What types of data do we collect about you?

We collect a variety of data that you voluntarily provide on BlinkStory (for example, when you send us an email).

2.1. Data You Provide to Us

You can provide us with data in different ways. For example, we collect and store the data you provide to us when you register for a user profile or respond to an email from BlinkStory or report a service issue. The data you provide to us includes:

Profile data. This includes your name, username, date of birth and email address. You may choose to provide additional data in your profile.

Because you have control over your profile, you can access these details at any time by visiting your Profile page, so you can correct or update your data (except name, date of birth and email address) at any time by logging into BlinkStory. Please do not post or add personal data in your profile that you do not want to be public. We also do not recommend that you put instant messaging details, phone numbers, credit card details, national identification numbers, driver's license details in your profile as this may expose them to abuse and misuse. Please be cautious about posting sensitive details about yourself in your profile, such as religion, health details, sexual orientation or ethnic background. If you choose to provide us with sensitive data about yourself, you are clearly making this data public to other users.

2.2. Data we collect about you

We collect data from various sources. We may automatically collect the following data about your use of our services:

Navigation data. We collect data about how you navigate and use our Services, such as the types of content you view or engage with, or the frequency and duration of your activities.

Device Data. Depending on the permissions you grant, we collect data from or about your phone or other devices on which you install or access our Services. Specifically, when you want to upload or take a photo for your profile, we request access to your device's photos and camera. We may associate data collected from your different devices, which helps us provide consistent Services across your devices. Device Data may include data about your operating system, hardware version, type and model, geographic location, IP address, connection data (such as ISP), language and time zone. We also receive the URL of the website you came from and the website you visit next.

Data about payments. We collect data about the amount of your credit purchases, the date of your credit purchases, and the payment method.

Transaction Data. When you make a payment through the Services, you provide financial account data, such as your credit card number, to our third-party service providers. We do not collect or store the full credit card number data, but we may receive credit card-related data, data about the transaction, including: the date, time and amount of the transaction, and the type of payment method used.

Advertising. We work with third-party ad networks to manage our advertising on other websites. Our ad network partners use cookies to collect non-personal information about your activities on the Site in order to provide you with targeted advertising based on your interests. The Site allows consumers to "opt out" of behavioral advertising provided by member companies.

2.3. Children's Data

We do not knowingly collect any data about children, minors, or persons under the age of 18. We also do not knowingly market to children, minors, or persons under the age of 18. If you are under the age of 18, we ask that you do not submit data to us.

3. How do we use the data we collect?

We and our service providers use personal data to: (i) provide the Services; (ii) detect and prevent fraud; and (iii) promote, analyze, and improve our Services. Specifically, we use your personal data to:

  • Provide you with the services you use or request, for example, we use your data to authenticate you and authorize access to our Services and to identify you throughout the Services.
  • Improve our Services by using data about your use of and interactions with our Services. We conduct surveys and research and test features in development. We analyze the data we have to evaluate our Services and conduct audit and troubleshooting activities to improve our Service content and layout.
  • To provide you with personalized services, such as selecting available payment processors, we may also use your data to determine whether you are eligible for promotions, sweepstakes and contests, and to show you personalized advertising with your consent.
  • To process your payments and send notifications about your transactions.
  • To verify your identity, including during account verification.
  • To prevent, detect, investigate, resolve disputes and/or remediate malicious activities, fraud and other cybercrime, take legally required actions or ensure that you are a real person and want to avoid creating fake accounts.
  • To communicate with you about our Services by email and other means (including push notifications). We will send you messages about the availability of our Services, security, payment transactions, your order status, legal notices or other service-related information (Service Messages). We will also send messages about Service updates, such as new books or new chapters available on the Services (Update Messages), and you can unsubscribe from Update Messages at any time. Please note that you cannot opt out of receiving our Service Messages.
  • Show you advertising on our Services and/or send you commercial emails about our Services, features, offers, promotions, contests and events, or to provide news or information about other third-party services that may be of interest to you. We offer you the option to opt-out of advertising and/or commercial emails.
  • Provide you with customer service and support.

We will also notify you if we want to use your personal data for a new or different purpose. We will only use your personal data for such additional purposes to the extent necessary or permitted by applicable law or with your consent.

4. Legal Basis for Processing (EEA Only)

If you are an individual from the European Economic Area (EEA), the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal data will depend on the personal data concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. However, we will generally collect your personal data only where: (a) we have your consent, (b) we need the personal data to perform a contract with you (for example, to provide a BlinkStory service you have requested), or (c) the processing is in our legitimate interests or those of a third party (and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms).

5. Advertising

5.1. Advertisements for Other Services on BlinkStory

BlinkStory may allow third-party advertisers to place advertisements for third-party products and services within the Service, including rewarded ads, rewarded interstitial ads, and/or other types of ads placed within the App (“Rewarded Ads”).

We use the data you provide to us when you interact with our Services (such as coins purchased on BlinkStory or time spent on the Service) to display advertisements for Third-Party Services. Our customization system enables us to understand when you see which ads and which ads you click on. This enables us to provide you with more useful and relevant ads. For example, if we know which ads were shown to you, we can be careful not to show you the same ads repeatedly. Our Privacy Policy does not apply to any third-party advertisers and/or websites, etc., and we cannot control their activities.

You may make choices about our use and disclosure of your personal data as set forth in Section 7 and update your preferences at any time.

5.2. Advertising our Services on Other Websites

We provide you with customized advertising outside of our Services based on data about your visits and use of our Services and data received from third parties.

To understand and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, we may use cookies, device identifiers, and other technologies to recognize that you have visited our Services or seen our ads on other websites, and we may provide this data to one or more third-party advertising networks. We may choose to work with Google AdWords, DoubleClick, Google Analytics, or other advertising networks. These companies have their own privacy policies. The data we provide may include the time and date you visit our Services, the pages you view, the links you click, and other data that does not reveal your identity. We may advertise to you through various advertising networks and exchanges, using advertising technology data on our Services, such as unique cookies or similar tracking technologies, pixels, device identifiers, geolocation, operating system information, email. The ads you receive on other websites are tailored to your interests based on predictions of your interests generated by your use of our Services and visits to different websites. This type of ad customization is called "online behavioral" or "interest-based" advertising. Currently, there is no industry standard for recognizing "Do Not Track" browser signals, so we do not respond to them.

6. Advertising Choices

You have choices about our use and disclosure of your personal data. We provide you with choices about receiving advertising.

  • Third-party advertising on BlinkStory is tailored to you based on your prior use of the Services. You can opt out of receiving third-party advertising by contacting our Customer Service.
  • If you no longer wish to receive (i) marketing-related emails from us regarding our Services or (ii) marketing-related emails from third parties regarding similar services, you can opt out of receiving such electronic communications. Please note that if you opt out of receiving marketing-related emails, we may still send you important administrative information necessary to provide you with our Services.

7. Retention Period

We will retain personal data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

Please note that we have various obligations to retain the data you provide to us, including to ensure that transactions can be properly processed, settled, refunded or returned, to help identify fraud, and to comply with anti-money laundering and other laws and regulations that apply to us and our financial service providers. Therefore, even if you close your profile, we will still retain certain data to fulfill our obligations.

8. Who do we share your data with?

Protecting your personal data is very important to us. We will only share your personal data with third parties if: (i) we have a legal obligation to do so; (ii) the transfer of data is necessary for the performance of a contract with you; or (iii) you have consented to the transfer of your data.

Third-party service providers and partner companies will only receive your data to the extent necessary for the performance of our contract with you or with your consent. In this case, the extent of data sharing will be kept to an absolute minimum. If our service providers come into contact with your personal data, we will ensure that they also comply with all applicable data protection laws.

We do not share personal information with other companies, organizations and individuals unless the following circumstances exist:

With your consent. We share personal data with other companies, organizations or individuals with your consent.

Other users. Any data you include in your profile and any actions you take on our services may be visible to other users. For example, when you update or add a photo (which you can change), this data may be publicly viewable.

Service providers. We may share your personal data with third parties who provide certain services on our behalf. We use these services for hosting and maintaining our website, application development, backup, storage, marketing assistance, performing business and sales analysis, supporting the functionality of our services, and supporting contests, sweepstakes, surveys, and other features offered through our services. These services process your personal data based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

Other Situations. We may also disclose your data, including personal data, in the following circumstances:

  • In response to a subpoena or similar investigative request, a court order, or a request for cooperation from a law enforcement or other government agency; to establish or exercise our legal rights; to defend against legal claims; or as otherwise required by law. In such cases, we may raise or waive any legal objections or rights at our sole discretion.
  • When we believe disclosure is appropriate to investigate, prevent, or take other action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud, or other wrongdoing; to protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of our company, our users, our employees, or others; to comply with applicable laws or cooperate with law enforcement; or to enforce our Terms of Use and Terms of Service or other agreements or policies.
  • In connection with a significant corporate transaction, such as the sale of our business, divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, or in rare cases in the event of bankruptcy.

10. International Data Transfers

BlinkStory is a global business. We may transfer personal data to a country other than where you live. That country may not have the same data protection laws as the country where you initially provided the data. If we transfer personal data from the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) to other countries where applicable data protection laws do not consider it adequate, we deploy safeguards.

We process data outside the EU and EEA.

Specifically, in order to provide our services, we need to transfer your personal data to the United States and Ukraine. The United States and Ukraine are not considered to provide an adequate level of protection under EU data protection law. This means that these countries do not have the same data protection laws as the country where you initially provided the data.

In all cases, we use standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission as the legal mechanism for transferring data from the EU. Learn more about the standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission. These clauses are contractual commitments between companies transferring personal data, binding them to protect the privacy and security of that data. BlinkStory Standard Contractual Clauses have therefore been adopted so that the data flows necessary to provide, maintain and develop our Services are lawfully conducted.

11. Third-party websites

You can click on links to other websites that are not governed by this Privacy Policy at various places in our Services. For example, if you click on an advertisement on our Services, you may be taken to websites that we do not control. These third-party websites may independently solicit and collect data (including Personal Data) from you and, in some cases, provide us with data about your activities on those websites. We recommend that you consult the privacy statements of all third-party websites you visit by clicking on the "Privacy" link, which is usually located at the bottom of the web page you are visiting.

12. How do we protect your personal information?

We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal data from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. When personal data is collected on BlinkStory and/or transmitted to other websites, we protect your personal data by using encryption protocols. However, data transmissions often have security gaps, so please make sure not to provide your login data to any third party.

13. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If we decide to make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will provide a notice through our Services or other means to give you the opportunity to modify it before the changes take effect. We will also publicly disclose the last date this Privacy Policy was updated for your convenience. We recommend that you add BlinkStory to your list of approved senders in your email reader.

If you do not agree to the changes to this Privacy Policy, you should close your profile. Your continued use of our Services after we send you a notice about changes to this Privacy Policy constitutes your consent to the updated Privacy Policy.

14. Privacy Rights

You can request at any time that we provide information about the processing of your personal data, correct any errors in your personal data, stop processing your personal data, delete your personal data or transfer your personal data for free. If you are a reader, please click the delete button on the Settings page of your personal center and do not log in for 7 days to delete your personal data. If you are the author, please feel free to contact us at any time via email and include "privacy Rights" in the subject line and body of your email.

If you send us a request by email, please indicate in the email which personal data you wish to change or delete. To protect you, we may only execute requests related to personal data associated with the specific email address you used when sending your request, and we may need to verify your identity before executing your request. We will respond to your request as soon as possible under reasonable circumstances.

15. Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our collection, use or storage of your data, please feel free to contact us by email at