Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2019-10-30

Your privacy is important to us. At CocktailLove.com, we abide by some fundamental principles:

  • We only ask for personal information if we think it will enhance your enjoyment of our site
  • We only store your information for as long as it's needed, and offer simple ways in which to limit access to it, or delete it altogether
  • We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use and share your personal information

Overview

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:

  • Our website CocktailLove.com

Throughout this Privacy Policy we'll refer to our website as “Services.” Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let's go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It's probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

  • Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a CocktailLove.com account to provide an email address, a username, and first and last name. You may provide us with more information, but we don't require that information to create a CocktailLove.com account.
  • Public Profile Information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a CocktailLove.com account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, such as a photo, your location, or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that–public–so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
  • Content Information: You may also provide us with information about you in published content within our Services. For example, if you write a comment, a note, or a guest blog post that includes biographic information about you, we will have that information, and so will anyone with access to the Internet if you choose to publish the post publicly.
  • Communications with Us: You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, communicate with us about a support question, or sign up for our newsletter. When you communicate with us via form, email, comment, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

  • Log Information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services.
  • Usage Information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that our users perform on our site–in other words, who did what, when and to what thing on a site (e.g., [CocktailLove.com username] deleted “[title of recipe]” at [time/date]). We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, recipe searches, account preference and information changes, and general interactions with our Services) along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
  • Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.
  • Stored Information: We may access information stored on your mobile or desktop device via our Services. We access this stored information through your device operating system's permissions. For example, if you give us permission to access the photographs on your mobile device's camera roll, our Services may access the photos stored on your device when you upload an amazing cocktail photo to CocktailLove.com.
  • Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor's computer, and that the visitor's browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. CocktailLove.com uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads. For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log into your CocktailLove.com account through another service (like Google) or if you connect your account to a social media service (like Facebook), we will receive information from that service (such as your username, basic profile information, and profile photo) via the authorization procedures used by that service. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and any options that are available.

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

  • To provide our Services–for example, to set up and maintain your account;
  • To further develop and improve our Services–for example by adding new features that we think our users will enjoy or will help them to navigate our website more efficiently;
  • To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
  • To monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, protect the security of our Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of CocktailLove.com and others, which may result in us removing content, an account, or the use of our Services;
  • To communicate with you. For example, we may email you to solicit your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on CocktailLove.com. If you don't want to hear from us, you can opt out of marketing communications at any time. (Please keep in mind that even if you opt out, we'll still send you important updates relating to your account); and
  • To personalize your experience using our Services, provide content recommendations (for example, by recommending recipes), target our marketing messages to groups of our users (for example, those who have shown interest in a particular type of recipe or alcohol), and serve relevant advertisements.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that: (1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account--for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device; or (2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or (3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or (4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information -- for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalize your experience; or (5) You have given us your consent--for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in our Cookie Policy.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We do not sell our users' private personal information. We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

  • Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
  • Third Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you), those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g. by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns), those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers), and companies that make products available on our websites, who may need information about you in order to, for example, provide technical or other support services to you. We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them. Other vendors are listed in our more specific policies (e.g. our Cookie Policy).
  • Legal and Regulatory Requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
  • To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of CocktailLove.com, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency.
  • Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that CocktailLove.com goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
  • With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so, such as the social media services that you use to sign up to our site.
  • Aggregated or De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services and we may share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
  • Published Support Requests: If you send us a request (for example, via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like your public profile, public recipes and lists, your “Likes”, reviews and comments on the site, are all available to others. For example, the photo that you upload to your public profile, or a default image if you haven't uploaded one, will display with the comments, reviews and “Likes” that you make on the site. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.

How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when we no longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it--which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information--and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, we keep the web server logs that record information about a visitor to CocktailLove.com, such as the visitor's IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to CocktailLove.com and investigate issues if something goes wrong on one of our websites.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks. To enhance the security of your account, we encourage you to use a strong password and make sure to logout when through with your session.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

  • Limit the Information that You Provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information and profile information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services may not be accessible.
  • Opt-Out of Marketing Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
  • Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, CocktailLove.com does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies, with the drawback that certain features of websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
  • Close Your Account: While we'd be very sad to see you go, if you no longer want to use our Services you can close your account. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above--for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

  • Request access to your personal data;
  • Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
  • Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
  • Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
  • Request portability of your personal data.

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren't able to do that, or you would like to contact us about one of the other rights, scroll down to How to Reach Us to and please contact us. EU individuals also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

Controllers and Responsible Companies

CocktailLove.com is the controller of personal information, which means that they are the company responsible for processing that information, based on the particular service and the location of the individual using our Services. Depending on the Services you use, more than one company may be the controller of your personal data. Generally, the “controller” is the CocktailLove.com company that entered into the contract with you under the Terms of Service for the product or service you use.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us.

Other Things You Should Know

Transferring Information

Because CocktailLove.com is offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use the Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us, other members of our group of companies, or third party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above. When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law.

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others

Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by CocktailLove.com and does not cover the collection of information by any third party advertisers or analytics providers.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, CocktailLove.com may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. CocktailLove.com encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or our blog, or sending you a notification through email or your account). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.

Change Log

2019-10-30: First draft of Privacy Policy published

Translation

Our Privacy Policy was originally written in English (US). We may translate it into other languages.

In the event of a conflict between a translated version of our Privacy Policy and the English version, the English version will control.

That's all folks. Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoy CocktailLove.com!