Privacy Policy

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Chimie, we have a few fundamental principles:

• We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.

• We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.

• We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on our app is shared publicly (or kept private), indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.

• We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.

• We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

The following sections document our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Hey Fellas! We are the folks behind Chimie, a platform created for users to socialise with one another without having to reveal their personal information to strangers head on like how other apps do. The students work their way to build a chemistry with each other and choose to share their personal information once they develop a personal rapport. We believe in evening the playing field where no user is differentiated or judged based on their looks, something that is relevant amongst similar lifestyle and social specific apps. Unlike most other services, we intend to be straightforward and transparent on how we collect and use your information.

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use our mobile applications (for iOS and Android devices).

When you download the app and create an account (“Account”), we may collect certain information (“Registration Information”) about you, such as:

• Name;

• Username;

• Student Email address;

• Gender;

• Age;

• Interested in;

• Looking for;

• Heritage;

• Study year;

• Course;

• Photographs;

• Location;

• International or local student;

You will also be required to create a password in connection with the registration of your account. Once you register, you will be able to review and change this information at any time by accessing your “Settings” page. You control your user profile and are able to correct or update (other than your email address and location (which is automatically updated)) your information at any time by just logging in to Chimie.

The information we collect helps to enhance the App and verify our Users (Robots have no chance of surviving here!). Registration Information such as your name and username may be visible to other users.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. 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 students who sign up for an account to provide a valid student email address and password, along with a username or name. You will also provide us with more information — like your age and other information mentioned above that you want to share.

• 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 an account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, like a photo, an “About Me” description, your interests and so on. Your public profile information remains hidden to other users and only unlocks if you choose to achieve a level of trust and friendship with the other user.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

• Log information: Like most mobile applications, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the IP address, unique device identifiers, device model, MAC address, language preference, the date and time of access, operating system, mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our application — for example, when you use our super cool electronic messaging function.

• Usage information: We collect information of whether you are engaging with all your users you connect with in-order to develop your very own engagement score. This engagement score is used by other users to validate the frequency in which you use our electronic messaging function as your public profile remains hidden for new users you connect with.

• Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from the university name you have given us. We collect information about your precise location via our mobile app if you allow us to do so through your mobile device operating system’s permissions.

• Stored information: We may access information stored on your mobile device. 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 photographs for your hidden public profile.

• Interaction with links available in Chimie: We may keep track of how you interact with links available on our application including third party services and clients by redirecting clicks or through other means. We may share aggregate click statistics such as how many times a particular link was clicked on.

• Information from cookies & other technologies: Cookies are small data files that are transferred to your computer’s hard disk and are basically a tool that stores information about website visits, recognises you and your preferences each time you use our application, and ensures site functionality and enable us to provide the services our users request. The cookies that we collect help us learn how users interact with Chimie, which in turn help us make a better product for you. Chimie’s use of cookies and local storage devices is related to the performance of the application itself, such as analytics that help us determine how our app is performing and ensuring a smooth and trouble-free experience for our users. If for any reason you decide that you not want all of your activities to be stored, you may set your mobile settings to block cookies and local storage devices, but please remember that if you do so, you may not be able to access all of the features that Chimie offers.

Our main goal is to ensure your experience with Chimie is an enjoyable one and you don’t end up getting stung. In order to deliver a seamless and enjoyable experience to you, we may use your registration and other information to:

• To provide our Services and features. For example using our electronic messaging function to connect and socialise with other users anonymously and working together to unlock each other’s public profile.

• To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services. For example, by providing over the air automatic updates and new versions of our application. Or, for example, by monitoring and analysing how users interact with our Services and features so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will improve their overall experiences.

• To place and manage ads. For example, to place ads as part of our advertising program, and understand ad performance.

• To market our Services and measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing. For example, by targeting our marketing messages to groups of our users, analysing the results of our marketing campaigns, and understanding and forecasting user retention.

• To protect our Services, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of Chimie and others, which may result in us, for example, terminating Services.

• To fix problems with our Services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.

• To customise the user experience. For example, to personalise your experience by serving you relevant notifications and advertisements for our Services.

• To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our product, or keep you up to date on Chimie. If you don’t want to hear from us, you can opt out of marketing communications at any time. (If you opt out, we’ll still send you important updates relating to your account.)

• To resolve disputes. For example, disputes between you and other users can be reported and investigated.

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 fulfil our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account; 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; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalise your experience; or

(5) You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyse them later on, as described in our Cookie Policy.

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy. These are spelled out below, as well as in the section called Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others:

• Subsidiaries and independent contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries and independent contractors who need the information to help us provide our Services or process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.

• Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you when you use our application. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you like Google’s Firebase which is a third party Backend Service Platform to Authenticate users into Chimie such as logging you out, deleting your account or creating a new account. Firebase also sends email confirmation to users to change their authentication credentials such as reseting their passwords. Notification function is made possible with Firebase Cloud Messaging, which is also a service provided by Google’s Firebase. Being a backend service platform allows Firebase to store users’ data and such as their profile pictures. We use Mongo DB Atlas which is a third party Database Service Platform to house a portion of your data for the application to run smoothly. Mongo DB Atlas in turn uses Amazon Web Services to host its database.

• Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. For more information on how we respond to requests for information about our users, please see our Legal Guidelines.

• 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 Chimie, 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 without delay.

• 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 when you authorise us to do so, like when you connected you actively click on an advertisement provided by us using Google Admob.

• Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services, or 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 assistance (for example, via a support email or one of our other feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to clarify or respond to your request, or to help us support other users.

We have a strict policy that we do not sell our users’ data. We aren’t a data broker, we don’t sell your personal information to data brokers, and we don’t sell your information to other companies that want to spam you with marketing emails.

We show ads for our users, and the revenue they generate lets us offer free access of our Services so that money doesn’t become an obstacle to providing the experience that you have come for..

Under a new California law, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), some personalized advertising you see online and on our services might be considered a “sale” even though we don’t share information that identifies you personally, like your name or email address, as part of our advertising program.

You have choices about these ads, learn more about them and our ads program.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is — you guessed it — disclosed publicly.

That means information like your public profile and other content that you choose to make public on the app are all available to others users

For example, when you reach a maximum chemistry score with a user you are socialising with anonymously, and choose to reveal your complete public profile, your details will be available to the other user based on your choices.

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share publicly.

We generally discard information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we’re not legally required to keep it. However, removed and deleted information may persist in backup copies for up to 30 days to enable restoration, but will not be available to others in the meantime. Information that may exist include your chat messages with other users. This is the scenario due to the fact that users you have communicated with might still want to look into the conversations exchanged. When your account is deleted, all information regarding you being a user is deleted including your connection data and your account will be in the disconnected state when your users try to view or message you. Messaging will altogether be disabled once your account is de-activated.

Here at Chimie we pride ourselves on taking commercially reasonable security measures to help protect your information against loss, misuse and unauthorised access, or disclosure. We use reasonable security measures to safeguard the confidentiality of your personal information with the help of Google’s Firebase which uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption. Google is known for its highly secure infrastructure. All data is encrypted in a secure format.

Unfortunately no website or Internet transmission is ever completely 100% secure and even we cannot guarantee that unauthorised access, hacking, data loss or other breaches will never occur, but here are some handy tips to help keep your data secure:

• • Please make sure you log out of your Account after use as you never know who may stumble onto your Account!

  • Please don't share your social media password with anyone else!

  • Change your password periodically.

If you ever think someone has had access to your password, please report it and change your password immediately. We cannot guarantee the security of your personal data while it is being transmitted to our site and any transmission is at your own risk.

WE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO ANY BREACHES OF SECURITY, DAMAGE TO YOUR DEVICE, OR ANY LOSS OR UNAUTHORISED USE OF YOUR REGISTRATION INFORMATION OR OTHER DATA.

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including California and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain 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 also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it.

The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

• Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);

• Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us);

• Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services, like the actions you take as a user);

• Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);

• Audio, electronic, visual or similar information (such as your profile picture, if you uploaded one);

• Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).

You can find more information about what we collect and sources of that information in the Information We Collect section above.

We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section.

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:

• Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;

• Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;

• Opt out of any sale of personal information; and

• Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.

The CCPA & Personalised Advertising in Our Ads Program

Our mission is to democratise publishing and commerce, and that means making our Services accessible to as many people as possible. We show ads using Google Admob as the advertising medium, and the revenue these ads generate lets us offer free access of our Services so that money doesn’t become an obstacle to the experiences the users come for. As part of our advertising program, we and our users do use cookies to share certain device identifiers and information about your browsing activities with our advertising partners, and those advertising partners may use that information to show you personalised ads and some of our own.

The personal information we share includes online identifiers; internet or other network or device activity (such as cookie information, other device identifiers, and IP address); and geolocation data (approximate location information from your IP address). These disclosures may be considered a “sale” of information under the CCPA. We do not sell (or share) information through our ads program that identifies you personally, like your name or contact information. We don’t knowingly sell personal information of those under 16. Learn how you can opt out by going to California: Do Not Sell My Personal Information.

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 or you’d like to contact us about one of the other rights..

When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorised agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorisation. We may still require you to verify your identity with 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. The are the fastest way to get a response to your inquiry, contact us by email at:

support@chimie.app

Chimie’s Services are worldwide, which means that they are the company responsible for processing information, based on the university and the location of the individual using our Services.

Depending on the country you live in, more than one company may be the controller of your personal data. Generally, the “controller” is Chimie that entered into the contract with you under the Terms of Service for the product you use and is the controller for all of the processing activities across all of our Services worldwide.

Transferring Information

Because Chimie’s Services are offered in Europe as well, 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. These measures include:

• In the case of US based entities, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them, or ensuring they have signed up to the EU-US Privacy Shield; or

• In the case of entities based in other countries outside the EEA, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them.

You can ask us for more information about the steps we take to protect your personal information when transferring it from the EU.

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others

Ads appearing on our product are delivered by Google’s Admob. Google may also provide analytics services via our Services using Google Analytics. 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 recognise your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyse and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver ads that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Chimie and does not cover the collection of information by any third-party advertisers or analytics providers.

Third-Party Software and Services

As mentioned in the use of third-party vendors, we use Google’s Firebase and Mongo DB Atlas Service Platforms to host our Backend and Database. Mongo DB Atlas, which is a Database server by itself uses Google Cloud Platform to host its database.

The link to the privacy policy of the third-party services mentioned above are listed below and are subject to change without our notification.

Google’s Firebase - https://firebase.google.com/support/privacy

Mongo DB - https://www.mongodb.com/legal/privacy-policy

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Chimie may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Chimie 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 (like adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy