Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 16, 2022

1. Introduction
This Privacy Policy is a legal document that forms part of our Terms and Conditions. The Privacy Policy explains how we (hereby referred to as "Zocal" which is the trademarked name of the service which is wholly owned and developed by Zocal, Inc., "Zocal, Inc.", "Zocal", "we", "us", "our") collect, use, disclose, and protect personal information of those that engage in our services (hereby referred to as "You", "your", "user", "the user"). It applies to all Personal Information collected by us on www.zocalapp.com and www.zocal.app (the "Site"), the Zocal mobile applications, and any other websites or mobile applications that link to this Policy, as well as during any written, electronic, and oral communications (collectively, the "Services").
By registering with or accessing Zocal, the user agrees to be bound to the Terms & Conditions of this Agreement and agrees to the Privacy Policy. Zocal reserves the right to make changes to this agreement without providing prior notice to the user, effective upon posting an updated version of the Agreement. Your continued usage of Zocal denotes acceptance of the terms and the any changes. Further, you also consent to the use of an electronic record to document your agreement.
When using Zocal's services, you consent to the collection, manipulation, transfer, storage, disclosure and other uses of any of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. Regardless of the country that you create the information from or reside in, your information and data may be used by Zocal in the United States or any other country where Zocal operates in accordance with the policy below.

2. Information Collected
Registration - When you create an account on Zocal, you provide your some personal information such as your name, e-mail, location, and some other details about yourself. Information such as your name and/or username, may be searchable by other users through the network.

You are allowed to edit and update any of the information you provide us through the 'Settings' page.

Content- You control how your information and content is shared. One of the main reasons of using Zocal is to share your location and other information with your friends and keep in touch with them. Thus, your location, history, status updates, photos, board discussions and other voluntarily uploaded information may be able to be seen by your friends and/or followers. Please upload only that information that you are comfortable with sharing and be aware that other users may also be able to see what you have uploaded, including your exact location. Please use Zocal to share with only those people whom you are comfortable with viewing your information. Zocal is not to be held responsible for any consequences occurring from not following these guidelines or by inadvertently giving unintended recipients access to any or all of your data.

Zocal recommends that you share your personal information such as your telephone number, e-mail address, exact location, home address and other contact information only with your friends or your known and trusted contacts.

Things You Do : Any activity that you or your friends or contacts do on Zocal, the type of content you engage with, the products that you interact with, and the time, frequency, duration, and location of your activities are recorded and stored on our servers to be able to provide you Services on Zocal. This may include chat history, location history, current location, information about content you provide, images, or other media that you receive, send, or upload, your list of contacts, friends and other individuals or entities that you interact with on Zocal.

Location – Given that Zocal is primarily a location sharing application, when you use our Services, we may collect and store location information such as IP address, location coordinates, updated time. If you permit the Services to access location services through the permission system used by your mobile operating system ("Platform") or browser, we may also collect and store the precise location of your device when the Zocal app is running in the foreground or background of your device. This information may be used to show your location to individuals or groups that you specify on Zocal or to those who have your personal location link. You can choose whether to enable the location permissions through the settings on your device or Platform or when prompted by the Zocal mobile app. To maintain Service quality and reliability of your location link, Zocal may collect and store your location information, provided you have granted access to location, even if you are not actively sharing your location with anyone. If you choose to disable the location feature, Zocal will not receive precise location information from your device, which may compromise the accuracy of your location being shared in some situations.

Things others provide about you – We also receive, store, and analyze communications and content provided by others about you as part of the Services offered by Zocal. This can include information about you such as your name, phone number, and other contact information when others share their location with you or send you a message or upload, sync, or import your contact information.

Network & Device Information – We collect information regarding the network, device, and device attributes when you use Zocal. This enables us to better personalize content for your device attributes, network settings, and other analytics to improve or further develop Zocal. This may include operating system, hardware, software information, battery level, signal strength, carrier information, ISP, storage space, app or file names, types and plugins, behaviors on the device such as if the app is backgrounded or foregrounded, identifiers, location data, device signals, nearby Wi-Fi access points, beacons, and cell towers, time zone, connection speed, and other devices in your network.

Who can view your information? : While only your basic information such as your name may be searchable through the Service, your friends and contacts may be able to see your entire profile, phone number, location, and other information that you choose to upload.

3. Usage of your information
The information you upload on Zocal is on a voluntary basis and at your own risk. Zocal owes you no compensation for the data either uploaded by you or gathered about you when using the Service.

You also agree to provide your friends, contacts, or followers on Zocal who are able to access your information through the Service a non-exclusive license to access, copy, modify, distribute or display your content and submissions.

The information may be used:
a. To provide, or personalize, our Products & Services
b. To communicate with you
c. To provide customer support or respond to any inquiry.
d. To promote safety, integrity, security and enforce our Terms & Conditions.
e. To process any form of payment for any goods or services ordered on our site.
f. To generate anonymous informational statistics regarding the use of our Services (the results of which may be shared publicly). Please note that this will not be linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person.
g. To measure, analyze and generate data for our internal studies to improve our Services.
h. In any business acquisition, merger, fund-raising or sale of any of our assets (including negotiations for the same).
i. To prevent any illegal or fraudulent activity, including but not limited to hacking, security breaches or safety risks.
j. In any business operation to which the information provided by you relates to.
k. As provided under bankruptcy or applicable laws.
l. As provided by the enforcement of equitable rights.
m. To serve targeted ads to you when you visit Zocal.

Please note that we maintain backups of the information contained on our website and mobile services and thus even when you alter, modify, or delete a certain submission, it may be possible that it will still be able to be viewed in our archives or in cached information.

If any of your information changes or for some reason you no longer wish to be part of our service, please discontinue use of Zocal.

4. Content posted by other users
While the Terms of Service list the guidelines for the kind of content that is posted by other users, Zocal is not responsible for the content posted, uploaded or submitted by its users nor is it required to monitor or control such submissions. Any use or reliance on such submissions is to be done at your own risk. However, Zocal does reserve the right to copy, modify, distribute or delete the content that is posted by its users without providing any compensation or prior notice for the same if, but not limited to, it violates the Terms of Service.

5. Cookies
Like several other websites, we use small files known as 'cookies' to collect website data and enhance our Services. A cookie is a small data file that is transferred to your computer. We may also store your 'Login Information' such as your IP address, the referring domain, pages visited, search terms, device, and browser type.
Cookies will be used by us for several activities such as (without limitation):
a. Monitoring aggregate usage by our users and web traffic routing.
b. Holding member's login information so that you need not re-enter them when you visit the website. This option is disabled after 'logging off' the Service.
c. Using the Zocal Service more easily, by means of a temporary 'session' cookie. These cookies disappear after either 'logging off' or when the browser session ends.
d. Running targeted advertisements. Advertisers or sponsors may place their own unique cookie that they can recognize.

Most browsers accept cookies automatically. You can change your browser's cookie settings to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from a website.

6. Notifications
As part of the Zocal Service, you may receive e-mails, SMS, push, or in-app notifications regarding updates in your account, reminders, information about your friends or other information at our discretion. You may change these notification settings in the 'Settings' tab.

7. Information Disclosure
Zocal will not supply your personal information and (where applicable) your credit card information to third parties for commercial exploitation. However, we may share your information in the following circumstances:
a. With other users, your friends, contacts, accounts and third-parties that you share or communicate with or as part of Zocal Services or about your active status on chat applications
b. With third parties, such as when you use a third party client on Zocal, with our Service Providers, or subsidiaries that perform functions and provide Services to us. However, we may share your information with these parties only to the extent where it is needed to provide the service
c. We may also share non-personally identifiable information to advertisers as part of reports to see how their ads are performing
d. When we feel it is necessary to supply, edit or delete any of your information to comply with a legal request, regulation or law to protect the safety of any person, to address fraud and security issues or to protect Zocal's rights or property.
e. In the event of a business acquisition, sale of assets, merger, reorganization or transfer, your information may be sold or transferred as part of that transaction. We will attempt to make sure that the promises made to you in this privacy policy will apply to your information when transferred to the new entity.
f. We may share your non-private, non-personal information or other aggregated information with trusted parties for internal and external evaluation purposes to improve our Services.
g. Though we make attempts to prevent it from happening, we cannot guarantee that your information will not be seen by unauthorized people.
h. The activity feed may aggregate and display your information, travels, and status updates to your friends.

8. Security
Though we have security measures to protect our customer database and access to our database is restricted internally, we cannot guarantee that the data storage, display and transmission will be 100% secure. Thus, it is the responsibility of all Zocal members to:
a. Protect your details from unauthorized access
b. 'Logout' after every session, especially on a public computer
c. Keep their password secret
d. Contact our team at support@zocalapp.com with any security concerns.

9. Data storage & processing
Zocal attempts to create a global community with consistent standards for everyone. However, in doing so, there are special provisions necessary for users who do not live in the same countries where Zocal's servers and offices are located. In order to better provide consistent services to all users globally, the following provision applies to all users: Data and user submissions may be transferred to and processed on Zocal's servers which may be in a country that you may or may not be affiliated with.

10. Inviting Friends or Importing Contacts
When inviting friends or importing contacts to the Zocal service, you represent that you have received the friend’s and/or recipient’s consent to provide their name, mailing address, email address, phone number or other information to us, and have explicit consent from the recipient that they agree to receive email or text message notifications or other communications from us. Further, you consent to an e-mail or text message being sent on your behalf to the relevant e-mail address or phone number as well as any subsequent reminders.

11. Third Party sites
Zocal is not responsible for the privacy, practices, content, or policies of third-party websites or services, even if they are affiliated with Zocal, or use any of our APIs or link, or promote, or advertise on or for Zocal. While we will make every effort to protect the privacy of our users, the user is solely responsible for visiting third-party websites and Zocal is not to be held liable should any issues arise therein.

12. Policy towards children
Zocal is not directed to people under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect information from users below the age of 13. If you believe your child has created an account on Zocal by forging his or her age, please contact us to have the account removed.

13. Changes to the Policy
Zocal reserves the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy and the most recent one can be found on the homepage. If the changes are of consequence, we may notify you by e-mail or the next time you use the Service.