This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, protect, and share your personal information through our services. Kuddo Inc. of 379 W Broadway Suite 541, New York, New York, 10012, is the data controller. If you reside in the European Economic Area or are a resident of California you may have additional rights as detailed below. It’s important that you read this entire policy, but here’s a summary to get you started:
We care a lot about privacy. We are committed to creating spaces where people can come together and find a place to belong. Respecting user privacy is a key part of that mission.
We limit what information is required. We require the information that enables us to create your account, provide and maintain our services, meet our commitments to our users, and satisfy our legal requirements. The rest is optional.
Kuddo is your place to find community.
We created Kuddo to be a platform that brings people together over shared experiences and gives everyone a place to belong. Our “services” has the same meaning as defined in the Terms of Service. They include the Kuddo app, which can be accessed on mobile we build another product, our services include that too.
As explained in our Terms of Service, we allow users to add content to the services in a number of different ways, including via direct messages in various spaces. Shared content may be accessed by many people, including people you do not know.
We also use content posted or information collected via surveys to help us improve and power features such as matching our users, identifying harmful content on the services, and to enforce our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. These things are important to us, and we believe they will make Kuddo even better for our users. You should take all of this into account when you are using our services, and choose the spaces, features, and settings that are most appropriate for your content.
The information we collect.
We collect certain information when you use Kuddo. This includes information you provide to us, information we collect automatically, and information we receive from other sources.
Information you provide to us:
Account information. When you create a Kuddo account, you can come up with a username and password, and provide a way of contacting you (such as an email address and/or phone number). You’ll also need to provide your birthday. In some cases, you may be required to verify your account or provide additional information (like a verified phone number) to your account. You may also have the option to add your name or nicknames.
Content you create. This includes any content that you upload to the service. For example, you may write messages or posts (including drafts), send voice messages, or upload and share files through the services. This also includes your profile information and the information you provide when you participate in spaces on our services. We generally do not store the contents of video or voice calls.
Payment information. If you buy any paid services through Kuddo, you may need to submit a valid payment method and associated billing information, including your full name and billing address. Our payment processors, like Stripe and PayPal, receive and process your payment information. Depending on the processor, we may also receive and store certain billing information, including the last four digits of the credit card number associated with the transaction. If we decide to process our own payments in the future, we would receive and process this information ourselves.
Information from actions you take. We collect information about your use of Kuddo and your activities on the services. This includes the friends you add, the users, and spaces you engage with, the conversations or other communities you join and participate in, your roles in spaces, content moderation decisions you make. You can control whether we collect, use, and display this information as described in the “How to control your privacy” section below.
Information used to enable optional features. Certain features, like contact syncing, may require that you provide additional information (or grant us access to such information) to make them work. This also includes third-party integrations you choose to enable and the data you authorize those third-party services to share with us. For example, if you link something like a music streaming account, we may collect information about that account such as the song you are listening to in order to display that information on your profile or as your status (if you have chosen to do so).
Other information you provide directly to us. You may have the option to submit additional information as you use Kuddo. For example, you may choose to participate in various surveys, which requires that you provide additional information about yourself or your company. These surveys may allow you to provide feedback on the services, or submit information to our team.
Information we collect automatically.
We also collect information automatically from you when you use Kuddo. This includes:
Information about your device. We collect information about the device you are using to access the services. For example, this includes information like your IP address, operating system information, browser information, and information about your device settings, such as your microphone and/or camera.
Information about your use of the apps or websites. For example, we collect log and event information related to how and when you use our services (such as the pages, spaces, and channels you visit, the activities you engage in, or the embedded content you interact with).
Other information that we collect automatically. When you take certain actions on other sites, we may receive information about you. For example, when we advertise for Kuddo on third party platforms, if you click on the ad, we may receive information about which ad you saw and on which platform. Similarly, we may also receive certain information when you click on a referral link, such as which website you came from.
We may receive information from cookies (small text files placed on your computer or device) and similar technologies. First-party cookies are placed by us (and our third-party service providers) and allow you to use the services and to help us analyze and improve your experience and the services. You can control cookies as described in the “How to control your privacy” section below. The services use the following types of cookies:
Strictly Necessary Cookies: These are required for services to function and to meet our legal obligations. If you try to use tools to disable these cookies, parts of the services may not work properly.
Functional Cookies: These help us provide enhanced functionality on the services like remembering language preferences. Disabling these could affect some service functionality.
Performance Cookies: These allow us or our third-party analytics providers to learn how you and others use and engage with the services so we can understand and improve them.
Information we receive from other sources:
We may receive information about you from other sources, including from other users and third parties, and combine that information with the other information we have about you. For example, if you interact with our social media account on another platform, we may receive certain information about you like your username on that platform.
How we use your information.
We use your information for the following purposes:
To fulfill our contract with you
To provide you with the services. We use your information to provide you with the Kuddo services. For example, if you start a video call, we process your images and audio to make that work. We similarly collect and store the messages you send and display them as you direct. We also use the information you provide to us to create and manage your account and to facilitate purchases. When you enable optional features (like connecting your Kuddo account to other platforms), we use information from those services to power the feature (like displaying what song you are listening to on another service within the Kuddo app).
To meet our commitments to the Kuddo community. We work hard to try to make Kuddo a safe, positive, and inclusive place. To do so, we use your information to monitor for and take action against users and content that violate our Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and other policies. This includes responding to user reports, generating transcriptions of content as part of our investigation, detecting fraud and malware, and proactively scanning attachments and other content for illegal or harmful content. We also use certain information, which may include content reported to us, content that violates the Terms, and certain other content widely available on the service (such as public posts, usernames, avatars, banners, user profiles), to create systems and models that can be automated to more swiftly detect, categorize, and take action against prohibited content or conduct.
To contact you. We use your information to contact you in connection with your account, such as to verify or secure it with two-factor authentication. We may also use your information to contact you about important product or policy changes and to send you information about products you have purchased.
To provide customer service. We use your information to respond to your questions about our products and services, and to investigate bugs or other issues.
For our legitimate business interests
To protect our services. We use information to keep our services secure, to prevent misuse, and to enforce our Terms of Service and other policies against users who violate them.
To report on our company’s performance. We use your information to track the fundamental metrics of our business, to perform financial reporting, to respond to regulatory obligations, and to debug billing issues.
To personalize the product. We use your information to personalize our services. This information powers our matchmaking capabilities and similar features, and it helps us surface features and promotions from us and our partners that may be of interest to you. As discussed in the “How to control your privacy” section below, you can choose to what extent we will use your personal information to personalize your Kuddo experience.
To improve our services. We use your information to help us understand how users interact with our services, what features or products users may want, or to otherwise understand and improve our services. This includes information about how you use our services and how spaces are structured. We may also use certain content that is widely available to better understand, for example, what topics spaces cover and what content is most interesting within those spaces.
To advertise our services on Kuddo and other platforms. We are proud of the product we've built. We may tell you about our paid services and other features directly in the services and through our own channels, and we may spend money advertising Kuddo on other platforms. As part of that, we use certain information to assist in the delivery of our advertising, to measure the effectiveness of advertisements for our own products, and to improve such advertisements in the future.
To contact you. We may use your information to let you know about new products or features we think you’ll like. You may opt-out of receiving such marketing communications. Where local law requires, we will obtain your consent before sending such communications.
To comply with our legal obligations
We retain and use your information in connection with potential legal claims when necessary and for compliance, regulatory, and auditing purposes. For example, we retain information where we are required by law or if we are compelled to do so by a court order or regulatory body. Also, when you exercise any of your applicable legal rights to access, amend, or delete your personal information, we may request additional information from you for the purpose of confirming your identity.
With your consent
We may also collect and use personal information with your consent, such as to send you marketing communications where legally required. By using our services you consent to your personal data being collected and uploaded to our server. You can revoke your consent at any time (mostly through our services directly), though note that you might not be able to use any service or feature that requires collection or use of that personal information.
To protect someone’s vital interests
We may collect or share personal data if we think someone’s life is in danger—for example, to help resolve an urgent medical situation.
How we disclose your information.
When you tell us to. When you add your content to the services, you are telling us to make that content available to certain people or communities. Who can access that information is determined by who can access a particular space. For spaces, those permissions are set by Kuddo. They control whether a space requires an invite link or is open and accessible to anyone. And these permissions, like the size of the participants in the space, may change over time. Similarly, if you link your Kuddo account with a third-party service (like a music-streaming service), embed content, or participate in a space that has third-party features like bots enabled, we may provide certain information to that service or to other Kuddo users to operate that service or feature. We may also disclose your information as you otherwise instruct us or provide us your consent to do so.
With our vendors. We may provide information to vendors we hire to carry out specific work for us. This includes payment processors like Stripe and PayPal that process transactions on our behalf and cloud providers like Google or Amazon that host our data and our services. We may also provide limited information to advertising platforms to help us reach people that we think will like our products and to measure the performance of our ads shown on those platforms. We do this to help bring more users to Kuddo and make our business successful and provide only the information required to facilitate these services. This may include information like the fact that you installed our app or registered to use Kuddo.
To comply with the law. We may disclose information in response to a request for information if we believe disclosure is required by law, including meeting national security or law enforcement requirements. Where allowed and feasible, we will attempt to provide you with prior notice before disclosing your information in response to such a request.
In an emergency. We may disclose information if we believe in good faith that it's necessary to prevent serious harm to a person.
To enforce our policies and rights. We may disclose information if needed to enforce our Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, or other policies, or to protect the rights, property, and safety of ourselves and others.
With our related companies. We may provide information to our related companies, including parents, affiliates, subsidiaries, and other companies under common control and ownership.
Sale, Acquisition, or Transfer of Assets. We may disclose information if Kuddo is evaluating and/or engaging in a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or sale, transfer, or change in ownership of Kuddo or any of its assets.
Aggregated or de-identified information. We may disclose information that has been aggregated or anonymized such that it cannot reasonably be used to identify you. For example, we may share aggregated user statistics in order to describe our business to partners or the public.
Data retention.
Weretain personal information until we determine it is no longer needed for the processing purposes for which we collected or retain it or for legal compliance. You can learn more about data retention periods in our data retention policy.
How we protect your information.
We take a number of steps to help protect your information. All information sent within our services is encrypted both in transit and at rest. For example, we use Transport Layer Security (“TLS”) to encrypt text and images in transit. We also enforce technical and administrative access controls to limit which of our employees and contractors have access to nonpublic personal information. You can help maintain the security of your account by configuring two-factor authentication.
How to control your privacy.
We believe that users should be able to tailor their experience to their preferences, including privacy. And while local laws may require different things, we believe that our users should have at least the same basic ability to shape their experience no matter where they are in the world. Here’s how you can control how we process your information, how to delete or correct certain information, and how to request access to your information. Users in certain places may have specific rights under their local laws. You can learn more about these in the relevant sections below.
Be aware of the Kuddo spaces you choose to participate in.
You can choose what spaces to participate in and what information you add to our services. You can choose what messages to send or post, who to engage with (e.g., one or more particular users or a potentially unlimited group of users), what information to include in your profile, whether to connect any third party services to your Kuddo account, and more. For example, if you share content in certain spaces your content may be accessed by anyone.
Disable or delete your account.
You can disable or delete your account by sending us an email at support@kuddo.club. Disabling your account stops the processing of new data, but allows you to reactivate your account without interruption to you. Deleting your account permanently deletes identifying information and anonymizes other data as described in our data retention policy.
Manage your content and spaces.
You may edit or delete specific pieces of information within the services:
You can edit or delete any message you have sent or content you have posted if you still have access to the space where you posted it.
Content may be retained by Kuddo for use as described elsewhere in this policy and in our data retention policy. Also, in limited circumstances, we may have a legal obligation to retain certain information, even if you delete the information or your account.
Access your information.
If you want to see what information we have collected about you, you can request a copy of your data by contacting support@kuddo.cub. You should receive your data packet within 30 days. Data is delivered in common digital formats including CSV, JSON, and any other file format you used when uploading attachments to the services.
Manage cookies.
To control how information is collected and used from cookies on the services, you can take one or more of the following steps.
You can disable and manage some cookies through your browser settings. You will need to manage your settings for each browser you use. You can find instructions for how to manage Cookies in popular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari (iOS), Safari (Mac), and Opera.
To disable analytics cookies, you can use the browser controls discussed above or, for certain providers, you can use their individual opt-out mechanisms, such as Google Analytics Opt-Out.
Your mobile device may also include browser settings to manage the use of cookies. Your device may also have settings to control the collection and use of information in your apps.
Third party groups also enable you to limit how cookies are used for advertising purposes by participating third parties. You can learn more at Network Advertising Initiative, the Digital Advertising Alliance, and for users in the EU, the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance.
Depending on where you are accessing our services, you may be able to adjust your cookie preferences at any time through a cookies banner or by selecting “Cookie Settings” from the footer or menu on our website.
If you disable or remove cookies, some parts of the services may not function properly. Information may be collected to remember your opt-out preferences.
Questions or concerns about your privacy? You can email us at support@kuddo.club
International data transfers.
We are based in the United States, and we process and store information on servers located in the United States. We may also store information on servers and equipment in other countries depending on a variety of factors, including the locations of our users and service providers. These data transfers allow us to provide our services to you. By accessing or using our services or otherwise providing information to us, you understand that your information will be processed, transferred, and stored in the U.S. and other countries, where different data protection standards may apply and/or you may not have the same rights as you do under local law.
When transferring data outside the EEA, we use standard contract clauses (Module 1 and Module 2), and we rely on the European Commission's adequacy decisions about certain countries, as applicable, or other legally compliant mechanisms or conditions for such data transfer.
Kuddo will comply with the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Frameworks, as well as the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. If you have questions or complaints regarding our compliance with the Data Privacy Framework principles, please reach out to us at support@kuddo.club. We are subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In certain circumstances, we may be liable for the transfer of personal data from the EU, Switzerland, or the UK to a third party outside those countries.
For more information about the Data Privacy Framework principles and to view our certification, please visit the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Data Privacy Framework site.
Services offered by third parties.
We may allow third party developers to build certain features or other services and offer them within the Kuddo services. It’s up to you whether to participate in spaces that use third-party services.
Information for Users in the EEA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Brazil.
Certain local laws, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Brazil’s Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD), require services to provide information about the information they collect, how they use it, and the lawful basis for processing it. We’ve described most of that already in the earlier portions of this Policy.
Exercising your rights: As described in the “How to control your privacy” section above, all our users have control over their information and can directly edit or delete information from their account and limit what data we process. If you are located in certain regions, including the European Union, you may have additional rights that you can exercise through the Kuddo app directly or by contacting us:
Right of access to your personal data
Right to rectify your personal data if they are incorrect
Right to erase your personal data
Right to limit the processing of your personal data
Right to the portability of your personal data
Right to object to the processing of your personal data
Right to withdraw consent. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before withdrawal.
If you have any questions about these rights or wish to exercise control over your information, please reach out to support@kuddo.club.
Information for Users in Certain U.S. States.
Exercising your rights: As described in the “How to control your privacy” section above, all our users have control over their information and can directly edit or delete information from their account and limit what data we process. If you are a resident of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, or Virginia, you may have additional rights that you (or, in certain states, an authorized agent acting on your behalf) can exercise through the Kuddo app directly (as described above) or by contacting us, including the right to:
More information about the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected and disclosed for a business purpose in the last 12 months
Access and/or receive a copy of certain personal information we hold about you
Correct certain of your personal information
Delete certain personal information we hold you
Receive information about the financial incentives that we offer to you, if any
Opt out of the processing of your personal information for purposes of profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects, if applicable
You also have the right to not be discriminated against for exercising your rights. You may also have the right to opt out of “sales” of your information and “sharing/processing of your information for targeted advertising.” We do not sell the personal data of our users or share personal data for targeted advertising purposes.
Certain information may be exempt from the requests above under applicable law. For example, we need to retain certain information in order to provide our services to you. We also need to take reasonable steps to verify your identity before responding to a request. If you are an authorized agent submitting a request on a user’s behalf (where permitted), we may require proof of your written authorization before processing the request. Depending on applicable law, you may have the right to appeal our decision to deny your request.
If you have any questions about these rights, wish to exercise them, or request an appeal, please reach out to us at support@kuddo.club.
Additional Information for Users in California.
In addition to the rights described above, consumers residing in California are afforded the right to certain additional information with respect to their personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act or (“CCPA”). If you are a California resident, this section applies to you.
Our collection and use of personal information: We collect the following categories of personal information: identifiers (such as your username, the email address you used to sign up, and your phone number if you’ve chosen to provide it); commercial information (a record of what you’ve bought from Kuddo, if anything); financial data (payment information and your history of purchases from Kuddo); internet or other network information (how you interact with the application); location information (because your IP address may indicate your general location); inference data about you (for example, what content you may be interested in); and other information that identifies or can be reasonably associated with you. For more information about what we collect and the sources of such collection, please see the “The information we collect” section above. To the extent we collect or use sensitive personal information as defined by law (such as the CCPA), we do so in accordance with applicable legal requirements, and we do not use or disclose it other than for purposes for which there is not a right to limit under the CCPA.
We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in “How we use your information” above.
Disclosure of personal information: We may share your personal information with third parties as described in the “How we disclose your information” section above. We disclose the categories of personal information mentioned above for business or commercial purposes.
No sale or “share” of personal information: The CCPA sets forth certain obligations for businesses that sell or “share” personal information. We do not sell or share the personal information of our users as defined in the CCPA. We do disclose certain information as outlined in the “How we disclose your information” section above and you can make choices with respect to your information as outlined in this policy.
We retain personal information as described in the “Data retention” section above and in our data retention policy.
Requests received:California’s “Shine the Light” law gives residents of California the right under certain circumstances to request information from us regarding the manner in which we share certain categories of personal information (as defined in the Shine the Light law) with third parties, as defined under applicable law, for their direct marketing purposes. We do not share your personal information with third-parties for their own direct marketing purposes.
Changes to this Privacy Policy.
We will update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We always indicate the date the last changes were published, and if changes are significant, we’ll provide a more prominent notice as required by law, such as by emailing you or highlighting the changes within the services.
Contact us.
Email us at support@kuddo.club with any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we process your information. We’ll be happy to help.
How long Kuddo keeps your information.
We collect certain information as you use Kuddo. Our Privacy Policy describes the information we collect, how we use and share it, and how you can control your information. This page describes how long we hold on to different types of information and why.
As mentioned in our Privacy Policy, we require the information that enables us to create your account, provide our services, meet our commitments to our users, and satisfy our legal requirements. The rest is optional.
We retain personal information for as long as it is needed for the purposes for which we collected it. In general, this means that we retain your personal data for as long as you have an active Kuddo account. Some information you can delete directly from the services. We may also retain information for a certain period of time for specific purposes as described below.
You can limit Kuddo from collecting some types of information used for specific purposes.
You may edit or erase content that you post within Kuddo. For example:
You can email us at support@kuddo.club to edit or delete any message you have sent or content you have posted.
Once we delete content, it will no longer be available to other users (though it may take some time to clear cached uploads). Deleted content will also be deleted from Kuddo’s systems, but we may retain content longer if we have a legal obligation to preserve it as described below. Public posts may also be retained for 180 days to two years for use by Kuddo as described in our Privacy Policy (for example, to help us train models that proactively detect content that violates our policies).
Information Retained Until Your Account Is Deleted.
We keep some data for the life of your Kuddo account. This includes information about how you use Kuddo, which helps us understand how users interact with our services, what features or products users may want, or how to improve our services. This also includes information like your username, email, and phone number. Some of that information may be kept for longer periods for specific purposes, as described below. You can delete your account at any time, and if your account is inactive for two years, we may delete it for you. For more on our deletion processes, see the “What happens when you delete your account” section below.
Retention Periods For Specific Purposes.
Business and legal requirements may mean that we need to retain certain information for set periods of time, some of which may extend beyond the deletion of your account. For each type of information, we set these data retention periods based on the reason for its collection:
Compliance with our legal obligations. We may need to retain certain information for longer periods to comply with legal requirements. For example, when you purchase something through Kuddo, we need to retain information related to that transaction for specific periods for tax and accounting purposes.
To meet our safety and security commitments. We retain certain information (including email addresses and phone numbers) for 180 days after deletion for trust and safety purposes. If a user has been reported or flagged for violations of our Terms of Service or Community Guidelines, we may retain this information for up to two years. This information helps us keep Kuddo secure, prevent fraud, or prevent bad actors from creating new accounts or otherwise engaging in behavior that violates our policies.
To exercise or defend legal claims. When you contact Kuddo directly (such as for customer support inquiries and requests to access your information), we retain related information for five years from the closure of your request in case of a dispute or to exercise or defend our legal rights.
Continuity of our service: If you delete your account, we continue to retain and display the content you shared with other users, but that content is no longer tied to your account. We do this in order to ensure that other users continue to have access to the content shared with them. If you want to delete specific content, please do so before you delete your account. You can delete specific content as described in the “Information you can delete directly from the services” section above, or if you need help deleting content, you can write in to support@kuddo.club.
What Happens When You Delete Your Account.
When you delete your account, we will typically first put your account on hold for 15 to 30 days so that it can be recovered in case it was deleted unintentionally. Once that period expires, we begin the process of deleting identifying information and anonymizing or aggregating other information. Most of this happens quickly (unless the information is subject to a longer retention period as described above), but it can take up to 45 days to delete identifying information from backups. We retain aggregated and anonymized information, which is information that no longer enables us to identify you and is no longer tied to you as an individual.
Your Rights.
As provided in our Privacy Policy, all our users have control over their information and can directly edit or delete information from their account and limit what data we process. If you are located in the European Union, the GDPR grants you the following specific rights that you can exercise through the Kuddo app directly or by contacting us:
Right of access to your personal data
Right to rectify your personal data if they are incorrect
Right to erase your personal data
Right to limit the processing of your personal data
Right to the portability of your personal data
Right to object to the processing of your personal data
If you have any questions about data retention or our deletion practices, or if you wish to exercise control over your information, please reach out to support@kuddo.club.