Privacy Policy

📅 Last updated on: 14 November 2023

Welcome, Guardian! 🚀

We're on a mission to explore, learn, and protect our beautiful planet. But while we're interested in wildlife data for biodiversity education and conservation, we're not interested in invading your privacy. We only collect personal information to make your journey with us more enjoyable, more impactful and to distinguish between our brave Guardians. 🌍

Please note that this Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with our Terms of Service. By using our Services, you are agreeing to both these Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service.

1️. What Minimal Personal Information We Collect

To protect the privacy of our community, by default we choose to only collect the very minimal personal information that we need to provide and improve our services, communicate effectively, and support biodiversity research. Depending on how you use our Services, this may include:

  • Direct or indirect identifiers (e.g. to provide our main services we may require username, email address, encrypted password, optional profile information, and location data. If you enquire about sales or support, so that we can provide adequate support, we may request additional information like name, associated company and contact details)

  • User generated content (e.g. photos, videos, audio and text ‘stories’ about user’s experiences in nature)

  • Internet activity (e.g., interactions with our Services)

  • Commercial information (e.g. purchases considered or completed)

We collect some non personal information to provide and improve our Services (e.g., it is sometimes helpful for us to know the type of device you are using, your operating system, or browser type, so when you are interacting with our Services so that we can better troubleshoot bugs in the system.

2. Why We Collect Personal Information

There are 4 main reasons we collect and use your personal information:

  • Provide you with our Services

  • Improve and optimise our Services

  • Communicate with you

  • Support biodiversity research and conservation efforts

In each case above, we aim to only collect the minimum personal information we require. For example, when you set up an account with us we do not ask for any demographic information, we simply require an email address (which we always keep private), a public username, and a password (which we keep secure). For a further example, when you submit nature sightings and stories through our Services, we may collect location data as this is directly relevant to providing you with species identification services and supporting biodiversity research.

We collect the minimum amount of personal information that we need to provide and improve our Services.

3. How We Collect and Use of Personal Information

  • Directly from you when you create an account - If you create an account, we will collect your email address and require you to choose both a username and password to login. We collect this information with your consent, and we use it to provide the Services, identify and administer your account, and communicate with you about the Services. You have the right to opt-out of communications from us, but you cannot opt out of critical communications that we need to send you regarding your account.

  • Directly from you when you submit or create content via our Services - If you submit nature sightings (including associated location data), stories or identifications through our Services these may be shared openly so as to support biodiversity research and conservation efforts. Note that you can set your own locations, and can also choose to obscure your location data.

  • Automatically from you when you use our Services - When you use our Services, at times we will automatically collect data about your location and internet activity such as information about the type of device, browser used. Your location data enables us to provide a geographically relevant experience through our Services, such as Augmented Reality. Like most online services, our Services may use cookies. We collect this information to achieve our legitimate interest of facilitating online communication or when it is strictly necessary to provide an online Service. We use this information to help diagnose problems with and secure our servers, to administer the proper functioning and legitimate use of our Services, generate analytics and statistics to improve our Services. With your prior consent, we also use that information to improve the nature and marketing of our Services.

  • Directly from you when you contact us or make a purchase - If you contact us via the Services or by email, phone, or other means to request information or support, we may collect your name, contact information as needed to respond to your inquiry. If you place an order with us, we will use a PCI-compliant payment processor to collect and process your payment information. You may opt-in to save your payment information for future orders, but this is not required. We collect this information with your consent, and we use it to respond to your inquiries, communicate with you about your order status, or for the purposes stated at the time of collection.

In addition to the specific uses described above, we might also use your Personal Information to:

  • Provide, maintain, and improve our Services and user experience.

  • Send you support and administrative messages.

  • Monitor your compliance with any of your agreements with us.

  • Detect, investigate, and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities and protect the rights and property of Company and others.

  • Protect your privacy and enforce this Privacy Notice.

  • If we believe it is necessary, to identify, contact, or bring legal action against persons who may be causing injury to you, to us, or to others.

  • Comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or court order.

  • Fulfil any other purpose to which you consent.

4️. Information Sharing and Disclosure

In order to provide our services and deliver maximum positive impact for the world, we do at times carefully disclose certain Personal Information. But let’s be clear - we have zero interest in selling sensitive personal information such as email addresses to third parties, advertisers or spammers!

We may disclose Personal Information to the recipients described below, or to other recipients with your permission or as required by law.

Publicly Shared - We share the following information about your account openly with the public in general: Your Username; other optional profile information that you may add; content that you upload such as nature sightings (and the location data associated with these) or identifications, your game activity scores, expertise and rankings.

Biodiversity interested community - We share nature sightings, identifications and stories contributed by our community through our Services with the broader community who seek to gain increased insights about biodiversity. This includes sharing this information with open biodiversity research databases (such as the Atlas of Living Australia and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and with other users of our Services, such as users who may pay for custom data reports. In such cases these audiences will have access to your Username in association with your nature sightings, identifications and stories, with associated location data where relevant - but they will never have access to your email address.

Service Providers - We use a variety of service providers such as data hosting companies, analytics services, email hosting services, and payment processors. The type of information that we share with a service provider will depend on the service that they provide to us. Our service providers are subject to contractual agreements that protect your Personal Information, and we require all service providers to maintain confidentiality standards that are commercially reasonable to ensure the security of your Personal Information.

Third Parties - Under specific circumstances, we may disclose Personal Information to certain third parties as permitted by applicable law, for example: if we go through a business transition (e.g., merger, acquisition, or asset sale); to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; when we believe it is appropriate to take action regarding illegal activities or prevent fraud or harm to any person; to exercise or defend our legal claims; or for any other reason with your consent.

We reserve the right to disclose aggregated, anonymized, or deidentified information about any individuals with affiliated or non affiliated entities for marketing, advertising, research, or other purposes, without restriction. For example, we may share reports showing trends about the general use of our Services without identifying an individual.

5️. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to provide our Services and for other essential purposes such as complying with our legal obligations and resolving disputes. If you delete your account, we do not retain your personal information any longer than is necessary for us to complete the deletion.

6️. User Rights and Choices

You have certain rights regarding your personal information, such as the right to access, correct, or delete your personal information. You can use the methods described below to control how we collect and use your Personal Information.

  • Your Account - You can access, change or delete the Personal Information in your account at any time by signing into the Services and editing information or changing settings. This includes your preferences for sharing your data for biodiversity research and conservation, and obscuring your location data. You can delete all of your Personal Information held by us by deleting your account.

  • Email Communications - We may send you marketing emails about our Services. If you do not wish to receive these emails, you may change your preferences via the links provided in the emails or by sending a request to info@earthguardians.life to be removed from our email list. Note that if you opt-out of marketing communications, we may still send you non-promotional communications, such as those about your account.

7. Children's Privacy

Our Services are designed with privacy in mind and can provide meaningful experiences for children when used in appropriate contexts, such as with family or through school activities. We acknowledge that our Services may be used by children, and we take their privacy very seriously.

We only collect the minimal Personal Information necessary to provide our Services. We strongly recommend that children under the age of 18 use a pseudonym ('fake name') for their public username, use our Services under the supervision of a responsible adult, and that they seek the consent of a parent or guardian before playing.

As with all users, the main Personal Information that has the potential to be sensitive within certain contexts, are:

  • Your email address - We will never disclose this information outside the terms of this policy.

  • Your public username and optional user-generated content such as your profile, nature sightings and stories - This information is shared openly with the users of our Services, so you should always take care not to share information you do not want others to see.

  • The location data associated with your nature sighting submission - Should you be concerned about sharing accurate location data in your submissions, you have the ability to set the locations yourself, and/or obscure the location data.

For all users, including those that may be children, we collect and disclose certain Personal Information so that we can deliver our Services and support biodiversity research.

If we learn that we have collected personal information from someone under the age of consent as required in their home country, and that they do not have the consent of a parent or guardian (and such consent is required) we will take steps to remove that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child who has not obtained parental consent, please contact us at info@earthguardians.life.

We strongly encourage parents and guardians to have open discussions with their children about online safety and privacy, and to monitor their children's use of online services, including our Services.

Just as importantly, we strongly encourage parents and guardians to have open discussions with their children about the benefits of exploring and playing in nature, whether that’s through our Services or otherwise.

8. Data Security

We use reasonable and appropriate security procedures and practices to help protect your Personal Information from unauthorised or illegal access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure. Please note, however, that no internet activity is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee that unauthorised third parties will not defeat our security measures or use your Personal Information for improper purposes.

It is your responsibility to keep your account secure from unauthorised access. We encourage you to take steps to protect against unauthorised access, such as choosing a robust password, keeping the password private, and signing off after using a shared device. We are not responsible for any lost, stolen, or compromised passwords, or any unauthorised activity on your account.

9. Changes to the Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do, we'll let you know via email.

10. Contact Information

Got a question about this Privacy Policy? Feel free to drop us a note at info@earthguardians.life. We're here to help. 💬

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