Privacy Policy - Ants Talents

Effective date: June 15, 2022

This policy explains our privacy practices for antstalents.com (which we’ll refer to as the “Site”), and our other services provided by Ants Talents (“Ants Talents,” together with “we,” “us,” and “our”). We’ll refer to the Site, and our other services as the “Services.” This policy does not apply to the practices of third parties (including other members who sell using the Services or API users) who may also collect or receive data in connection with your use of the Services.

1. Our Privacy Policy

We process your personal information to run our business and provide our users with the Services. By accepting our Terms of Use (and in some jurisdictions, by acknowledging this policy), you confirm that you have read and understood this policy, including how and why we use your information. If you don’t want us to collect or process your personal information in the ways described in this policy, you shouldn’t use the Services. We are not responsible for the content or the privacy policies or practices of any of our members, or third-party websites and apps.

Ant Talents’s Terms of Use require all account owners to be at least 18 years of age. Minors under 18 years of age and at least 13 years of age are permitted to use Ants Talents’s Services only if they have permission and direct supervision by the owner of the account. Children under age 13 are not permitted to use the Services. You are responsible for any and all account activity conducted by a minor on your account. We do not knowingly “sell,” as that term is defined under applicable law, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, the personal information of minors. By using the Services, you acknowledge that Ants Talents will use your information where Ants Talents operates.

2. Information Collected or Received

In the course of providing our Services, we collect or receive your personal information in a few different ways. We obtain the categories of personal information listed below from the following sources: directly from you, for example, from forms you complete or during registration; indirectly from you based on your activity and interaction with our Services, or from the device or browser you use to access the Services; from our vendors and suppliers that help provide Ant Talents services you may interact with (such as, for example, for payments or customer support), and from our third party advertising and marketing partners. Often, you choose what information to provide, but sometimes we require certain information to provide you the Services. Ant Talents uses the personal information it receives and collects in accordance with the purposes described in this policy.

Registration, Account Setup, Service Usage: In order to use the Services, you will need to submit a valid email address. If you register, you will need to submit a name associated with your account. You may modify that name through your account settings. You need to provide this information to enable us to provide you with the Services. Additional information, such as a shop name, billing, and payment information (including billing contact name, address, telephone number, credit card information), a telephone number, and/or a physical postal address, may be necessary in order for us to provide a particular service. For example, we need a physical postal address if you are buying something on the Site for delivery. As an Ant Talents seller, we might require some information from you in order to verify your identity, provide this service to you, and comply with applicable law. For both buyers and sellers, Ant Talents requires this information from you in order to provide you with the Services (including, to verify ownership of an account, to mitigate fraud and abuse, to comply with regulatory obligations, or to complete a transaction as a buyer or seller). We may store credit card information and other information provided to us during checkout, for billing and payment purposes, and to process your transaction. Members in certain countries can elect to save their credit card information to facilitate checkout for future purchases. You may be asked to authenticate your payment method when you place your order. To authenticate a payment, you will need to respond to a prompt from your card issuer and provide additional information, such as a correct response to a question, a password, or a passcode. Ant Talents may contact individual shop owners confidentially to request more information about their shops or items listed through the Services, or may request information from buyers to ensure compliance with our policies and applicable law. In order to use certain products or services on Ant Talents, you may be required to complete an application; information that you submit through the application process will not be displayed publicly and will only be used internally by Ant Talents and its service providers, unless otherwise specified.

Profile: You may provide your name and other personal information in connection with your account and activity. You can edit or remove this information through your account settings. The name associated with your account (which you may modify in your account settings) is publicly displayed and connected to your Ant Talents activity. Other members may see the date you joined; ratings, reviews (including your display name, city and/or country) and information relating to items you review, and related photos for items you purchased or sold; your profile information; items you listed for sale, and other info you want to display. For Sellers, we may collect and use information about you in order to feature you in marketing materials, and to feature you and your shop on and off the platform, as provided for in Ant Talents’s Terms of Use or as otherwise legally required.

Automated Information: Ant Talents automatically receives and records information from your browser or your mobile device when you visit the Site, use the Apps, or use certain features of the Services, such as your IP address or unique device identifier, cookies, and data about which pages you visit and how you interact with those pages in order to allow us to operate and provide the Services. This information is stored in log files and is collected automatically. We may combine this information from your browser or your mobile device with other information that we or our advertising or marketing partners collect about you, including across devices. This information is used to prevent fraud and to keep the Services secure, to analyze and understand how the Services work for members and visitors, and to provide advertising, including across your devices, and a more personalized experience for members and visitors.

We also automatically collect device-specific information when you install, access, or use our Services. This information can include information such as the hardware model, operating system information, browser information, IP address, and device identifiers.

Data from Ant Talents Vendors and Suppliers: We also receive information from our vendors and suppliers about you. This information can for exemple include customer service interactions, payment information and shipping information.

Data from Advertising and Marketing Partners: As described below, Ant Talents receives information from our advertising and marketing partners about you. This information can include attribution information via cookies and UTM tags in URLs to determine where a visit to Ant Talents comes from, responses to marketing emails and advertisements, responses to offers, and audience information from partners who you have given consent to share that information with us.

Location Information: We collect information about your use of the Services for advertising, for analytics, to serve content, and to protect the Services. We obtain location information you provide in your profile or your IP address.

Analytics Information: We use data analytics tool to ensure Site functionality and to improve the Services. This tool records information such as how often you use the site, what happens within the site, aggregated usage, performance data, site errors and debugging information. We do not link the information we store within the analytics software to any personally identifiable information that you submit within the mobile application.

Non-Member Information: Ant Talents receives or obtains information (for example, an email address or IP address) about a person who is not yet a registered Ant Talents member (a “non-member”) in connection with certain Ant Talents features, such as when a non-member chooses to subscribe to an Ant Talents newsletter, a member invites a non-member to visit the Site, a member uploads non-member information using the contact uploader feature, a non-member engages in a transaction, a member sends a gift card code to a non-member, or a non-member uses Guest Checkout to make a purchase. Non-member information is used only for the purposes disclosed when it was submitted to Ant Talents, for purposes necessary to the functioning of Ant Talents’s Services or where Ant Talents has a legitimate interest, as disclosed in the “Information Uses, Sharing, & Disclosure” Section below, or to facilitate action authorized by a member or the non-member.

3. Messages from Ant Talents

On occasion, Ant Talents will need to contact you. Primarily, these messages are delivered by email for a variety of reasons, including marketing, transactions, and service update purposes. You can opt out of receiving marketing communications via email by following the unsubscribe link in any marketing email you receive. Every account is required to keep a valid email address on file to receive messages. Ants Talents may also contact you by telephone to provide member support or for transaction-related purposes if you request that we call you. Additionally, and with your consent where required by applicable law, Ants Talents may send you an SMS (or similar) message, or reach out to you by telephone, in order to provide you with customer support, for research or feedback.

Some messages from Ants Talents are service-related and necessary for members and Guest Checkout users. You understand and agree that Ants Talents can send you non-marketing emails, or messages, such as those related to transactions, your account, security, or product changes. Examples of service-related messages include an email address confirmation/welcome email when you register your account, notification of an order, service availability, modification of key features or functions, relaying Messages with buyers, and correspondence with Ants Talents’s Support team.

When you register for an account, subscribe to a newsletter, or provide us with your email address or phone number such as for a Guest Checkout purchase, you receive notice of and agree to receive marketing emails and messages from us. You can unsubscribe at any time from marketing emails or messages through the opt-out link included in such emails or messages. Please note that some changes to your account settings may take a few days to take effect.

4. Information Uses, Sharing, & Disclosure

We respect your privacy. Ants Talents will not disclose your name, email address, or other personal information to third parties without your consent, except as specified in this policy.

We or our sellers may advertise our Services or our sellers’ products through a variety of different mediums and rely on your consent to do so off-site.

Legal Bases

When you access or use the Services, we collect, use, share, and otherwise process your personal information for the purposes described in this policy. We rely on a number of legal bases to use your information in these ways. These legal bases include where:

Necessary to perform the contractual obligations in our Terms of Use and in order to provide the Services to you;
You have consented to the processing, which you can revoke at any time;
Necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, a court order, or to exercise or defend any impending or asserted legal claims;
Necessary for the purposes of our or a third party’s legitimate interests, such as those of visitors, members, or partners (described in more detail below);
You have expressly made the information public;
Necessary in the public interest, such as to prevent crime; and
Occasionally necessary to protect your vital interests or those of others (in rare cases where we may need to share information to prevent loss of life or personal injury).

We principally rely on consent (which can be withdrawn at anytime) (i) to send marketing messages, (ii) for third-party data sharing related to advertising, and, to the extent applicable, (iii) for the use of location data for advertising purposes.

We rely on consent for targeted online and offline marketing including through tools like Facebook Custom Audience and Google Customer Match. We or our sellers may advertise our Services or our sellers’ products through a variety of different mediums and rely on your consent to do so off-site. These companiess have their own privacy policies and consent mechanisms for their customers. You may see the privacy policies and privacy choices for these companies, and the information you share with them.

Our Legitimate Interests

Where we process your information on the basis of legitimate interests, we do so as follows:

Providing and Improving our Services: We use your information to improve and customize our Services, including sharing your information for such purposes, and we do so as it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests of improving our Services for our users. This is also necessary to enable us to pursue our legitimate interests in understanding how our Services are being used, and to explore and unlock ways to develop and grow our business. It is also necessary to allow us to pursue our legitimate interests in improving our Services, efficiency, interest in Services for users, and obtaining insights into usage patterns of our Services. As a core part of our Services, we have a legitimate interest in customizing your on-site experience to help you search for and discover relevant items and recommended purchases, including using this information to help sellers find the best ways to market and sell their products on Ants Talents.

Providing Marketing Communications: We rely on our legitimate interest to send you marketing messages (where permitted independent of consent) and for Ants Talents’s advertising programs (including Ants Talents’s on-site advertising and marketing).

Keeping our Services Safe and Secure: We use your information for safety and security purposes, which can include sharing your information for such purposes, and we do so because it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests or those of a third party in ensuring the security of our Services, preventing harm to individuals or property, or crime, enforcing or defending legal rights, or preventing damage to Ants Talents’s systems, or those of our users or our partners. This includes enhancing protection of our community against spam, harassment, intellectual property infringement, crime, fraud and security risks of all kinds. We use your information to provide and improve the Services, for billing and payments, for identification and authentication, and for general research and aggregate reporting.

Buying and Selling: As part of the buying and selling process, Ants Talents will facilitate the sharing of information between the two members involved in the transaction, such as the other Ants Talents member’s shipping address, email address, and payment status. This can also involve us sharing your information with some of our third party partners such as our shipping and payment partners to enable us to provide the Service to you. Such partners will process your personal information in accordance with their own privacy policies. In some instances, while they are subject to Ants Talents’s privacy and security requirements for vendors, these partners, not Ants Talents, are responsible for the protection of personal information under their control. By making a sale or a purchase on Ants Talents, you are directing us to share your information in this way. Since this is an important part of the Services we provide, we need to do this in order to perform our obligations under our Terms of Use. We may partner with third parties to enable you to make a purchase from an Ants Talents seller on that third party’s website or mobile app. The third parties’ terms of service, privacy policy, and other policies may apply, in addition to Ants Talents’s own policies, and they will collect information directly from you in connection with your purchase. The third party partner will share information collected from you with Ants Talents for purposes of fulfilling the order and for any other purpose disclosed to you at the time you provide your information. We expect you to respect the privacy of the member whose information you have received. As described in Ants Talents’s Terms of Use, you have a limited license to use that information only for Ants Talents-related communications or for Ants Talents-facilitated transactions. Ants Talents has not granted a license to you to use the information for unauthorized transactions or sending unsolicited commercial messages in violation of any applicable laws, including any consent requirements of the jurisdiction of the recipient. You should only add a member to your email or physical mailing list or otherwise use or store a member’s personal information in accordance with applicable laws, including any consent requirements that apply in that member’s jurisdiction.

Site Customization: We may learn about the types of products that you’re interested in from your browsing and purchasing behavior on (and off) the Site or Apps and use such information to suggest potential purchases as a result. As a core part of our Services, we have a legitimate interest in customizing your on-site experience to help you search for and discover relevant items and recommended purchases, including using this information to help sellers find the best ways to market and sell their products on Ants Talents.

Legal and Safety: Ants Talents may also retain, preserve, or release your personal information to a third party in the following limited circumstances: in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet legitimate national security or law enforcement requirements; to protect, establish, or exercise our legal rights or defend against impending or asserted legal claims, including to collect a debt, or a material violation of our policies (including our Intellectual Property Policy); to comply with a subpoena, court order, legal process, regulation, or other legal requirement; or when we believe in good faith that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with the law, prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss, or investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, threats to our rights or property, or violations of Ants Talents’s Terms of Use. For example, if permitted due to the foregoing circumstances, your information may be shared with tax authorities or other governmental agencies. In the cases set out above, our use of your information may be necessary for the purposes of our or a third party’s legitimate interest in keeping our Services secure, preventing harm or crime, enforcing or defending legal rights, or preventing damage. Such use may also be necessary to comply with a legal obligation, a court order, or to exercise or defend legal claims or to facilitate the collection of taxes and prevention of tax fraud. It may also be necessary in the public interest (such as to prevent crime or fraud) or to protect vital interests (in rare cases where we may need to share information to prevent loss of life or personal injury).

Service Providers: Ants Talents also needs to engage third-party companies and individuals (such as research companies, and analytics and security providers) to help us operate, provide, and market the Services. These third parties have only limited access to your information, may use your information only to perform these tasks on our behalf, and are obligated to Ants Talents not to disclose or use your information for other purposes. Our engagement of service providers is often necessary for us to provide the Services to you, particularly where such companies play important roles like helping us keep our Service operating and secure. In some other cases, these service providers aren’t strictly necessary for us to provide the Services, but help us make it better, like by helping us conduct research into how we could better serve our users. In these latter cases, we have a legitimate interest in working with service providers to make our Services better.

Third Parties: Third-party plug-ins also collect information about your use of the Site. For example, when you load a page on Ants Talents that has a social plug-in from a third-party site or service, you are also loading content from that third-party site. That site may request cookies directly from your browser. These interactions are subject to the privacy policy of the third-party site. In addition, certain cookies and other similar technologies on the Site are used by third parties for targeted online marketing and other purposes. These technologies allow a partner to recognize your computer or mobile device each time you use the Services. Please be aware that when you use third-party sites or services, their own terms and privacy policies will govern your use of those sites or services. Ants Talents chooses and manages these third-party technologies placed on its Site. However, these are third-party technologies, and they are subject to that third party’s privacy policy. For more information, see our Cookies & Similar Technologies Policy. We rely on your consent to drop and read these cookies when not technically necessary or when not required based on another purpose such as legitimate interest.

This policy does not apply to the practices of third parties (such as other members who sell using the Services, certain third-party providers on whom we rely to provide certain services, or API users) that Ants Talents does not own or control or individuals that Ants Talents does not employ or manage, except as otherwise provided for in the Terms or as required by law. If you provide your information to such third parties in connection with your use of the Services, different practices may apply to the use or disclosure of the information that you provide to them. While Ants Talents requires these third parties to follow Ants Talents’s privacy and security requirements, Ants Talents does not control the privacy or security policies of such third parties. To the full extent applicable in your jurisdiction, Ants Talents is not responsible for the privacy or security practices of these sellers, API users, or other websites on the internet, even those linked to or from the Services. We encourage you to read the privacy policies and ask questions of third parties before you disclose your personal information to them. For the purposes of the law, these sellers, third party providers, and API users are independent controllers of data, which means that they are responsible for providing and complying with their own policies relating to any personal information they obtain in connection with the Services.

5. Security

The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and after it is received, for example encryption is used for certain information (such as credit card numbers) using TLS (transport layer security). Unfortunately, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Your account information is protected by a password. It is important that you protect against unauthorized access to your account and information by choosing your password carefully and by keeping your password and computer secure, such as by signing out after using the Services.

6. Retention

Ant Talents will retain your information only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this policy, for as long as your account is active (i.e., for the lifetime of your Ant Talents member account), or as needed to provide the Services to you. If you no longer want Ant Talents to use your information to provide the Services to you, you may close your account. Ant Talents will retain and use your information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your information to comply with applicable tax/revenue laws), resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and as otherwise described in this policy. In addition, Ant Talents sellers may also be required to retain and use your information in order to comply with their own legal obligations. We also retain log files for internal analysis purposes. These log files are generally retained for a brief period of time, except in cases where they are used for site safety and security, to improve site functionality, or we are legally obligated to retain them for longer time periods.

7. Your Rights & Choices

Consistent with laws, Ant Talents gives you the choice of accessing, editing, or removing certain information, as well as choices about how we contact you. You may change or correct your Ant Talents account information through your account settings. You may also remove certain optional information that you no longer wish to be publicly visible through the Services, such as your name. You can also request to permanently close your account and delete your personal information. Depending on your location, you may also benefit from a number of rights with respect to your information. While some of these rights apply generally, certain rights apply in limited cases.

Right to Access & Portability: You can access certain personal information associated with your account by visiting your account settings. You can request a copy of your personal information in an easily accessible format and information explaining how that information is used.
Right to Correction: You have the right to request that we rectify inaccurate information about you. By visiting your account settings, you can correct and change certain personal information associated with your account.
Right to Restrict Processing: In certain cases where we process your information, you may also have the right to restrict or limit the ways in which we use your personal information.
Right to Deletion: In certain circumstances, you have the right to request the deletion of your personal information, except information we are required to retain by law, regulation, or to protect the safety, security, and integrity of Ant Talents.
Right to Object: If we process your information based on our legitimate interests as explained above, or in the public interest, you can object to this processing in certain circumstances. In such cases, we will cease processing your information unless we have compelling legitimate grounds to continue processing or where it is needed for legal reasons. Where we use your personal data for direct marketing purposes, you can object using the unsubscribe link in such communications or changing your account email settings.
Right to Withdraw Consent: Where we rely on consent, you can choose to withdraw your consent to our processing of your information using specific features provided to enable you to withdraw consent, like an email unsubscribe link for example. This is without prejudice to your right to generally permanently close your account and delete your personal information.

The CCPA provides California residents the right to Know and the right to Opt-Out.

If you would like to manage, change, limit, or delete your personal information, you can do so via your Ant Talents account settings. Alternatively, you can exercise any of the rights above by contacting us by submitting a message through our contact form. Once you contact us to exercise any of your rights, we will confirm receipt of your request.

Limiting use of, or deleting, your personal information may impact features and uses that rely on that information. However, we will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights, including otherwise denying you goods or services, providing you with a different level or quality of services, or charging you different prices or rates for services. If you need further assistance, you can contact Ant Talents through one of the channels listed below under “Contact”. We will respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe.

Please note that we may verify your identity before we are able to process any of the requests described in this Section, and in our discretion, deny your request if we are unable to verify your identity. As a part of this process, government or other identification may be required. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. In order to designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf, you must provide a valid power of attorney, the requester’s valid government issued identification, and the authorized agent’s valid government issued identification, and we may verify the authenticity of the request directly with you.

Email & Messages

You may also control the receipt of certain types of communications from Ant Talents in your account settings. Ant Talents may send you messages about the Services or your activity. Some of these messages are required, service-related messages for members (such as transactional messages or legal notices). Other messages are not required, such as newsletters. If you no longer wish to use the Services or receive service-related messages (except for legally required notices), then you may close your account.

Cookies

We use both technically necessary (for the functioning and security of the Services) and non-technically necessary cookies and similar technologies.

Additional Disclosures for California Residents

Notice of Collection

In addition to the Rights & Choices, the CCPA requires disclosure of the categories of personal information collected over the past 12 months. While this information is provided in greater detail in the “Information Collected or Received Section above, the categories of personal information that we have collected – as described by the CCPA – are:

Identifiers, including name, email address, shop name, IP address, and an ID or number assigned to your account.
Other individual records such as phone number, billing address, or credit or debit card information. This category includes personal information protected under pre-existing California law (Cal. Civ. Code 1798.80(e)), and overlaps with other categories listed here.
Demographics, such as your age or gender, or, where you have provided such information to Ant Talents voluntarily
Commercial information, including purchases and engagement with the Services.
Internet activity, including your interactions with our Services and what led you to our Services.
Sensory visual data, such as pictures posted on our Service.
Geolocation data provided through location enabled services such as WiFi.
Inferences, including information about your interests, preferences and favorites.

The Purposes for Our Collection

We collect and use these categories of personal information for our business and commercial purposes described in the “Information Uses, Sharing and Disclosure” Section above, including providing and improving the Services, maintaining the safety and security of the Services, processing purchase, and sale transactions, and for advertising and marketing services.

Third Party Marketing and Advertising and Your Rights (Opt-Out of “Sale”)

Ant Talents does not sell personal information to third parties. However, the term “sale” is defined broadly under the California Consumer Privacy Act. To the extent that “sale” under the CCPA is interpreted to include interest based advertising or other data uses described in the “Information Uses, Sharing and Disclosure” Section above, we will comply with applicable law as to those activities.

To opt-out of receiving interest based advertising, you can exercise your choice by contacting us.

Do Not Track Signals

Your browser settings may allow you to automatically transmit a “Do Not Track” signal to online services you visit. Note, however, there is no industry consensus as to what site and app operators should do with regard to these signals. Accordingly, unless and until the law is interpreted to require us to do so, we do not monitor or take action with respect to “Do Not Track” signals. For more information on “Do Not Track,” visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com.

Shine the Light

California law entitles residents to ask for a notice describing what categories of personal information we share with third parties for their own direct marketing purposes. Other than to Sellers on Ant Talents, who must obtain your separate consent for their own marketing off of Ant Talents, or unless you request us to or consent to it, Ant Talents does not share any personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes. If you have questions about these practices, you can contact us.

Accessibility

If you have a disability and would like to access this policy in an alternative format, please contact us.

8. Your Responsibilities

If you sell using our Services, you may receive and determine what to do with certain personal information.

9. Privacy Policy Changes

We may amend or update this policy from time to time. If we believe that the changes are material, we’ll let you know by doing one (or more) of the following: (i) posting the changes on or through the Services, (ii) sending you an email or message about the changes. We encourage you to check back regularly and review any updates.

10. Contact

If you have any questions: Contact Ant Talents’s Support team via our contact page.