Privacy Policy

Last modified: 6/1/2020

Hi :)

Marco is a location-sharing social platform that makes getting your friends together easier than ever.

We understand that privacy is important when sharing your location. That’s why we have built-in features that give you both visibility into and control over what you’re sharing. We have prepared this Privacy Policy to make sure you are aware of our practices. This policy applies to your use of the Marco app and any other services that Marco Ventures, Inc. (Marco) may offer.

❕Important information❕

Before you read on, we would like to highlight important information.

When you use our services you share information with Marco and companies within our corporate family. Marco Ventures, Inc. is the data controller and responsible for processing your data.
To create your account we only require a name, birthday and phone number. The name is used to identify you on Marco, your birthday ensures you’re old enough to use the app, and your phone number is used to authenticate your account.
Marco is a location based application. In order to provide the services to you we need to access and store your location data.
You can always email us at hello@getmarco.io if you have questions about our Privacy Policy, if you want access to your data, if you want us to correct your data, or if you want us to delete it. See the Control Over Your Information section for details.
We have a data deletion and retention policy in place that details how long we store your information. As a general rule, we store the information we collect as long as you are actively using the Marco app. If you haven’t opened or used the app for more than 12 months we will delete most of the data collected by us.
You have the right to provide us with instructions on how to handle the deletion and retention of your personal data after your death.

🗄 Information we collect

There are three categories of information we collect:

Information you provide
Information we may get when you use Marco
Information we collect from third parties

📤 Information you provide

When you interact with our services, we collect information that you choose to share with us.

Registration. When you register through the app you provide us with a name (which could be your first and/or last name, or a pseudonym…it’s totally up to you), birthday and phone number. During registration we will send you a verification code via text message which will enable us to verify your account (we find it easier and more secure than remembering a password). If you don’t receive a verification code you can also request a good, old-fashioned phone call.
Profile picture. If you want, you can also add a profile picture to make it easier and more fun to interact with your friends. Of course, you're free to change your photo and name anything you’d like: just go to Settings in the app. 🤳
Address book. We also allow you to share your address book to easily find friends that are already active on Marco. Sharing your address book also makes it easy to invite friends to Marco and share the love! 💕 Note that we only upload the phone numbers of your contacts (not their names!) and all data is salted ’n hashed. That’s a nerdy way of saying we keep address book data secure in a scrambled kind of way so even we can’t make a lot of sense of it. 🍳
Location. Marco is a location based service. In order for the app to fully function we require your precise location, and store only your most recently-updated location, until it is replaced by your new location when you either a) open the Marco app again, or b) a friend who has your location permissions requests your updated location. You provide us with your location through the permission settings on your phone. We collect your location using Apple Core Location. Your location information is always associated with a timestamp, without the timestamp we would not be able to provide the features that are part of our services.

📇 Information we may get when you use Marco

When you use our services, we collect information about how you use those services so we can provide you with a better experience. Here are some examples:

Usage information. We collect information with regard to your activity on Marco. For example, how you communicate with your friends: names, usernames, times and dates of communications, your favorite friends, the time at which you open messages, and so on. This helps us understand what you like, and what we should improve!
Device information. We collect a variety of device-specific information, such as your phone hardware model. This helps us protect your security, fix bugs, and improve the precision of your positions, for example.

📑 Information we collect from third parties

We may obtain information from other companies that are owned or operated by us—or any other third-party sources—and combine that with the information we normally collect through our services. For example, we may obtain information from third parties to help identify points of interest. Be sure we’ll never send them your precise position.

🤓 How we use information

Our main goal is to offer the best possible location based service. Specifically, we may use your information to…

…develop, operate, improve, deliver, maintain, and protect our services.
…send you communications, including by email. For example, we may use email to respond to direct support inquiries (protip: it’s quicker and easier to use in app support!)
…enhance the safety and security of our products and services, for example by detecting and preventing excessive friend requests. Nobody likes spam! 👮🏻👮🏿
…send you push notifications. Of course, if you don't want to receive push notifications, just turn them off in the Settings or look at the Marco Notification preferences.
…verify your identity to prevent fraud or other unauthorized or illegal activity.
…enforce our Terms of Service and other usage policies.
…store some information locally on your device, so that you can open the app and view content faster.

↔️ How we share information

We may share your information in the following ways:

With other Marco users. Specifically, we may share the following information:
- Information about you, such as your name, username, friend list, number of friends, and profile picture.
- Your location, but only if the user is your friend and you’ve allowed them to view it. We would also like to draw your attention to the fact that your friends may have access to your location regardless of theirs. This means that if a friend is traveling abroad he or she will still be able to see where you are, and vice versa. Remember: you can always limit the sharing of your location in the app anytime.
- Information about how you have interacted with the service such as the day you joined, and the day you became friends with another user.
- When you are sending a friend request, we will share your profile name and friends you have in common, so the receiver can make a better decision on whether or not to accept the friend request.
- Any other information you have consented for us to share. For example, when you let us access your device’s address book, we may share information about you with other users who have your name and phone number in their device’s address book.
With our affiliates. That means that we may share information with entities within the Marco Ventures, Inc. family of companies.
With third parties. Specifically:
- With service providers and partners. We may share information about you with service providers who perform services on our behalf and business partners that provide services and functionality.
- With third parties for legal reasons. We may share information about you if we reasonably believe that disclosing the information is needed to:
  - Comply with any valid legal process, governmental request, or applicable law, rule, or regulation.
  - Investigate, remedy, or enforce potential Terms of Service violations.
  - Protect the rights, property, and safety of us, our users, or others.
  - Detect and resolve any fraud or security concerns.
- Other third parties. We may also share aggregated, non personally identifiable or de-identified information.
With the world 🌎. If you decide to publicly share information, for example if you decide to explicitly share your Footprints using a web link.
With third parties as part of a merger or acquisition. If Marco Ventures, Inc. gets involved in a merger, asset sale, stock sale, share sale, financing, liquidation or bankruptcy, or acquisition of all or some portion of our business to another company, we may share your information with that company before and after the transaction closes. Things like this can happen in the wild world of tech!
🚨Also be aware that your friends may take screenshots of the app and/or share some information about their interactions with you on Marco.

🤳 Third-Party Content and Integrations

Our services may also contain third-party links and include third-party integrations. Through these links and third-party integrations, you may be providing information (including personal information) directly to the third party, us, or both. You acknowledge and agree that we are not responsible for how those third parties collect or use your information. As always, we encourage you to review the privacy policies of every third-party service that you visit or use, including those third parties you interact with through our services.

📚 How long we keep your information

We store your information as long as necessary and as long as you’re a user of our service. We have different retention protocols in place depending on the information. As a general rule, we store the information we collect as long as you are actively using Marco. If you haven’t opened or used the app for more than 12 months we will delete most of the data we’ve collected. Don’t want us to delete your data? Don’t worry, we won’t remove data if you’re still using the app.

The following data is stored as long as you are actively using the Marco app:

Your name, username and phone number
Your age and profile picture
Encrypted elements from your address book.
Friend requests and friend list
Your chats and images
Location data
Your device and usage information

Of course, we also respect your requests for account deletion. The following section, Control over your information, provides more information on how to delete your account.

As a basic principle, we only keep the data we need to provide you with our awesome services.

🎛 Control over your information

It is very important to us that you have control over your information! Here are some ways we establish just that:

Location. You can change the location that is visible to your friends at any time in the app settings. We allow you to share only limited location information with certain friends, or even hide your location from them altogether.
Access. We strive to let you access and update most of the personal information that we have about you. Most of this can be done in the profile section of the app. If you need to access, update, or delete any other personal information that we may have, you can contact hello@getmarco.io. Note however that, we may ask you to verify your identity or provide additional information before we can provide access to your information.
Correct. You can also request us to correct your data.
Deletion. You can easily delete information in the application, for example messages you’ve sent, friends you’ve added.
Account deletion. We don’t like seeing you leave us but if, for some reason, you want to delete your account you can always contact us at hello@getmarco.io to request account deletion. You can also send an old school letter to 380 10th St. Unit 20, San Francisco, CA 94103… or do it directly from within the application.
Right to object. You have the right to object to our use of your information. With many types of data, we’ve provided you with the ability to simply delete it if you don’t want us processing it anymore. For other types of data, we’ve given you the ability to stop the use of your data by disabling the feature altogether. You can do these things in the app. If there are other types of information you don’t agree with us processing, you can contact us at hello@getmarco.io.

👶 Children

Our services are not intended for—and we don’t direct them to—anyone under 13. And that’s why we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. Additionally, you must be old enough to consent to the processing of your information in your country.

✍️ Revisions to the Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we’ll let you know one way or another. Sometimes, we’ll let you know by revising the date at the top of the Privacy Policy (which is available on our website and in our app). Other times—especially if there is a major change—we’ll provide you with additional notice, such as adding a statement to our websites’ homepages or providing you with an in-app notification.

💫 That’s all for now

If you have any questions feel free to let us know at hello@getmarco.io or reach out to our Chief Executive Officer at avi@getmarco.io. And remember: we love you! 🥰