Privacy Policy
We believe you should always know what data we collect from you and how we use it, and that you should have meaningful control over both.
That’s the basic purpose of this Privacy Policy.
You should read this policy in full, but here are a few key things we hope you take away from it:
- LancUp is a platform build by students for students and has no affiliation with the University of Lancaster. It’s a social platform designed to enhance the social experience for students. Posts you upload to LancUp maybe public depending on the upload settings you select, and they can be deleted at any point from the publisher account. We give you non-public ways to communicate on LancUp too, through protected Direct Messages. You can also use LancUp under a pseudonym if you prefer not to use your name.
- When you use LancUp, even if you’re just looking at Posts, we receive some personal information from you like the type of device you’re using and your IP address. When you sign up we ask for your email so we can sent you notifications relating to activity on your account and for general admin purposed such as resetting your password. You can choose to share additional information with us like your gender or date of birth, the preferences for these can be changed at any point. We use this information for things like keeping your account secure.
- As of August 2021, LancUp does not use your data to target adverts and we aim to limit the data we collect from you. All your preferences can be viewed from your account settings. You can change all preferences at any point and if you have any questions, please contact our team at support@lancup.co.uk.
- If you want to see all the information, we have stored relating to your account you can request a secure export from our servers. To request an export, visit the settings, click export data, and then request new data export. You will then be sent a secure link via email to download your personal data.
Information You Share With Us
We require certain information to provide our services to you. For example, you must have an account in order to upload or share content on LancUp. When you choose to share the information below with us, we use it to operate our services.
1.1
Basic Account Information
You don’t have to create an account to use some of our service features, such as searching and viewing public LancUp profiles or Events. If you do choose to create an account, you must provide us with some personal data so that we can provide our services to you. On LancUp this includes a display name (for example, “John doe”), a username (for example, @JohnDoe), a password, and an email address. Your display name and username are always public, but you can use either your real name or a pseudonym.
1.2
Public Information
Most activity on LancUp is public, including your profile information, your display language, when you created your account, and your Posts and certain information about your Posts like the date, time, and application and version of LancUp you Posted from. When you share audio or visual content on our service we may analyze that data to operate our services, for example by providing audio transcription. The lists you create, people you befriend and who follow you, and Posts you Like or Retweet are also public. If you Like, Retweet, Reply, or otherwise publicly engage with an ad on our services, that advertiser might thereby learn information about you associated with the ad with which you engaged such as characteristics of the audience the ad was intended to reach. Information posted about you by other people who use our services may also be public. For example, other people may tag you in a photo within a post.
You are responsible for your Posts and other information you provide through our services, and you should , especially if it is sensitive information. If you update your public information on LancUp, such as by deleting a Post or deactivating your account, we will reflect your updated content on all platforms (LancUp, LancUp Events and LancUp Housing).
By publicly posting content, you are directing us to disclose that information as broadly as possible, including through our APIs, and directing those accessing the information through our APIs to do the same. To facilitate the fast global dissemination of Posts to people around the world, we use technology like application programming interfaces (APIs) and embeds to make that information available to websites, apps, and others for their use – for example, displaying Posts on a news website or analyzing what people say on LancUp. We have standard terms that govern how this data can be used, and a compliance program to enforce these terms. But these individuals and companies are not affiliated with LancUp, and their offerings may not reflect updates you make on LancUp.
1.3
Contact Information and Address Books
We use your contact information, such as your email address, to authenticate your account and keep it – and our services – secure, and to help prevent spam, fraud, and abuse. Subject to your settings, we also use contact information to enable certain account features (for example, for login verification), to send you information about our services, and to personalize our services. LancUp also uses your contact information to market to you as your country’s laws allow, and to help others find your account if your settings permit, including through third-party services and client applications. You can use your settings for email to control notifications you receive from LancUp. You can also unsubscribe from a notification by visiting your account settings > email and then change your preferences.
If you email us, we will keep the content of your message, your email address, and your contact information to respond to your request.
1.4
Direct Messages and Non-Public Communications
We provide certain features that let you communicate more privately or control who sees your content. For example, you can use Direct Messages to have non-public conversations on LancUp, protect your Posts. When you communicate with others by sending or receiving Direct Messages, we will store and process your communications and information related to them. This includes link scanning for malicious content, link shortening, detection of spam, abuse and prohibited images, and use of reported issues. We also use information about whom you have communicated with and when (but not the content of those communications) to better understand the use of our services, to protect the safety and integrity of our platform, and to show more relevant content. We share the content of your Direct Messages with the people you’ve sent them to; we do not use them to serve you ads. Note that if you interact in a way that would ordinarily be public with LancUp content shared with you via Direct Message, for instance by liking a Posts, those interactions will be public. When you use features like Direct Messages to communicate, remember that recipients have their own copy of your communications on LancUp – even if you delete your copy of those messages from your account – which they may duplicate, store, or re-share.
1.5
How You Control the Information You Share with Us
Your Privacy and safety settings let you decide:
- Whether your Posts are publicly available on LancUp
- Whether others can tag you in a photo
- Whether you will be able to receive Direct Messages from anyone on LancUp or just your followers
- Whether others can find you based on your email
- When and where you may see sensitive content on LancUp
- Whether you want to block or mute other LancUp accounts
Additional Information We Receive About You
We receive certain information when you use our services or other websites or mobile applications that include our content. Like the information you share with us, we use the data below to operate our services.
2.1
Location Information
We require information about your signup and current location, which we get from signals such as your IP address or device settings, to securely and reliably set up and maintain your account and to provide our services to you.
2.2
Links
In order to operate our services, we keep track of how you interact with links across our services. This includes links in emails we send you and links in Posts that appear on other websites or mobile applications.
2.3
Cookies
A cookie is a small piece of data that is stored on your computer or mobile device. Like many websites, we use cookies and similar technologies to collect additional website usage data and to operate our services. Cookies are not required for many parts of our services such as searching and looking at public profiles. Although most web browsers automatically accept cookies, many browsers’ settings can be set to decline cookies or alert you when a website is attempting to place a cookie on your computer. However, some of our services may not function properly if you disable cookies. When your browser or device allows it, we use both session cookies and persistent cookies to better understand how you interact with our services, to monitor aggregate usage patterns, and to personalize and otherwise operate our services such as by providing account security, personalizing the content we show you, and remembering your language preferences.
2.4
Log Data
We receive information when you view content on or otherwise interact with our services, which we refer to as “Log Data,” even if you have not created an account. For example, when you visit our websites, sign into our services, interact with our email notifications. This Log Data includes information such as your IP address, browser type, operating system, the referring web page, pages visited, location, your mobile carrier, device information (including device and application IDs), search terms (including those not submitted as queries), and cookie information. We also receive Log Data when you click on, view, or interact with links on our services, including when you install another application through LancUp. We use Log Data to operate our services and ensure their secure, reliable, and robust performance. For example, we use Log Data to protect the security of accounts and to determine what content is popular on our services. We also use this data to improve the content we show you.
2.5
Payment Information
Financial transactions relating to our website and services are handled by our payment services providers, Stripe. We will share transaction data with our payment services providers only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing your payments, refunding such payments and dealing with complaints and queries relating to such payments and refunds. You can find information about the payment services providers’ privacy policies and practices at https://stripe.com/gb/privacy.
Information We Share and Disclose
As noted above, LancUp is designed to broadly and instantly disseminate information you share publicly through our services. In the limited circumstances where we disclose your private personal data, we do so subject to your control, because it’s important for operating our services, or because it’s required by law.
3.1
Service Providers
We engage service providers to perform functions and provide services for us in the United States, Ireland, and other countries. For example, we use a variety of third-party services to help operate our services, such as hosting our various blogs and wikis, and to help us understand the use of our services, such as Google Analytics. We may share your private personal data with such service providers subject to obligations consistent with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures, and on the condition that the third parties use your private personal data only on our behalf and pursuant to our instructions (service providers may use other non-personal data for their own benefit). We share your payment information with payment services providers to process payments; prevent, detect, and investigate fraud or other prohibited activities; facilitate dispute resolution such as chargebacks or refunds; and for other purposes associated with the acceptance of credit and debit cards.
3.3
Law, Harm, and the Public Interest
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Privacy Policy or controls we may otherwise offer to you, we may preserve, use, share, or disclose your personal data or other safety data if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request; to protect the safety of any person; to protect the safety or integrity of our platform, including to help prevent spam, abuse, or malicious actors on our services, or to explain why we have removed content or accounts from our services; to address fraud, security, or technical issues; or to protect our rights or property or the rights or property of those who use our services. However, nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit any legal defenses or objections that you may have to a third party’s, including a government’s, request to disclose your personal data.
3.4
Affiliates and Change of Ownership
In the event that we are involved in a bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets, your personal data may be sold or transferred as part of that transaction. This Privacy Policy will apply to your personal data as transferred to the new entity. We may also disclose personal data about you to our corporate affiliates in order to help operate our services and our affiliates’ services.
Managing Your Personal Information With Us
You control the personal data you share with us. You can access or rectify this data at any time. You can also deactivate your account. We also provide you tools to object, restrict, or withdraw consent where applicable for the use of data you have provided to LancUp. And we make the data you shared through our services portable and provide easy ways for you to contact us. Please note, to help protect your privacy and maintain security, we take steps to verify your identity before granting you access to your personal information or complying with deletion, portability, or other related requests.
4.1
Accessing or Rectifying Your Personal Data
If you have registered an account on LancUp, we provide you with tools and account settings to access, correct, delete, or modify the personal data you provided to us and associated with your account. You can download certain account information, including your Posts, by following the instructions in the ‘Portability’ section. To submit a request related to access, modification, or deletion of your information, or someone else’s information if you are their authorized agent, you may also contact us as specified in the How To Contact Us section of our Privacy Policy (Additional Information or Assistance). We may require you to provide additional information for verification.
4.2
Deletion
We keep Log Data for a maximum of 18 months. To delete your account this function can be found in your accounts settings area. When deactivated, your LancUp account, including your display name, username, and public profile, will no longer be viewable on Lancup.co.uk, Events.Lancup.co.uk or Housing.Lancup.co.uk.
Keep in mind that search engines and other third parties may still retain copies of your public information, like your profile information and public Posts, even after you have deleted the information from our services or deactivated your account.
4.3
Object, Restrict, or Withdraw Consent
When you are logged into your LancUp account, you can manage your privacy settings and other account features by viewing your account settings. It may take a short amount of time for privacy settings to be fully reflected throughout our systems.
4.4
Portability
LancUp provides you a means to download the information you have shared through our services. If you want to see all the information, we have stored relating to your account you can request a secure export from our servers. To request an export, visit the settings, click export data, and then request new data export. You will then be sent a secure link via email to download your personal data.
4.5
Additional Information or Assistance
Thoughts or questions about this Privacy Policy? Please let us know by contacting us here or writing to us at the appropriate address below.
If you live in the United States or any other country outside of the European Union, EFTA States, or the United Kingdom, the data controller responsible for your personal data is LancX LTD. with an address of:
LancX LTD
1 Heytesbury Road,
Bournemouth, England,
BH6 5BN
If you live in the European Union, EFTA States, or the United Kingdom, the data controller is LancX LTD, with an address of:
LancX LTD
1 Heytesbury Road,
Bournemouth, England,
BH6 5BN
You can confidentially contact LancUp Data Protection Officer here. If you wish to raise a concern about our use of your information (and without prejudice to any other rights you may have), you have the right to do so with your local supervisory authority or LancUp International Company’s lead supervisory authority, the Irish Data Protection Commission. You can find their contact details here.
