Who we are
Our website address is: tuvens.com.
Tuvens.com is owned and administered by Tuvens Ltd (“Tuvens”), a registered company based in Ireland. When we say “we” or “us” in the following, we mean Tuvens Ltd. We are a team of professionals who have a passion for building communities and want to make it easier for people to connect.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
At Tuvens, the privacy of our visitors is of utmost importance to us. We aim to be 100% transparent with our privacy model, and to make privacy an intuitive and accessible function of social networking. We believe that many other social networks pay lip-service to privacy in public while their real position is that privacy doesn’t exist online. More and more information about you can now be found on the web. It is therefore increasingly important to take seriously the responsibility of ensuring that people who entrust us with their personal data have a reasonable idea of how we manage and use it, no matter how complicated it gets. “It’s complicated” is not an excuse we tolerate. This policy aims to make it easy to understand what data we collect, use, and disclose to third parties, for what purposes we do so, and what mechanisms we have in place to ensure our users’ privacy at every step.
Privacy Model
As you can see, in order to provide transparency, this Privacy Policy has become pretty lengthy. Here is a summary to give you a brief, yet accurate overview of how we handle your data. The complete policy follows in the subsequent sections.
Our privacy model is simple. It flows from the requirements of the data protection laws but also reflects our values as an organization. We can summarise it in the following points:
What Personal Data we Collect, How, and Why
The following table makes good on the promise of providing transparency regarding the data we collect, how, and for what purposes. We divided it into three sections, (1) Required for account holders, (2) Automatically collected, and (3) Voluntarily disclosed, so you can see where you have a choice and where we require the data to provide our services and hence collect it on the basis of necessity rather than consent.
We use the term ‘Activity’ in the following table to mean any or all of the following: creating, hosting, and indicating attendance of events, setting up an organization, performing a role, engaging in public conversations, and all other activities that users can today or in the future perform on our platform which have a communal aspect, i.e., that are visible to other users, not just us at Tuvens.
| Personal Data we Collect | Method of Collection | Purpose for Collection |
|---|---|---|
| Family name and given name | You provide us with this data. This is mandatory if you sign up for an account. We do not authenticate your name. | Display to general public visiting your profile or viewing your Activities |
| Email address | You provide us with this data. This is mandatory if you sign up for an account. The email will be validated, so you need to have access to it. | – Account creation, support, verification, authentication – Verify your access to our platform and services – Receive notifications and confirmations which you can change in the settings – Receive marketing materials, if you consent separately; we use ActiveCampaign to help us with this – see below for more details |
| Password | You select a password which is encrypted so only you can see it. Setting a password is mandatory when you sign up for an account. | Required for you to sign in |
| Whether or not you are over 18 | You provide us with this data. If you are not over 18, you will not be able to create an account. | – Privacy laws prescribe an age restriction for consent. In order to comply with the law, we need to know your age, so we can determine whether you are able to provide valid consent. |
| Location | You provide us with this data when you sign up. This is mandatory. In addition, we collect your browser location; see below under technical. For users who are not signed in, we use the location and language stored by their browser. | – Provide more useful suggestions on the platform – It enables other users to find you in relevant communities, if you allow your location to be publicly visible |
| Time zone | You provide us with this information when you sign up for your account. The default time zone comes from your browser, even if you are in incognito mode. Providing a time zone is mandatory. | – Display events in your local time – Provide more useful suggestions on the platform |
| Time of account creation and modification | We collect this information automatically when you perform these actions. | – Display for how long you have had an account on Tuvens.com – Support |
| Personal Data we Collect | Method of Collection | Purpose for Collection |
|---|---|---|
| Location | For users who are not signed in, we use the location (country) and language stored by their browser. | Knowing the country where our users are located allows us to make product and marketing decisions, for example identifying new locations to promote Tuvens.com |
| Time zone | For users who are not signed it, we collect the time zone information from the browser, even if you are in incognito mode. | Display events in your local time |
| Your behaviour on our website | We use PostHog for this purpose – see below for details on what information they collect. | – We can see how you set up your account, created events, search, etc. This allows us to determine where there is friction in the design of the processes we have implemented and to improve our product. – This information is also collected for users who are not signed in. They are uniquely identified based on their IP address, device ID, and location, which PostHog uses to create a unique identifier |
| Personal Data we Collect | Method of Collection | Purpose for Collection |
|---|---|---|
| Email address [forthcoming] | As mentioned above, we require a valid email to set you up with an account. However, you can decide whether to have this or another email displayed to other users in your settings | Display to general public viewing your profile and your Activities, if you allow it |
| Phone number [forthcoming] | You provide us with this data, if you wish. | – Contact you for trouble-shooting purposes, e.g., if your account was locked or hacked – Display to general public if you allow it |
| Profile photos (see below under Media for guidance on protecting your information when uploading photos) | You provide us with this data, if you wish. | – Allow users to identify you – Make your content visually appealing |
| Description | You provide us with this information, if you wish. | Allow you to present yourself to others using the platform. |
| Availability (to host, meet, guide, etc.) | You provide us with this information, if you wish. | Display this information to the general public |
| Personal account preferences | You provide us with this data through making selections in the settings. | – Enhance your experience of the platform – As a default setting, we select the minimum visibility. |
| Date of Birth | You provide us with this data, if you wish. | – For the benefit of other users, we display an age range on your profile, if you provide your DoB. – Some events may have age restrictions. If you decide to provide us with this information, we can tailor your search results accordingly. |
| Interests | You provide us with this information either by adding an interest to your profile or by interacting with content on our platform. | – Offer relevant suggestions on our platform – The intersection of interest and location is called a space on Tuvens.com. Other users will be able to see you in these spaces if you set your profile to ‘public.’ – Facilitate connections with other users with similar interests |
| Activity | Your engagement with our platform is visible to other users, if you set your account to ‘public.’ | – Allows for engagement among users and roles – Allows organizers to manage numbers |
Third Party Applications We Share Information With
- ActiveCampaign – manages our newsletter and welcome email
- PostHog – collects user information that helps us improve our products
- Mapbox – used to embed maps into our products
- Alceris Analytics – privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative used to track user interaction with our platform
We provide further detail on each of these third-party service providers below!
Sensitive Information
We do not collect or retain any sensitive personal data, such as data concerning health or financial records. If an Activity you engage in discloses information about you publicly (e.g., religious affiliation), we do not consider this sensitive information because there exists no expectation of privacy in that case.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded personal data, e.g., EXIF GPS. Note that this is not possible with all file types. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms
When you contact us for support via a contact form submissions, a service that is only available to signed-in users, we save the subject, a support category, and a description for customer service purposes. We do not use the information submitted through contact forms for marketing purposes.
We hold this information until the issue is properly addressed or resolved. The time frame depends on the content of the submission. For example, if you made a product feature request, we store this information until a decision has been made on this feature, which likely takes longer than addressing an issue with your login.
Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on a site visitor’s hard drive to help us improve your access to our site and identify repeat visitors to our site. We use one cookie on tuvens.com which contains only the login credentials. No cookie is stored on a visitor’s device who uses tuvens.com but is not signed into an account.
PostHog stores two cookies on the user’s device in order to provide its services to us. See below for a detailed list of the information collected via these cookies.
If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.
- Disable Cookies in Chrome
- Disable Cookies in Firefox
- Disable Cookies in Safari
- Disable Cookies in Internet Explorer
Marketing
We use the services of ActiveCampaign for our marketing. They distribute our newsletter for us and they send out marketing emails based on a user’s interests on our behalf.
We do not send out the newsletter or marketing emails, unless a user has consented to receiving them. This is an opt-in consent we specifically ask for.
Every user receives a one-time welcome email sent by ActiveCampaign on our behalf when they sign up for an account. This is independent of the user’s consent, as this email contains important information about how to use tuvens.com.
In order for ActiveCampaign to provide these three services, we disclose to them:
- The email address of every user for purposes of sending the welcome email.
- After sending the welcome email, the user’s email address is saved by ActiveCampaign, even if the user does not consent to receiving marketing materials. Their email address is tagged with their preference accordingly and no new emails are being sent to them by ActiveCampaign.
- The location information of every user as indicated on their profile
- The user’s interests as indicated on their profile by the user as well as the interests we deduce from their interaction with our content, but only if the users consented to receiving marketing materials
Site tracking is not enabled, when a user receives an email from Active Campaign and clicks on any of the links included in the email, cookies are not placed on the user’s device.
ActiveCampaign will not know if or when an identified contact browses the website.
When marketing emails are sent out, if the user clicks on a button, that action is recorded in the activity stream of that contact, but no cookies will be added to the contact. The activity stream will remain visible in the ActiveCampaign account; when the account is deleted so is that information.
Product enhancement
We use PostHog to gather detailed information on the behaviour of the users on our website that are logged into their personal account. This allows us to see how you interact with our content, set up and change your account, create and edit events, etc. This enables us to identify potential improvements to our processes, so we can make our product better.
The information gathered and stored by PostHog is the following:
- Email address (only for signed-in users)
- Slug (only for signed-in users)
- Unique ID – an alphanumeric string assigned to every user (even those not signed in); there may be several for a single user because of different devices used by the same user
- Device ID
- Environment
- Browser, browser version, initial browser, and initial browser version
- Initial current URL
- Initial device type, i.e., mobile
- Initial OS
- Initial referrer URL
- Initial referring domain
- OS
- ‘Events’ users actioned, i.e., pages used and buttons pressed, etc. on the recordings of their sessions
- Mouse movements, pageload, data entered, except passwords
PostHog stores and makes accessible to us this information for 30 days after which it is deleted.
Mapbox
We use the services of Mapbox to embed maps into our products. You can access the Data Processing Addendum that governs their processing procedures regarding the data their customers (Public Spaces) provide them with (your data). The most important passage reads, at the time of writing this Privacy Policy in March 2023:
2.3. Mapbox’s Processing of Personal Data. Mapbox shall Process Personal Data provided to Mapbox pursuant to this DPA on behalf of Customer and only in accordance with the Purpose, Customer’s documented instructions herein, to comply with Customer’s other reasonable instructions (e.g. sent via email) where such instructions are consistent with the Purpose, and as permitted by law and legal process or Data Protection Laws and Regulations. Mapbox shall not sell such Personal Data. If, in Mapbox’s opinion, an instruction from Customer infringes Data Protection Laws and Regulations, Mapbox shall promptly inform Customer.
No personal data is sent to Mapbox from Tuvens.
Alceris Analytics
We use Alceris Analytics tracking. This is a privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative. They do not store any cookies on the user’s device. The info it sends is the following whenever the URL changes: locale such as “en-US”, URL, performance metrics, timezone, and a per-session ID that is not connected to the user.
Embedded content from other websites
Tuvens will, from time to time, include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Depending on the content, it may be dynamic, in which case it behaves in the same way as it would on the originating website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
We also store the personal information members provide in their user profile. All members can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time. When you change or delete any information on your profile, we no longer have access to this information either, i.e., we do not keep a copy of it.
Website administrators can see and edit the information on your user profile, unless or until you delete it.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about the privacy policy of Tuvens and the data we hold on you, or if you would like to exercise any of your data protection rights please do not hesitate to contact us at our email address: contact@tuvens.com
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.