Privacy Policy

By using MatesUp's services, you consent to the collection and use of your information as outlined in this policy, as well as to our general Terms of Use.

General principles

We respect the privacy of our users to the fullest:

Chat contents is considered confidential and will never be sold or given away to third parties for commercial purposes. Email addresses are used only once each time they are entered and only for the purpose of sending out email invitations for a chat. Chat rooms are considered private and are not monitored by moderators. What information is collected and why? In addition to information required for the functioning of the system, MatesUp saves information such as time of day, browser type and browser language with every chat. This allows us to track the number of users and their characteristics in order to improve our service.

Each major chat action (entering a room, posting a link, etc.) is logged together with the visitor's IP address and either browser ID (for new users) or email address (for registered users). The purpose of these action logs is to prevent misconduct in the chatrooms or other cases of misuse, such as the sending out of chat invitations without the intention to chat with the recipients.

MatesUp uses cookies to store user preferences and track number of users. Our rooms, however, work fine without cookies. If you disable cookies on your computer, you can still use our chatrooms, but you will not be able to sign up and make MatesUp remember your rooms and settings.

With whom do we share information?

As mentioned, chat contents is considered confidential and will never be sold or given away to third parties for commercial purposes.

Likewise, information about individual chat users, such as IP addresses, email address, number of visits, etc. is only used for inhouse analysis.

Your IP address is always hidden, but your registered email address is visible to the Administrator when you enter a Virtual Room, unless you have previously chosen a MatesUp ID.

We do NOT disclose emails or IP addresses to private users who have been offended in the chatrooms. If, however, we are contacted by law enforcement authorities acting upon the request of users who have been harassed or threatened in chat rooms or in email invitations, we may help them identify the perpetrader(s) by passing on information such as names, IP's and email addresses. This obviously also applies if the chatroom has been used to promote or carry out criminal activity of any kind.

Finally, we may also choose to pass on personal information to users who have had their rooms hacked or accounts stolen by their peers.

Third-party login (Facebook, etc.)

If you have an account at Facebook, Google+, Windows Live, or any of the other third-party platforms we support, you can use it to log into MatesUp. After login, the following information will be stored in your MatesUp profile:

• Your email address, which is also used as your account ID,
• Your full name, as reported by the third party,
• Your ID and a link to your public profile at the third party.
• We do not read or store any other information about you, your friends/connections, or your activity on the third-party platform. We try to request the minimum permissions required in order to obtain the above three pieces of information, but sometimes, the third-party API does not allow this.

Furthermore, we do not interact with your third-party account, i.e. we cannot and will not post anything about MatesUp or your use of MatesUp on Facebook or any of the other social media platforms.

Your name and ID/profile link will only be used to identify you on the Visitor List in rooms you enter, if you explicitly request this under Account Preferences.

Third-party content (YouTube, etc.)

If you click on any video link, we try to show information about the video, such as a thumbnail, title, duration, etc. This happens automatically, if you enable "Video Thumbs" (under "My Preferences").

MatesUp does not view or store any of this information; it is retrieved by your browser directly from the video-sharing service (e.g. YouTube) and it disappears when you leave the room or close the browser.

The same is true, if you choose to "Show Images" in the chatroom; a thumbnail is retrieved by your browser, but this thumbnail is never viewed or stored on our servers.

How long do we keep your information (Data Retention)?

The above-mentioned chat action logs are kept for at least 6 months. After this period, we delete them within the following 6 months. You cannot ask to be removed from these logs, since they may be used for law enforcement purposes.

Furthermore, certain action logs are kept for 5 years. These include payment transactions, which we are required to safeguard for accounting purposes.

Your MatesUp profile, which includes your preferences and personal rooms list, can be deleted at any time from the login option page (available after logging in).

Changes to the Privacy Policy

MatesUp may decide to change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do, we will post those changes on this page.