SYNE Privacy Policy

We are committed to
protecting your Privacy.

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Effective 11 February 2021

Welcome to SYNE. The protection of your personal information is very important to us, and we are committed to protect your Privacy. Central to this mission is our commitment to be transparent about the data we collect about you, how it is used and with whom it is shared. This Privacy Policy explains how we handle and use your personal information and your rights in relation to that information.

This Privacy Policy applies when you use our services. We offer our users choices about the data we collect, use and share as described in this Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and in our Terms of Use.

1. Registration

To create an account you need to provide your personal data including your Given name, Surname, Email address and Mobile number and a password. If you register for a any paid Service, you will need to provide payment (e.g., credit card) and billing information. If you are running a fundraising project you should complete the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) information for verifications.

2. Registered Users and Guests

Our registered users (“Members”) share their professional identities, engage with their network, publish projects, exchange knowledge and post and view relevant content and find business opportunities. Content and data on some of our Services is viewable to non-members (“Visitors”).

We use the term “Designated Countries” to refer to countries in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland.

3. User or Organisational Profile

You have choices about the information on your profile, such as your education, work experience, photo, location and other relevant information. You don’t have to provide additional information on your profile; however, profile information helps you to get more from our Services, including identifying business opportunities find you. It’s your choice whether to include sensitive information on your profile and to make that sensitive information public. Please do not post or add personal data to your profile that you would not want to be publicly available.

Your profile is fully visible to all Members and customers of our Services. Subject to your settings, it can also be visible to others on or off of our Services (e.g., Visitors to our Services or users of third- party search engines).

4. Projects, Posts, Likes, Follows, Comments, Messages and Uploads

We collect personal data from you when you create a Project, Post or upload images or data to our Services, such as when you fill out a form on our Services. You don’t have to post or upload personal data; though if you don’t, it may not limit your ability to engage with your network over our Services. We collect information about you when you send, receive, or engage with messages in connection with our Services.

Our Services allow viewing and sharing information including through posts, likes, follows and comments.

  • When you share an article or a post (e.g., an update, image, video or article) publicly it can be viewed by everyone and re-shared anywhere (subject to your settings). Members, Visitors and others will be able to find and see your publicly-shared content, including your name (and photo if you have provided one).
  • Any information you share through companies’ or other organizations’ pages on our Services will be viewable by it and others who visit those pages.
  • When you follow a person or organization, you are visible to others.
  • We let senders know when you act on their message, subject to your settings where applicable.
  • Subject to your settings, we let a Member know when you view their profile.
  • When you like or re-share or comment on another’s content, others will be able to view these “actions” and associate it with you (e.g., your name, profile and photo if you provided it).

You and others may post content that includes information about you (as part of articles, posts, comments, videos) on our Services. We also may collect public information about you, such as awards and accomplishments, and make it available as part of our Services, including, as permitted by your settings, in notifications to others of mentions in the news.

When you create a project, we create a profile page for you on SYNE which becomes public when a campaign is submitted and approved. This information may then be shared on social media or with any of our marketing partners to assist in helping you provide funding and publicity for your campaign. Please note that once we share your personal information with another company, the information received by the other company is controlled by that company and becomes subject to the other company’s privacy practices.

When you contribute to a campaign, so that the campaign creator can send you rewards, provide you with customer service, conduct market research, and comply with obligations. Please note that once we share your personal information with a campaign creator, the information received by the campaign creator is controlled by them and becomes subject to their privacy practices.

When companies perform services on our behalf, like accounting, web development, marketing and advertising, and customer service; however, these companies are prohibited from using your personal information for purposes other than those requested by us or required by law.

When we share your personal information with third parties in connection with the sale of a business, to enforce our Terms or rules, to ensure the safety and security of our users and third parties, to protect our rights and property and the rights and property of our Users and third parties, to comply with legal process (including to comply with national security or law enforcement requirements), or in other cases if we believe in good faith that disclosure is required by law.

Our website may include links to other websites or services whose privacy practices may differ from our own. When you use a link to an external site or service, the privacy policy and data processing disclosures for that site or service governs.

The privacy practices of this statement apply to the website located at https://www.syne.com and to personal information collected from the different interactions you may have with us as a business including through our social media pages, our websites, through in person meetings with our teams, phone calls or through any of our competitions or promotions.

When we talk about “us”, “we” or “our” we mean the business that operates the website. SYNE is the controller of the data collected and is responsible for its use and protection.

As we operate the platform, project creators on our platform run fundraising projects and reach out to others for funding. Campaign creators may also be data controllers and be separately legally responsible for the use of your information in connection with those projects.

When we talk about “you”, we mean the person using our website or services.

You should be aware that when you provide information to us using a third-party site or social media platform, the information you provide may be separately collected by the third-party site or platform.

The information we collect is covered by this Privacy Policy only, and the information the third-party site or platform collects is subject to the third-party site or platform’s privacy practices. Privacy choices you have made on the third-party site or platform will not apply to our use of the information we have collected directly through our Site or Services.

Please also keep in mind that our site and services may contain links to other sites not owned or controlled by us and we are not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site or services and to read the policies of other sites that may collect your personal information.

5.Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies to collect data (e.g., device IDs) to recognise you and your device(s) on, off and across different services and devices where you have engaged with our Services. We also allow some others to use cookies as described in our Cookie Policy. If you are outside the Designated Countries, we also collect (or rely on others who collect) information about your device where you have not engaged with our Services (e.g., IP address, operating system and browser information) so we can provide our Members with better services.

We log usage data when you visit or otherwise use our Services, including our sites, app and platform technology, such as when you view or click on content (e.g., stories, projects) or perform a search, share articles. We use log-ins, cookies, device information and internet protocol (“IP”) addresses to identify you and log your use.

6. How we use your Data

How we use your personal data will depend on which Services you use, how you use those Services and the choices you make in your settings. We use the data that we have about you to provide and personalize our Services, including with the help of automated systems and inferences we make, so that our Services can be more relevant and useful to you and others.

7. Stay Connected in the Network

Our Services allow you to stay in touch and up to date with colleagues, partners, clients, and other professional contacts. To do so, you can “follow” with the professionals who you choose, and who also wish to “follow” you. Subject to user settings, when you connect with other Members, you will be able to search each others’ connections in order to exchange opportunities.

We use data about you (such as your profile, profiles you have viewed or data provided) to help others find your profile, suggest connections for you and others and enable you to invite others to become a Member and follow you. You can also opt-in to allow us to use your precise location or proximity to others for certain tasks.

It is your choice whether to invite someone to our Services, follow or allow another Member to follow you. When you invite someone to follow you, your invitation will include your network and basic profile information (e.g., name, profile photo, job title, region). We will send invitation reminders to the person you invited. You can choose whether or not to share your own list of connections with your connections.

Our Services allow you to stay informed about news, events and ideas regarding topics you care about. We use the data we have about you (e.g., data you provide, data we collect from your engagement with our Services and inferences we make from the data we have about you), to personalize our Services for you, such as by recommending or ranking relevant content and conversations on our Services. We also use the data we have about you to suggest skills you could add to your profile and skills that you might need to pursue your next opportunity. We use your content, activity and other data, including your name and photo, to provide notices to your network and others. For example, subject to your settings, we may notify others that you have updated your profile, posted content, took a social action, used a feature, made new connections or were mentioned in the news.

8. Communications

We will contact you through email, mobile phone, notifications on our websites or apps, messages to your SYNE messages, and other ways through our Services, including text messages and push notifications. We will send you messages about the availability of our Services, security, or other service-related issues. We also send messages about how to use our Services, network updates, reminders, suggestions and recommendations from us and our partners. You may change your communication preferences at any time. Please be aware that you cannot opt out of receiving service messages from us, including security and legal notices.

We also enable communications between you and others through our Services, including for example invitations, and messages between connections.

9. Legal Disclosures

It is possible that we will need to disclose information about you when required by law, or other legal process or if we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (1) investigate, prevent or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities or to assist government enforcement agencies; (2) enforce our agreements with you; (3) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations; (4) protect the security or integrity of our Services (such as by sharing with companies facing similar threats); or (5) exercise or protect the rights and safety of SYNE, our Members, personnel or others. We attempt to notify Members about legal demands for their personal data when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. We may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand.

10. Data Retention

We generally retain your personal data as long as you keep your account open or as needed to provide you Services. This includes data you or others provided to us and data generated or inferred from your use of our Services. We will retain your information and keep your profile open, unless you close your account. During closure of account if there are any financial transaction related to your account – the same will retained in our systems with out any specific end date. In some cases we choose to retain certain information (e.g., insights about Services use) in a depersonalized or aggregated form.

11. Rights to Access and Control Your Personal Data

We provide many choices about the collection, use and sharing of your data, from deleting or correcting data you include in your profile and controlling the visibility of your posts and communication controls. We offer you settings to control and manage the personal data we have about you.

For personal data that we have about you, you can ask us to erase or delete all or some of your personal data (e.g., if it is no longer necessary to provide Services to you). You can edit some of your personal data through your account. You can also ask us to change, update or fix your data in certain cases, particularly if it’s inaccurate. You can ask us to stop using all or some of your personal data (e.g., if we have no legal right to keep using it) or to limit our use of it (e.g., if your personal data is inaccurate or unlawfully held). You can ask us for a copy of your personal data and can ask for a copy of personal data you provided in machine readable form.

Visitors can learn more about how to make these requests. You may also contact us using the contact information below, and we will consider your request in accordance with applicable laws.

Residents in the Designated Countries and other regions may have additional rights under their laws.

12. Children’s Privacy

People under 18 (or the legal age in your jurisdiction) are not permitted to use SYNE their own. we do not knowingly collect any personal information from children under the age of 13 and children under 13 are not permitted to register for an account or use our services.

If you believe that a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at legal@syne.com. If we become aware that a child under age 13 has provided us with personally identifiable information, we’ll delete it.

We do not knowingly process data of EU residents under the age of 16 without parental consent. If we become aware that we have collected data from an EU resident under the age of 16 without parental consent, we will take reasonable steps to delete it as quickly as possible.

13. Account Closure

If you choose to close your SYNE account, your personal data will generally stop being visible to others on our Services within 24 hours. We generally delete closed account information within 30 days of account closure, except as noted below.

We retain your personal data even after you have closed your account if reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations (including law enforcement requests), meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, maintain security, prevent fraud and abuse (e.g., if we have restricted your account for breach of our policies), enforce our User Agreement, or fulfill your request to “unsubscribe” from further messages from us. We will retain de-personalized information after your account has been closed.

Information you have shared with others (e.g., through messages, comments, updates or timeline posts) will remain visible after you close your account or delete the information from your own profile, and we do not control data that other Members have copied out of our Services. Your profile may continue to be displayed in the services of others (e.g., search engine results) until they refresh their cache.

14. Security

We implement security safeguards designed to protect your data, such as HTTPS. We regularly monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. However, we cannot warrant the security of any information that you send us. There is no guarantee that data may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards.

We use your data (including your communications) for security purposes or to prevent or investigate possible fraud or other violations of our Terms of Use and/or attempts to harm our Members,Visitors or others.

15. European Economic Area Resident Users

The laws in the European Economic Area and some other jurisdictions require a “lawful basis” for collecting and retaining personal information. For citizens or residents of the European Economic Area our lawful bases include:

Performing the contract we have with you: In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligation to deliver the services, enable creators to establish and display their projects, and enable supporters to find and make pledges to them. Legal compliance: Sometimes the law says we need to collect and use your data. For example, tax laws may require us to retain records of pledges and payments made through our services. Legitimate interests: This is a technical term in data protection law which essentially means we have a good and fair reason to use your data and we do so in ways which do not hurt your interests and rights. We sometimes require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way that might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and that does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests.For example, we use identity, device, and location information to prevent fraud and abuse and to keep the services secure. We may also send you promotional communications about our services, subject to your right to control whether we do so. We analyse how users interact with our website so we can understand better what elements of the design are working well and which are not working so well. This allows us to improve and develop the quality of the online experience we offer all our users.

In addition, users in the European Economic Area and some other jurisdictions have certain legal rights to obtain confirmation of whether we hold personal data about them, to access personal data we hold about them and to obtain its correction, update, amendment or deletion in appropriate circumstances.

They may also object to our uses or disclosures of personal data, to request a restriction on its processing, or withdraw any consent, though such actions typically will not have retroactive effect. They also will not affect our ability to continue processing data in lawful ways for example, we might still decide to contact you regarding potential fraud on your account.

Users in the European Economic Area have the right to opt-out of all of our processing of their personal data for direct marketing purposes. To exercise this right, they may contact us at contact@syne.com. In addition to these rights, users in the European Economic Area have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority. However, we encourage you to contact us first at contact@syne.com, and we will do our very best to resolve your concern in the first instance.

16. Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may review this policy from time to time and any changes will be notified to you by posting an updated version on our website and, where appropriate, by contacting you by email. We recommend you regularly check this page for changes and review this policy.

17. Contact Information

If you have questions or complaints regarding this Policy, please first contact SYNE. You can also reach us by legal@syne.com. If contacting us does not resolve your complaint, you have more options.