Policies

1. Overview

This Privacy Policy explains how What's Poppin GR ("What's Poppin GR," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, shares, and protects information about you. It applies when you use our website, emails, and related services (the "Platform"). It should be read together with our Terms of Service.

It doesn't cover outside websites or services you reach from the Platform. That includes ticketing sites, business websites, and social media. Their own privacy policies apply.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

• Account information: your name, email address, phone number, and password. We store your password only in encrypted (hashed) form.
• Profile information: your profile photo, banner image, and anything else you add to your profile.
• Events: event details, images, locations, dates, links, capacity settings, team members, and invites you send. Invites include the names or email addresses of the people you invite.
• Business listings: business names, categories, locations or service areas, hours, contact details, photos, logos, links, amenities, team members, sponsorships, and ownership requests.
• Activity: RSVPs (going or maybe), waitlist spots, check-ins, event feedback, favorites, and connections with other members.
• Payments: when you subscribe to a paid plan, our payment processor Stripe collects your payment details. We receive and store your Stripe customer ID, plan, billing status, and history, plus your card brand and last four digits. We never receive or store your full card number.
• Newsletter: your email address. To keep a record of your consent, we also store when you subscribed and confirmed, plus your IP address and browser type at sign-up.
• Messages and reports: what you send us through our contact form or email, and any reports you submit about events, businesses, or profiles.

Information collected automatically

• Page views on the Platform: when you view an event, business, or other page, we record the page, a session identifier, when the view started, and how long the page was open. See section 6.
• Device and log information: our servers automatically log technical information. This includes your IP address, browser type, device type and operating system, referring page, pages requested, and the date and time of each request.
• Cookies and similar technologies: see section 7.
• Analytics providers: Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity collect information about how you use the site. See section 6.
• Email engagement: whether our emails were delivered, opened, or clicked. See section 8.
• Bot protection: on some forms, Cloudflare Turnstile collects signals from your browser and device to check that you're a person, not a bot.

Your camera

If you use the quick-add scanner to connect with someone, your browser asks permission to use your camera. The code is read in your browser. We don't record or store camera images.

Information from others

• Other members may give us information about you. For example, they may invite you to an event, add you to a team, connect with you, list a business you're associated with, or report your content.
• Stripe tells us whether payments succeed, along with subscription and billing details.
• Service providers send us information such as email delivery status, analytics reports, and bot-check results.

3. How we use your information

• To run the Platform: create and manage your account; publish your events, listings, and profile; process RSVPs, waitlists, check-ins, invites, connections, teams, and sponsorships.
• To bill you: manage subscriptions, trials, upgrades, downgrades, and receipts.
• To communicate with you: send service emails and the notifications you've chosen, such as approvals, reminders, waitlist openings, and event changes. If you've subscribed, this also includes the newsletter.
• To show you relevant content: suggest events, businesses, and people you might be interested in, based on your activity on the Platform.
• To give organizers and business owners analytics: page view and visitor totals, time on page, busiest days and hours, favorites, and sponsorship reach.
• To keep the Platform safe: review submissions, respond to reports, enforce our Terms, prevent spam, fraud, and abuse, and secure accounts.
• To improve the Platform: understand how people use our pages, find bugs and confusing designs, and decide what to build next.
• To meet legal obligations: keep tax and billing records, respond to lawful requests, and protect our rights and the rights of others.

We don't use your information to show you third-party ads.

4. What others can see

• Everyone, including search engines: published public events and business listings, including the business contact details you choose to add, and your public profile (your name, photo, and banner).
• Signed-in members: details of Members Only events. Depending on an event's settings, members may also see who is attending. Members you share events or connections with may see that you have them in common.
• Organizers and their teams: when you RSVP, join a waitlist, check in, or leave feedback for an event, the event's organizers can see that activity along with your name and profile.
• Business and event teams: team members can see each other's names and roles on that business or event.
• Not shown publicly: your account email address, your account phone number, your payment details, and the reports you submit.
• Page view analytics are shown to organizers and business owners only as totals and trends. They don't see which individual people viewed their page.

You can remove connections and block other members. See our profile policy and the People help guide.

5. How we share information

We don't sell your personal information. We don't share it for cross-context behavioral advertising (ads targeted based on your activity across other websites).

We share information only in these situations:

• With other users, as described in section 4 and as you direct. For example, when you RSVP, sponsor an event, or join a team.
• With service providers who work on our behalf. They may use your information only to provide their services to us. They include:
  • our hosting and infrastructure providers;
  • our email delivery provider;
  • Stripe (payments);
  • Cloudflare (Turnstile bot protection);
  • Google (Google Analytics); and
  • Microsoft (Clarity).
• For legal reasons: when we believe in good faith that it's needed to follow the law, a subpoena, or another legal process. We also share information to protect the safety, rights, or property of our users, the public, or What's Poppin GR, or to detect and prevent fraud or abuse.
• In a business transfer: if we're involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets. Your information may be transferred as part of that deal, and it will remain subject to this policy's protections.
• With your consent or at your direction.

We may also share information that has been aggregated or de-identified so it can't reasonably identify you. One example is total visitor counts.

6. Analytics

Our own page view analytics

We measure page views on events, business listings, and other pages ourselves. For each view, we record the page, a session identifier, the time the view started, and how long the page stayed open. We use this to show organizers and business owners totals and trends. They see views, unique visitors, average time on page, and busiest days and hours. We also use it to understand what's popular on the Platform. Owners never see who viewed their page.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics, provided by Google LLC, to understand how visitors find and use the Platform. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect information such as:

• the pages you visit and how long you stay;
• how you got here;
• your browser and device type; and
• your approximate location (city level).

It doesn't log or store your full IP address. Google processes this information under its own privacy policy. Read how Google uses information from sites that use its services. You can opt out by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Microsoft Clarity

We use Microsoft Clarity to understand how people interact with the Platform, so we can fix problems and make pages easier to use. Clarity captures:

• how you scroll, click, tap, and move your mouse;
• the pages you visit; and
• basic information about your device and browser.

Clarity uses this to produce heatmaps and session replays (a reconstruction of how a visit unfolded). It is set up to mask what you type into form fields. Microsoft collects this data using first- and third-party cookies, and processes it as described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement. Microsoft may use some of it to improve its own products and services. To learn more, see Clarity's cookie information.

7. Cookies

Cookies are small text files stored by your browser. We use them, along with similar technologies like local storage, for these purposes:

Most browsers let you block or delete cookies. If you block essential cookies, you may not be able to sign in, submit forms, or perform other actions on the website. Blocking analytics cookies won't affect how the Platform works.

8. Email tracking

Our emails may contain a small image (a "tracking pixel") and tracked links. These let us know whether an email was delivered and opened, and which links were clicked. For newsletter clicks, we also record the IP address and referring page. We use this to confirm important emails arrived, troubleshoot delivery, and see which newsletter content people find useful. You can prevent open tracking by turning off automatic image loading in your email app.

9. Your choices

• Account and profile: you can update your name, phone number, profile photo, and banner anytime from your profile and Account Settings.
• Notification emails: turn email notifications on or off by type in your notification preferences, or use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email. We'll still send emails you need, like password resets and billing receipts.
• Newsletter: use the unsubscribe link in any newsletter.
• Connections: remove connections or block members whenever you like.
• Analytics: block or delete cookies in your browser settings, or use the Google Analytics opt-out add-on. Content blockers and browser privacy settings can also stop Google Analytics and Clarity from loading.
• Camera: you can deny or withdraw camera permission in your browser at any time.
• Delete your account: from Account Settings. See section 10 for what happens next.

10. How long we keep information

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy. That means as long as your account is active, plus any further time needed to:

• follow the law, such as keeping billing and tax records;
• resolve disputes and enforce our agreements; and
• keep the Platform safe, for example records of reports and enforcement actions.

When you delete your account, we delete or de-identify your account information, profile, and activity, with some exceptions:

• billing records we're required to keep;
• records we need for safety, fraud prevention, or legal reasons;
• aggregated analytics that don't identify you; and
• copies in backups, which are overwritten on a regular schedule.

Events and businesses that you've transferred to someone else stay with their new owner.

Newsletter consent records are kept while you're subscribed and for a reasonable period afterward, so we can show we had your consent and respect your unsubscribe. Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity keep data under their own retention settings.

11. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards to protect your information. These include encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed passwords, access controls, and signed links for sensitive actions like email verification and unsubscribing. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we can't guarantee absolute security. Please use a strong, unique password. If you suspect unauthorized access to your account, contact us right away. If a data breach affects your personal information, we'll notify you as required by law.

12. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Know and access: ask what personal information we have about you and get a copy, in a portable format where required.
• Correct: ask us to fix inaccurate information.
• Delete: ask us to delete your personal information, subject to the exceptions in section 10.
• Opt out: of the sale of personal information, targeted advertising, or profiling with legal or similarly significant effects. We don't do any of these.
• Appeal: ask us to reconsider if we decline your request.

We offer these rights to all users, wherever you live. Much of this you can do yourself in your profile and Account Settings. For anything else, email info@whatspoppingr.com with the subject line "Privacy Request." We'll need to verify your identity, usually by confirming control of the email address on your account. We'll respond within 45 days, or within the timeframe your state's law requires. An authorized agent can make a request for you if they provide proof that you've authorized them. We won't treat you differently for exercising your privacy rights.

To appeal a decision on your request, reply to our response with the subject line "Privacy Appeal." If you're still not satisfied with how we handled your appeal, you may contact your state attorney general.

Categories of personal information

In the past 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information, as described in sections 2 and 3. We disclosed them only for the business purposes described in section 5.

We don't collect sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you.

13. Age requirement

You must be 18 or older to create an account. We don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we'll delete it and close the account. If you believe someone under 18 has given us information, contact us at info@whatspoppingr.com or report the profile.

14. Visitors outside the U.S.

The Platform is built for the West Michigan community and operated in the United States. If you use it from another country, your information will be transferred to, stored in, and processed in the United States. Privacy laws there may differ from those where you live.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the Platform changes. If we make material changes, we'll let you know before they take effect, by email or with a notice on the Platform. The "Effective" date at the top always shows the latest version.

16. Contact us

Questions or requests about your privacy? Email info@whatspoppingr.com or use our contact page.