Effective date: [27 August 2023]

At EthiopianCircle, we value the privacy and security of our users. This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, protect, and disclose personal information gathered through our social media platform, EthiopianCircle.com, in accordance with applicable data protection laws in Ethiopia. By accessing and using EthiopianCircle.com, you consent to the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Personal Information: When you register an account on EthiopianCircle.com, we may collect certain personal information, including but not limited to your name, email address, date of birth, and location. We may also ask for additional information to enhance your user experience or provide specific services.

1.2 Usage Data: We automatically collect certain information when you interact with EthiopianCircle.com. This includes your IP address, device information, browser type, operating system, and browsing activities. We may also gather data on your interactions with other users, content you post or share, and your engagement with our platform's features.

2. Use of Information

2.1 Providing and Improving Services: We utilize personal information to provide, personalize, and improve our services. This includes facilitating user registration, authenticating accounts, delivering personalized content, and optimizing our platform's functionality.

2.2 Communication: We may use your contact information to communicate with you about updates, announcements, promotional offers, and other relevant information related to EthiopianCircle.com.

2.3 Analytical Purposes: We may analyze aggregated and anonymized data to gain insights into user preferences, trends, and to enhance our platform's performance, features, and content.

3. Data Sharing and Disclosure

3.1 Third-Party Service Providers: We may share personal information with trusted third-party service providers who assist us in delivering our services, such as hosting providers, analytics providers, and customer support services. These providers are obligated to handle your information securely and in compliance with applicable laws.

3.2 Legal Compliance: We may disclose personal information if required by law, governmental regulations, or in response to valid legal processes, such as court orders or subpoenas.

3.3 User Consent: We may share personal information with your consent or at your direction, such as when you choose to interact with third-party applications or services through EthiopianCircle.com.

4. Data Security

We implement reasonable security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. However, no method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

5. Your Rights

You have the right to access, correct, update, or delete your personal information. You can exercise these rights by accessing and editing your account settings on EthiopianCircle.com or by contacting us using the information provided below.

6. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to modify or update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the revised Privacy Policy on EthiopianCircle.com or by other means of communication. Your continued use of EthiopianCircle.com after the effective date of the revised Privacy Policy constitutes your acceptance of the changes.

7. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at \[insert contact information\].

Please note that this Privacy Policy applies solely to EthiopianCircle.com and does not govern the practices of third-party websites or services that may be linked from our platform. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of those third parties before providing any personal information.

 

Consent

By using our website, you hereby consent to our Privacy Policy and agree to its terms.

Information we collect

The personal information that you are asked to provide, and the reasons why you are asked to provide it, will be made clear to you at the point we ask you to provide your personal information.

If you contact us directly, we may receive additional information about you such as your name, email address, phone number, the contents of the message and/or attachments you may send us, and any other information you may choose to provide.

When you register for an Account, we may ask for your contact information, including items such as name, company name, address, email address, and telephone number.

How we use your information

We use the information we collect in various ways, including to:

·         Provide, operate, and maintain our website

·         Improve, personalize, and expand our website

·         Understand and analyze how you use our website

·         Develop new products, services, features, and functionality

·         Communicate with you, either directly or through one of our partners, including for customer service, to provide you with updates and other information relating to the website, and for marketing and promotional purposes

·         Send you emails

·         Find and prevent fraud

Log Files

EthiopianCircle follows a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this and a part of hosting services' analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users' movement on the website, and gathering demographic information.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Like any other website, EthiopianCircle uses 'cookies'. These cookies are used to store information including visitors' preferences, and the pages on the website that the visitor accessed or visited. The information is used to optimize the users' experience by customizing our web page content based on visitors' browser type and/or other information.

Google DoubleClick DART Cookie

Google is one of a third-party vendor on our site. It also uses cookies, known as DART cookies, to serve ads to our site visitors based upon their visit to www.website.com and other sites on the internet. However, visitors may choose to decline the use of DART cookies by visiting the Google ad and content network Privacy Policy at the following URL – https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads

Our Advertising Partners

Some of advertisers on our site may use cookies and web beacons. Our advertising partners are listed below. Each of our advertising partners has their own Privacy Policy for their policies on user data. For easier access, we hyperlinked to their Privacy Policies below.

·         Google

https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads

Advertising Partners Privacy Policies

You may consult this list to find the Privacy Policy for each of the advertising partners of EthiopianCircle.

Third-party ad servers or ad networks uses technologies like cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons that are used in their respective advertisements and links that appear on EthiopianCircle, which are sent directly to users' browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. These technologies are used to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and/or to personalize the advertising content that you see on websites that you visit.

Note that EthiopianCircle has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

Third Party Privacy Policies

EthiopianCircle's Privacy Policy does not apply to other advertisers or websites. Thus, we are advising you to consult the respective Privacy Policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information. It may include their practices and instructions about how to opt-out of certain options.

You can choose to disable cookies through your individual browser options. To know more detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers, it can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

CCPA Privacy Rights (Do Not Sell My Personal Information)

Under the CCPA, among other rights, California consumers have the right to:

Request that a business that collects a consumer's personal data disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal data that a business has collected about consumers.

Request that a business delete any personal data about the consumer that a business has collected.

Request that a business that sells a consumer's personal data, not sell the consumer's personal data.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us.

GDPR Data Protection Rights

We would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:

The right to access – You have the right to request copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.

The right to rectification – You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request that we complete the information you believe is incomplete.

The right to erasure – You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, under certain conditions.

The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.

The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.

The right to data portability – You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us.

Children's Information

Another part of our priority is adding protection for children while using the internet. We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in, and/or monitor and guide their online activity.

EthiopianCircle does not knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.