Sizzle Website Privacy Policy
At Sizzle, our fundamental philosophy is “Users first.” That value powers all of the decisions we make, including how we gather and respect your personal information. We’ve crafted the policy below to be as clear and straightforward as possible. Our aim is for you—our Users—to always feel informed and empowered with respect to your privacy on Sizzle.
Introduction
Last revised on March 17, 2022
Sizzle is a unique promotional platform for—Sellers—brands, services, companies, institutions, individuals and organizations to connect with Sizzle Users in fun and stimulating ways using the Sizzle Offer Engine to deliver pull advertising experiences to Users.
Sizzle’s Mission: Imagination, Innovation, Inspiration Promoting Sustainable, Inclusive Culture.
Sizzle accomplishes this by allowing Sellers to use the Sizzle technology platform consisting of augmented reality technologies, games, streaming media systems, paired with the other Offer Trigger Systems and promotional tools to promote themselves by allowing the Sellers to be more actionable, interactive, transactional and thereby, successful. Our Sellers share their promotional messages and offers, engage with Users, post and view relevant content, study data relating to their campaign results and much more. A Seller may either use Sizzle on a professional basis (“Enterprise Seller”), seeking to deliver their offer to an audience, or on a personal basis (“User”) seeking to engage with the offers on Sizzle. Many of our Sellers use Sizzle in both a professional and personal capacity. We believe that our services allow our Sellers to effectively promote themselves to their greatest potential. The cornerstone of our business is to focus on our Sellers first.
We protect your personal information using industry-standard safeguards.
We may share your information with your consent or as required by law, and we will always let you know when we make significant changes to this Privacy Policy.
Sizzle participates in the EU-U.S. and Swiss U.S. Privacy Shield.
Maintaining your trust is our top priority, so we adhere to the following principles to protect your privacy:
- We protect your personal information and will only provide it to third parties: (1) with your consent; (2) where it is necessary to carry out your instructions; (3) as reasonably necessary in order to provide our features and functionality to you; (4) when we reasonably believe it is required by law, subpoena or other legal process; or (5) as necessary to enforce our User Agreement or protect the rights, property, or safety of Sizzle, our Users and Sellers, and the public.
- We have implemented appropriate security safeguards designed to protect your information in accordance with industry standards.
This Privacy Policy applies to sizzle.network, sizzlesells.com, and the Sizzle mobile applications, and all other Sizzle websites, apps, developer platforms and other products and services (collectively the “Services”). We may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time, and if we make material changes to it, we will provide notice through our Service, or by other means so that you may review the changes before you continue to use our Services. If you object to any changes, you may close your account. Continuing to use our Services after we publish or communicate a notice about any changes to this Privacy Policy means that you are consenting to the changes.
1. What information we collect
1.1. Data Controllers
Our Privacy Policy applies to any User. We collect information when you use our Services to offer you a personalized and relevant experience, including targeting your special interests with companion offers of direct relevance and interest to you.
The personal information provided to or collected by our Services is controlled by Sizzle Inc., 23679 Calabasas Rd. Suite 785 Calabasas, CA 91302. If you have any concern about providing information to us or having such information displayed on our Services or otherwise used in any manner permitted in this Privacy Policy and the User Agreement, you should not become a User, visit our websites, apps or otherwise use our Services. If you have already registered, you can close your accounts (e.g., Sizzle Apps).
We collect your personal information in the following ways:
1.2. Registration
When you create an account with us, we collect information (including your name, email address, and password).
To create an account on Sizzle, you must provide us with at least your name and a password and agree to our Terms of Use and this Privacy Policy, which governs how we treat your information. You may provide additional information during the registration flow (for example, your email, phone number, address, postal code) to help you make offers as a Seller, and to accept offers as a User and to provide you more customized services (for example: language-specific pages, updates, content, more relevant Sizzle video highlights). You understand that, by creating an account, we and others will be able to identify you by your Sizzle profile. We may also ask for your credit card details if you purchase products or services from Offers made on Sizzle. Sizzle does not see or store your credit card details. These details are passed through Sizzle to Stripe, as our merchant processor, and only Stripe is given access to your sensitive information.
1.3. Profile Information
As a User, we collect information when you fill out a profile. A completed Sizzle profile includes a unique User name that you wish to go by, password, address, phone number and a unique PIN. You may also choose to provide your interests so that Sizzle may effectively collect content that is most suited to your personal likes.
If you create an Enterprise Seller account, you may choose to provide additional information on your Sizzle profile, such as descriptions of your company’s services, products and specialties. A User account generally is limited to the information required for you to complete an Offer, share with friends, use our augmented reality services and enter polls, contests or sweepstakes. A Seller account requires substantially more information so that you are approved to use the Sizzle Offer Engine™ to make offers to Sizzle Users and financial information so that you may be able to accept payment for your products or services inside the Sizzle platform.
1.4. Address Book and Other Services That Sync with Sizzle
We collect information when you sync non-Sizzle content – like your email address book, mobile device contacts, or calendar – with your account. You can remove your address book and any other synced information whenever you like.
You may use our address book or “contacts” importer (or other similar features) to upload your address book into our Services. We store this information (including phone numbers) and use it to help you manage and leverage your contacts in connection with our Services.
Please note that when you invite an outside user to join our Service to watch your Sizzle presentation as a Seller, or your augmented reality videos, that person may have access to your email address or, for SMS invitations, mobile number because it may be displayed in the invitation. After sending these invitations, we may also remind your invitees of your invitation on your behalf. As a Seller, your Sizzle connections will also have access to your email address. When a User views your offer and initiates an email inquiry, you will be allowing that User to have your direct email.
We make other tools available to sync information with our Services, and may also develop additional features that allow Users to use their account in conjunction with other third-party services.
Any information that you upload or sync with our Services is covered by the User Agreement and this Privacy Policy. You can remove your information at your convenience using the features we make available. You can remove your address book and any other synced information at any time.
1.5. Customer Service
We collect information when you contact us for customer support.
When you contact our customer support services, we may have access to searches, saved Sizzle IDs, and collect the information we need to categorize your question, respond to it, and, if applicable, investigate any breach of our User Agreement or this Privacy Policy. We also use this information to track potential problems and trends and customize our support responses to better serve you. We do not use this information for advertising.
1.6. Using the Sizzle Site and Applications
We collect information when you visit Sizzlesells.com, Sizzle.shop, SizzleFX.com, use our mobile applications, and interact with Sizzle videos.
For you to access certain services that we can offer through the site and apps, we may require you to provide us with information that can identify you as an individual. (“Personally Identifiable Information”) Personally Identifiable Information includes: (i) “Contact Data” (such as your first and last name, street address, city, state, zip code, phone number, and email address), and (ii) “Financial Data” (credit card number, expiration date, verification code), and (iii) “Questionnaire Data” (such as information about your personal life, habits, demographic information, purchasing information, offer interests, categories of interest, offer viewing habits). We collect information when you use (whether as a User or a Seller) our websites, or our applications. For example, we collect information when you view or click on Sizzle videos, share them in social networks, engage with their games, polls, or contests, perform a search, import a contact to your address book, accept a calendar invite, If you are logged in on Sizzle.network, or one of our cookies on your device identifies you, your usage information and the log data described in Section 1.09 of this policy, such as your IP address, will be associated by us with your account. Even if you’re not logged into a Service, we log information about devices used to access our Services, including IP address.
Please note that Contact Data and Anonymous Data are used to gather general statistics regarding our customers and visitors, in order to enhance the User experience on the Site and Apps. We may also use demographic data in a manner that does not identify you specifically or allow you to be contacted but does identify certain criteria about our users in general. For example, we may inform third parties about the number of registered users, number of unique visitors, and the pages and offers most frequently browsed.
We use your Contact Data to provide you with special information and promotions regarding our products or to contact a User regarding an order or to respond to a question or request. Any Financial Data gathered is used for the purposes of processing or completing the financial transaction for your order. Sizzle does not collect or store Financial Data on our internal servers. All Financial Data is collected by our global partner, Stripe, to ensure your data is completely secure and not accessible directly through any Sizzle system.
Questionnaire Data is used to improve the services provided to you by our Site.
1.7. Cookies
We use cookies and similar technologies to collect information.
As described in our Cookie Policy, we use cookies and similar technologies, including mobile application identifiers, to help us recognize you across different Services, learn about your interests both on and off our Services, improve your experience, increase security, measure use and effectiveness of our Services, and serve advertising. You can control cookies through your browser settings and other tools. By visiting our Services, you consent to the placement of cookies and beacons in your browser and HTML-based emails in accordance with this Privacy Policy, which incorporates by reference our Cookie Policy.
1.8. Intentionally Omitted
1.9. Log Files, IP Addresses, and Information About Your Computer and Mobile Device
We collect information from the devices and networks that you use to access our Services.
When you visit or leave our Services (whether as a User or Seller) by clicking a hyperlink or when you view a third-party site that includes our plugin or cookies (or similar technology), we automatically receive the URL of the site from which you came or the one to which you are directed. Also, advertisers receive the URL of the page that you are on when you click an ad on or through our Services. We also receive the internet protocol (“IP”) address of your computer or the proxy server that you use to access the web, your computer operating system details, your type of web browser, your mobile device (including your mobile device identifier provided by your mobile device operating system), your mobile operating system (if you are accessing Sizzle using a mobile device), and the name of your ISP or your mobile carrier. We may also receive location data passed to us from third-party services or GPS-enabled devices that you have set up, which we use to show you local information on our mobile applications and for fraud prevention and security purposes. Most mobile devices allow you to prevent real time location data being sent to us, and of course we will honor your settings.
In the case of our iPhone and Android apps, you will be provided notice of the types of data (e.g. location) that will be sent to us. If you choose to use our app after this notice, we process this data to enable registration or preview product features for you. If you choose not to become a User, we will delete this information.
1.10. Data Collected by Audio
Sizzle uses audio input in numerous ways. When you enable the Sizzle app to Listen for the very first time, you will be allowed to set your preferences for listening restrictions.
Sizzle uses audio input from our Users to trigger interactivity with Sizzle Artificial Intelligence connections to Siri and Alexa. Users may turn this functionality off and only activate it on specific occasions. If the Audio listening is left in the normal position, Sizzle will always be listening for silent offers in many of the locations our Users visit, or embedded within much of the media that our Users are watching or listening to. It is normal for Sizzle to be listening only for our silent audio signals and it is an option to leave the Sizzle listening functionality on when using artificial intelligence to engage with Sizzle offers, products and services. All Users who have any privacy concerns that are not addressed in this Section 1.10 are hereby instructed not to enable the Sizzle listening functionality as Sizzle would never wish for you to ever feel your privacy was impinged upon.
1.11. Other
We are constantly innovating to improve our Services, which means we may create new ways to collect information on the Services.
Our Services are a dynamic, innovative environment, which means we are always seeking to improve the Services we offer you. We often introduce new features, some of which may result in the collection of new information. Furthermore, new partnerships or corporate acquisitions may result in new features, and we may potentially collect new types of information. If we start collecting substantially new types of personal information and materially change how we handle your data, we will modify this Privacy Policy and notify you in accordance with Section 4.3.
2. How we use your personal information
2.1. Consent to Sizzle Processing Information About You
You agree that information you provide on your profile can be seen by others and used by us as described in this Privacy Policy and our User Agreement.
The personal information that you provide to us may reveal or allow others to identify aspects of your life that are not expressly stated on your profile (for example, your picture or your name may reveal your gender). By providing personal information to us when you create or update your account and profile, you are expressly and voluntarily accepting the terms and conditions of our User Agreement and freely accepting and agreeing to our processing of your personal information in ways set out by this Privacy Policy. Supplying to us any information deemed “sensitive” by applicable law is entirely voluntary on your part. You can withdraw or modify your consent to our collection and processing of the information you provide at any time, in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy and the User Agreement, by changing your account settings or your profile on Sizzle, or by closing your Sizzle account.
2.2. Sizzle Communications
We communicate with you using Sizzle messaging, email, and other ways available to us. We may send you messages relating to the availability of the Services, security, or other service-related issues. We also may send promotional messages to your Sizzle inbox. You can change your email settings at any time.
We communicate with you through email, notices posted on the Sizzle website or apps, messages to your Sizzle inbox, and other means available through the Services, including mobile text messages and push notifications. Examples of these communications include: (1) welcome and engagement communications – informing you about how to best use our Services, new features, updates about other Enterprise Accounts you are connected to and their actions, etc.; (2) service communications – these will cover service availability, security, and other issues about the functioning of our Services; (3) promotional communications – these include email messages, and may contain promotional information directly or on behalf of our partners. These messages will be sent to you based on your profile information and messaging preferences. You may change your email and contact preferences at any time by signing into your account and changing your Sizzle email settings. You can also opt out of promotional messages by sending a request to Sizzle Help Center.
Please be aware that you cannot opt out of receiving service messages from us.
2.3. User Communications
With certain communications you send on our Services, the recipient can see your name, email address, and some network information.
Many communications that you initiate through our Services (for example, an inquiry to an Sizzle Seller) will list your name and primary email address in the header of the message.
2.4. Service Development; Customized Experience
We use the information and content you provide to us to conduct research and development and to customize your experience and try to make it relevant and useful to you.
We use information and content that you and other Users provide to us to conduct research and development for the improvement of our Services in order to provide you and other Enterprise Customers and Users with a better, more intuitive experience and drive User growth and engagement on our Services and to help connect businesses to economic opportunity and help deliver the world’s best offers to our Users.
We also customize your experience and the experiences of others on our Services. For example, when you sign in to your account, we may display the names of new Users who have recently started following you, or recent updates from your connections and companies you follow.
2.5. Sharing Information with Affiliates
We share your information across our different Services, among companies in the Sizzle family.
We may share your personal information with our affiliates (meaning entities controlled by, controlling or under common control with Sizzle) outside of the Sizzle entity that is your data controller as reasonably necessary to provide the Services. You are consenting to this sharing.
2.6. Sharing Information with Third Parties
Any information you put on your profile and any content you post on Sizzle may be seen by others.
We don’t provide any of your non-public information (like your email address) to third parties without your consent, unless required by law, or as described in Sections 2.6 and 2.13 of this Policy.
We do not rent or sell personal information that you have not posted on our Services, except as described in this Privacy Policy. We will not disclose personal information that is not published to your profile or generated through engagement with our other services, except to carry out your instructions (for example, to process payment information) or unless we have your separate consent, unless we have a good faith belief that disclosure is permitted by law or is reasonably necessary to: (1) comply with a legal requirement or process, including, but not limited to, civil and criminal subpoenas, court orders or other compulsory disclosures; (2) enforce this Privacy Policy or our User Agreement; (3) respond to claims of a violation of the rights of third parties; (4) respond to User service inquiries; or (5) protect the rights, property, or safety of Sizzle, our Services, our Users, Visitors, or the public. See Section 2.13 for additional details about our compliance with legal requests for information.
We support middleware providers that offer archiving solutions to firms subject to legal and regulatory archiving requirements, which, with your permission, facilitate the archiving of your communications and other activity by a third party for compliance purposes.
Also, if you have opted to bind any of your Service accounts to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other similar account, you can easily share content from our Services to these third party services, in accordance with your account settings (which you may change at any time) and respective policies of these third parties. Further, we allow third parties to look-up profile information (subject to your privacy settings) using your Sizzle ID, Company name, email address or first and last name information through its profile API (see Section 2.7. below).
Third parties (for example, your email provider) may give you the option to upload certain information in your contacts stored with us onto their own service. If you choose to share your contacts in this way, you will be granting your third party provider the right to store, access, disclose and use your these contacts in the ways described in such third party’s terms and privacy policy.
2.7. Third Parties Using Sizzle Platform Services
We work with developers to build Platform Applications using our developer tools. Whether you use Platform Applications is up to you.
If you have given a Platform Application access to your Sizzle account, you can revoke that permission anytime. Also, you can opt out of providing information to developers through your connections.
We collaborate with and allow third parties to use our developer platform to offer services and functionality in conjunction with our Services. These third-party developers have either negotiated an agreement to use our platform technology or have agreed to our self-service API and Plugin terms in order to build applications (“Platform Applications”). Both the negotiated agreements and our API and Plugin terms contain restrictions on how third parties may access, store, and use the personal information you provide to us.
If you choose to use a Platform Application, you will be asked to confirm acceptance of the privacy policy and user agreement of the third-party developer. To revoke permission granted to a Platform Application, please visit your settings. Note, however, that even if you revoke the permission granted to a Platform Application, your connections may still be using the Platform Application, so the Platform Application may still have access to certain information about you, just as your connections do. You may opt out of providing information to third-party developers through your connections by accessing the “Turn on/off data sharing with third-party applications” control in the tab under settings.
2.8. Polls and Surveys
We conduct our own surveys and polls and also help third parties do this type of research. Your participation in surveys or polls is up to you. You may also opt out of getting invitations to participate in surveys.
Polls and Surveys may be conducted by us, Users, or third parties. Some third parties may target advertisements to you on the results page based on your answers in the poll. We or third parties may follow up with you via Sizzle Messages regarding your participation unless you have opted out of receiving Sizzle Messages. We may use third parties to deliver incentives to you to participate in surveys or polls. If the delivery of incentives requires your contact information, you may be asked to provide personal information to the third party fulfilling the incentive offer, which will be used only for the purpose of delivering incentives and verifying your contact information. It is up to you whether you provide this information, or whether you desire to take advantage of an incentive. Your consent to use any personal information for the purposes set forth in the poll or survey will be explicitly requested by the party conducting it. You may opt out of participating in surveys by changing your settings to stop receiving these inquiries and requests.
2.9. Search
Our Services help you search for other offers, brands, organizations, professional individuals, institutions and corporations.
You can search for brands, offers, organizations, professional individuals, institutions and corporations from Sizzle search functionalities using key word and key phrases. For example, you can find Offers within a particular category, or geographic location, or Offers that you may know from your industry or profession. You can also find information about companies. We use personal information from our Services, including User profiles, and Company Pages, to inform and refine our search service.
2.10. Public Posts
You are responsible for any information you post on our Services, and this content will be accessible to others.
2.11. Marketing and Sales Solutions
We offer a premium service to companies and professionals, which can be used to search for, organize, and communicate with potential Users as well as business candidates or offer business opportunities. In some cases we allow the export of public profile information. You can control how your information is exported by changing which parts of your public profile are accessible to search engines.
Sizzle provides a global Offer Management System. A professional or company or other such subscriber may also manage and store information it has independently obtained about you outside of our Services, such as your services or products, in connection with our platform. Any personal information obtained independently of our Services will not be added by us to your profile and is not under our control but is subject to the policies of our, marketing or sales solution subscriber. We store such information on behalf of such subscriber who can remove it at any time. We do not further process such information.
2.12. Pages for Companies, Schools, Influencers, and Other Entities
Companies and other entities can create pages on our Services. If you follow one of these pages, non-identifiable information about you will be provided to the page’s administrators.
Certain pages on the Services are public (e.g., company services and products offered), and any communications or information shared through them will be accessible by the entity that created them. If you follow a person or organization, you will be listed among its followers, which can be viewed by others including the page owner. We use aggregate information about followers and viewers to provide data about such Sizzle ID’s’ performance (for example, visits and updates).
2.13. Compliance with Legal Process and Other Disclosures
We may disclose your personal information if compelled by law, subpoena, or other legal process, or if necessary to enforce our User Agreement.
It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information, profile information, or information about your activities as a User or Visitor when required by law, subpoena, or other legal process, whether in the United States, Hong Kong, or other jurisdictions, 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 the User Agreement, investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations, or protect the security or integrity of our Service; or (3) exercise or protect the rights, property, or safety of Sizzle, our Users, personnel, or others. We attempt to notify Users about legal demands for their personal information when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. In light of our principles, we may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but do not commit to challenge every demand. To find out more about how we engage with government requests for data see our Law Enforcement Data Request Guidelines.
2.14. Disclosures to Others as the Result of a Change in Control or Sale of Sizzle
If there is a change in control or sale of all or part of Sizzle, we may share your information with a third party, who will have the right to use that information in line with this Privacy Policy.
We may also disclose your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of the assets of Sizzle, a subsidiary, or division, or as the result of a change in control of the company or one of its affiliates, or in preparation for any of these events. Any third party to which we transfers or sells our assets will have the right to continue to use the personal and other information that you provide to us in the manner set out in this Privacy Policy.
2.15. Service Providers
We may employ third parties to help us with the Services
We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Services (e.g. maintenance, analysis, audit, marketing and development). These third parties have limited access to your information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated to Sizzle not to disclose or use it for other purposes.
2.16 Data Processing Outside Your Country
We may process your information outside the country where you live.
We may transfer your information and process it outside your country of residence, wherever Sizzle, its affiliates and service providers operate.
3. Your Choices & Obligations
3.1. Rights to Access, Correct, or Delete Your Information, and Closing Your Account
You can change your Sizzle information at any time by editing your profile, deleting content that you have posted, or by closing your account. You can also ask us for additional information we may have about your account.
You have a right to (1) access, modify, correct, or delete your personal information controlled by Sizzle regarding your profile, (2) change or remove your content, and (3) close your account. You can request your personal information that is not viewable on your profile or readily accessible to you (for example, your IP access logs) through Sizzle‘s Help Center. If you close your account(s), your information will generally be removed from the Service within 24 hours. We generally delete closed account information and will de-personalize any logs or other backup information through the deletion process within 30 days of account closure, except as noted below.
3.2. Data Retention
We keep your information for as long as your account is active or as needed. For example, we may keep certain information even after you close your account if it is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, or enforce this agreement.
We retain the personal information you provide while your account is in existence or as needed to provide you services. We may retain your personal information even after you have closed your account if retention is reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations, meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes between Users, prevent fraud and abuse, or enforce this Privacy Policy and our User Agreement. We may retain personal information, for a limited period of time, if requested by law enforcement. Our Customer Service may retain information for as long as is necessary to provide support-related reporting and trend analysis only, but we generally delete or de-personalize closed account data consistent with Section 3.1., except in the case of our plugin impression data (i.e., the information that you visited on sites carrying our social plugin, but which you did not click on), which we de-personalize within 7 days (although we do maintain 30 days worth of webserver logs for security, debugging, and site stability purposes only) by creating aggregate data sets that cannot be traced back to individuals.
4. Important Information
4.1. Minimum Age
You have to meet Sizzle’s minimum age requirements to create an account.
Visit our Safety Center for tips on using Sizzle smartly and securely.
As described in Section 2.1 of the User Agreement, persons must be of Minimum Age to use Sizzle.
4.2. Changes to this Privacy Policy
We will notify you when we change this Privacy Policy.
4.3. California’s Shine the Light Law
We don’t share any of your personal information with third parties for direct marketing.
California Civil Code Section 1798.83, known as the “Shine The Light” law, permits our customers who are California residents to request and obtain from us a list of what personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes in the preceding calendar year and the names and addresses of those third parties. Requests may be made only once a year and are free of charge. Under Section 1798.83, we currently do not share any personal information with third parties for their direct marketing purposes.
4.4. Security
We take privacy and security seriously and have enabled HTTPS access to our site (turn on HTTPS), in addition to existing SSL access over mobile devices. Also, please know that the Internet is not a secure environment, so be careful and select strong passwords.
We have implemented security safeguards designed to protect the personal information that you provide in accordance with industry standards. Access to your data on our Services is password-protected, and data such as credit card information is protected by SSL encryption when it is exchanged between your web browser and the Services. We also offer secure https access to the Sizzle.network website. To protect any data you store on our servers, we also regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks, and we use a tier-one secured-access data center. However, since the Internet is not a 100% secure environment, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information that you transmit to us. There is no guarantee that information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. It is your responsibility to protect the security of your login information. Please note that emails, instant messaging, and similar means of communication with other Users are not encrypted, and we strongly advise you not to communicate any confidential information through these means. Please help keep your account safe by using a strong password.
