Effective Date: 4th November 2019
This Privacy Statement explains how Groupon
International Limited and our New Zealand Affiliate collects, control, process,
and use information about you (which we call “personal data”).
When we say “Groupon International”, “us”,
“our”, or “we”, we mean Groupon International Limited. Groupon
International is the operator of the Groupon marketplace. It provides
platforms where our Affiliates and other unaffiliated third-party sellers
(collectively “Sellers”) can list offers for vouchers, deals, goods, getaways,
and other offerings.
Our New Zealand Affiliate (“NZ Affiliate”) is Groupon New Zealand Limited (NZ Company number
3275270) with a registered office in Auckland. Our NZ Affiliate
collects, processes, and uses your personal data as necessary to facilitate the
sale of vouchers, deals, goods, and getaways. Our NZ Affiliate also
complies with this Privacy Statement.
When we talk about the “Site”, we mean our platforms, which include our websites, mobile applications, communications we send or services we provide, social networking sites, or any other websites where we offer a link to or reference this Privacy Statement.
Change
We routinely update this Privacy Statement to
clarify our practices, and the practices of our NZ Affiliate, and to reflect
new or different privacy practices, such as when we add new services,
functionality, or features to the Site. If we make any changes we will notify
you, either by email (sent to the email address specified in your account), by
means of notice on the Site or by using other methods. You can determine when
this version of the Privacy Statement was adopted by referring to the
“Effective Date” above.
You understand that your continued use of the Site after we send a notice about our changes to the Privacy Statement means that the collection, control, processing, and use of your personal data is subject to the updated Privacy Statement. If you object to any changes, you may modify your account settings or close your account as described below.
1. Personal Data We Collect
We and our NZ Affiliate will collect the
following personal data when you interact with the Site:
·
Authentication and
identification information (e.g. your name, email address, and password). This
information is necessary to set up and log you into your account, but you do
have the option to make purchases without creating a password. If you don’t
provide this, the full range of Groupon account services may not be able to be
provided to you;
·
Basic personal details (e.g.
your name, date of birth, and nationality);
·
Contact details (e.g. your
postal address, telephone number, and email address). We and our NZ Affiliate may
need some of this information to deliver products to you, such as your postal
address to deliver physical products and your email address to send you
vouchers, and won’t be able to carry out these services if you don’t provide
it;
·
Payment details (e.g. your
credit card details or payment tokens from third party payment providers like
PayPal). These are used to process your order, payment won’t be able to be
taken from you or refunds won’t be able to be given to you if you don’t provide
it; and
·
Information about your contacts
with Groupon (e.g. call recordings, instant messages on our site, and user
generated content).
Some information we or our NZ Affiliate collect
is necessary for us to provide our services or meet our legal obligations. This
will be made clear when information is collected from you.
We and our NZ Affiliate will also automatically
collect personal data when you interact with the Site through your computer,
mobile device, or other device. This personal data includes the following:
·
Analytics data (e.g.
information about app downloads, app and web page histories), which may include
data collected from cookies and other types of device identifiers;
·
Profile inputs (e.g. page and
deal views on the site, purchase details, click information and information
about the website you clicked to our Site from). This may include data about
your location. With respect to geolocation information collected from your
mobile device, we will only collect this where you have provided consent; and
·
Device details (e.g. MAC
address, IP address, bluetooth data and advertising identifiers).
We and our NZ Affiliate also receive personal
data and other online and offline information from third parties with whom we
conduct business, such as merchants, co-marketers, distributors, resellers, and
other companies or organizations with whom we enter into agreements to support
our business and operations, including advertising partners and third
party data providers that provide us with supplemental or additional
information about our customers (collectively “Business Partners”).
The personal data received from Business
Partners includes basic personal details, contact details, device details,
profile inputs, as well as:
·
Demographic information, (e.g.
details about age brackets and educational background);
·
Location data (e.g. information
about postal or ZIP code); and
·
Purchase information from third
party sites (e.g. information about purchases on other sites).
We and our NZ Affiliates will only receive data
from our Business Partners where they are legally permitted to share such data,
and that data will only be used for the purposes described below. The data provided
is used to better understand your preferences, deals that are relevant to you,
and how our merchants are performing. By combining the data collected directly
from you with that received from third parties, you can be provided with a
better, and more personalized, Groupon experience.
We and our NZ Affiliates will collect the
personal data described above at various stages in your relationship with us and
our NZ Affiliates when you:
·
Register, subscribe, authorise
the transfer of, or create an account with us. If you choose not to create a
password for your account, we create an account and link your purchase details
to your email address, which you can set a password for during each purchase;
·
Open or respond to emails or
messages from us;
·
Provide information to enrol or
participate in programs provided on behalf of, or together with Sellers and
Business Partners, with your consent or as necessary to provide services you
have requested;
·
Visit any page online that
displays our ads or content;
·
Purchase products or services
on or through the Site from Sellers;
·
Connect, log-in, or link to the
Site using social networking tools; and
·
Post comments to the online
communities sections of the Site.
We also create profiles about you based on the
personal data you provide to us or that is collected about you, as described
above and including personal data that we receive from Business Partners. We do
this to market offers to you we think you would be interested in buying. The
contents of that profile include:
·
Account details. For example, we create a permanent URL to your account page which
may include your name. We also generate tokens to remember your subscription
and purchase histories, and any loyalty numbers you may have obtained;
·
Marketing segment
information. For example, if you purchase
products or services related to wellness and beauty, we may infer that you are
interested in these types of products, or if you purchase Groupon Getaways
deals we may infer that you are a frequent traveller;
·
Audience information. We create audiences based on parameters such as gender, age, and
location (e.g. males aged 25-35 in your city), and if your personal data matches
those audiences, you’ll be assigned to it. This is to help you receive relevant
offers; and
· Activity information. Based on your interactions with communications, we’ll generate personal data about how many communications you like to receive, so that we don’t send you more than are useful to you.
2. Your Choices
You can manage the types of personal data you
provide to us and our NZ Affiliate and you can limit how we and our NZ
Affiliate communicate with you. At the same time, we think that the more you
tell us and our NZ Affiliate about yourself and what you like, the more
relevant and valuable your experience with our Site and services will be.
You can manage your email, push notification,
location information and subscription notification preferences by logging into
your account through the Site or by adjusting the settings in our mobile
application:
·
Push notifications and
location information. Your device and the
Groupon mobile app provide you with options to control push notifications and
how and when we collect your geolocation. You can disallow our use of certain
location data through your device or browser settings, for example, by
disabling “Location” services for the Groupon application in Apple’s iOS and
Android privacy settings, or by disabling “Location” services for your device;
·
Subscriptions. You can also manage your subscriptions by following subscription
management instructions contained in any commercial emails that we send you.
You may choose to subscribe to some types of messages, and may choose not to
subscribe to, or to unsubscribe from, others. You may update your subscription
preferences at any time. Even if you decide not to subscribe to, or to
unsubscribe, from promotional email messages, we may still need to contact you
with important transactional information related to your account and your
purchases from Sellers. For example, even if you have unsubscribed from our
promotional email messages or push notifications, we will still send you
confirmations when you make purchases on the Site;
·
Cookies. You can manage how your browser handles cookies. You may also manage
how your mobile device and mobile browser share information on and about your
devices with us, as well as how your mobile browser handles cookies.
·
Objecting to uses of
data. In certain circumstances, you have the right to object to the
use of your personal data. In particular, you can object to the use of personal
data where we, or our NZ Affiliate, use such data to meet our, or our NZ
Affiliate’s, own interests in running our business, or the business of our NZ
Affiliate, (as described under ‘How We Use Information’ below and including use
of your data for marketing purposes and management of our business needs). If
you object to the use of your data by us or our NZ Affiliate, we or our NZ
Affiliate will assess the objection and cease processing that data upon
confirmation of a valid request. For more information, see ‘Your Rights’ below;
· Social networking. You may also manage sharing certain personal data with us when you connect with us through social networking platforms or applications. Please refer to Section 8 below and also the privacy policy and settings of the social networking website or application to determine how you may adjust our permissions and manage the interactivity between us and your social networking account or your mobile device.
3. Your Rights
You can access, update, rectify, and delete
your personal data which makes up some of your profile by logging into your
account or contacting us here. Keeping your personal data current helps ensure
that we can respect your preferences and offer you the goods and services that
are most relevant to you.
In accordance with applicable law, you may:
(i)
request access to any personal
data we hold about you;
(ii)
request that it be updated,
rectified, deleted or blocked;
(iii)
request that we delete personal
data we hold about you;
(iv)
request that we restrict our
processing of your personal data;
(v)
request that we provide you or
a third party with a copy of certain personal data about you (that is referred
to as the right of “data portability”);
(vi)
object to any of our uses of
your personal data described in this policy, including our marketing
activities; and
(vii)
revoke your consent to the
processing of your personal data, to the extent consent was required and
provided by you.
If you request a correction to your personal information but we do not make that correction, you have the right to request that we take attach to your personal information a statement that a correction was sought but not made;
4. How We Use Information
We control and process the personal data you
provide to us, which we and our NZ Affiliate collect from other sources, and
which we and our NZ Affiliate generate to:
·
Create your account when you
sign up and log you in, which is necessary for us to provide our services to
you in accordance with the Terms of Use.
If you make purchases without creating a password, we link these purchases to
your email address and create a secure account in our systems. If you create a
password at a later date, you will be able to see the past purchases made with
a particular email address;
·
Operate, maintain, and improve
the Site by analyzing how you and our other customers use and interact with it.
This is to meet our legitimate business interests in providing the Site and
ensuring that it provides the best experience for our customers;
·
Validate, facilitate, and
prevent fraudulent purchases. This may include processing orders for vouchers
and other goods and services, payment verification, and verifying that vouchers
redeemed by customers are valid. This is necessary to meet our contractual
commitments to you set out in the Terms of Use;
·
Carry-out marketing, which may
involve:
o Establishing and analyzing individual and group profiles and
customer behavior, in order to determine your or others interest in certain
types of offers, products, and services. We do this by analyzing your
interactions with the Site and your other personal data (including personal
data received from Business Partners) to determine what your interests are, and
what sorts of products and services people with similar interests also buy,
which helps us understand what products and services you may be interested in
viewing. This is to meet our legitimate interests in understanding the types of
products and services our customers are interested in, and to provide the most
relevant products to you and our other customers;
o Showing relevant offers and advertising. We will use the profiles
described above to create advertising for our products that will be displayed
on relevant third-party sites. We do this to meet our legitimate interests in
showing you products which may be relevant to you;
o Sending you relevant direct marketing messages and other
communications via email or push notifications on mobile devices, including,
with your consent, using your location data to notify you of tailored
location-based deals. We will send these messages on the basis that you have
consented to receiving them; and
o Analyzing advertising effectiveness, which may involve analyzing the
advertising campaigns our customers choose to interact with most often. This is
to meet our legitimate interests in understanding which types of advertising
campaigns are more or less effective than others.
·
Answer your questions and
respond to your requests, for example in the context of customer service. This
is to meet our contractual commitments to you in the Terms of Use where these questions or
requests are part of the purchase process or to comply with legal obligations
(such as allowing you to exercise your rights as described above), and in other
cases to meet our legitimate interests in providing a good service to our
customers;
·
Send you reminders, technical
notices, updates, security alerts, support and administrative messages, service
bulletins, and requested information, including on behalf of Business Partners,
other Groupon entities or other Sellers. This is to meet our legitimate
interests in managing our relationship with you effectively;
·
Administer rewards, surveys,
sweepstakes, contests, or other promotional activities or events, in order to
meet our contractual commitments to you set out in the terms and conditions of
those promotional events;
·
Manage our everyday business
needs, such as administration of the Site, forum management, fulfilment,
analytics, fraud prevention, and enforcement of our corporate reporting
obligations and Terms of Use or
to comply with the law; and
· Comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. We do this where necessary to comply with legal obligations to which we are subject, or to meet our legitimate interests in enforcing our legal rights and resolving disputes or verifying payments and preventing fraud.
5. When and Why We Disclose Personal Data
We and our NZ Affiliate share your personal
data as follows:
·
with your consent;
·
with each other and other
Groupon entities within and outside of New Zealand, including, without
limitation, Groupon, Inc. which has its registered offices at 600 West Chicago
Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60610, USA, who will process your personal data only
in accordance with our instructions and for the purposes set out in this
Privacy Statement;
·
with unaffiliated third-party
Sellers and Business Partners, so they can sell, deliver, and provide the
products or services purchased to you (e.g. to deliver products to you, or to
provide a Getaways provider with your details so they can confirm
reservations). We share personal data with unaffiliated third-party Sellers and
Business Partners in order to meet our contractual obligations to you, and they
are not permitted to use your personal data in any way other than for selling,
delivering, and/or providing the products or services purchased by you;
·
with third parties that provide
tools and services to help us better understand your deal preferences, so that
we can show you advertisements for Groupon vouchers, goods, or services on
third party websites which are more suited to your interests and tastes. Those
third parties may also use your personal data to match you with their existing
customer base.
·
to report or collect on debts
owed to Sellers or other Business Partners;
·
as necessary to perform
contractual obligations towards you with Sellers or Business Partners to the
extent you have purchased or redeemed a Groupon voucher, goods, or services
offered by them or participated in an offer, rewards, contest or other activity
or program sponsored or offered through us or the Sellers on behalf of a
Business Partner;
·
to a subsequent owner,
co-owner, or operator of one or more of the Sites or any portion or operation
related to part of one or more of the Sites;
·
in connection with a corporate
merger, consolidation, or restructuring, the sale of substantially all of our
stock and/or assets, or other corporate change, including, without limitation,
during the course of any due diligence process;
·
to comply with legal orders and
government requests, or as needed to support auditing, compliance, and
corporate governance functions, where this is necessary to comply with these
legal obligations;
·
to combat fraud or criminal
activity, and to protect our rights or those of our Groupon entities, Sellers,
or Business Partners, and users, or as part of legal proceedings affecting us
and/or our other Groupon entities, as it is in our legitimate interests to
prevent fraud and protect these rights; or
·
in response to a subpoena, or
similar legal process, including to law enforcement agencies, regulators, and
courts, to the extent this is necessary to comply with such legal obligations.
We encourage our unaffiliated third-party
Sellers and Business Partners to adopt and post privacy policies. However,
while we share personal data with Sellers and Business Partners only for the
above-mentioned purposes, their subsequent processing and use of personal data
obtained through us is governed by their own privacy policies and practices and
is not under our control (except for the use and processing by Sellers and
Business Partners providing services to us, as described above). We
contractually restrict how our Sellers and Business Partners, including
merchants, use your personal data and aim to ensure they do not use it for any
purposes which are incompatible with those set out in this privacy statement.
In a number of the cases set out above, we will transfer your personal data to a country located outside New Zealand that may not be considered as providing the same level of protection for personal data under New Zealand law. In such cases, we put in place appropriate safeguards to ensure that there is adequate protection for your personal data.
6. Security of Personal Data
We have implemented an information security program that contains administrative, technical and physical controls that are designed to safeguard your personal data, including industry-standard encryption technology. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
7. Retention of Personal Data
We will retain your personal data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you close your account, we will retain your personal data for a period where it is necessary to continue operating our business effectively, to maintain a record of your transactions for financial reporting purposes or fraud prevention purposes until these purposes no longer exist, and to retain as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
8. Social Networks
Social Community Areas
You may access the Site through, or the Site
may contain connections to, areas where you may be able to publicly post
information, communicate with others such as discussion boards or blogs, review
products and merchants, and submit media content. Prior to posting in these
areas, please read our Terms of Use carefully.
All of the information you post may be accessible to anyone with Internet
access, and any information you include in your posting may be read, collected,
and used by others. For example, if you post your email address along with a
public restaurant review, you may receive unsolicited messages from other
parties. You should avoid publicly posting sensitive information about you or
others.
Connecting through Social Networks
We offer social networking users the
opportunity to interact with friends and to share on social networks. If you
are logged into both the Site and a social network, when you use the Site’s
social networking connection functions, you will connect your social network
account with your Groupon account (this happens automatically, if the email
addresses match). If the email addresses do not match, we ask you if you want
to link them and you must validate that you control the accounts by logging in
to your social network account. If you are already logged into the Site but not
into your social network site, when you use the Site’s social network
connection functions, you will be prompted to enter your social network website
credentials or to sign up for the social network.
If you are not currently registered as a
Groupon user and you use the Site’s social network connection functions, you
will first be asked to enter your social network credentials and then be given
the option to register and join Groupon. Once you register with us and connect
with the social network, you will be able to automatically post recent Groupon
activity back to your social network. Please refer to the privacy settings in
your social network account to manage the data that is shared through your
account.
When you use the Site’s social network connection function, you will have the opportunity to consent to our accessing all of the elements of your social network profile information that you have made available to be shared (as per the settings chosen by you in your social network profile) and to use it in accordance with the social network’s terms of use and this Privacy Statement. You can withdraw this consent at any time.
9. Privacy Practices of Third Parties
This Privacy Statement only addresses the collection, processing and use (including disclosure) of personal data by us and our NZ Affiliate through your interaction with the Site. Other websites that may be accessible through links from the Site may have their own privacy statements and personal data collection, processing, use, and disclosure practices. Our Business Partners and Sellers may also have their own privacy statements. We encourage you to familiarise yourself with the privacy statements provided by these other parties prior to providing them with information or taking advantage of a sponsored offer or promotion.
10. Contact Us
If you would like to make use of any of the
above rights or any other rights in relation to your personal data, please go
to: https://gr.pn/privacy.
If you have any questions or comments about our
privacy practices or this Privacy Statement please contact our Data Protection
Officer at dpo@groupon.com or privacy@groupon.co.nz