Last updated: August 2024
This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) sets out how we, NiteOwl LLC, an Illinois Limited Liability Company (“NiteOwl”), collect, use, disclose, and protect your personal information in connection with your use of our services, including those offered through our venue monitoring and promotion program (the “Service”) through the NiteOwl website (the “Website”) and/or the NiteOwl mobile application (the “App”).
Please read this Policy carefully before you use the Website, use the App, or submit information to us. When you access or use our Website and/or App, certain information, including personal information, may be collected, processed, stored, and in certain circumstances, disclosed or shared as described in this policy.
BY CREATING AN ACCOUNT WITH NITEOWL OR OTHERWISE PROVIDING US WITH YOUR OR OTHERS’ PERSONAL INFORMATION, YOU EXPRESSLY CONSENT TO THE INFORMATION HANDLING PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND CONFIRM THAT YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO PROVIDE US WITH ALL PERSONAL INFORMATION PROVIDED. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY OR THE TERMS OF USE, PLEASE DO NOT ACCESS, USE, OR REGISTER FOR AN ACCOUNT WITH NITEOWL.
- THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT
We collect data to provide the products and services you request, ease your navigation on the Website and/or App, communicate with you, and improve your experience using our Website and/or App. Some of this information is provided by you directly to us, as certain areas of the Website and/or App allow you to submit information. Some of the information is collected through your interactions with the Website and/or App. We may collect, transmit, and store such data using technologies like cookies, action tags, and other tracking technologies, error reports, and usage data collected when you interact with our Website and/or App. Some of the information is collected from your use of, and interactions with, us and others on social media.
The data we collect depends on the products, services, and features of the Website and/or App that you use, and include the following:
- Personal Information
In general, we collect personal information that you submit to us in the process of creating or editing your account and user profile on the Website and/or App, that you submit to us voluntarily through your use of the Website and/or App, or that you permit us to access (including, but not limited to, your permission to access stored contact information). Information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household is “Personal Information.” Personal information does not include publicly available information from government records or de-identified or aggregate consumer information.
We may also collect Personal Information from third parties, like social media, payment processors, product vendors, and other partners. Our collection of this information allows us to provide you with our products and services.
In particular, our Website and/or App may collect information like your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, and other information you may provide during the account creation process, like gender or birth date. Even if we do not retain such information, it may be transmitted to our servers initially and stored long enough to process.
A. NiteOwl Account
When a NiteOwl user account is created, it is meant for public consumption. We may display your name, as well as any photos or other content you submit through the account creation process as part of your account profile. We also store and use any preferences you provide to personalize your experience, including venue and activity preferences. You can limit the visibility of some information through your account settings. In addition, when you register for a User Account, you are also agreeing to receive direct messages (“Messages”) from other users or businesses. For example, if you request information on queue size from a participating venue or otherwise contact a venue through our Website and/or App, we or the venue you are interacting with may send you a message in response.
When you visit the Website without creating an account, you can browse without submitting personal information about yourself. However, the experience on the Website may be limited in comparison to the experience when personal information is provided.
B. Public Content
You may also provide information to be published or displayed on public areas of the Website and/or App or transmitted to other users of the Website and/or App or third parties. Your contributions to the Service are intended for public consumption and are therefore viewable to the public, including your photos, videos, venue monitoring information, and reviews. Your profile is also intended for public consumption, as is some of your activity through the Service, like how you interact with other users’ contributions to the Website and/or App, which venue bar cards you contribute to, and which venues you like. This information is posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. We cannot control the actions of other users of the Website and/or App with whom you may choose to share your contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.
C. Communications
When you sign up for an account or use certain features, you are opting to receive messages from other users, venues, and NiteOwl. If you exchange messages with others through the Service, we may store them in order to process and deliver them, allow you to manage them, and we may review and disclose them in connection with investigations related to use of the Service, as well as efforts to improve the service. If you are a representative of a venue listed on NiteOwl or use a phone number associated now or previously with such a venue, we may contact you, including by using the contact information you provide us, make publicly available, or that we have on record for your business.
D. Activity
We collect and store information about your use of the Service, such as your search activity, the pages and bar cards you view, the date and time of your visits, your activity on our App, and any information you upload.
E. Information from other Sources
You may access the Service through different devices (e.g. mobile phone or personal computer) and different platforms (e.g. the NiteOwl website or NiteOwl app). The information we collect and store through those different uses may be cross-referenced and combined, and your contributions through one NiteOwl platform will typically be similarly visible and accessible through all other NiteOwl platforms.
F. Location information
We may collect precise geolocation data from you or your device, as well as your address information when you set up your account. We also may collect and use information about your general location (e.g. your state of residence) and can infer your approximate location based on your IP address in order to track our general Service usage or to tailor pertinent aspects of your user experience, for example, which bar cards are available to you, to the region where you are located.
G. Information to or From Others
You may provide us with a third party’s personal information, for example, a venue on NiteOwl. We collect and handle any personal information about others consistent with this Policy. By providing such information, you represent and warrant that you have obtained any required consent, provided any required notice, and otherwise fully complied with all applicable laws with regard to any information that you provide to us about others.
H. Social Media
If you interact with NiteOwl or other users regarding NiteOwl on any social media, the information may be collected and/or used by us as described in the Policy and where NiteOwl interacts with you on social media, your account name may be viewable by any and all members or users of NiteOwl’s social media accounts. We are not responsible for the personal information that you chose to submit or link on an social media, as social media operates independently from NiteOwl and we are not responsible for social media interfaces, privacy, or security practices. You should review the privacy policies of any social media with which you interact to better understand their privacy practices, and questions regarding their practices should be referred the applicable social media providers.
I. Professional Information
If you represent a venue on NiteOwl, we may collect and display information about you related to your business activities, such as a business name that may incorporate your individual name, or a publicly available business address.
1.2 Automatically Collected Usage and Device information.
We also store information that your computer or mobile device may provide to us in connection with your use of the Service, such as your browser type, type of computer or mobile device, browser language, IP address, WiFi information, mobile carrier, phone number, and location. We may also receive and store your location whenever our App is running, including when running in the background, if you enable our App to access such information in the course of the service. You may be able to limit or disallow our use of certain data through your device or browser settings.
A. Cookies
Our Website also uses “cookies” to help personalize your online experience, such as recognizing repeat visitors. A cookie is a text file that is anonymously placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued cookie to you. NiteOwl does not match your personally identifiable information with the cookie assigned to you without your permission. We will not share or sell non-aggregated information contained within cookies with any third party. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of our Website and/or App.
1.3 Aggregated Information
When you visit our Website and/or App, we log general data, such as your domain name, the name of the webpage from which you entered our Website, which pages you visit on our Website, and how much time you spend on each page. We use this information to monitor use of and improve our Website and services as well as for internal analysis. In particular, we may use the information to analyze trends, administer the website, and gather information for aggregate use.
- EXTERNAL LINKS
The Service may link to third-party controlled websites, like a business’ URL. Except as set forth herein, we do not share your personal information with them, and are not responsible for their privacy practices. The links and information these sites contain are not monitored by us and those sites are subject to their own privacy policies. We are not responsible for the content, accuracy, or practices of these sites, nor do we endorse these sites or content provided thereon.
- HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
3.1 General
We may use or disclose the personal information identified above for one or more of the following business purposes:
A. To fulfill or meet the reason you provided the information (e.g. to monitor a venue, view a bar card, upload a photo, or leave a review). This includes providing your personal information to venues or other third parties in connection with any request you might make when using the Service.
B. To personalize and develop our Service and improve our offerings.
C. To provide certain features or functionalities on the Site.
D. For marketing and promotions.
E. To create, maintain, customize, and secure your NiteOwl account.
F. To provide you with support, to communicate with you and respond to your inquiries, including to investigate and address your concerns and monitor and improve our responses.
G. To personalize your experience and to deliver content, service offerings, and promotions relevant to your interests.
H.To help maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our Service.
I. For testing, research, analysis, and product development, including to develop and improve our Service.
J. To respond to law enforcement requests as required by applicable law, court order, or governmental regulations.
K. To prevent illegal activity, fraud, and abuse.
L. To evaluate or conduct a merger, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by us about our users is among the assets transferred or liquidated.
3.2 Our Information Sharing Practices
When we disclose personal information for a business purpose, we enter into a contract that describes the purpose and requires the recipient to keep that personal information confidential and use only for performance of the contract, and not for any other purpose.
3.3 Specific Information Sharing Practices
A. Acquired Data: NiteOwl may acquire information enabling us to identify and contact representatives of local venues from third parties. Such data may be combined with other information NiteOwl receives from or about you.
B. Advertisers: We may share some non-identifiable, de-identified or aggregated information from or about you with third parties in connection with advertising programs and data analytics. We also share certain information described below with venues on NiteOwl, who may or may not be advertisers.
C. Aggregate Information: We may share non-personally identifiable user information in the aggregate and/or anonymized in any manner that does not identify individual users for the purpose of improving the operation and management of the Service, including to develop new features, functionality, to conduct internal research, to better understand Service usage patterns, to troubleshoot problems, fulfill user request, or for security and compliance purposes. For example, we may disclose the number of users exposed to a venue’s bar card to improve the content on the card.
D. Content and Data Partners: We allow third party partners to use and display some of the public content available through the Service, such as your photos, reviews, and uploaded venue information.
E. Interaction with third party platforms: If you sign up for, or log into, NiteOwl using a third-party platform or link your NiteOwl account with a third-party platform like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, we may receive information about you from such third-party platform.
F. Joint Venture: Should we share information from or about you with any subsidiary, joint venture, or other company under common control, we will require them to honor this Policy. our subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control, and will require them to also honor this Policy.
G. NiteOwl’s Service Providers: We rely on third-party service providers to support or provide services for us in connection with your use of the Service, such as security and fraud prevention, technical and customer support, tracking and reporting usage of the Service, quality assurance testing, marketing, and other functions. We share information from or about you with these third-party providers so that they can perform their services. NiteOwl shares personal information with its service providers subject to the obligations consistent with this Policy, and on the condition that personal information is only used on NiteOwl’s behalf and pursuant to our instructions. You may be able to limit our access to some of this information through your mobile device settings or through the Service’s settings. NiteOwl’s third-party service providers may likewise share information with us that they obtain from or about you in connection with providing their services or completing your requests.
H. NiteOwl as a Service Provider: NiteOwl collects, receives and processes certain information about you on behalf of venues for which NiteOwl is acting as a service provider. NiteOwl does not share information collected or received by NiteOwl outside of its role as a service provider with the venues or third parties, unless otherwise disclosed in this Policy, or at your direction. Third parties may also share information about you with NiteOwl in order for NiteOwl to provide services to them. Third parties’ collection, use and disclosure of your information is subject to such third party’s own privacy policy.
I. Venues on NiteOwl: We may share information from or about you, your device type, and your use of the Service with venues on NiteOwl. You may adjust your account settings to increase or decrease the amount of information we share. Venues can also view your public activity and posts and may receive information from or about you when you through NiteOwl or otherwise, regardless of settings.
J. Other Users: NiteOwl may, at its discretion, offer certain features allowing you to interact with other users of the App. Your transfer of any information to other users is optional and requires you to elect to use any such features. By using an interactive user feature, you authorize us to transmit any information contained in those communications or published on your App profile to the users you have elected to interact with via the App.
3.4 Legal Requirements
We reserve the right to disclose all information collected via the Service, internally, to affiliates, or to third parties, for any lawful purpose, to protect our rights, or to prevent harm to us or others. For example, and without limitation, it is up to our discretion to disclose information to government regulators, law enforcement authorities, or alleged victims of identity theft. We will notify you in the event of a government or legal request for your information unless otherwise prohibited by law. If you flag or otherwise complain to us about content through the Service, we may share the substance of your complaint with the contributor of that content in order to provide an opportunity for the contributor to respond.
3.5 Organizational Transitions
If NiteOwl should ever transfer or restructure the operational ownership of the Service, such as through a merger with another entity or a reorganization of all or a part of our operational responsibilities or assets, we may disclose, transfer, assign our rights, and/or delegate our duties to your information without notice and consent, including to prospective or actual recipient or acquiring entities. Should this occur, we will require any third party receiving your personal information as described in this subsection to be contractually required to provide the same level of privacy standards as provided by NiteOwl under this Policy.
3.6 Disclaimer
We cannot ensure that all of your personal information will be disclosed only in the ways described in this Policy. For example, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or other users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the Website and/or App. Even with the most rigorous information security standards, no transmission of data using the internet can be 100% secure.
4. USER CHOICE AND OPTIONS RELATING TO OUR COLLECTION
4.1 You Can Choose Not to Provide Personal Information
You may always decline to provide your personal information to us. Creating an account or otherwise providing your personal information may not be needed for certain features of the Service. If you choose not to provide certain personal information to us, some of your experiences may be affected.
Other users may be able to identify you, or associate you with your account, if you include personal information in the content you post publicly. You can reduce the risk of being personally identified by using the Service pseudonymously, though doing so could detract from the credibility of your contributions to the Service.
4.2 You May Decline Other Requests
We use the personal information of our users as needed for the purposes for which it was collected or where you have consented to our sue of such information. If you do not wish to provide information to use or do not wish to consent to the uses described in this Policy, please do not use NiteOwl, set up an account, or supply the requested information to us.
4.3 State Data Protection Rights
State consumer data protection and privacy laws may provide their residents with additional rights regarding our use of their personal information. Pursuant to such data and privacy laws, you may have the right to ask NiteOwl for a copy of your personal data; to correct, delete or restrict processing of your personal data; and to obtain the personal data you provided to us in a structured, machine readable format. You may also have the right to withdraw your consent to our use of your personal data at any time. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us by email or in writing to the address provided below. If you have any unresolved concerns, you may have the right to complain to the relevant data protection authority.
4.4 Data Retention and Account Termination
We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax, or accounting requirements). When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it, or if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any other processing until deletion is possible. You may request the deletion of your data as provided in our Data Deletion Policy, available at niteowl.com
Note that venues cannot remove their bar cards, ratings, or reviews by closing their accounts. NiteOwl retains information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or as otherwise permitted or required by law.
4.5 Online Tracking Choices
Most browsers are initially set up to accept Cookies, but you can reset your browser to refuse all Cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some features of the Service may not function properly if your Cookies are disabled.
- SAFETY AND INFORMATION MEASURES
We use various safeguards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and after we receive it. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or via mobile device, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, while NiteOwl strives to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. In the event that any of your personal information under our control is compromised as a result of a breach of security, we will take reasonable steps to investigate the situation and notify you, as appropriate, in accordance with pertinent laws and regulations.
5.1 Security
We use certain physical, managerial, and technical safeguards designed to preserve the security of your information that we maintain in connection with your use of the Service. However, no safeguards are a guarantee of absolute security, and so you are responsible for maintaining the security of your credentials and information, and you should monitor and observe you account and timely report any suspicious activity to NiteOwl.
5.2 Storage
We or our third-party service providers store personal information in operating environments that are safeguarded against public or unauthorized access and protected from internal access with physical and technical safety measures.
- NOTICE TO USERS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
Please be aware that NiteOwl’s Website and/or App is governed by United States law. If you are using any of NiteOwl’s Service from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States where our servers may be located. The United States might not offer the same level of privacy protection as the country where you reside or are a citizen. BY USING THE WEBSITE AND/OR APP OR OTHERWISE PROVIDING INFORMATION TO US, YOU CONSENT TO THE TRANSFER TO, AND PROCESSING OF, YOUR INFORMATION IN THE UNITED STATES.
- NOTICE TO MINORS AND THOSE UNDER LEGAL DRINKING AGE
Our Website and/or App is not intended for those under the legal drinking age, which in the United States is twenty-one (21). We do not knowingly collect information from or about these individuals. If you believe an individual under the United States’ legal drinking age has provided us with personal information, please contact us by e-mail or by writing at the address provided below.
- CHANGES TO THIS PIVACY POLICY
The date of this Policy indicates the date it was last updated. Because our privacy practices and privacy law necessarily evolve over time, we reserve the right to revise this Policy from time to time in our sole discretion, upon notice to you, to reflect visitor feedback and any changes in applicable data protection and privacy legislation. We may provide notice to you in a reasonable manner, such as posting the updated Policy to the Website and/or App, or providing a copy via e-mail. We encourage you to periodically review this Policy to be informed of how we are committed to protecting your information and providing you with improved content on our Website and/or App. Your continued use of the Site after the effective date posted above will constitute your acceptance of the updated Policy.
- CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or comments about this Policy, the ways in which we collect and use your information described in this Policy, your choices and rights regarding such use, or wish to exercise your rights under state data protection laws, please do not hesitate to contact NiteOwl at: support@niteowlllc.com.