Your privacy is critically important to us. At MainCross, we have a few fundamental principles:
- We don't want to know who are in the real world
- We are careful with the personal information we request you to provide and that we collect through the operation of our services.
- We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
- We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.
Below is our privacy policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles. If you have any questions or suggestions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us. We also follow privacy by design.
Information we collect#
We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so – for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.
Information you provide to us
It’s probably no surprise that we collect information you provide us with. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:
Basic Account Information: When you sign up on a Network Site, a MainCross account is created for you. This single account can then be used be you to sign into all the Network Site that are powered by the MainCross system. As part of this signup, we ask for some basic information like name, username, password, email address and optionally cell phone number. Only your name and username are public. We urge you to use your real name so that the community can benefit; however you are free to use a pseudonym.
Special account information: When you apply for a Verified Account, you may be asked to provide further information for verification purposes only.
Your content contributions: MainCross is specifically designed for posting, publishing and sharing your unique contributions with your network and with the world. What you share on MainCross may be viewed by anyone, anywhere around the world. Hence all your contributions are public, and may be disseminated to a wide audience across Network Sites. When you share information or content via the Services, we urge you to think carefully about what you are making public.
Information we collect automatically
We also collect some information automatically:
Log Information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services.
Usage Information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about which channels you are following and your interaction with others content, etc. All these are private and are not visible to anyone. We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from various geographic regions.
Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and e-mails. MainCross uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to better understand how you interact with our Services, to monitor aggregate usage by our users and web traffic routing on our Services, and to customize and improve our Services. Although most web browsers automatically accept cookies, some browsers’ settings can be modified to decline cookies or alert you when a website is attempting to place a cookie on your computer. However, some Services may not function properly if you disable cookies.
Information we collect from other sources
We may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log into your MainCross account through another service (like Facebook), we will receive basic information from that service (such as your username & contact) via the authorization procedures used by that service. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and any options that are available. As an example, we offer Telegram login, which does not share your mobile phone number with us.
Information we don't collect#
Unlike the great many (patently evil?) Internet services today, we do not want to identify you in the real world. We do not track you across third-party websites, we do not synthesize or match any information about you from other sources with your MainCross account in order to build profiles about you.
How we use information#
We use information about you as mentioned above and as follows:
- To provide our Services – for example, to set up and maintain your account, to showcase your content to the world, to organize and display content from other users to you, to send you notifications;
- To further develop our Services – for example by adding new features that we think our users will enjoy or will help us in our vision to create an Internet that is meant for us as creators and users;
- To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
- To monitor and protect the security of our Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of MainCross and others;
- To communicate with you about new features and products, or address support requests and feedback
How we share information#
We do not sell our users’ private personal information.
We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:
Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
Important Third Party Services:
- Amazon AWS – MainCross utilizes the Amazon AWS services to run parts of the MainCross service, including multiple backend services, databases, mail services, media storage services, notification services, CDN services etc. The privacy policies for AWS can be found at https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/
- Microsoft Azure - MainCross utilizes the Microsoft Azure services to run parts of the MainCross service, including multiple backend services, databases, mail services, media storage services, notification services, CDN services etc. The policies for Azure can be found at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/
- Netlify - MainCross utilizes the Netlify service to serve some of the frontends for MainCross Network Sites. The privacy policies for Netlify can be found at https://www.netlify.com/privacy/
- Cloudflare - MainCross utilizes the Cloudflare services to run parts of the MainCross service, including edge processing, caching and CDN services. The privacy policies for Cloudflare can be found at https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/
- Getstream - MainCross utilizes the GetStream service to order (e.g. based on priority) and filter (e.g. based on importance to you) some of the content that we show to you. The privacy policies for GetStream can be found at https://getstream.io/legal/
- (Deprecated)
Postmark- MainCross utilizes the Postmark service to deliver bulk emails (eg Digest Mail, Newsletters) and partial list management - unsubscribe, suppression etc. The privacy policies for PostMark can be found at https://postmarkapp.com/privacy-policy - Sentry - MainCross utilizes the Sentry service to monitor for errors in the MainCross backend servers, which gives us the insights needed to reproduce and fix crashes. The privacy policies for Sentry can be found at https://sentry.io/privacy/
As Required by Law: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
To Protect Rights and Property: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of MainCross, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that MainCross goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so.
Aggregated and De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services.
Deleting your data#
- You can access, update or delete your personal data directly on the platform by logging into your account - this includes posts, comments, up/down votes, subscriptions, user profile photo, bio, etc
- You may submit a request to hide or delete your complete account (and associated data like posts, votes, subscriptions etc) by contacting us. We will respond to your request after verification.
