The Infatuation Privacy Policy

Welcome to the website (the “Site”) of The Infatuation, Inc., known as The Infatuation and Zagat (together with its successors and assigns, “The Infatuation,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). The Infatuation provides editor, writer, and user-generated reviews of and information about restaurants and bars in locations across the globe (collectively, including the Site and any related mobile application, the “Service”).

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use and share that data, and your choices concerning our data practices.

This Privacy Policy constitutes an integral part of our Terms of Service, accessible at: https://www.theinfatuation.com/terms.

Please read this Privacy Policy before using our Service or submitting any personal information to The Infatuation and contact us if you have any questions.

1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

When you contact us or interact with our Service we may collect the following types of personal information:

Personal Information You Provide: We collect personal information when you voluntarily provide such information, such as when you contact us with inquiries, register for our newsletter, post information, comments or reviews, respond to one of our surveys, register for access to the Infatuation Services, allow us to access your location information (such as by using the GPS on your mobile device) or use certain Infatuation Services. The personal information collected during these interactions may vary based on what you choose to share with us, but it will generally include name, email, city location, mobile device or phone number and the financial information necessary to ensure payments can be processed by our payment processors.

Personal Information We Collect Through Our Social Media Pages: We have pages on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Spotify, Twitter and YouTube (“Social Media Pages”). When you interact with our Social Media Pages, we will collect personal information that you elect to provide to us through your settings on the Social Media Site, such as your contact details. In addition, the companies that host our Social Media Pages may provide us with aggregate information and analytics regarding the use of our Social Media Pages.

Personal Information We Receive Automatically From Your Use of the Service: When you visit, use and interact with the Service, we may receive certain information about your visit, use or interactions. For example, we may monitor the number of people that visit our Service, peak hours of visits, which page(s) are visited on the Service, the domains our visitors come from (e.g., google.com, yahoo.com, etc.), and which browsers people use to access and use the Service (e.g., Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, etc.), broad geographical information, and site-navigation pattern. In particular, the following information is created and automatically logged in our systems:

• Log data: Information (“log data”) that your browser automatically sends whenever you visit the Site. Log data includes your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address (so we understand which country you are connecting from when you visit the Site), browser type and settings, the date and time of your request, and how you interacted with the Site.
• Cookies: Please see the “Cookies” section below to learn more about how we use cookies.
• Device information: Includes name of the device, operating system, and browser you are using. Information collected may depend on the type of device you use and its settings.
• Usage Information: We collect information about how you use our Site, such as the types of content that you view or engage with, the features you use, the actions you take, and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities.

2. HOW WE USE PERSONAL INFORMATION

We use personal information to send you newsletters, restaurant recommendations, membership perks, invites to events, and information about giveaways. This processing is necessary to perform our contract with you.

We also use personal information:

• To respond to your inquiries, comments, feedback or questions;
• To manage our relationship with you, which includes sending administrative information to you relating to our Service and changes to our terms, conditions, and policies, and asking you to leave a review or take a survey;
• To analyze how you interact with our Service and provide, maintain and improve the content and functionality of the Service and our customer relationships and experiences, develop our business and inform our marketing strategy (please see the “Cookies” section below to learn how we use cookies);
• To create anonymous data from your personal information and other individuals whose personal information we collect. We make personal information into anonymous data by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to you. We may use this anonymous data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes, including to analyze and improve our Services and promote our business.
• To administer and protect our business and the Site, prevent fraud, criminal activity, or misuses of our Site, and to ensure the security of our IT systems, architecture and networks (including troubleshooting, testing, system maintenance, support and hosting of data); and
• To comply with legal obligations and legal process and to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or other third parties, and enforce our terms and policies.

Marketing. We may contact you to provide information we believe will be of interest to you. For instance, if you elect to provide your email address, we may use that information to send you promotional information about our products and services. If we do, where required by law, for example if you are in the EU, we will only send you such emails if you consent to us doing so at the time you provide us with your personal information. You may opt out of receiving emails by following the instructions contained in each promotional email we send you or by contacting us. If you unsubscribe from our marketing lists, you will no longer receive marketing communications but we will continue to contact you regarding our Site and Services and to respond to your requests.

Interest-based Advertising. We engage our advertising partners, including third party advertising companies and social media companies, to display ads around the web. These companies may use cookies and similar technologies to collect information about your interaction over time across our Service, our communications, and other online services, and use that information to serve online ads that they think will interest you. This is called interest-based advertising. We may also share information about our users with these companies to facilitate interest-based advertising to those or similar users on other online platforms. You can learn more about your choices for limiting interest-based advertising in the “Online Tracking Opt-Out” section below.

3. HOW WE SHARE AND DISCLOSE PERSONAL INFORMATION

In certain circumstances we may share your personal information with third parties without further notice to you, unless required by the law, as set forth below:

• Vendors and Service Providers: To assist us in meeting business operations needs and to perform certain services and functions, we may share personal information with service providers, including hosting, cloud services, and other information technology services providers; event management, email communication software providers and email newsletter providers; data base management services; payment processors; web analytics services; content moderation services; search services; application development services (for more details on the third parties that place cookies through the Site, please see the “Cookies” section below). Pursuant to our instructions, these parties will access, process or store personal information in the course of performing their duties to us.
• Advertising Partners: We may share your personal information with third-party advertising companies for the interest-based advertising purposes described above.
• Business Transfers: If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing due diligence, reorganization, bankruptcy, receivership, sale of all or a portion of our assets, or transition of service to another provider, your personal information and other information may be shared in the diligence process with counterparties and others assisting with the transaction and transferred to a successor or affiliate as part of that transaction along with other assets.
• Legal Requirements: If required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to (i) comply with legal or regulatory obligations, including to respond to lawful requests from public authorities and to meet national security or law enforcement requirements, (ii) protect and defend our rights or property, (iii) prevent fraud, (iv) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of the Site, or the public, or (v) protect against legal liability.

4. DO NOT TRACK

Some Internet browsers may be configured to send “Do Not Track” signals to the online services that you visit. We currently do not respond to “Do Not Track” or similar signals. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” please visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com.

5. DATA RETENTION

We keep personal information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, while we have a legitimate business need to do so, or as required by law (e.g. for tax, legal, accounting or other purposes), whichever is the longer.

If you have elected to receive marketing communications from us, we retain information about your marketing preferences until you opt out of receiving these communications and in accordance with our policies.

To determine the appropriate retention period for your personal information, we will consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we use your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

6. UPDATE YOUR INFORMATION

If you need to change or correct your personal information, or wish to have it deleted from our systems, you may contact us at privacy@theinfatuation.com. We will address your request as required by applicable law.

7. ONLINE TRACKING OPT OUT

There are a number of ways to opt out of having your online activity and device data collected through our Services, which we have summarized below:

• Blocking cookies in your browser. Most browsers let you remove or reject cookies, including cookies used for interest-based advertising. To do this, follow the instructions in your browser settings. Many browsers accept cookies by default until you change your settings. For more information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set on your device and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
• Blocking advertising ID use in your mobile settings. Your mobile device settings may provide functionality to limit use of the advertising ID associated with your mobile device for interest-based advertising purposes.
• Using privacy plug-ins or browsers. You can block our Services from setting cookies used for interest-based ads by using a browser with privacy features, like Brave, or installing browser plugins like Privacy Badger, DuckDuckGo, Ghostery, or uBlock Origin, and configuring them to block third party cookies/trackers.
• Platform opt-outs. The following advertising partners offer opt-out features that let you opt out of use of your information for interest-based advertising:
• Google: https://adssettings.google.com
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/about/ads
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/settings/account/personalization?lang=en
• Advertising industry opt-out tools. You can also use these opt-out options to limit use of your information for interest-based advertising by participating companies:
• Digital Advertising Alliance: http://optout.aboutads.info
• Network Advertising Initiative: http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1

Note that because these opt-out mechanisms are specific to the device or browser on which they are exercised, you will need to opt out on every browser and device that you use.

8. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR USERS LOCATED IN CALIFORNIA

This section applies only to California residents. For purposes of this section, “personal information” has the meaning given in the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) but does not include information exempted from the scope of the CCPA.

Your California privacy rights. The CCPA grants individuals whose information is governed by the CCPA the following rights:

• Information. You can request information about how we have collected and used your Personal Information during the past 12 months. We have made this information available to California residents without having to request it by including it in this Privacy Policy.
• Access. You can request a copy of the Personal Information that we have collected about you during the past 12 months.
• Deletion. You can ask us to delete the Personal Information that we have collected from you.
• Correction. You can ask us to correct inaccurate Personal Information that we have collected from you.
• Opt out of sale of your personal information. We do not sell personal data. We offer instructions on how to limit online tracking in the “Online Tracking Opt Out” section above.

You are entitled to exercise the rights described above free from discrimination.

Please note that the CCPA limits these rights by, for example, prohibiting us from providing certain sensitive information in response to an access request and limiting the circumstances in which we must comply with a deletion request. If we deny your request, we will communicate our decision to you.

How users in California can exercise their rights

You may exercise your California privacy rights described above as follows:

• Right to information, access, and deletion. You can request to exercise your information, access, and deletion rights by:
• Emailing privacy@theinfatuation.com
• To learn how to opt out of interest-based ads and other online tracking, see the “Online Tracking Opt Out” section above.
• Identity verification. We will need to confirm your identity and California residency to process your requests to exercise your information, access, or deletion rights. We cannot process your request if you do not provide us with sufficient detail to allow us to understand and respond to it.
• Authorized agents. California residents can empower an “authorized agent” to submit requests on their behalf. We will require the authorized agent to have a written authorization confirming that authority.

9. CHILDREN

Our Service is not directed to children who are under the age of 16. The Infatuation does not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 16. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of 16 has provided personal information to The Infatuation through the Service please contact us and we will endeavor to delete that information from our databases.

10. EU USERS

Scope. This section applies to individuals in the EU (for these purposes, reference to the EU also includes the European Economic Area countries of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, the United Kingdom, and, to the extent applicable, Switzerland).

Data Controller. Data protection laws in the EU differentiate between the “data controller” and “data processor” of personal information. The Infatuation is the data controller for the processing of your personal information. You can find our contact information, and the contact information of our EU-based representative, in the “Contact Us” section below.

Legal Bases for Processing. We use your personal information only as permitted by law. Our legal bases for processing the personal information described in this Privacy Policy are described in the table below.

Your Rights. Pursuant to the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR), you have the following rights in relation to your personal information, under certain circumstances and subject to any applicable exceptions:

• Right of access: If you ask us, we will confirm whether we are processing your personal information and, if so, provide you with a copy of that personal information along with certain other details. If you require additional copies, we may need to charge a reasonable fee.
• Right to rectification: If your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you are entitled to ask that we correct or complete it. If we shared your personal information with others, we will tell them about the correction where possible. If you ask us, and where possible and lawful to do so, we will also tell you with whom we shared your personal information so you can contact them directly.
• Right to erasure: You may ask us to delete or remove your personal information, such as where you withdraw your consent. If we shared your data with others, we will tell them about the erasure where possible. If you ask us, and where possible and lawful to do so, we will also tell you with whom we shared your personal information with so you can contact them directly.
• Right to restrict processing: You may ask us to restrict or ‘block’ the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances, such as where you contest the accuracy of the data or object to us processing it (please read below for information on your right to object). We will tell you before we lift any restriction on processing. If we shared your personal information with others, we will tell them about the restriction where possible. If you ask us, and where possible and lawful to do so, we will also tell you with whom we shared your personal information so you can contact them directly.
• Right to data portability: You have the right to obtain your personal information from us that you consented to give us or that was provided to us as necessary in connection with our contract with you, and that is processed by automated means. We will give you your personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You may reuse it elsewhere.
• Rights in relation to automated decision-making: You have the right to be free from decisions based solely on automated processing of your personal information (including profiling) which produce a significant legal effect on you, unless this is necessary in relation to a contract between you and us or you provide your explicit consent to this use.
• Right to object: You may ask us at any time to stop processing your personal information, and we will do so:
  • If we are relying on a legitimate interest to process your personal information -- unless we demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing or we need to process your data in order to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims;
  • If we are processing your personal information for direct marketing. We may keep minimum information about you in a suppression list in order to ensure your choices are respected in the future and to comply with data protection laws (such processing is necessary for our and your legitimate interest in pursuing the purposes described above);
• Right to withdraw consent: If we rely on your consent to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal of consent will not affect any processing of your data before we received notice that you wished to withdraw consent.
• Right to lodge a complaint with the data protection authority: If you have a concern about our privacy practices, including the way we handled your personal information, you can report it to the data protection authority that is authorized to hear those concerns (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), who can be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns, and in other EU countries the data protection authority of the country in which you are located).

Please see the Contact Us section below for information on how to exercise your rights. 

Data Transfers. The Infatuation is based in the U.S. The U.S. may have data protection laws less stringent than or otherwise different from the laws in effect in the EU and UK. Transfers of your personal information to The Infatuation in the U.S. are necessary to perform the agreement we have entered into, or are about to enter into, with you.

11. LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

The Site may contain links to other websites not operated or controlled by The Infatuation, including Social Media Sites (“Third Party Sites”). The information that you share with Third Party Sites will be governed by the specific privacy policies and terms of service of the Third Party Sites and not by this Privacy Policy. By providing these links we do not imply that we endorse or have reviewed these sites. Please contact the Third Party Sites directly for information on their privacy practices and policies.

We and our partners use cookies to operate and administer our Site, make it easier for you to use the Site during future visits, and gather usage data on our Site.

A “cookie” is a piece of information sent to your browser by a website you visit. By choosing to use the Site after having been notified of our use of cookies and other technologies in the ways described in this Privacy Policy, and, in applicable jurisdictions, through notice and unambiguous acknowledgement of your consent, you agree to such use.

Cookies can be stored on your computer for different periods of time. Some cookies expire after a certain amount of time, or upon logging out (session cookies), others survive after your browser is closed until a defined expiration date set in the cookie (as determined by the third party placing it), and help recognize your computer when you open your browser and browse the Internet again (persistent cookies). Our Site uses cookies from the third parties described below. For more details on cookies please visit All About Cookies

Type of Cookies Used:

The following chart sets out how we use different categories of cookies and similar technologies, as well as information on your options for managing the settings for the data collection by these technologies:

13. SECURITY

You use the Service at your own risk. We comply with industry standards to protect personal information both online and offline from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction. However, no Internet or e-mail transmission is ever fully secure or error free. In particular, e-mail sent to or from us may not be secure. Therefore, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via the Service or e-mail. Please keep this in mind when disclosing any personal information to The Infatuation via the Internet. In addition, we are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Service, or third party websites.

14. YOUR CHOICES

Whether or not you provide personal information to us is completely up to you, but if you choose not to provide information that is needed to use some features of our Site, you may be unable to use those features. You can also contact us to request access to your data or to ask us to update, correct, or delete your personal information.

15. CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY

The Service, and our business may change from time to time. As a result we may change this Privacy Policy at any time. When we do we will post an updated version on this page, unless another type of notice is required by the applicable law. By continuing to use our Service or providing us with personal information after we have posted an updated Privacy Policy, or notified you if applicable, you consent to the revised Privacy Policy and practices described in it.

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or the information practices of the Site, please feel free to contact us at privacy@theinfatuation.com.

If you are an individual in the EU, you can also contact our EU based representative, VeraSafe, who has been appointed as Companyʼs representative in the EU pursuant to Article 27 of the GDPR on matters related to the processing of personal information activities that take place in the EU. To make such an inquiry, please contact VeraSafe using this contact form: https://verasafe.com/public-resources/contact-data-protection-representative or via telephone at: +420 228 881 031. Alternatively, VeraSafe can be contacted at VeraSafe Ireland Ltd., Unit 3D North Point House, North Point Business Park, New Mallow Road, Cork T23AT2P Ireland.