Privacy Policy

Effective date: 12/1/2012 

1) Information about you

We receive a number of different types of information about you, including:

a) Registration & contributions.

Your registration information is the information that's required when you sign up for GarageFuse, as well as the information you choose to contribute:

i) Registration information: When you sign up for Garagefuse, you are required to provide your name, email address, birthday, and gender.

ii) Contributions: Your information also includes the information you choose to share on GarageFuse, such as when you post a status update, upload a photo, add a car profile, or comment on a fellow Gearhead’s story.

 It also includes the information based upon your activities, such as when you add a friend and other actions on GarageFuse.

Your birthday allows us to do things like make sure all Gearheads are at least 13 years of age and to help provide you with relevant services information.

b) Information others share about you.
We receive information about you from your friends and others, such as when they mention you in a comment. We also receive other types of information about you, such as information related to how you use the Site.

c) Your information footprint.

i) Public Information.
Your basic account information is made public, which means people off of GarageFuse can see it.  This information can be associated with you (i.e., your name, profile pictures, etc.) even off GarageFuse and can show up when someone does a search on GarageFuse or on a search engine like Google.

ii) GarageFuse Information
All outward facing content you provide on GarageFuse, such as your name, profile picture, status updates, cars, car images, and the content generated around them is openly viewable to all members of GarageFuse.  There are no privacy settings to allow for only friends on the platform to see certain content.

d) How we use the information we receive.

We use the information we receive about you in connection with the services and features we provide to you on the site.

Providing GarageFuse us this permission allows us to develop our services in exciting new ways.

You continue to own your information, even though we have your permission to use it.  To keep your trust, we don’t share your information with anyone, unless we received your permission, given you notice; or removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it.

We retain data to provide products and services to our Gearheads, including those described above.  However, we will delete your information according to the policies below.

e) Deleting your account.

If you want to stop using your account, you can delete it.

f) Deletion.
Deleted accounts are permanently deleted from GarageFuse.  However, certain information is needed to provide you with services, so we only delete this information after you delete your account.  Some of the things you do on GarageFuse aren’t stored in your account, like sending someone a message.  Your friends get to keep those messages, and that information remains after you delete your account.

2) Finding you on GarageFuse

a) Searching for you on GarageFuse.

So that your friends may more easily find you, we enable anyone with intensifying information about you to search using that information.

3)  Cookies, pixels and other similar technologies

GarageFuse uses cookies, pixels and other smiliar technologies to provide and understand how you use our services.  We aim to provide Gearheads with the best online experience for what we do.  A cookie is data stored on your computing device relating to your online activities. Pixels are code on webpages that allows servers to measure webpage viewing and are often used in combination with cookies.

We use these technologies to do things like: make GarageFuse a better service; deliver, understand and improve advertising; and to protect you, others and GarageFuse.

We may allow advertisers or other partners to serve ads or services to computing devices that may use a cookie, pixel or other similar technology placed by GarageFuse or the third party (although we would not share any other information that personally identifies you with an advertiser).

Cookies also helping us authenticate you to deliver personalized content.

To learn more about how advertisers generally use cookies and the choices advertisers provide, visit the Network Advertising Initiative at http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp, the Digital Advertising Alliance at http://www.aboutads.info/, the Internet Advertising Bureau (US) at http://www.iab.net or the Internet Advertising Bureau (EU) at http://youronlinechoices.eu/.

Remove or block cookies or other similar technologies may affect your ability to use GarageFuse.

4)  Some other things you need to know

a) Contact us with questions or disputes.
If you have questions or complaints regarding our Privacy Policy or practices, please contact us by email at Privacy@GarageFuse.com.

b) Responding to legal requests and preventing harm.
In response to a legal request (like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) with a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so, we may access, preserve and share your information.  This may include responding to legal requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where we also consider whether it affects users in that jurisdiction and whether it is consistent with internationally recognized standards. Lastly, we may also access, preserve and share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity, or to protect ourselves, you and others, including as part of investigations.

c) Notifications and Messages.
We may send you notifications and other messages using the contact information we have for you, like your email address.

d) Invitations.
When you invite a friend to join GarageFuse, we send a message on your behalf using your name, and reminders. If there are people your friends might know, we may also include their names and pictures in the message.

e) Service Providers.
In providing, understanding and improving our services, we give your information to the people and companies that help achieve those goals.  For example, we may use outside vendors to help host our website, serve photos and videos, process payments, analyze data, measure the effectiveness of content and ads, or provide search results.  In some cases we provide the service jointly with another company. In all of these cases our partners must agree to only use your information consistent with the agreement we enter into with them, as well as this Privacy Policy.

f) Change of Control.
If the ownership of our business changes, we may transfer your information to the new owner so they can continue to operate the service. But they will still have to honor the commitments we have made in this Privacy Policy.

g) Notice of Changes.
If we make changes to this Privacy Policy we will notify you by publication here. If the changes are material, we will provide you additional, prominent notice as appropriate under the circumstances.

h) Your California privacy rights.
California law permits residents of California to request certain details about what personal information a company shares with third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes. GarageFuse does not share your information with third parties for the third parties’ own and independent direct marketing purposes unless we receive your permission. If you have questions about our sharing practices or your rights under California law, please email us at Privacy@GarageFuse.com.