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The protection of your data is a fundamental issue for aka-aki. We protect the data of our members so that using aka-aki is as much fun as possible—and simultaneously secure. But because aka-aki is a proximity-based service, there are some special things we’d like to you keep in mind.
NOTE: Not all devices support all of the technologies mentioned in this document, such as Bluetooth, GPS or identification of the cell in the cellular network.
We've divided our data protection information into four sections:
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aka-aki on Your Cell Phone
1. What data does aka-aki collect, and who has access to it? We store certain data in order to ensure the functional capabilities of aka-aki. This data includes the cellular mobile telephone data members have transmitted, the time of transmission, and the coordinates related to the data. In addition, we also store the time of members’ encounters with other Bluetooth devices and their Bluetooth IDs.
We do not, however, store any information on who was near whom and at what time in terms of distance, city or region.
aka-aki members cannot see the absolute location of other members unless they have explicitly disclosed their own location. Revealing members on a map of a city or region without their explicit permission is not the goal of aka-aki, nor does it constitute an integral part of the aka-aki service.
Instead, aka-aki is based on real-world, relative and fuzzy categories of proximity that respect the privacy of its members: you can see, for example, who is “nearby” or “within walking distance”.
This not only requires that your cell phone fulfils certain technical standards, but also that the other member is either a friend of yours or has explicitly chosen to share his or her relative proximity with other aka-aki members (these settings can be made in the cell phone application). Not all mobile phones support all of aka-aki’s proximity categories.
Invisibility function: If you do not want to be discovered by other members no matter how far away they are from you, activate the option “make me visible: to no one” (these settings can be made in the cell phone application). You are always in control of whether other members can find you or not.
In any case, your friends and other members cannot explicitly recognise what street you’re on or the details of your latitude and longitude unless you explicitly share this information with them. This means that other members or only your friends (depending on how you’ve configured your cell phone software) can only see how far away from them you are, but not exactly where you are.
If the distance between two members exceeds a certain threshold, no details will be made at all as to how far away the other member is.
aka-aki saves so called "foot prints" of you and uses them to show other members if you have been around within the last 15 minutes. To protect your privacy, this information given to other members will never be more precise than "nearby", "within walking distance", "in the city" or "in the region", unless you specifically authorize aka-aki to give more precise information.
Furthermore, foot prints older than seven days will be deleted automatically from the aka-aki system.
2. No access to telephone data: The aka-aki mobile phone application does not access any data stored in your mobile phone (e.g. address book or SMS) without your permission. If you want to find out whether your friends are aka-aki members yet or want to invite friends to aka-aki via e-mail, aka-aki accesses your address book and sends the e-mail adresses contained to the aka-aki server (not available on all devices). The data will not be stored permanently, but will be deleted right after the matching process with the aka-aki data base. Your address book will not be read out without your permission.
3. Real-life encounters: To make it possible to discover other aka-aki members in real life, you have to install the aka-aki mobile phone application on your mobile phone. Once you log into the mobile phone application with your aka-aki user name and password, the Bluetooth ID of your telephone will be connected to your user account. For this purpose, your Bluetooth ID is stored in a database together with your user name. From this moment on, other aka-aki members who have also installed the aka-aki mobile phone application (and have a mobile phone that supports Bluetooth) can discover you. Other members within Bluetooth range (a roughly 20-metre perimeter) can then access the “people around you” function, where they’ll see your user name, photo and headline. If they choose, they can access your profile to check out your friends, stickers and the stick-o-meter compatibility, or send you an aki-mail. If you’re out of the Bluetooth range, Section 1 of this Data Protection Notice applies.
4. Staying invisible: In order for other aka-aki members to discover you with their mobile phones, you have to have logged in at least once with the aka-aki mobile phone application with your user name and password. After this procedure, other aka-aki members within a perimeter of 20 metres can see you with their mobile phones even if your aka-aki mobile phone application is not running - subject to bluetooth being enabled and set to visible. If you also want to remain invisible within close distance, simply activate the "magic cap" option in the settings of the mobile phone application.
5. Proximity: When setting data in your profile, please keep in mind that as the owner of your profile, you might only be just a few metres away from your “audience”. In contrast to purely web-based communities where users can hide behind a “wall” on the web, you are anonymous on aka-aki, but you still have to keep in mind that there might be people nearby who can see your profile and react to it.
6. Stickers for Bluetooth devices: Using the cell phone application, you can stick virtual stickers on devices that have Bluetooth turned on (if your mobile phone supports this function). These devices do not have to be connected to an aka-aki profile, nor must their users be aka-aki members. Other aka-aki members can then see who has stuck which stickers to the device. As stipulated in our Terms of Service, these stickers may not be used to identify a person whom a particular device belongs to (e.g. the sticker may not contain a photograph of the device’s owner).
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Your Profile
7. Registering with a pseudonym: When you register with aka-aki, you can pick your own user name (as long as it is unique and is not already in use by another member).
8. Protection of your real name: You can enter your first and last name in the “home > my data” section. Your real name will not be shown in your profile; other members can only search for it (in “members > search”). By using this search function, your friends can find you even if they don’t know your aka-aki user name. We generally do not recommend disclosing your real name, address, telephone number or email address in your profile.
9. Members only: Profiles of aka-aki members are not visible outside of the aka-aki network. If someone wants to view a member’s profile, they have to have an aka-aki profile themselves. Preview mode however enables users who are not yet members to see a list of aka-aki members around them (if their visibility settings allow for this). Users of the preview function can see a small picture, the username and the current tagline. They can’t see the full profile, request friendship or write a message. You can always see who has recently visited your profile, if the visitor has not disabled this function (with the exception of preview users, because we don’t have any profile data for them yet) The list of profile visitors is only visible to you.
10. Data in your profile: The following components of your profile can be seen by aka-aki members from their mobile phones: your user name, age, gender and sexual preference (if you have entered this information, place of residence (only the city/town or district in the case of large cities if you have entered it), and a photo of you, if you have uploaded one. Apart from the registration data (user name and password), age and gender and your email address all data you enter is voluntary. For other users, the total number of your encounters (but not the people you’ve actually met), the total number of people who have visited your profile, and the time of your last encounter with the user who is accessing your profile is visible. Further a list of aka-aki members you’re friends with, and the stickers you wear are visible for other members. However, you can create stickers that can only be seen by members who wear the same stickers (on the website, click “edit sticker” on the page of the sticker that you’ve created). On the web, you also have the possibility of adding HTML to your profile page, which you can use to embed a video for example. On some phones, these HTML contents are visible in text form only. Comments that other members have left on your profile page (which you can also delete) are also displayed. You will be informed via email if another member left a new comment on your profile (email notifications can be disabled) Your email address is neither displayed on the web, nor on mobile phones. If other members want to invite you to aka-aki by entering your email-address (which they have to know for doing that) they will see a dirct connection between your email-address and your username.
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Data Collection and Data Processing by aka-aki
11. General guidelines: Some parts of aka-aki’s functionality can only work if aka-aki users have provided certain personal data such as the Bluetooth ID of their mobile telephone and personal details like interests, and have made this data accessible to other users. Only then can users identify one another in their immediate surroundings and e.g. expand their network of friends by finding out about other users. aka-aki users can change their profile and data at any time to control how they communicate with other users and the provider of aka-aki. aka-aki takes data protection very seriously. If you have any questions regarding our data protection guidelines, please send an email to privacy@aka-aki.com.
12. Compilation and use of data by aka-aki: The user data provided by the user at the time of registration with aka-aki and throughout his or her membership with and use of the aka-aki platform is only used by aka-aki in fulfilment of the offers/services described here (Section 1 of TOS). In particular, aka-aki uses the email addresses of its users to send updates, newsletters or other up-to-date information to its members. Users can unsubscribe to these newsletters. Generally speaking, every user creates his or her own profile that can be seen by other users and used to establish contact. aka-aki compiles user data like email addresses or cell phone numbers to identify its users. Email addresses and telephone numbers are not, however, visible to other users. In addition, aka-aki automatically logs certain information on users of the aka-aki website and aka-aki service including IP addresses, profile information, cumulative user data and browser type, but this information cannot be traced to individual users This data is used to administrate aka-aki’s services, track usage, and improve the range of offers on the aka-aki network in the interest of our users. User’s IP addresses are logged for security reasons.
13. Disclosure of information to third parties: aka-aki does not disclose user data to third parties unless a user has granted his or her explicit permission for us to do so, or if we are legally obliged to do so. An exception is made for technical service providers we have carefully selected—and who are bound by our instructions—to fulfil certain tasks for aka-aki such as sending out newsletters (commissioned data processing).
14. Cancellation of your consent to data processing: If you have consented to data processing, you can cancel your consent at any time by sending a simple message to privacy@aka-aki.com. In this case, however, your membership with aka-aki will be terminated.
15. Use of cookies: Cookies are small text packets that can be “placed” from a server (e.g. the aka-aki server) on the computer of a member. These text files can contain different, even personal information regarding e.g. personal browser settings that allow us to improve the use of aka-aki’s services. aka-aki uses cookies to log session information in order to e.g. adjust the display of web pages to a user’s profile. Most browsers are set to automatically accept cookies. Every user can configure his or her browser to accept or reject all or only certain cookies, or to ask for permission before placing a cookie during a session. Check the documentation for your specific browser or its “help” pages to find out how to do this. To use aka-aki, however, it is necessary to accept cookies. The use of cookies by advertisers and other third parties on aka-aki underlies the data protection guidelines of that advertiser or third party. The data protection guidelines of aka-aki do not apply in such cases.
16. Correction, update and deletion of information: Members of aka-aki can process, modify, correct, update, or partially or fully delete their personal data at any time. Users can also cancel their membership at any time without reason by accessing the option “home > my data” and clicking the button “delete account now” there. By cancelling one’s membership, the entire dataset stored in the user profile will be completely deleted or, if we are legally obliged to store this data for a certain time period, the profile will be locked and then deleted. The user’s relationship with aka-aki ends upon cancellation of membership.
17. Security of member accounts: aka-aki members’ accounts are protected by a password that each individual member chooses. aka-aki does not take any further steps to protect the data stored on the aka-aki network by a user from access through third parties. Furthermore, only aka-aki employees have access to user data if their job position requires them to access such data. Despite these preventive measures, aka-aki cannot ensure the security of members’ account data. Due to the potential threat of illegal procuration of access to data, errors in hardware or software and other factors, security gaps cannot be fully debarred.
18. Public forums on the aka-aki network: Information that users publish in any public forums on aka-aki, e.g. in weblogs (“blogs”), postings, ads, etc. can be seen, read, and commented on by other aka-aki users.
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General Information
19. Spam protection: If you do not wish to receive any more aki messages from a particular user or sticker community, you can select “ignore” on the profile page of the sender. This can be done on your cell phone or on the aka-aki website. After clicking “ignore”, you will no longer receive any more messages from that person or sticker community.
20. Support: If you take advantage of our support through the contact form or user “support” option, your enquiry will be stored in a database together with the details you voluntarily make there (if applicable). Our support team only uses this information to process your enquiry. Data compiled in this manner is also used by aka-aki for statistical analyses. Neither the raw data, nor the results of these analyses are made accessible in part or whole to third parties.
21. Access to the aka-aki server: We store your data on highly secure aka-aki servers located in Germany. Only a small number of specially authorised people have access to these servers. Information pertaining to your identity is only collected by us if you have explicitly given us permission to do so.
22. Disclosure of personal information to third parties: No personal data, i.e. data that can identify a person, is disclosed to third parties.
23. Google Analytics: This website uses Google Analytics, a web analysis service provided by Google Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses so-called “cookies”, small text packets that are stored on your computer and used to analyse your use of a website. The information generated by the cookie about your use of a website (including your IP address) is transferred to Google in the United States and stored there. Google uses this information to evaluate your use of a website, to compile reports about a website’s activities for that website’s operator, and to provide services related to Internet and website use. Google will also disclose this information to third parties if need be, e.g. if it is legally required to do so or if third parties have been contracted by Google to process this data. Google will by no means link your IP address to any other Google data. You can prevent the installation of cookies by configuring the appropriate settings in your browser software. Please note, however, that you might not be able to use all of the functions of this website to their full extent if you do so. By using this website, you agree that the data collected about you will be processed by Google in the manner and for the purpose described here.
24. Modification of this Data Protection Notice: aka-aki reserves the right to modify this Data Protection Notice at any time in observance of the data protection guidelines stipulated by German law. Information on any such changes will be presented to users upon logging onto the website.
25. Questions and comments: If you have any questions, comments or suggestions regarding the protection of your data, please send us an email at privacy@aka-aki.com.
Last updated: September 21th, 2009
