Candlemonk is aware of your interest in knowing how your information is put to use or shared with others. We thank you for your trust in us to handle your information with utmost care. This privacy policy of Candlemonk lets you know the information that’s collected from you when you opt to use any of Candlemonk’s platforms like its websites, webpages, services, products or mobile applications. It also lets you know how your information is stored or used or transferred or deleted. Please be aware that, by using or visiting or creating a user account by signing up on any of Candlemonk’s platforms, you are agreeing, accepting and giving consent to the practices as explained in this Privacy Policy Notice.
Upon creating a user account or profile with Candlemonk, we might gather information like your name, contact details (email Id, mobile phone number, etc.), demographic information, bank account details and other user experience centred information like your interest areas when it comes to writing or reading. Any information that you provide as part of creating your profile, like your name, profile picture, demographics, interests, etc. can be viewed by other registered users and non-registered visitors of Candlemonk’s platforms. Visitors to any of Candlemonk’s platforms, either registered or non-registered, would also be able to view your activities on Candlemonk. This includes the write-ups or articles you publish, the users following you, the users you follow, your engagement with the write-ups on the platform (likes, comments, views, reads, shares etc.,), the edit history of your write-ups etc. We also collect information based on your actions, like how you use the features and interact with pages on the platform, to further enhance your experience and to analyse user behaviour and patterns. This includes details of your interaction with the pages you view (time you spend and how much portion you read or view or engage) and your usage of other Candlemonk’s features. The information collected also includes details of your interactions, your IP address, your devices or browsers details including country, timezone,etc. and source from where you landed up in a particular page. These information are used to enhance and personalize your experience in using Candlemonk.
You can opt to sign in or sign up to Candlemonk using your accounts on other social media platforms or websites like Facebook, Google, etc. Upon doing so, we will collect the needed profile or account information about you from the social media or website account you used. We might update your Candlemonk account information by periodically collecting and storing information associated with that third-party website or social media account. This includes information like name, date of birth or age, gender, phone number, email address, city, country, interests, etc. We will not publish anything on your third-party account without permission from you. To know about the practices and details on what information might be disclosed by the third-party web platforms, refer to the respective privacy policies. In order to receive and make payments from and to Candlemonk, you would have to use third-party networks or platforms or payment gateways. And on doing so, you grant us your permission to pass to and receive from the third-party platform, your account information and data for payment purposes.
The write-ups published or drafted on Candlemonk are collected along with the associated information like pictures, comments, time stamps and names of users who engaged with the same. All these information are publicly viewable by visitors to Candlemonk. These information could be indexed by search engines and be republished elsewhere in accordance with our Terms and Conditions.
We would be using any of your contact information to get in touch with you when required. Thus, by sharing your contact details with Candlemonk, you consent to our using the same to contact you. We might also be maintaining logs or records of the calls or messages or communications or conversations between you and Candlemonk in any form.
We might use cookies, pixel tags, and other technologies to track and source information about any of your actions or activities while using or visiting Candlemonk. The same is applicable for both registered users and un-registered visitors. Your browsing or device information such as timezone, date-time stamp, IP address and location, date and time stamp, Candlemonk cookie ID (if applicable), URL, unique advertising or content identifiers (if applicable) etc. are collected as well.
Candlemonk does not share or transfer or sell your information to external parties for direct advertising or marketing purposes. However the information provided by you would be internally used by Candlemonk to show you relevant and contextual advertisements of external parties. We might enable a platform for advertisers or third parties to set the criteria to match their target audience based on demographics and interests or topics of concern, based on which users of Candlemonk would be identified and shown advertisements. Candlemonk will not share the audience’s details with the advertisers. A summarized report of the results of the advertising campaign will be shared ensuring no information of Candlemonk users are included or disclosed.
The information obtained from you is used to provide you the services offered on Candlemonk, get in touch with you regarding your usage, respond to your queries, to customize, personalize and suggest content and followers, to offer location and language customization, to display advertisements identified as relevant to you, to enhance our advertising and analytics systems, to measure the effectiveness of advertisement campaigns, for promotional purposes, such as newsletters, offers, promotions, etc., to comply with legal obligations where we need to investigate, prevent or take action regarding illegal activities, fraud and threating situations with respect to the safety of any person or violations of our Terms of Service or this Privacy Policy.
Your information might be transferred or shared with third-party service providers of Candlemonk, such as payment processors, banks, hosting providers, auditors, advisors, consultants, customer service and support providers. Your information might be shared with or can be accessed by subsidiaries and affiliates of Candlemonk LLP, whose use and disclosure of your information is subject to this Privacy Policy. You information might be shared or disclosed, as part of any sale, merger and transfer of our assets, acquisition or restructuring of all or part of our business, bankruptcy, or similar events. Your information might also be disclosed by us if required to do so by law. If required, your information might be disclosed to respond to claims asserted against us or, comply with legal process, enforce or administer our agreements and terms, for fraud prevention, investigation, and protect the rights, safety or property of Candlemonk, its users, or others. Your profile information like profile picture, name, interests, your write-ups and certain associated activity information is available to other registered users and unregistered visitors to Candlemonk and may be viewed publicly. Also, the content you post or information you share might get indexed by search engines. We might share comprehensive details of performance of advertisements or the content that you post in the form of reports or metrics or statistics, with the advertisers or publishers. We may share de-identified summarized aggregate information with third parties for analytics, marketing, research and other purposes. While the content or write-up published or posted on Candlemonk is owned by the user, by publishing on Candlemonk, you are allowing Candlemonk to use the same for its advertising purposes and for sharing them on its social media handles like Facebook page or Instagram page or Linkedin page for engaging its followers and page visitors.
We might use technologies like browser cookies to identify you when you attempt to sign in to Candlemonk. They are used by us to get you logged in, store and identify your preferences and content personalization. Your interactions with and within any of Candlemonk’s platforms might be tracked or recorded. The third party services used by us might place their own cookies in your browser. Their policy in terms of your privacy is not covered here and applies as mentioned in their respective sites or applications or platforms.
Based on details we collect from you and identify about you through your activity on Candlemonk, we might show you third party advertisements or third party content or content of Candlemonk’s users that might be relevant to you. We might share comprehensive details of performance of third party advertisements or third part content or content published by users of Candlemonk in the form of de-identified summarized aggregate information or reports or metrics or statistics, with the advertisers or publishers. Advertisers might be able to set filter criteria on user demographics and other details to get their advertisements reach their preferred audience. This information will be used internally by Candlemonk to enable the advertiser’s campaign. We do not disclose or share any of your personal or contact information with the advertisers without your consent. We might use third party network advertisers or website or media such as Google AdSenseand Facebook Audience Network to serve you advertisements on Candlemonk. These third parties might use tracking technologies to personalize advertisements or to measure the performance and effectiveness of their advertisements.
Some content on Candlemonk pages like “embeds” are hosted by third-parties and are embedded so that it gives the user a good experience. Candlemonk doesn’t monitor or determine or control what information third parties collect or do with them in these cases. Policies related to third-party embeds on Candlemonk are not covered here and would be covered by the privacy policy of the respective third-party services. If you decide to submit any information to a third party through these embeds, you are doing so at your own discretion. We recommend that you don’t share any of your information to any third-party through these embeds.
Candlemonk uses HTTPS/TLS encryption to protect the data that is transmitted to and from our platform. Still, no website is completely secure and we request you to follow safety measures to keep your information safe like having a strong private password for your account, using a known secured device, logging out after use, etc.
On opting to delete your account, all information linked to you like your personal information, write-ups, etc. will be removed from Candlemonk forever and can’t be restored again. Though visibility of your information on Candlemonk gets restricted instantly, it might take up to 90 days for us to delete all your information from our databases. Also, it may take several more days for your content and personal information to be de-indexed from search engines, depending on their practices. Alternatively if you opt to deactivate your account, your account will made inactive in which case all your informations and content you shared will be made invisible to visitors of Candlemonk. However, you can reactivate your account any time by logging in with your user credentials.
We do not knowingly allow anyone under the age of 13 to register on Candlemonk or collect personal information from them. In the case of getting to know that information about users less than the age of 13 has been collected, we will take measures to delete that same.
The content posted or published by users of Candlemonk are owned by the respective users and not by Candlemonk. Being a crowd-sourced user content platform, the pages might contain links to third-party sites. Candlemonk is not responsible or accountable for the practices of such third parties. Refer to their respective privacy policies for information on their practises.
If you are a resident of California, then under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), you have a right to request information about how we collected, used, or disclosed your personal information over the last 12 months. Subject to certain exceptions, you can request to delete any of your personal information. We do not knowingly collect household data. If you do not have a Candlemonk account, we will not have enough information about you to verify your ‘Right to Know’ and ‘Right to Delete’ requests since we do not keep sufficient information to re-identify and link you to a prior visit to Candlemonk.
Candlemonk gathers and stores information about its users to give them a customized and personalized reading experience. The data it shares with its service providers are less.
Information is processed to provide and improve the services, to collect usage statistics, to show contextual and relevant advertisements based on interests identified, to offer a customized and personalized reading experience, to publish and share user-generated content, to offer access to paid content, to compensate writers for their content, and to defend against spam, fraud, and other abuse of services.
Signed-in users of Candlemonk can publicly use its social features like bookmarking, liking, commenting or reporting a post, following other registered users or writers, sharing links to Candlemonk pages on social media platforms, or publishing own write-ups. Guest users or unregistered visitors to Candlemonk can read posts published by registered users, share links to Candlemonk pages on social media platforms and can check their public profile that displays personal information like name, qualification, education, profession, gender, country, etc. If you do not agree to this public usage, do not create an account or use the features of Candlemonk.
Search engines might index your Candlemonk profile page, your public activities on Candlemonk such as your write-up posts or pages, likes, comments, etc. Visitors registered or unregistered can share links to your content on social media and messaging platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, etc.
For logged out users or unregistered visitors, the data collected are Reading history, DNT status, Viewing history, IP address and Browser information. For logged in users the data collected are Name, Gender (Optional and non – public), Date of Birth (To verify age eligibility, non – public), City/Town - State – Country, Mobile Phone number (non public), Preferred languages to view content in (non-public), Interest areas to view content about, Hobbies (optional), Unique Username, Bio, Profile Image (optional), Profile Cover image (optional), Email address (non-public), Bank account details (for earnings pay-out to writers), Website (optional), Education or Qualification details (optional), Profession details (optional), URLs to social media pages (optional), Session activity, IP address, Browser information, Reading history (on Candlemonk only), Meta-data about Candlemonk page URLs saved by using the optional feature ‘Bookmark’ (to read later), Network interactions (recommends, follows, etc.), Posts, comments or responses by the user.
Candlemonk, in order to provide its services, shares required personal data with third-parties. The data protection offered by these third parties may or may not be on par with Candlemonk’s. The categories of recipients are Hosting, Storage, & Other Infrastructure, Security, Analytics, Advertising, Communication & Support, Payment Processors, Accounting.
Candlemonk provides its services in association with payment processors, using which users may receive their earnings pay-out for the write-ups published and pay for contests or subscriptions. These third party payment processors might gather and store personal details related to your payment history, bank account and billing information in order to provide their services. When you opt to delete your account with Candlemonk, we delete your personal data. However, deletion of your payment or billing information with your payment provider will be as per their privacy policy and practises and hence, Candlemonk has no say in it.
Candemonk gathers and stores your personal information to customize and personalize your reading experience by showing content relevant to the preferences and interests mentioned by you as well as those identified by us through your interactions and activities on Candlemonk. We also moderate the content using based on reports by fellow users for the purpose of fighting and preventing spam, fraud, and other forms of abuse and we may rely on algorithms for the same.
Due to the public nature of information and user content posted on Candlemonk, it might be possible for third parties to identify or derive personal data from posts, either by reading or added research or automated crawling or extraction and analysis. Users are free to provide alternate names of their choice while creating their account. If you do not agree with or accept the risks mentioned, you may not use the platform or its services.
Candlemonk is based out of India. By creating an account or using its Services, you are allowing and authorizing Candlemonk to collect, store, transfer, and use your information in India and any other country where we might operate.
Candlemonk stores and maintains your personal information connected with your account until you opt to delete your account. On opting to delete your account, all information linked to your account like your personal information, write-ups, etc. will be removed from Candlemonk forever and can’t be restored again. Though visibility of your information on Candlemonk gets restricted instantly, it might take up to 90 days for us to delete all your information from our databases. Also, it may take several more days for your content and personal information to be de-indexed from search engines, depending on their practices. Alternatively if you opt to deactivate your account, your account will made inactive in which case all your informations and content you shared will be made invisible to visitors of Candlemonk. However, you can reactivate your account any time by logging in with your user credentials.
India law lists eight types of personal data as sensitive personal data : 1) password 2) financial information such as bank account or credit card or debit card or other payment instrument details; 3) physical, physiological and mental health condition; 4) sexual orientation; 5) medical records and history; 6) biometric information; 7) any detail relating to the above clauses as provided to body corporate for providing service , 8) any of the information received under above clauses by body corporate for processing, stored or processed under lawful contract or otherwise.
Throughout this Privacy Policy, the terms ‘user information’ or ‘user data’ or ‘personal information’ or ‘data’ or ‘information’ or ‘details’ will include ‘sensitive personal information’ as well. By creating an account with or by using Candlemonk, you allow and authorize Candlemonk to collect, store, use, disclose and transfer your personal information including your sensitive personal data.
On opting to delete your account, all information linked to your account like your personal information (including sensitive personal data), write-ups, etc. will be removed from Candlemonk forever and can’t be restored again. Though visibility of your information on Candlemonk gets restricted instantly, it might take up to 90 days for us to delete all your personal information from our databases. Also, it may take several more days for your content and personal information to be de-indexed from search engines, depending on their practices. Alternatively if you opt to deactivate your account, your account will made inactive in which case all your personal information and content you shared will be made invisible and inaccessible to visitors of Candlemonk. However, you can reactivate your account any time by logging in with your user credentials.
Contact Us
If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our practices, please contact us at contact@candlemonk.com
