🔒 Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Welcome to Animalsss Marketplace, a Customer-to-Customer (C2C) platform operated by Gaongram Tech Pvt Ltd ("we," "our," "us"). This Privacy Policy explains how we handle your personal data when you access or use our website, mobile application, and related services (collectively, the "Platform").

We are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring that your personal data is handled in a safe, transparent, and responsible manner. This policy applies to all users of the Platform — buyers, sellers, and visitors — across all countries we serve: India, United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Nepal, South Africa, and Brazil.

2. Who We Are — Data Controller

Gaongram Tech Pvt Ltd is the primary data controller responsible for your personal data. We are a company registered in India, operating the Animalsss Marketplace platform globally.

For any privacy-related inquiries, questions about your data, or to exercise your data rights, please contact us through our Contact Us form — this is the designated channel for all privacy and data protection communications.

3. Personal Data We Collect

We collect different types of personal data depending on how you interact with our Platform. All data collection is done with transparency and for specified, legitimate purposes. Here is a comprehensive breakdown:

3.1 Data You Provide Directly

3.2 Data Collected Automatically

3.3 Data We Do NOT Collect

We want to be clear about what we do not collect or access:

• Financial Data: We do NOT collect or store credit card numbers, bank account details, or payment information. All transactions happen directly between buyers and sellers outside our platform. We are not a payment processor.
• Government IDs: We do NOT collect national ID numbers, passports, driver's licenses, or tax identification numbers.
• Sensitive Personal Data: We do NOT intentionally collect data about race, religion, political opinions, health conditions, biometric data, or sexual orientation.

4. How We Use Your Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes. Each purpose is tied to a specific legal basis under applicable data protection laws (including GDPR):

• Platform Operation & Service Delivery (Legal Basis: Contractual Necessity): To create and manage your account, display your listings to other users, facilitate chat communication and offers, process phone number sharing, and deliver the core C2C marketplace functionality.
• Communication (Legal Basis: Legitimate Interest): To send you notifications about messages, offers, phone share requests, listing updates, and platform announcements. To respond to your inquiries submitted via the Contact Us form.
• Safety & Security (Legal Basis: Legitimate Interest & Legal Obligation): To detect and prevent fraud, spam, abuse, and illegal activity. To enforce our Terms & Conditions. To comply with legal obligations and respond to lawful requests from authorities.
• Improvement & Analytics (Legal Basis: Legitimate Interest): To analyze usage patterns, understand how users interact with our platform, identify areas for improvement, and develop new features. This data is aggregated and anonymized where possible.
• Marketing & Advertising (Legal Basis: Consent): To display Google AdSense advertisements on our platform. We do not send marketing emails or newsletters unless you have explicitly opted in.
• Legal Compliance (Legal Basis: Legal Obligation): To comply with applicable laws, regulations, court orders, and government requests across all jurisdictions where we operate.

5. Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom, or any jurisdiction with similar data protection laws, we process your personal data under the following legal bases:

• Consent: Where you have given clear consent for us to process your personal data for a specific purpose (e.g., cookies that are not strictly necessary).
• Contractual Necessity: Processing necessary to perform our contract with you — i.e., to provide the Animalsss Marketplace services as described in our Terms & Conditions.
• Legitimate Interests: Processing necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. This includes improving our platform, ensuring security, and communicating with you about your account.
• Legal Obligation: Processing necessary to comply with legal or regulatory obligations.

6. How We Share Your Data

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data to third parties. However, we may share your data in the following limited circumstances:

• With Other Users (Platform Functionality): Your public profile information and listing details are visible to other users of the Platform. Your phone number is shared only when both you and another user mutually consent through our Phone Number Share feature.
• With Service Providers: We engage third-party service providers for hosting (cloud servers), analytics, email delivery, and other operational services. These providers are contractually bound to process your data only on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy.
• With Advertising Partners: We use Google AdSense to display advertisements. Google may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to our website or other websites. See Section 10 for more on cookies.
• For Legal Reasons: We may disclose your data if required to do so by law, court order, or governmental authority, or if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, your safety, or the safety of others.
• Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your data may be transferred as part of that transaction. You will be notified via the Platform of any such change in ownership.

7. Data Retention — How Long We Keep Your Data

We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required by law. Our retention practices are as follows:

• Active Account Data: Retained for the entire duration that your account is active on the Platform.
• Deleted Account Data: Upon account deletion, your personal data is removed from active systems within 30 days. Some data may be retained in backups for up to 90 days before permanent deletion.
• Listing Data: Retained for as long as the listing is active. Deleted listings are removed from public view immediately and purged from our systems within 30 days.
• Chat Messages: Retained for the lifetime of your account to provide a complete communication history. Deleted upon account deletion.
• Community Contributions: Posts, comments, and Q&A content may be retained even after account deletion (in anonymized form) to preserve the integrity of community discussions. Your name will be replaced with "Deleted User."
• Usage Analytics: Aggregated and anonymized analytics data may be retained indefinitely.
• Legal Holds: Data subject to legal holds or required for compliance with legal obligations may be retained beyond standard deletion timelines.

8. Data Security — How We Protect Your Data

We implement industry-standard technical and organizational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. Our security practices include:

• Encryption: Data transmitted between your browser and our servers is encrypted using TLS (Transport Layer Security). Passwords are stored using strong, one-way hashing algorithms.
• Access Controls: Access to personal data is restricted to authorized personnel who require it to perform their job functions. All access is logged and monitored.
• Regular Audits: We conduct periodic security assessments and vulnerability scans of our systems and infrastructure.
• Secure Development: Our codebase undergoes security review, and we follow secure coding practices including input validation, parameterized queries, and protection against common web vulnerabilities (XSS, CSRF, SQL injection).
• Data Minimization: We collect only the data we need and limit processing to specified purposes.

9. International Data Transfers

As a global platform, your personal data may be transferred to, stored on, and processed on servers located in India (our primary data centre) and in other countries where our service providers or cloud infrastructure operate.

For EEA and UK users: When we transfer your data outside the EEA or UK, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, including:

• Transferring to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of data protection by the European Commission or UK Government.
• Using Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) approved by the European Commission or UK Information Commissioner's Office.
• Implementing supplementary technical and organizational measures as needed.

By using our Platform, you acknowledge that your data may be transferred internationally as described in this policy.

10. Cookie Policy

Our Platform uses cookies and similar tracking technologies to enhance your browsing experience, analyze usage, and serve advertisements. By using our Platform, you consent to the use of cookies as described in this policy.

10.1 Types of Cookies We Use

• Essential Cookies (Strictly Necessary): These cookies are required for the Platform to function. They enable core features like user authentication (keeping you logged in), security (CSRF protection), and session management. The Platform cannot operate without these cookies.
• Preference & Functional Cookies: These cookies remember your preferences — such as language settings, location preferences, and display options — to provide a more personalized experience.
• Analytics & Performance Cookies: We use these cookies to understand how users interact with our Platform — which pages are visited, time spent, and features used. This data helps us improve the Platform. We use aggregated and anonymized analytics.
• Advertising & Targeting Cookies: We use Google AdSense to display advertisements. Google and its partners use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to our website or other websites. These cookies enable interest-based advertising. You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings or www.aboutads.info.

10.2 Managing Cookies

You can control and manage cookies through your browser settings. Most browsers allow you to block or delete cookies. However, disabling essential cookies may prevent you from using certain features of our Platform. For more information about managing cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

11. Your Data Rights

Depending on your location and applicable data protection laws, you may have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Right to Access: You have the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you and information about how we process it.
• Right to Rectification: You have the right to request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold about you.
• Right to Erasure ("Right to be Forgotten"): You have the right to request deletion of your personal data, subject to certain exceptions (e.g., legal obligations, community content integrity).
• Right to Restrict Processing: You have the right to request that we limit the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
• Right to Data Portability: You have the right to receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format and to transmit it to another controller.
• Right to Object: You have the right to object to processing of your personal data based on legitimate interests, including for direct marketing purposes.
• Right to Withdraw Consent: Where processing is based on consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.
• Right to Lodge a Complaint: You have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority in your country of residence if you believe our processing violates applicable data protection law.

12. Country-Specific Privacy Rights

In addition to the general rights described above, users in certain countries have additional rights under local law:

• India (Digital Personal Data Protection Act): Indian users have the right to access, correct, and erase their data, nominate another individual to exercise rights on their behalf, and file grievances. Contact us via our Contact Us form for any issues.
• United Kingdom (UK GDPR & Data Protection Act 2018): UK users enjoy all rights under the UK GDPR. The UK supervisory authority is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
• Australia (Privacy Act 1988): Australian users have rights under the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), including access and correction rights. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is the regulatory body.
• United States (CCPA — California Residents): California residents have the right to know what personal data is collected, to access their data, to request deletion, and to opt out of the sale of personal data. We do not sell personal data. For CCPA requests, contact us via our Contact Us form.
• Canada (PIPEDA): Canadian users have rights under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Contact us via our Contact Us form for any privacy issues.
• UAE (Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021): UAE users have rights including access, rectification, erasure, and the right to object. Contact us via our Contact Us form.
• Saudi Arabia (PDPL): Saudi users have rights under the Personal Data Protection Law. Contact us via our Contact Us form.
• Bangladesh (Digital Security Act): Bangladeshi users have data protection rights. Contact us via our Contact Us form for any inquiries.
• Nepal (Privacy Act 2018): Nepali users have privacy rights. Contact us via our Contact Us form.
• South Africa (POPIA): South African users have rights under the Protection of Personal Information Act. The Information Regulator is the supervisory authority. Contact us via our Contact Us form.
• Brazil (LGPD): Brazilian users have rights under the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados, including confirmation of processing, access, correction, anonymization, portability, and erasure. Contact us via our Contact Us form.

13. Children's Privacy

Our Platform is not intended for children under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from individuals under 18 years of age. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal data, please contact us immediately via our Contact Us form, and we will take steps to delete such data promptly.

If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected personal data from a child under 18 without verified parental consent, we will delete that data from our systems as quickly as possible.

14. Third-Party Links and Services

Our Platform may contain links to third-party websites, services, or applications that are not owned or controlled by Gaongram Tech Pvt Ltd. This Privacy Policy does not apply to those third-party services. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party service before providing your personal data.

In particular, our Platform uses Google AdSense to display advertisements. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads based on your visit to our Platform and/or other websites. You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings.

15. Data Breach Response Policy

In the unfortunate event of a data breach involving your personal data, we have established the following response protocol:

• Immediate Action: Upon discovering a breach, our security team will immediately contain the breach and secure our systems to prevent further unauthorized access.
• Investigation: We will conduct a thorough investigation to determine the scope, nature, and impact of the breach — what data was affected, how many users were impacted, and the root cause.
• Notification: We will notify affected users and relevant regulatory authorities as required by applicable law. Notifications will include: nature of the breach, categories of data affected, likely consequences, measures we have taken, and recommended steps for users to protect themselves.
• Remediation: We will implement measures to prevent similar breaches from occurring in the future, including system upgrades, policy changes, and additional security controls as needed.

16. Contact Us — Privacy Inquiries & Data Protection Office

Gaongram Tech Pvt Ltd is the data controller for personal data processed through Animalsss Marketplace.

For all privacy-related inquiries — including data access/deletion requests, questions about this policy, complaints, or to communicate with our Data Protection Office — please use our Contact Us form. This is the only channel for privacy and data protection communications.

We aim to respond to all privacy inquiries within 30 days (or sooner as required by applicable law). Please provide sufficient detail about your request or concern to help us address it promptly.

Our platform is open to users anywhere in the world, and this policy applies to all of them.

17. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, legal requirements, or platform features. When we make material changes, we will:

• Post the updated policy on this page with a new "Last Updated" date.
• Display a prominent notice on our Platform for a reasonable period.
• Notify registered users via the notification system or email for significant changes.

Your continued use of the Platform after the effective date of any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.