Privacy Policy for Public review
We value your privacy. With this policy, we set out your privacy rights and how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and store your personal data.

Terms we use in this policy
When we say “Public review”, “we”, “our”, or “us”, we mean Public review, which is the entity responsible for processing your personal data.

When we say “website” or “platform”, we mean the Public review website located at https://publicreview.net/ and any associated applications.

Third-party websites
Our platform may contain links to other websites, but that doesn’t imply endorsement. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of these third-party websites as their procedures for collecting, handling, and processing personal data may differ from ours.

Privacy Notice for Public review
We’re an open platform. Because we’re an open platform, when you write a review, the review and your Public review profile will be visible to anyone who visits our platform. By clicking on your profile, such visitors can see your country location and all the reviews you’ve written, including the locations and products you’ve reviewed, and your product photos or videos. Similarly, if you’re a business user and reply to a review about your company, this will also be visible on our platform. So please remember that depending on the information you add to your Public review profile and the username you choose, you may or may not be anonymous.

Personal Data We Collect
Personal data refers to any information that relates to an identifiable individual. When you engage with our platform, create an account, submit reviews, or use our services, we may collect and process the following personal data about you:

• Contact Information: Your name, email address, or any other contact details you provide.
  
  
• Device and Location Information: Your IP address, browser settings, and location.
  
  
• User Account Information: Your username, password, photo, location, and preferred language.
  
  
• Business Account Information: Your password, company name, domain, and additional information added to your business profile.
  
  
• Usage and Profiling Information: Your search history, interactions with our platform, and engagement with emails.
  
  
• Review and Rating Information: Details about your reviews, including business/product reviewed, review content, star rating, product photos/videos provided, review dates, reference numbers, and order IDs.
  
  
• Viewership and Interactions: Information about views, likes, and the usefulness of your reviews to others.
  
  
• Reports and Replies: Details about reports and replies to reviews from your business account, including reported review details and dates.
  
  
• Verification Data: Information about user or business account verification, including verification badges and submitted verification documents.
  
  
• Questions Asked: Information about questions asked on a business's website, including question details and business responses.
  
  
• Data from "Find Reviewer" Tool: Information disclosed to businesses via the "Find Reviewer" tool, such as full name, phone number, email address, and reference ID.
  
  
• Preferences Information: Selected account preferences, consents, newsletter preferences, and cookie preferences.
• Communication Information: Communications received from you, including review notifications, feedback, and queries, along with associated metadata.
  
  
• Call Recordings: Recordings of inbound and outbound telephone calls made to or by Public review for training, quality control, and compliance purposes.
  
  
• Information from Social Networks: Information collected when you connect your Public review profile with social media profiles, including name, username, email address, and profile photo.

We request that you refrain from sharing sensitive personal documents or data with us, such as information revealing ethnic origin, religious beliefs, or health information, whether about yourself or others.

How We Collect Personal Data
The personal data we process is primarily collected directly from you when you provide your details to create an account with us or interact with our platform. This includes your usage and profiling information, such as your interactions with our platform or marketing emails, such as leaving reviews or posting replies to reviews.

Sometimes, we receive information about you from third parties. For instance, if you sign up for a Public review account via a social media platform like Facebook, your account is automatically pre-filled with the information we receive from them. Similarly, when a business requests us to send a review invitation to you on their behalf, they provide us with your name, email address, and a reference number, such as an order ID.

Additionally, we generate or collect information automatically from your computer or device as you use our services. This includes data such as your IP address, location, device and browser information, and usage and profiling information, such as your interactions with our platform or marketing emails.

Controller of Your Personal Data
If you've received invitations to write reviews on Public review from businesses that utilize our services, or from us on their behalf, those businesses will act as the data controllers responsible for those invitations and any associated personal data. If you have inquiries about such invitations or wish to exercise your rights regarding any data used in that context, kindly contact the relevant businesses directly, as we are unable to assist in this regard.

For all other personal data associated with our platform, such as information provided when creating an account, leaving a review, or submitting a reply, Public review is the data controller.

Why and How We Use Your Personal Data

We may utilize your personal data for the following purposes:

1. Provide Services: Deliver our services to you, including displaying your reviews, granting access to your user account or company's business account, and facilitating interaction with our platform.
2. Identification: Identify you as a registered user when you log into our platform.
3. Improvement: Enhance our platform and services, including data analysis, audits, and identifying usage trends.
4. Customer Service: Respond to your inquiries and provide customer support.
5. Newsletters: Send you newsletters if you have subscribed.
6. Internal Business Purposes: Engage in internal business activities such as data analysis, fraud prevention, and product development.
7. Training and Quality Control: Train staff and improve service quality.
8. Legal Compliance: Exercise or comply with our legal rights and obligations, including regulatory and auditing purposes.
9. Authenticity and Verification: Verify the authenticity of your reviews and contact you if necessary to verify your review or experience.
10. Feedback and Notifications: Provide feedback on your reviews, notify you about review activity related to your company, and inform you about user feedback concerning your responses to reviews.
11. Enforcement: Enforce our Terms & Conditions for both user and business accounts.

We process your personal data to:

1. Perform Contractual Obligations: Fulfill our contract with you or your company.
2. Legal Compliance: Comply with legal rights and obligations and operate in accordance with applicable laws.
3. Legitimate Business Interests: Pursue legitimate interests related to operating our platform, ensuring relevance, adequacy, and limited processing to safeguard your rights and freedoms.
4. Legal Claims: Establish, exercise, or defend legal claims as necessary.

Where you have provided consent for specific processing activities, such as subscribing to newsletters or accepting certain cookies, you can revoke consent at any time. However, we may continue processing your information if justified by other legal bases mentioned above.

You have the right to object to or request restriction of processing of your personal data. Please refer to 'Your Rights' below for more details.

Who May Access Your Personal Data?

Your Personal Data on Public review:
We share your reviews on our platform to enable others to learn about your experiences with specific businesses. When you write a review, other users of our platform can see your username, country location, all reviews you've written (including reviewed locations and products, and any associated media), and other information linked to your public profile. They can also view whether you've marked other reviews as "useful."

Please note that if you've chosen to use your real name as your username, this may reveal your identity. We advise careful consideration regarding the information you share on our platform, as the level of detail provided may impact your anonymity.

If you connect to a social network, certain information from your social network profile may be collected and used to identify you on our platform. This includes your profile photo, name, birth year, and approximate location, subject to your privacy settings on the social network. Users of our platform can use this information to identify the reviews you've written.

If you've opted for anonymity by not using your name for your Public review username, be aware that information from social networks can partially or fully reveal your identity, enabling identification of your reviews.

Your Personal Data on Public review as a Business Account Holder:
When you create a business account on behalf of your company, we disclose your company name, address, domain, country, and any other information connected to your company's public profile. Please exercise caution when determining which information to disclose on the website, as the level of detail provided may involve personal data disclosure.

Additionally, other information provided by you on the website, including your responses to user reviews about your company, is made available to other users of the website.

Your Personal Data Shared with Other Services, Websites, and Businesses:
Public review's objective is to enhance the exposure and availability of reviews. Therefore, we allow other services to display reviews created on our platform, including companies' responses to reviews. This broader dissemination increases audience reach and consumer awareness of Public review and its reviews.

Categories of third-party services and companies that may display your reviews, along with your public user profile or business account responses, include:

• Search engines like Google and Bing.
• Businesses reviewed on Public review .
• Businesses inviting you to review a product.
• Consumer portals, business portals, price comparison websites, and shopping guides.
• Application partners and platforms such as Prestashop, Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce.
• Similar websites where reviews are deemed relevant for user searches.
• Social networks.
  
  

If you write a review on Public review in response to an invitation from a business via our review invitation services, that business can associate your review with their invitation.

We do not share documentation you provide to verify your experience with a reviewed business. However, if you have a reference number or order ID, we may pass that information to the business, unless instructed otherwise by you. Information provided when replying to a message sent by a reviewed business using the Find Reviewer tool is also shared with the reviewed business.

Your Personal Data Shared with Data Processors:
We share your personal data with selected third parties, including Public review subsidiaries, to support the technical operation of our platform and service delivery. These third parties act as data processors for personal data for which we are the data controller. We have data processing agreements in place with these entities, ensuring compliance with our instructions regarding data processing.

Other Disclosures:
In addition to the above, we may disclose your personal data in the following circumstances:

• To comply with laws, legal processes, and requests from public and government authorities.
• To cooperate with regulatory bodies and government authorities in investigations or case referrals.
• To enforce our User Terms & Conditions, Guidelines for Reviewers, Business Terms & Conditions, and Guidelines for Businesses.
• To protect our operations, affiliates, rights, privacy, safety, or property, and/or those of our users or others.
• To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding suspected or actual prohibited activities, including fraud and misuse of our platform.
• In the event of any reorganization, merger, acquisition, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of our business or assets.

Duration of Personal Data Storage

We retain your data only for as long as necessary, or as required by law. This duration depends on the purpose of data collection and whether there's a continuing legal basis (such as contract fulfillment, legal compliance, or legitimate interests). When we no longer require your data for valid reasons, we will either delete it or anonymize it to prevent identification. Data treatment varies based on its usage, but you can request deletion of your personal data at any time (refer to ‘Your Rights’ below).

• Personal Data Provided by You: Your data, including reviews, is retained for as long as you have a Public review account or as needed to provide services. If you opt to delete your account, we'll retain a log containing your name, email address, and the deletion date for three years. Certain information may be retained even after account deletion for reasons such as security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, and legitimate business interests.
  
  
• Personal Data Received from Companies: Data received from companies using our automated services to send review invitations on their behalf is kept for three years.
  
  

We may retain certain data for extended periods to meet legal or regulatory requirements, prevent fraud or abuse, and safeguard our legitimate business interests.


Your Rights

If you have a Public review user account, you can access, edit, download, or delete the key personal data associated with your profile anytime by logging into your account. Additionally, you can manage your email subscription preferences from your account settings.

You also possess rights regarding the personal data we hold about you. These rights may be subject to limitations, such as when fulfilling your request would reveal personal data about another individual, or if deletion conflicts with legal obligations or compelling legitimate interests. If you have unresolved concerns, you retain the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority. For further guidance on this matter, please refer to the Privacy section of our Support Center.

Access and Download Your Personal Data

If you have a Public review user account, you can log in to view and download information related to your account, including your reviews. Instructions for accessing and downloading this data are available in the Privacy section of our Support Center.

If you possess a business account on Public review or if you do not have an account, you can request information about your personal data by emailing [email protected].

Correction and Deletion of Your Personal Data

If any of the personal data we hold about you is inaccurate, misleading, or if your circumstances change, or if you no longer wish to maintain a presence on the platform, you have the option to correct, edit, or delete the information yourself via your Public review user account. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] to request corrections or deletions.

Refer to the 'How Long Do We Store Your Personal Data?' section for further details on data deletion.

Other Rights

In addition to the aforementioned rights concerning your personal data, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data and to request restrictions on its processing. This is particularly applicable when processing your data is not necessary to meet contractual or legal requirements, such as for direct marketing purposes.

If we have sought your consent for processing, you may withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw consent through the provided functionality within the relevant product feature or by contacting us (see 'Contact Us' below). Withdrawal of consent will not affect any processing already conducted by Public review at the time of withdrawal.


Children’s Information

Our platform is not intended for children under the age of 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from individuals in this age group. If you become aware that a child under the age of 16 has provided us with their personal data, please contact us using the information provided below.


Changes to This Policy

We reserve the right to modify this policy periodically. Changes may be required due to evolving laws, regulations, industry standards, alterations to our services, or business developments. Any updates will be posted on this page, and we encourage you to review our Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed.

If significant changes are made that substantially affect your privacy rights, we will provide additional notice, such as via email or through our platform. Your continued use of our platform or services following the publication or distribution of a notice regarding policy changes indicates your acceptance and agreement to the updated policy.


Contact Information

We aim to ensure clarity and transparency regarding our data processing practices. If you have any questions about how we handle your personal data or wish to exercise your rights under our policy, please don't hesitate to contact our Data Protection Officer at [email protected].

You can also reach us by mail at:

Public review
[email protected]
[email protected]

If contacting us doesn't resolve your concern, you have further options. For example, you may file a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, such as Data Protection Agency. Additional information can be found in the Privacy section of our Support Center.

Furthermore, you can access additional resources about data privacy in our Support Center.