1. Who we are
SplashArk is operated by SplashArk, Inc., a Texas corporation with its principal office at 7600 Sterling Springs Lane, Katy, TX 77493, United States (“SplashArk”, “we”, “us”). SplashArk, Inc. is the controller of the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us about privacy at any time at info@splashark.com (subject line “Privacy”).
2. What this policy covers
This policy applies to the SplashArk mobile apps, the website at splashark.com, the web app at splashark.io, WINTA AI, and every related feature, including the feed, marketplace, services bookings, live streaming, HLS broadcast, pay-per-view, tips, messaging and calls, invoicing and payments (together, the “Services”). It applies to everyone who uses the Services: buyers, sellers, service providers, creators, viewers and visitors.
When you buy from or book with another user, that user may also handle your information (for example, a delivery address or appointment details). They are responsible for how they use it and must follow our Terms & Conditions and applicable law.
3. Information we collect
Information you give us
- Account details: name, username, email address, phone number, password, date of birth, country and preferred language.
- Profile details: profile photo, bio, business name, categories, service area, opening hours and anything else you add to your public profile.
- Listings and content: photos, videos, live streams, captions, product and service descriptions, prices, deposits, refund policies, comments, reviews and ratings.
- Transactions and bookings: what you buy, sell or book, amounts, dates, delivery or service addresses, invoices, offers, tips, pay-per-view purchases and dispute records.
- Payout details: the bank account or mobile-money wallet you use to receive earnings.
- Communications: messages you send to other users, call records (such as time and duration), messages with our support team, and your conversations with WINTA AI.
- Reports and feedback: reports you make about content or users, survey responses, and feedback.
- Referral and partner information: referral codes you share or use, and for marketing partners, the application details, social channels and tax information you provide.
Information we collect automatically
- Device and log data: device model, operating system, app version, language, IP address, crash reports, and timestamps.
- Usage data: pages and screens viewed, searches, taps, time spent, streams watched, and how you interact with posts and listings.
- Location: approximate location from your IP address, and precise location only if you allow it in your device settings. We use location to show nearby services and listings and to apply sellers' geo-fenced selling areas.
- Identifiers and cookies: app instance IDs, advertising IDs (subject to your device settings), and cookies or similar technologies described in section 12.
Information from others
- Payment partners (Stripe and PawaPay) tell us whether a payment succeeded, the payment method type, and fraud-risk signals.
- Verification partners confirm identity documents and, where applicable, background check results.
- Other users may provide information about you, for example in reviews, messages, reports or disputes.
- Safety organizations such as child-protection hash databases help us identify known illegal content.
4. Verification and sensitive data
To keep the marketplace safe, sellers and service providers pass through verification tiers based on risk (see our Terms). Depending on your tier and country, this may involve:
- Government ID: an image of a valid, unexpired photo ID, your legal name, date of birth and address.
- Biometric check: a live selfie that is compared with your ID photo to confirm you are the person on the document. We use the resulting facial data only for this verification and fraud prevention, never for advertising or to identify you in other content. We ask for your explicit consent before collecting it, and we delete the facial template once verification is complete, within 30 days at most, unless the law requires us to keep it longer.
- Background checks: for in-person service providers where this is lawful and available (for example, criminal record and sex-offender registry checks in the United States). We ask for your written authorization first and give you the notices required by laws such as the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act. If a check affects your account, you can see the result and dispute it.
- Precise location: only with your permission, and you can turn it off at any time in your device settings.
We treat this information as sensitive. Access is restricted to staff and partners who need it, and we do not use it to infer characteristics about you.
5. How we use information
- To provide the Services: create your account, show your storefront, process orders, bookings, tips and pay-per-view access, deliver messages and calls, run live streams, and pay out your earnings.
- To keep people safe: verify users, detect and prevent fraud, scams, money laundering and account takeovers, moderate content, enforce our Terms, and find, remove and report child sexual abuse and exploitation.
- To protect payments: apply hold windows, trust tiers and reserves, investigate disputes and chargebacks, and issue refunds.
- To personalize: recommend posts, products, services and live streams, and show relevant listings near you.
- To support you: answer questions, resolve disputes and power WINTA AI.
- To improve: measure performance, fix bugs, and develop new features, using de-identified or aggregated data where we can.
- To communicate: send service messages (receipts, booking reminders, security alerts) and, with your permission where required, news and promotions.
- To meet legal obligations: keep tax and transaction records, respond to lawful requests, and comply with financial and child-protection laws.
6. Legal bases
Where laws such as the EU and UK GDPR, Cameroon’s Law No. 2024/017 or similar laws require a legal basis, we rely on:
| Legal basis | Examples |
|---|---|
| Performing our contract with you | Running your account, processing orders and bookings, paying out earnings, delivering messages. |
| Legitimate interests | Fraud prevention, platform security, content moderation, product improvement and personalization. We balance these against your rights, and you can object. |
| Consent | Biometric verification, precise location, optional cookies, personalized advertising and marketing messages where required. You can withdraw consent at any time. |
| Legal obligation | Tax and accounting records, anti-money-laundering checks, reporting child sexual abuse material, and responding to lawful orders. |
| Vital interests and public interest | Acting to protect someone’s life or physical safety, including children. |
7. AI, WINTA and automated decisions
WINTA AI uses your questions and relevant account context (such as your listings or recent orders) to answer you. Conversations with WINTA are stored with your account so you can see your history and so we can improve quality and safety. Don’t share passwords or full card numbers with WINTA.
We also use automated systems, including machine learning, to rank content, detect spam and fraud, flag harmful content and set payment hold windows. When an automated system contributes to a decision with a significant effect on you, such as suspending your account or holding your funds, a trained person reviews it on request, and you can explain your side and appeal. We do not use your private messages, ID documents or biometric data to train general-purpose AI models.
8. Messages, calls and live streams
Messages and calls are private between participants, and we don’t share your phone number with the people you talk to. Messages and files are protected in transit and stored securely. To keep the community safe, we use automated tools to scan messages, files and streams for spam, scams, malware and child-safety threats, and trained staff may review content that is reported or flagged. We do not listen to audio or video calls in real time. Live streams and public posts are visible to the audience you choose and may be recorded or replayed where you enable it.
10. Payments
Card payments are processed by Stripe and mobile-money payments by PawaPay. They collect and process your payment credentials under their own privacy policies, and we recommend you read them. We receive only what we need, such as the payment status, the method type, the last digits of a card, and fraud signals. We do not store full card numbers or mobile-money PINs.
11. Advertising and marketing
We may show promoted posts and ads inside SplashArk, and we may advertise SplashArk on other services. Where we use personal information for personalized advertising, we do so only as the law allows: with your consent where required, and with the ability to opt out everywhere else, including through your device’s ad settings and browser signals such as Global Privacy Control. We never use sensitive data, or data from users we know are under 18, for personalized advertising.
You can unsubscribe from marketing emails using the link in any email, and from push notifications in your device settings. Service messages about your account, orders and security will still reach you.
13. International transfers
SplashArk is based in the United States and serves people in many countries, so your information may be processed in the United States and other countries where we or our service providers operate. When we transfer personal information across borders, we protect it with safeguards required by law, such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK addendum, or equivalent mechanisms under Cameroonian and other African data-protection laws, and we require recipients to protect it to the standard described in this policy.
14. How long we keep data
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Account and profile | While your account is open. Deleted or anonymized within 90 days after you close it, except as listed below. |
| Transactions, invoices and payouts | Up to 7 years, to meet tax, accounting and anti-fraud obligations. |
| ID verification records | For as long as you are a verified seller or provider, plus the period required by law. Facial templates are deleted within 30 days of verification. |
| Messages and WINTA conversations | Until you or the other participants delete them, or your account is closed, unless they are needed for an open dispute or investigation. |
| Safety and enforcement records | As long as needed to prevent repeat abuse, and as required by law. Evidence of child sexual abuse material is preserved and handled only as required by law. |
| Logs and analytics | Generally up to 24 months, then deleted or aggregated. |
15. Security
We protect information with administrative, technical and physical safeguards, including encryption in transit, access controls based on need-to-know, monitoring for suspicious activity, and security reviews of new features. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password and never share one-time codes. If a security breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.
16. Your rights and choices
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you and receive a copy in a portable format.
- Correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Delete your account and personal information, subject to the legal exceptions above.
- Object to or restrict certain processing, including processing based on legitimate interests and direct marketing.
- Withdraw consent for biometric verification, precise location, optional cookies or marketing, without affecting earlier processing.
- Request human review of significant automated decisions and appeal our decisions.
You can change most settings and download or delete your data in the app under Settings. You can also email info@splashark.com with the subject line “Privacy request”. We will verify your identity before acting, and we respond within 30 days (or sooner if your local law requires). You can use an authorized agent where the law allows. We will never treat you differently for exercising your rights.
17. Deleting your account
In the app: open SplashArk, go to Settings and choose Delete account. You’ll be asked to confirm.
Without the app: email info@splashark.com from the address linked to your account with the subject line “Delete my SplashArk account”, and include your username. We’ll verify the request and confirm when it’s done.
When you delete your account, your profile, listings, posts and personal information are deleted or anonymized within 90 days. We keep only what section 14 describes, such as transaction records required for tax and anti-fraud purposes. Pending orders, bookings, disputes and payouts are completed first, so please withdraw any available balance before you delete. You can also ask us to delete specific data without closing your account.
18. Regional information
Cameroon and other African countries
We process personal data in line with Cameroon’s Law No. 2024/017 of 23 December 2024 on personal data protection and the data-protection laws of other countries where we operate, such as Nigeria’s Data Protection Act 2023, Kenya’s Data Protection Act 2019, Ghana’s Data Protection Act 2012 and South Africa’s POPIA. You can exercise the rights in section 16 and complain to your national data-protection authority.
European Economic Area, United Kingdom and Switzerland
You have the rights described in section 16 under the GDPR, UK GDPR or Swiss law, including the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.
United States
Residents of California and other U.S. states with privacy laws have the right to know what personal information we collect, use and disclose; to delete and correct it; to opt out of targeted advertising and any “sale” or “sharing” of personal information; to limit the use of sensitive personal information; and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. We do not sell personal information for money. In the past 12 months we collected the categories described in section 3 (identifiers, commercial information, internet activity, geolocation, audio or visual content, professional information for providers, and sensitive information such as government ID and biometric data for verification), for the purposes in section 5, and disclosed them to the recipients in section 9. We honor Global Privacy Control signals as an opt-out request. If we deny your request, you can appeal by replying to our decision.
Illinois, Texas and Washington residents: we collect biometric identifiers only with your consent, only for identity verification and fraud prevention, and we destroy them as described in section 14.
19. Children and teens
SplashArk is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Where local law sets a higher age for consent to data processing (for example, up to 16 in parts of the EU), users below that age need a parent or guardian’s consent. Users aged 13 to 17 need a parent or guardian’s consent to create an account.
Teen accounts have extra protections: no personalized advertising, restrictions on messages from adults they don’t know, and no sending or receiving money with adults outside a linked family account. Selling or receiving payouts requires the verified consent and identity of a parent or guardian.
If you believe a child under 13 has an account, or that a child is at risk, report it in the app or email info@splashark.com. We will act quickly, delete the child’s information where appropriate, and involve authorities when a child may be in danger. Our Child Safety Standard explains our zero-tolerance approach.
20. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as our Services and the law change. If a change is material, we will notify you in the app or by email at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless the change is required sooner by law. The effective date at the top shows when this policy was last updated.
21. Contact us
SplashArk, Inc., Attn: Privacy, 7600 Sterling Springs Lane, Katy, TX 77493, United States. Email: info@splashark.com (subject line “Privacy”). You can also use our contact form.