Being You

Privacy Policy

Draft for solicitor review — not in force until counsel signs off.

Being You — Privacy Policy

Operator: Being You (BeU), United Kingdom
Status: Draft for solicitor review — not legal advice and not in force until counsel signs off
Intended frameworks: UK GDPR / Data Protection Act 2018
Last updated: 2026-09-05

Our stance: you are not the product

You are not the product, you are the customer.

Being You does not sell personal data. We do not run ads on personal profiles or personal feeds. The platform is intended to be funded by subscriptions, professional tools, and optional paid promotion on professional surfaces — not by surveillance advertising or selling profiles to data brokers.

1. Who we are

Being You (“we”, “us”) provides a UK-oriented social and professional networking service across web, desktop, and mobile. Contact details for the data controller will be published at launch and confirmed with counsel.

2. What we collect

We aim for minimal collection — only what we need to run accounts, security, feeds, messaging, and (when live) payments, jobs, freelance, and Books accounting.

Typical categories:

| Category | Examples | Purpose | |----------|----------|---------| | Account | Email, username, password hash, country, nationality | Create and secure accounts; enforce access policy | | Profile | Personal/professional profile fields, CV, media | Show your presence on the service | | Content | Posts, comments, reactions, messages, uploads | Provide social and professional features | | Usage | Engagement events used for Following / For You ranking | Rank feeds; weights documented in FEED_WEIGHTS.md | | Access denials | Reason, country, nationality, IP hint, timestamp | Audit blocked signup/login attempts | | Payments (when live) | Wallet balances, payment intents, invoices, expenses | Process top-ups, fees, Books; comply with law | | Technical | Session tokens, device/app diagnostics, Geo-IP soft signals | Security, abuse prevention, optional geo enrichment |

We do not sell this data. Geo-IP is a soft signal; form country remains primary for access decisions.

3. How we use data

  • Provide and improve the service you asked for
  • Authenticate sessions and protect accounts
  • Enforce regional access rules (see TERMS.md and LEGAL_REVIEW.md)
  • Process payments and Books features when enabled
  • Comply with UK law, including lawful holds or disclosures where required
  • Rank “For You” with documented weights — not opaque advertiser-driven manipulation of personal feeds

We do not train opaque models on your private messages to manipulate what you see for third-party advertisers.

4. Ads and monetisation

  • Personal surfaces: ad-free
  • Professional surfaces: optional paid promotion and professional tools may appear as product features, not as sale of your personal graph to advertisers
  • Funding model: you as customer, not inventory

5. Sharing

We share data only as needed with:

  • Infrastructure providers (hosting, database, media storage) under contract
  • Payment processors (e.g. Stripe) when you top up or pay for professional features
  • Authorities where UK law requires disclosure

We do not sell personal data to third parties for their marketing.

6. Retention

  • Account and content data: while the account is active and for a limited period after closure as needed for backups, disputes, and legal retention
  • Access denial logs: retained for audit and security; schedule to be counsel-approved
  • Payment and Books records: retained as required for tax, AML, and accounting rules

Blocked users who submitted a signup attempt may still have minimal denial-log entries; subject-access and erasure rights will be handled per UK GDPR as counsel directs.

7. Your rights (UK)

Subject to legal limits, you may request:

  • Access to your personal data
  • Correction of inaccurate data
  • Erasure (where applicable)
  • Restriction or objection to certain processing
  • Data portability for data you provided

How to exercise rights will be published at launch. You may also complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

8. Security

We use industry-standard measures appropriate to the risk (hashed passwords, session tokens, transport security, access controls). No method is perfect; please use a strong unique password.

9. International transfers

If we transfer personal data outside the UK, we will use appropriate safeguards as required by UK data protection law (to be confirmed with counsel for each processor).

10. Children

Being You is 16 and over. We do not allow children under 16 on the platform, we do not knowingly create accounts for them, and we close any under-age account we find. Where local law sets a higher digital-consent age, that higher age applies.

This is a choice, not a loophole we tolerate. Children should be outside having fun — fresh air, real games, real people — not stuck in an online world. Nothing beats realism and real people. See Terms §2.1.

We do not knowingly collect personal data from under-16s. If you believe a child has given us data, contact us and we will delete the account and its data.

11. Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy. Material changes will be notified in-product or by email where appropriate. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance where permitted by law.

External gate

Solicitor review is required before launch. This Privacy Policy must be reviewed and approved by qualified UK counsel together with the Terms of Service and payment practices. Until that sign-off, this document is a product draft only and must not be presented as a live privacy notice to end users.

See LEGAL_REVIEW.md and TERMS.md.

Terms of Service