About Precise Geolocation Data
Precise geolocation data can help you navigate and interact with the physical and digital worlds around you. Precise geolocation data is collected using various technologies such as the location services of your operating system or browser, sensor data from your device, and other data that may help us understand your location with accuracy. Ever type in a business name into a ride-share app, or tag your location in a photo before sharing on social media? Or, have you ever received a notification for a coupon when you’re passing by your favorite fast food joint? Foursquare powers these features as well as others that help people navigate, explore, and enjoy the world around them.
Precise geolocation data is both powerful and sensitive. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully and visit our Privacy Center to understand Foursquare’s commitment to your data privacy. We are also a participating member of the Network Advertising Initiative’s Precise Location Solution Provider Enhanced Standards which, among other things, requires that participating members not use, allow the use of, sell, or share any information about device or user activity correlated to known sensitive places, such as:
– Places of religious worship
– Correctional facilities
– Places that may be used to infer an LGBTQ+ identification
– Places that may be used to infer engagement with explicit sexual content, material, or acts
– Places primarily intended to be occupied by children under 16
– Domestic abuse shelters, including rape crisis centers
– Welfare or homeless shelters and halfway houses
– Dependency or addiction treatment centers
– Medical facilities that cater predominantly to sensitive conditions, such as cancer centers, HIV/AIDS, fertility or abortion clinics, mental health treatment facilities, or emergency room trauma centers
– Places that may be used to infer refugee or immigrant status, such as refugee or immigration centers and immigration services
– Credit repair, debt services, bankruptcy services, or payday lending institutions
– Temporary places of assembly such as political rallies, marches, or protests, during the times that such rallies, marches, or protests take place
– Military Bases
Commitment to Accountability
Foursquare participates in the following organizations and programs:
Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”). Foursquare designs our products to adhere to the DAA’s Self-Regulatory Principles and participates in the DAA’s Your AdChoices, which is an easy way to opt out of digital advertising.
Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”). Foursquare is a member of the NAI and adheres to the NAI Privacy Principles and the Precise Location Solution Provider Enhanced Standards.
EU/UK/Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework. Foursquare’s privacy practices comply with the Data Privacy Framework Principles of Notice; Choice; Accountability for Onward Transfer; Security; Data Integrity and Purpose Limitation; Access; and Recourse, Enforcement and Liability. For more information relating to our participation in the EU/UK/Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework, please read about our International Data Transfers.
Personal Data We Collect and Process
The nature of the data collected often depends on the Consumer Services you are using; however, there are three main sources for the personal data we collect:
Data You Choose to Provide. We collect data when you create an account for our Consumer Services, when you consent or opt-in to providing data (e.g., geolocation data or contact information from people in your contact list to enable you to find friends when using our apps) via our mobile apps or websites, when you upload content using Consumer Services, or when you contact us for customer support.
Data Automatically Collected. We automatically collect data about how you interact with our Consumer Services, such as through cookies, pixels, and similar technologies. This data, among other things, helps us better understand your use, interactions, and experiences with our Consumer Services. You can learn more about our use of these tools in our Cookies & Similar Technologies Policy.
Data From Third Parties. We also receive data from third parties such as from the following categories of entities:
– Foursquare Affiliates – This includes, for example, our corporate parent, subsidiaries, and affiliates.
– Business Partners, Developers & Enterprise Customers – This includes, for example, third parties who create and deliver experiences using our Developer & Enterprise Services, such as the incorporation of our location technology (i.e., SDK or APIs) into their apps and websites. In some cases, these third parties may license data to us.
– Data Suppliers/Brokers and Advertising Networks – This includes, for example, third parties who provide us commercially available data, including demographic data, data about how you interact with a third party’s websites, apps, smart TVs and streaming devices, device data (including mobile device and advertising identifiers, such as Apple IDFA or Google Advertising ID, and location data), and information from cookies, pixels and other technologies.
– Social Media – This includes, for example, when you access our apps through social media logins (i.e., logging in to our apps using your Facebook or other social media credentials). The details we receive may depend on your social network account privacy settings, but could include name, email address, date of birth, gender, hometown and/or friends.
– Foursquare Service Providers – This includes, for example, third parties who specialize in providing enterprise data, analytics and software as a service.
– Public Sources – This includes, for example, public records, government agencies, social media platforms, and other publicly available sources.
– Business Transaction Partners – This includes, for example, an entity we acquire or are acquired by, a successor, an assignee, or any party involved in a business transaction such as a merger, acquisition, sale of assets, or similar transaction, and/or in the context of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership. These transactions may be actual or prospective.
You can learn more about Foursquare’s data collection, including categories, examples and sources, at A Glance.
At A Glance
Data that does not contain any personal data that can be used to identify you or has otherwise been de-identified or aggregated is not considered personal data. To the extent we process de-identified data, we will maintain and use the data in de-identified form and will not attempt to reidentify the data unless permitted by applicable law.
When we collect data, we rely on several legal bases, including:
Contract Performance. When the processing is necessary to perform our contract with you, such as our Terms of Service. This may include providing you with our Consumer Services or tailoring the Consumer Services to your preferences;
Legitimate Interests. When the processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests (or those of our enterprise customers), including but not limited to, improving the Consumer Services or providing our Products;
Consent. When you have given us your consent, including as described in this Privacy Policy. You may withdraw your consent to processing at any time using the settings on your device or in your account;
Legal Obligation. When we have a legal obligation to do so, as described in this Privacy Policy.
How We Use Your Personal Data
We may use your personal data for the following purposes:
Account & Registration. To operate, support, and improve the Consumer Services. This includes maintaining or servicing your accounts (including repairing errors that impair existing or intended functionality), providing customer service, processing transactions and payments, and verifying customer information.
Personalization. To personalize your experience with our Consumer Services. These personalization features make inferences based on your location about your interests, and whether separate devices (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, and/or TVs) may be owned by you or members of your household, to tailor Consumer Services based on the data we have about you. You may also choose to provide us with access to your contact list so that we can help you to find your friends when using our apps.
Business Operations. To conduct and maintain business operations such as verifying your identity across Consumer Services, conducting business research, auditing, analytics, planning and strategy, corporate reporting, and management.
Communications. To communicate with you about our Consumer Services, such as responding to requests for support, sharing updates, and providing information required by law or applicable corporate updates related to mergers, acquisitions, or divestitures.
Marketing & Advertising. For different types of advertising, including the contextual customization of ads shown as part of your interaction with us. We may also use data collected from your use of our Consumer Services and data from your engagement with apps and services provided by third parties to provide you with advertising about products and services tailored to your inferred interests, preferences, and locations.
Rewards, Contests & Sweepstakes. To administer rewards (e.g., give points for survey completion), contests, and sweepstakes. If you enter a sweepstakes, we may use data such as your name and email address to run the sweepstakes and fulfill prizes.
Events. To facilitate events, including contacting you about an event for which you registered or may be interested. If you register for an event with us, we will add your contact information to our list of expected attendees.
Research & Innovation. To conduct data analytics and use artificial intelligence and machine learning to support internal research, create new products and services, improve functionality of existing products and services, and develop new features.
Product & Service Provision. To offer products and services to developers, our partners, and our enterprise customers. These product and service offerings currently include the following:
Points of Interest (POI) – POI, or Places, data relates to physical places (restaurants, shops, airports, hotels, etc.) and is used to identify and provide context to points of interest worldwide.
Visits – When you opt-in to the collection and sharing of precise geolocation data from your mobile device, we may use your data to create an inferred visit to that location, which we call a “Visit.”
Targeting (Audience) – Using our Visits, along with inferences about your interests, location and other demographics that we derive from the data we have about you, we create “Audiences.” Audiences may be used to send you advertisements tailored to your inferred interests.
Targeting (Proximity) – Using a dataset of geographically-placed points of interest, such as a fast food joint, we create geofences called “Proximity” around such points of interest. Proximity may be used to send advertisements to your device when it is detected near a point of interest.
Attribution – We also help brands measure the effectiveness of their advertisement campaigns by attributing purchases or other actions, such as a store visit, to their ads by matching ad impressions to such actions. As part of Attribution, we may also associate devices that we believe are related to each other.
Aggregated Products and Services – We may also use your data in an aggregated manner to power products and services that offer movement- and location-based insights and trends. In addition, your data may be used to power Foursquare Geospatial Intelligence Platform which is a geospatial data analytics platform that enables visualization of aggregated data.
Security. To detect security threats (e.g., malware or other malicious activities), troubleshoot performance issues and to protect the security and safety of our products, systems, and customers. Our security measures may include the use of automated systems.
Protect Our Rights & Property. To prevent fraud, identity theft, activities that violate our policies, terms of service, or the law, or to prevent other criminal activity that compromises our ability to protect our rights and property, secure our services, your data or the safety of our customers, employees and others.
Data Sharing in the Context of Corporate Events. To share certain data in the context of actual or prospective corporate events.
Comply with Law & Industry Standards. To comply with applicable laws, regulations, court orders, legally-binding requests (such as from law enforcement), and relevant industry standards.
Disclosing Your Personal Data
We may disclose the categories of personal data we process about you (as described At A Glance above) to third parties as follows:
Disclosures with Your Consent or at Your Direction. With your consent or as necessary to complete any transaction or provide any product you have requested or authorized. For example, we disclose data to third parties when you instruct us to do so, such as when you authorize friends to see your data or make your data publicly available (e.g., profile photo, users you are following, or other information you post), when you communicate via our Consumer Services with your friends, or when you check-in to a store, restaurant or other point of interest. You can control what you want visible to others, including your friends, in your applicable Foursquare account “Settings.”
Disclosures to Affiliates. To other Foursquare affiliates for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy.
Service Providers & for Business Purposes. To service providers that perform services on our behalf, such as cloud storage, IT services, marketing, analytics and search engine and other software services. These service providers may be located in countries other than the country where the information originally was collected, such as the US and Canada.
Disclosures to Business Partners, Developers & Enterprise Customers. To business partners, developers, and enterprise customers for their own purposes. For example, we use “Visits” to infer stops that you may make to disclose them to our enterprise customer, Replica HQ, a data platform primarily serving public agencies, transit authorities, and urban planners that applies advanced modeling and simulation techniques to analyze complex urban dynamics across time and space, in accordance with their Privacy Policy which you can find here. We may also use “Visits” combined with data that our business partners, developers, and other enterprise customers collect to understand movement patterns to determine where to open a physical store, to conduct research and development, to perform analytics, to serve targeted ads, and to determine whether an online or offline advertisement (including on unaffiliated apps, websites, and billboards) you were exposed to resulted in a visit to a physical store. Under certain privacy and data protection laws, this activity may be considered a “sale” of personal data, “sharing” of personal data for cross-context behavioral advertising, or targeted advertising.
Disclosures to Advertising Partners. To advertising partners (including ad networks, ad-serving companies such as social media companies, and other service providers they may use) so that they may recognize your devices and deliver content and advertisements (including interest-based) to you. Under certain privacy and data protection laws, this activity may be considered a “sale” of personal data, “sharing” of personal data for cross-context behavioral advertising, or targeted advertising.
Disclosures to Comply with Law & Protect Our Rights. To law enforcement, government authorities, and private parties (i) if we are required to do so by law or legal process (such as a court order or subpoena); (ii) in response to duly authorized requests from public authorities, including to meet national security, public interest or law enforcement requirements; (iii) to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights; (iv) when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical or other harm or financial loss; (v) in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity; (vi) to protect the rights, property, or safety of Foursquare and our products and services, our employees, or users and others; or (vii) to otherwise comply with legal obligation (i.e., conducting due diligence or screening for compliance purposes).
Sharing for Corporate Transactions. As part or in anticipation of a business sale, merger, consolidation, investment, change in control, transfer of substantial corporate assets, reorganization, liquidation, or other business transaction or corporate event.
How We Secure & Retain Your Personal Data
We maintain administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect personal data we obtain through the Consumer Services against accidental, unlawful or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure or use. However, security risk is inherent in all internet and information technologies, and no online provider can fully guarantee the security of your personal data.
We will retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected and processed, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for your personal data, we will consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk from unauthorized use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and applicable legal requirements.
Children’s Privacy
Our Consumer Services are intended for a general audience and are not directed at children under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data online from individuals under the age of 18.
Your Privacy Choices – Global
You can learn how to exercise your privacy choices here. These choices (and rights, depending upon the applicable law), in summary include:
Data Access, Copies or Transfer. You may request access to or copies of the personal data we have about you (including for transfer purposes), together with details about how we collect, use, disclose or sell your personal data. In some cases, we may only provide access to the categories of personal data that we collect, use, disclose and sell.
Data Correction and Deletion. You may ask us to update or correct any inaccurate personal data or to delete any personal data that we may hold about you.
Opting Out of Sales, Sharing for Cross-Context Behavioral Advertising and Processing for Targeted Advertising. You may opt-out of the sale of your personal data, the sharing of your personal data for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes and the processing of your personal data for targeted advertising.
Limiting Processing of Sensitive Personal Data. We may collect certain categories of sensitive personal data as described in this Privacy Policy. You may ask us to stop the processing of your sensitive personal data for purposes of inferring characteristics about you.
Withdrawal of Consent. To the extent that we relied upon your consent for processing of your personal data, you may withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal data.
Unsubscribe from Marketing Emails & Text Messages. You may opt out of receiving marketing communications from us.
In some instances, your request to exercise your privacy choices may be limited, for example, if fulfilling your request would reveal personal data about another person or you ask us to delete information that we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests to keep.
We will not discriminate against you for exercising your choices. If you reside in certain jurisdictions, you may have the ability (including right) to appeal our decision with respect to a request you have submitted via our Privacy Portal. If we are unable to resolve your concerns and if you reside in certain jurisdictions, you may have the right to contact a data privacy supervisory authority in the country where you live or work, or where you consider that the data protection rules may have been breached, or seek a remedy through the courts. For questions, concerns or complaints about our participation in the EU/UK/Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework, please read about our International Data Transfers.
Your Privacy Choices – US Consumers
In the US, the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) and the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) have established rules about interest-based advertising, including cross-device linking for such advertising. Interest-based advertising is digital advertising that is tailored to a consumer’s inferred interests, preferences, and locations. Cross-device linking is the practice of associating different browsers and/or devices (such as mobile devices and televisions) based on information about the potential relationships among them.
You may have the right to opt-out of seeing interest-based ads from us, or our Business Partners, Developers & Enterprise Customers that are delivered on various platforms. To do so, please visit:
– Desktop/Mobile Web Browser – DAA WebChoices or NAI Consumer Opt-Out
– Connected TVs/TV Streaming Devices – NAI Connected TV Choices
– Mobile Apps – DAA AppChoices iOS, DAA AppChoices Android, DAA AppChoices Amazon.
You can learn more about how opting-out of interest-based advertising works by visiting our Cookies & Similar Technologies Policy.
Specific US State Residents
If you reside in a U.S. state with a privacy law applicable to us, please review our US State Consumer Privacy Notice.
International Data Transfers
In order to provide you with our Consumer Services, it is possible that data you provide may be transferred to or accessed by Foursquare affiliates or third parties located in countries other than the country in which you reside. These countries may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you reside. Foursquare will conduct any data transfers in accordance with this Privacy Policy and all applicable laws and permissible data transfer mechanisms. Where the international data transfer programs do not apply, when you download and use our Consumer Services, you consent to the transfer of your data.
Foursquare Labs, Inc. complies with the EU-US, UK-US, and Swiss-US Data Privacy Frameworks, as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal data transferred from the EU, UK, and/or Switzerland to the US.
Foursquare has certified to the Department of Commerce that we adhere to the Data Privacy Framework Principles. If there is any conflict between the terms in this Privacy Policy and the Data Privacy Framework Principles, the Data Privacy Framework Principles shall govern. To learn more about the Data Privacy Framework program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/.
Foursquare commits to resolve complaints about our collection or use of your personal data in compliance with the Data Privacy Framework Principles. Therefore, EU, UK, and Swiss individuals with inquiries or complaints regarding our Data Privacy Framework compliance should first contact us via the methods outlined in the Contact Us section.
Foursquare has further committed to refer any unresolved Data Privacy Framework complaints to the JAMS Data Privacy Framework program, an alternative dispute resolution provider. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your complaint from us, or have not resolved your complaint, please visit the JAMS Data Privacy Framework program (https://www.jamsadr.com/DPF-Dispute-Resolution) for more information or to file a complaint. The JAMS Data Privacy Framework program services are provided at no cost to you.
If your complaint is not resolved through the above channels, under limited circumstances, you may be able to invoke binding arbitration before a Data Privacy Framework Panel. For more information, visit: https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/s/article/ANNEX-I-introduction-dpf.
The US Federal Trade Commission has jurisdiction over Foursquare’s compliance with the Data Privacy Framework.