Grip Privacy Policy

‍Grip Technologies LLC Privacy Policy

We are Grip Technologies LLC, the provider of the Grip mobile application. We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

SCOPE OF POLICY

This policy (together with our Terms of Service available here, Terms of Service) applies to your use of:

  • “Grip” mobile application software, or any event-branded version of Grip which contains either this Privacy Policy or a link to this Privacy Policy (Grip) once you have downloaded Grip onto your mobile phone or handheld device (Device); and
  • Any of the services accessible through Grip (Services).

This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you or others provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. In particular, note that we will use your data to propose ‘handshakes’ with other Grip users. This is based on the content of social media platforms hosting accounts you notify us of, and information provided to us by the promoter of an event for which you have registered and we have produced a branded version of Grip (“Event Promoter”).

For the purpose of data protection legislation, the data controller is Grip Technologies LLC whose registered office is c/o The Corporation Trust Company, Corporation Trust Center, 1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, DE 19801.

INFORMATION WE MAY COLLECT FROM YOU

We may collect and process the following data about you:

  • Information you give us (Submitted information): You may give us information about you by completing your profile or filling in forms on Grip, or by corresponding with us (for example, by e-mail or chat). This includes information you provide when you register to use Grip, subscribe to any of our Services, search for another user, ‘handshake’ with another user, share data via Grip’s social media functions, enter a competition, promotion or survey, and when you report a problem with Grip. The information you give us may include your name, address, e-mail address and phone number, access to your LinkedIn, Facebook or other social media account, the Device’s phone number, your age, username, password and other registration information, personal description and photograph. It will also include the details of any event for which you have registered with an Event Owner.
  • Information we collect about you and your Device. Each time you use Grip we may automatically collect the following information:
  • Technical information, including the type of mobile device you use (model, manufacture and library version), a unique device identifier (for example, your Device’s IMEI number, the MAC address of the Device’s wireless network interface), mobile network information, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile browser you use, time zone setting, (Device Information);
  • Information contained in your LinkedIn, Facebook account (if you permit us to access them) or other account we ask your permission to access (Social Information);
  • Details of your use of Grip and the resources and features that you access, the users you ‘handshake’ (or you decline to handshake, or who decline to handshake you) (Log Information).

Information we receive from Event Promoters. We work with Event Promoters and may receive information about you from them, in relation to an event you have registered to attend. This information comprises the registration details you provided to the Event Promoter  – for example, your name, email address, street address and demographic data. (Event Promoter Information).

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.

AI Assistant (Grip Assistant)

We provide an AI-powered event assistant (the “Grip Assistant”) which allows you to interact with Grip in a conversational way, for example to navigate an event, request information, or arrange meetings.

What information we process

When you use the Grip Assistant, we process:

  • the content of your messages and queries;
  • related metadata such as session identifiers, timestamps, and device context;
  • derived or aggregated data such as intent classification, keywords or suggested matches.

How we use this information. 

  • to provide real-time responses to your queries and support your participation in events;
  • to suggest sessions, exhibitors or attendees that may be relevant to you;
  • to monitor and moderate content for safety and compliance;
  • to analyse usage and improve the performance of the Grip Assistant;

We do not use your conversations with the Grip Assistant to train or fine-tune our underlying AI models.

Important safeguards
Please do not provide sensitive or “special category” personal data (such as health, political, religious or financial information) when interacting with the Grip Assistant. We do not require such information and we take steps to filter and minimise it if received.
The Grip Assistant is an assistive tool and does not provide legal, financial, or medical advice.
If you prefer not to use the Grip Assistant, alternative support is available (for example, FAQs, maps, or contact with event staff).

Legal basis
We process your information for operation of the Grip Assistant on the basis of our legitimate interests in enhancing your event experience. Where we use chat transcripts for model training or profiling, we rely on legitimate interests or, where required, your consent. You may object or withdraw consent at any time. When we operate the Grip Assistant on behalf of an Event Promoter, we act as a processor. Where we use anonymised or pseudonymised transcripts for model training or service improvement, we act as a controller.

Retention

Chatbot transcripts and interaction data are retained until the end of the relevant event plus 30 days, after which they are deleted or anonymised. If data is used for training, it is first anonymised or pseudonymised and then retained only in non-identifiable form.

Your rights

You may object to the use of your chatbot data for profiling or model training, request deletion of any stored transcripts, or choose not to use the Grip Assistant at all. You also have the right to request human review of any automated decision that has a legal or similarly significant effect.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

  • Submitted Information: We will use this to help us provide you with Grip’s various features and personalize your experience; we will also use it to display your profile to other users, and propose you as a potential ‘handshake’ for other users. We also anonymize and aggregate the information such that it can no longer identify you as an individual. We do this for various purposes including research and improving our Services.
  • Device information: We use this to better understand who uses Grip and quickly understand if bugs are related to specific phones.
  • Social Information: We use this to build your profile and to help us decide which other users are good potential ‘handshakes’ for you, and whether you are a good potential ‘handshake’ for other users. We also anonymize and aggregate the information such that it can no longer identify you as an individual. We do this for various purposes including research and improving our Services.
  • Log information: we use this to optimize and further develop Grip for the benefit of us and all our users. We also anonymize and aggregate the information such that it can no longer identify you as an individual. We do this for various purposes including research and improving our Services.
  • Event Promoter Information: we use this to personalize your Grip experience in relation to the event you are attending, and to decide which other users to propose a ‘handshake’ with. We may use an email address we receive from an Event Promoter for the purposes of sending you service messages regarding how to access and use Grip. We also anonymize and aggregate the information such that it can no longer identify you as an individual. We do this for various purposes including research and improving our Services.
  • Chatbot / Assistant Use & Improvement – We use your messages and interaction metadata in real time to power the Grip Assistant (responding to your queries, suggesting sessions or matches). We may also (unless you opt out) use anonymised or pseudonymised transcripts to train, refine or improve our AI models, and to enhance future performance of the conversational system. See the section on the AI Assistant above for more detail.

We may associate any category of information with any other category of information and will treat the combined information as personal data in accordance with this policy for as long as it is combined.

If we have your consent, we may also use your personal data to provide you with marketing messages about other products and services we provide which may be of interest to you.

Also, we may provide various third parties (including Event Promoters) with anonymous aggregate information about our users (for example, we may inform them that 500 men aged under 30 have used the chat function on any given day). This data will not identify you as an individual.

Our Legal basis for Processing Your Data

The legal grounds for processing your personal data are as follows:

It is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party, or to take steps prior to entering into a contract with you. Our Terms of Service sets out the basis of your use of the Services and the rules for using them.

It is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests, except where our interests are overridden by the interests, rights or freedoms of affected individuals (such as you). To determine this, we shall consider a number of factors, such as what your expectations are about the processing of the data, the nature of the data, and the impact of the processing on you. Where Grip acts as a processor on behalf of an Event Promoter, Grip does not rely on “performance of contract” to process your data.

In some cases, your consent (such as where we seek your consent to send you details of our products and services by email).

For processing relating to the AI Assistant (such as transcript reuse, profiling, model training), we rely on legitimate interests or consent where required, subject to your objection rights.

It may be necessary for us to undertake processing in order to comply with mandatory legal obligations to which we are subject under EU or UK law.

Disclosure of your information

We may disclose some or all of the data we collect from you when you download or use Grip to the following third parties:

Category of data Submitted Information; Event Promoter Information

Recipient Event Promoters will receive activation data in respect of your email address – that is, whether or not you have successfully downloaded and registered on Grip.

‍Category of data Submitted Information, Social Information

Recipient Other users of Grip.

‍We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the Companies Act 2006.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
  • If Intros.at or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.
  • If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal or regulatory obligation or request.
  • In order to:
  • enforce or apply our Terms of Service and other agreements or to investigate potential breaches; or
  • protect the rights, property or safety of Intros.at, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

How long will we retain your data?

We will not retain your personal data for longer than is necessary in relation to the purposes for which the data was collected or otherwise processed. The criteria we use for determining this period data will be any legal or regulatory requirements, statutory retention periods or guidance provided by regulatory bodies such as the Information Commissioners Office.  For example, we delete any personally identifying Log Data when you disable your Grip account, or 2 years after your last use of Grip. We use this 2 year period because in our experience users may wish to retain an active Grip registration to access information derived from the Services when they repeat attend the same event in another year. Some events are held on a biennial basis (every 2 years). Chatbot transcripts and interaction metadata will be retained only until the conclusion of the relevant event plus 30 days, after which they will be deleted or anonymised. If transcripts are used for AI model training or improvement, they will first be pseudonymised or aggregated, and retained only in non-identifiable form.

Security

We take security seriously. A summary of our security measures employed to protect your data is here.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to or through Grip or the Services; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorized access.

Grip includes chat features. Ensure when using these features that you do not submit any personal data that you do not want to be seen, collected or used by other users. If you interact with the Grip Assistant (our AI chatbot), the content of your messages may also be processed, stored, and (where permitted) used for service delivery, moderation, or future AI model improvement.

Automated Profiling

To assist us in providing an effective networking service, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from your usage of Grip to help us understand what you might be interested in, or who you might be interested in connecting with. This ‘profiling’ activity is powered by some intelligence in our software which makes calculations about potential preferences or requirements you might have about what you see in the app or who we think you might wish to connect with. There’s no consequence for you of this profiling other than hopefully refining and improving what we suggest to you in Grip. Where our profiling or suggestions derive from your interactions with the Grip Assistant, we will explain the logic (e.g. types of criteria used) and you have the right to object at any time or disable the Assistant.

Marketing

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. we will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. If you are using a third party-branded version of the App, this includes disclosure to the owner of, or companies doing business under that brand. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us at hello@grip.events.

Websites of others

Grip may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of others. If you are using a third-party branded version of Grip, this includes websites of companies providing services under that brand. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites and any services that may be accessible through them have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies or for any personal data that may be collected through these websites or services, such as contact and location data. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites or use these services.

Disabling your Grip account

You can disable your account at any time using the ‘Delete Profile’ button in Grip.

Your Rights

You have a number of rights regarding our use of your data.

Upon written request, we will provide you with a copy of the personal data which we keep about you, subject to any exceptions under data protection laws (for example, if the data includes information about other people). We will respond to you within the time frame specified within the applicable data protection law, which is generally within one month of receipt of the written request. We will provide the information without charge, but we may charge a reasonable fee for the administrative cost of providing the information where the request for information is excessive.

You can require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data which we hold about you. You can request a copy of your information which we hold (this is known as a subject access request). To the extent required by data protection laws, we will provide you with a readable copy of the personal data which we keep about you. We will respond to you within the time frame specified within the applicable data protection law, which is generally within one month of receipt of the request.

You can ask us to stop contacting you for direct marketing purposes.

You can require us to erase the personal information we hold about you where: the personal data is no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which it was collected or otherwise processed; you object to the processing and there is no overriding legitimate interest for us to continue the processing of the data; your personal data was unlawfully processed, or your personal data must be erased in order to comply with a legal obligation.

You have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data where: you contest the accuracy of the personal data; you have objected to our processing of your data, and we are considering your objection because we have said the processing is necessary for the purpose of our legitimate interests; the processing is unlawful and you do not wish for the data to be erased but require restricted processing of the data instead; or we no longer require your personal data but you require the data to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.

You have the right to object to us processing your personal data where our legal basis for processing the data is for the purposes of our legitimate interests or for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest.  We may refuse if there are compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing is necessary for the exercise or defense of legal claims.

Additionally, you may object to processing related to the AI Assistant, including profiling or use of your chat transcripts for model training, and request deletion of any stored transcripts at any time. If you prefer not to use the Assistant, you can access alternative event features (such as FAQs, maps, or direct contact with organisers) without it.

Should you wish to exercise these rights then you can write to us at privacy@grip.events.

California Residents.

If you are a resident of the State of California, you have certain rights afforded to you under the California Consumer Privacy Act or the “CCPA”. When we say “Personal Information” in this section, we mean information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with you. Personal Information does not include information that is aggregated or information that cannot be reasonably linked to you.

We collect Personal Information and Non-Personal Information for the business and commercial purposes described in the section above titled “We use information held about you in the following ways.” We do not sell (as such term is defined in the CCPA) the Personal Information we collect (and will not sell it without providing a right to opt out). 

Subject to certain limitations, the CCPA provides California residents the following rights:

  1. You have the right to request that we disclose to you the Personal Information we collect, use, or disclose, and information about our data practices;
  1. You have the right to request that we delete your Personal Information that we have collected from you;
  1. You have the right to request that we no longer sell your Personal Information to third parties;
  1. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

California residents may make a request pursuant to their “right to know”, “right to request deletion”, and/or “right to opt-out” under the CCPA by contacting us in accordance with the “Contact Us” section below. In order to verify your request to know or delete information, we may require you to provide us with certain information to be used solely for the purpose of verifying your identity.

Under the CCPA, you may exercise these rights yourself or you may designate an authorized agent to make these requests on your behalf. We may request that your authorized agent have written permission from you to make requests on your behalf and may need to verify your authorized agent’s identity.

Changes to privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you when you next start Grip. The new terms may be displayed on-screen and you may be required to read and accept them to continue your use of Grip.

Contact Us

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to support@grip.events.