Privacy Policy
This agreement was written in English (US).
Date of Last Revision: June 4, 2024

Please read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy carefully.
Acceptance of these Terms
By accessing, browsing, using or registering with the similarworlds.com website, SimilarWorlds or SimilarWorlds Mobile App, you represent and agree that:
  1. You are at least 13 years of age.
  2. You acknowledge that you have read, understood and agree with the Terms of Service, the Privacy Policy and the Cookies Policy.
  3. You will comply and be bound by the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, including any future modifications.
If you do not agree to be bound by the Terms of Service or the Privacy Policy in their entirety or you are under 13 years of age, you are not authorized to use the similarworlds.com website, SimilarWorlds or SimilarWorlds Mobile App.

While we attempt to remove any posts, replies, or messages containing inappropriate material that violates our Terms of Service or any applicable law (and in extreme cases, we report to law enforcement), it is impossible for us to review every message posted on this website. For this reason, you acknowledge that all posts, replies, and messages express the views and opinions of the original author and not necessarily the views of the owners and moderators of the website. Therefore, we take no responsibility and cannot be held liable for any messages posted. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy and completeness of any message.

By registering on this website, you agree to follow our Terms of Service and will not post any material that is knowingly false, inaccurate, abusive, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, threatening, or invasive of a person's privacy, or any other material that may violate any applicable laws.
What information we collect
We collect information from you when you fill out a form, use our services or when you log into SimilarWorlds.

  1. At the time you sign up for an account, we collect basic details you provide to us, such as your name, e-mail address, sex and birth date.
  2. If you create a post, reply or comment, or send a message to anyone, we will save the contents that you submitted.
  3. When you log in, create a post, add a comment or use our services, we may save some details, such as your IP address and device you are using.
  4. When you upload a photo, we may save some meta data that comes with the image.
  5. If you choose to submit private photo(s) for account verification, we save those image(s) in our servers. You can delete these verification photos at any time.
  6. If you sign in with a 3rd party service, such as Google or Apple, we may use the name and email address associated to the account you used to authenticate, which you can change later.
  7. When you make a payment, we may save some transaction details such as the item you purchased, your payment amount and PayPal public details. We do not have access to your debit/credit card information and we do not save any details of it.
  8. We may collect information about your device and browser, such as what modern web technologies your browser supports, whether you use an ad-blocker, your operating system, your browser name and some other details. We do not have access to your device username, password or personal files.
  9. We may save a history of posts you visited or seen in the Feed, profiles you visited, pages you navigated to, some of the buttons you pressed, or actions you have taken within our website or app. We do not collect (and don't have access to) any data you have in your device, unless you submit to our website or app; and we do not collect (and don't have access to) any history of actions you do on your device, unless those actions are taken within our website or app.
What we use your information for
Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one or more of the following ways:

  1. To personalize your experience
    Your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs, ensure we provide you with website features that your browser supports, and provide you support when you need help from us.
  2. To improve our website
    We continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you. These details also help us in knowing our community better and ensure that we take the right decisions when we make changes or implement something new.
  3. To improve customer service
    Your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs. We also use your information to respond to you when you contact us.
  4. To process transactions
    Your payment information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company or entity for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested.
  5. To protect our community
    We use the information we have to help verify accounts and activity, and to promote safety and security on and off of our services, such as by investigating suspicious activity, abuse or violations of our terms or policies.
How we protect your information
We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you access your personal information:

  1. We store your passwords using an encryption/hashing algorithm specifically designed for this purpose. We have no way of knowing what your password is, using the data we store in our database.
  2. We are constantly checking that our applications and servers are secure, trusted and up-to-date, and doing our best to prevent unwanted individuals from taking control of our systems or gaining access to private data.
  3. We encrypt our server backups and database backups as a way of better protecting your data.
  4. We use HTTPS/SSL (secure connection) on SimilarWorlds, which means that your activity is encrypted and private.
  5. We don't use insecure protocols to administrate our server, database or emails. We also try our best to disable the usage of insecure protocols.
  6. We don't share your personal information without your permission (unless required by law).
  7. We restrict access to personal information only to the Admins of SimilarWorlds. Moderators and Staff are subject to strict confidentiality obligations and their role may be terminated if they fail to meet these obligations. Moderators and Staff (other than the Admins) may have access only to the information that they need to know in order to process it for us (such as dealing with Reports of public posts and replies). Only Admins and selected Moderators have access to Posts which visibility is set to 'Friends-only' while the user hasn't added the Admin or Moderator as a friend. Moderators and Staff (other than the Admins) do not have access to your private messages. When an investigation is required, due to a user report or other indication that a user may be engaged in illegal activities, we may examine private messages to assess for further proof of offenses. All content (posts, messages, media), transmitted on or uploaded to SimilarWorlds, are subject to scans for malware, child abuse material, and other types of content that can harm users of SimilarWorlds in any way.
  8. We limit the data we keep in places outside the main databases, such as logs, documents, notes, emails and conversations. If any of these require any personal identifiable information, we only add the data we need for each specific scenario, and we destroy that data when we don't need it anymore. This helps greatly in preventing against data breaches.
Use of cookies
We use cookies, just like many other websites. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your device's hard drive through your web browser (if you allow that in its settings) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information.
We use cookies to personalize content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyze our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.
We use cookies to temporarily save your login information for your own convenience.
We also use cookies for other special features on SimilarWorlds.
Please read more in our Cookie Policy.
Information shared with third parties
  1. We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer your private personally identifiable information to outside parties.
  2. We do not intentionally share any personally identifiable information with third parties, unless it is necessary for the purpose of hosting the data, encrypted data backups, and other essential services. For instance, we may store data in secure facilities provided by trusted third parties (such as our hosting provider's data center), who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, as long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential.
  3. We may release your information when we believe such release is appropriate or necessary to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others' rights, property, or safety, as well as those of others.
  4. We do not intentionally share private data (such as your email, username, user ID, or private messages) with third parties, except for our trusted hosting providers or if it is essential to providing a service. However, if the data is publicly available on your profile or in a post you have submitted, it may be accessible to third parties.
  5. We do not intentionally share sensitive data (such as your sexual orientation or religious beliefs) with third parties. However, if you have shared such data with us and it is stored in our database, or if the data is publicly available on your profile or in a post you have submitted, it may be accessible to third parties.
  6. Non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.
  7. We use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to send email notifications and other correspondence, via email, to our users. Please refer to Amazon Web Services' Privacy Notice and Data Privacy.
  8. We use Azure Cognitive Services Translator to provide us with the Translate feature. This service does not write the texts to persistent storage. There will be no record of the submitted text, or any portion thereof, in any Microsoft data center. The text will not be used for training purposes either. Please refer to Microsoft/Azure's Privacy Statement and Translator No Trace policy.
  9. We use Google AdSense to provide advertising on SimilarWorlds. Google AdSense uses cookies to provide high-quality ads that are more relevant and interesting to you. Google AdSense only has access to pages that can be publicly seen by members of SimilarWorlds. For example, if a post can be seen by a common SimilarWorlds member, then Google AdSense will be able to view it; however, Google AdSense cannot view any of your private messages. Users may opt out of Google's use of cookies by visiting the Google AdSense Opt-out of Ad personalization. Please refer to Google's Ad Personalization policy, My Activity, My Ad Center and Ad technology providers.
  10. We use Amazon Publisher Services to provide advertising on SimilarWorlds. Amazon Publisher Services use cookies to provide high-quality ads that are more relevant and interesting to you. Amazon Publiser Services only has access to pages that can be publicly seen by members of SimilarWorlds. For example, if a post can be seen by a common SimilarWorlds member, then Amazon Publisher Services will be able to view it; however, Amazon Publisher Services cannot view any of your private messages. Please refer to Amazon's Privacy Notice and Advertising Preferences.
How we retain and access information
We may retain information from accounts disabled for violations of our terms for at least two years to prevent repeat abuse or other violations of our terms. When you delete your contents, your removed content may persist in the database and backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others). We may also access, preserve and share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to: detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity; to protect ourselves, you and others, including as part of investigations; or to prevent death or imminent bodily harm. To delete your account, please visit this page for instructions on the account deletion process.
Your account settings and email notifications
When you register on SimilarWorlds, you are automatically subscribed to the email notifications of its basic features.
However, you may disable some or all notifications via your Account Settings - Email Preferences.
On that page, you can edit your account preferences. If you no longer wish to use or have access to that particular account on SimilarWorlds, you may cancel your account at any time by accessing your Account Settings, then Leave SimilarWorlds and following the instructions there. After your account has been set to hiatus, you can complete the process to cancel your account. Once canceled, it can no longer be reactivated.
Profile Visibility
Profiles on SimilarWorlds are set, by default, to be visible by everyone, including people who are not registered on SimilarWorlds.
This setting can be changed through your Account Settings. You can set your profile visibility to Members only.
If your profile visibility is set to Public, everyone will be able to see your public comments, stories, groups, public photos and other contents that are not private.
If you set a photo or image as your Profile Picture, both the thumbnail (small) version of the photo and the full (big) version of the photo will be made public, independently of the privacy setting of the album that the image is in, and whether your Profile is public or private.
Sharing Posts on SimilarWorlds
When you share a post (via the submission form at the top of any group or community, or the Post page), your submission will be posted to the group or community and will be made public.
Sharing Photos on SimilarWorlds
The visibility of the photos you upload to your profile depends on the Album you post into. If an Album's visibility is set to Friends, its photos will only be visible to users on your Friends List. This also means that updates about that image (upload or comments) will not appear in the news feed of users who are not on your Friends List.
Always think before you upload a image. If someone provides the direct link of the image (URL) to a person that is not on your Friends List, that person will be able to see the image. The page on your album that contains the image will not be accessible to non-Friends (depending on your privacy setting) and the image will not appear in the Albums list.
If the album visibility is set to Everyone, this setting will change its behavior depending on your profile visibility. This means that if your profile visibility is set to Friends, then the photos in the album will be visible to users on your Friends List only.
If you set a photo or image as your Profile Picture, both the thumbnail (small) version of the photo and the full (big) version of the photo will be made public, independently of the privacy setting of the album that the image is in, and whether your Profile is public or private.
Third party links
Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third party products or services on our website. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback regarding these sites.
Children
We do not intentionally gather personal information of users and visitors who are under the age of 13.
Terms of Service
Please also read to our Terms of Service section, where you can find detailed information regarding the usage, content monitoring, disclaimers, and limitations of liability that govern the use of our website.
Your Consent
By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We reserve the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this Privacy Policy at any time. Please check the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy periodically. Your continued use of SimilarWorlds after the posting of changes constitutes your binding acceptance of such changes and the updated Privacy Policy. If the modified Privacy Policy are not acceptable to you, then your only recourse is to discontinue using the website and the services.
Contacting Us
If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy, you may contact us at our email.

Disclaimer: SimilarWorlds and all staff of SimilarWorlds will not be held responsible for (1) any content generated by SimilarWorlds users or (2) content that exists through any links posted on the SimilarWorlds website.

SimilarWorlds is in no way affiliated, endorsed, or sponsored by Experience Project.

SimilarWorlds and all images associated with SimilarWorlds are © Copyright 2024 SimilarWorlds. All Rights Reserved.