Privacy Policy

Open Comedy (“we”, “our”, or “us”) operates the Open Comedy website and mobile application (the “Service”). This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Service.

We use your data to provide and improve the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.

Personal Information

We may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you. This may include:

• Email address
• First name and last name
• Phone number
• Address, State, Province, ZIP/Postal code, City
• Profile information (stage name, bio, photos, videos)
• Social media profiles

Usage Data

We may also collect information on how the Service is accessed and used. This may include:

• Your computer's Internet Protocol address (IP address)
• Browser type and version
• Pages you visit on our Service
• Time and date of your visit
• Time spent on pages
• Unique device identifiers

Open Comedy uses the collected data for various purposes:

• To provide and maintain our Service
• To notify you about changes to our Service
• To allow you to participate in interactive features when you choose to do so
• To provide customer support
• To gather analysis or valuable information to improve our Service
• To monitor the usage of our Service
• To detect, prevent and address technical issues
• To connect comedians with venues and audiences
• To facilitate bookings and communications
• To market our own Service to existing users and to find new users who are likely to be interested, including through advertising platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram). See the Marketing and Advertising section below.

We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties so they can advertise their own products or services to you.

We do share limited personal information in the following circumstances:

• Service providers acting on our behalf: Hosting, email, analytics, payment, and advertising platforms that process data under our instructions. See Third-Party Services below.
• Marketing of our own Service: We share hashed contact data with advertising platforms (such as Meta) solely to advertise Open Comedy to existing or prospective users. See Marketing and Advertising below.
• Legal and safety reasons: Where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, protect our rights or property, prevent or investigate wrongdoing in connection with the Service, protect the safety of users or the public, or protect against legal liability.
• Business transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, user data may be transferred to the successor organisation, subject to the same commitments set out in this policy.

We advertise Open Comedy on third-party platforms, including Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and similar advertising networks. To make those ads relevant, we use the following features:

• Custom Audiences: We upload lists of existing users (for example, our email list, or bookers in a particular country) so the platform can match them to their own accounts and show our ads to those users. Contact details (email address, name, phone number, country, city) are hashed using SHA-256 before they leave our systems. The advertising platform uses the hashed data only to match against its own users and must discard any data that does not match.
• Lookalike or similar audiences: We ask the advertising platform to find users whose profile is statistically similar to an uploaded audience, so that we can show our ads to people likely to be interested in Open Comedy. The source list is not shared with those new users and the platform does not disclose who is in the lookalike audience.
• Website and app signals: Where permitted by your cookie and tracking preferences, we may use advertising pixels and SDKs to measure the effectiveness of our ads and to retarget users who have visited the Service.

We use these features exclusively to market Open Comedy. We do not sell, licence, or otherwise make your personal information available to any third party so they can advertise their own, unrelated products or services to you.

When we share hashed data with Meta for audience matching, Meta and Open Comedy act as joint controllers for the matching process, as described in Meta’s Controller Addendum. Meta is responsible for its own subsequent use of the data in accordance with its privacy policy.

Your choices: You can opt out of this type of marketing at any time by:

• Emailing privacy@opencomedy.com and asking us to exclude you from advertising audiences. We will add your details to a suppression list so you are not included in future uploads.
• Adjusting your ad preferences directly on the advertising platform (for example, Facebook and Instagram let you hide ads from specific advertisers and control whether contact information can be used for matching).
• Deleting your Open Comedy account, which removes you from any future audience uploads.

UK and EU users: We rely on legitimate interests as the lawful basis for this processing (our interest in growing the Service and promoting it to people likely to benefit from it, balanced against the limited privacy impact of hashed, platform-scoped matching). You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests at any time using the contacts above.

California residents: Our use of Lookalike and similar audiences may qualify as “sharing” of personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising under the California Consumer Privacy Act. You have the right to opt out of this sharing at any time by emailing privacy@opencomedy.com. We do not knowingly share the personal information of consumers under 16 without opt-in consent.

The security of your data is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction.

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track activity on our Service and hold certain information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent.

We use cookies for:

• Authentication and security
• Preferences and settings
• Analytics and performance monitoring
• Personalised content delivery

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA) or United Kingdom, we process your personal data under the following legal bases:

• Contractual necessity: Processing necessary to provide the Service you requested (e.g., creating your account, facilitating bookings)
• Legitimate interests: Processing for our legitimate business interests, such as improving the Service, preventing fraud, ensuring security, and direct marketing of our own Service (including advertising to existing users and to similar audiences via platforms such as Meta). You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests at any time.
• Consent: Where you have given explicit consent (e.g., marketing communications)
• Legal obligations: Processing necessary to comply with applicable laws and regulations

We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including:

• Account data: Retained while your account is active and for a reasonable period thereafter to allow for account reactivation
• Transaction records: Retained for up to 7 years to comply with tax and accounting requirements
• Communication records: Retained for up to 3 years for dispute resolution and service improvement
• Usage data: Generally retained for up to 2 years for analytics purposes

When you delete your account, we will delete or anonymise your personal data within 30 days, except where we are required to retain certain information for legal or legitimate business purposes.

Your information may be transferred to and processed in countries other than your country of residence. These countries may have data protection laws that are different from the laws of your country.

When we transfer personal data outside the EEA or UK, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, including:

• Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission
• Transfers to countries with adequate data protection laws
• Other legally recognised transfer mechanisms

We may use third-party services to help us operate the Service. These third parties have access to your personal data only to perform specific tasks on our behalf and are obligated to protect your information. These include:

• Hosting providers: Cloud infrastructure services that store and process data
• Analytics services: Tools to understand how users interact with our Service
• Email services: Providers that help us send transactional and marketing emails
• Content delivery: Services that help deliver media content efficiently
• Advertising platforms: Services such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram) that host our own ads and allow us to reach existing users and statistically similar audiences via hashed audience matching. See the Marketing and Advertising section above.

We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party services you interact with through our platform.

Under GDPR, you have the following rights:

• Right to access - You have the right to request copies of your personal data
• Right to rectification - You have the right to request correction of inaccurate data
• Right to erasure - You have the right to request deletion of your data
• Right to restrict processing - You have the right to request restriction of processing
• Right to object to processing - You have the right to object to our processing
• Right to data portability - You have the right to request transfer of your data

Our Service does not address anyone under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 16. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal data, please contact us.

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the “Last updated” date.

You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes.