Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 03, 2024

This Privacy Statement (Statement) describes the collection and use of personal data by Buddy Ride Limited (Buddy Ride), its affiliates, subsidiaries and/or commercial partners.

Collection of personal data

Buddy Ride collects personal data:

  • provided by you, such as during account creation;
  • created during your use of our services or communication channels, such as location, Buddy Ride mobile application usage and device data (see section below); and
  • through cookies, pixels, tags and similar tracking technologies that create and maintain unique identifiers.

The following personal data is collected by or on behalf of Buddy Ride:

  1. User information, including: name, email address, phone number, address, payment or banking information (including related payment verification information), account information, user settings, identification photos, demographic data, information submitted to customer support services (including through third party channels such as Buddy Ride’s social media presences) and location data (when the Buddy Ride application is running in the foreground), transaction information in relation to the use of Buddy Ride’s services (including the number of trips taken monthly, order details, payment transaction information, journey information and payment method) and mobile application usage data (including how riders interact with Buddy Ride’s services, access dates and times, mobile application features viewed, mobile application crashes and other system activity).
  2. Device data, including: data about the devices used to access our services, including the hardware models, device IP address or other unique device identifiers, operating systems and versions, software, preferred languages, advertising identifiers, device motion data and mobile network data.
  3. Communications data, including: data regarding calls, electronic messages (e.g. SMS or on instant messaging platforms) or other communications, including the date and time of the communications and the content of the communications.

Purposes of use of personal data

Buddy Ride uses your personal data to enable reliable and convenient transport services. Buddy Ride also uses your personal data for the following purposes:

  1. To provide Buddy Ride’s services (including to create/ update accounts, enable Buddy Ride’s transport services, process payments and track and share the progress of trips).
  2. To facilitate insurance solutions.
  3. To perform necessary operations to maintain our services, including to troubleshoot software bugs and operational problems, to conduct data analysis, testing and research, and to monitor and analyse usage and activity trends.
  4. To verify your telephone number and other contact information provided
  5. To identify, prevent, detect and combat fraud and other improper conduct.
  6. To use user ratings, reported incidents and other feedback to encourage compliance with Buddy Ride’s guidelines and as grounds for deactivating users with low ratings or who have otherwise violated such guidelines.
  7. To prevent matching of riders and hire car companies for whom there is higher risk of conflict (for instance, because a rider previously gave a driver a low rating).
  8. To provide customer support, including to investigate and address user concerns and to monitor and improve Buddy Ride’s customer support responses and processes.
  9. For testing, research, analysis and mobile application product development to improve the mobile application usage experience.
  10. To enable communications between riders and hire car companies.
  11. To market various services to our users, including the services of our affiliates, subsidiaries and commercial partners, and to personalise and improve marketing communications (including advertisements and other forms of direct marketing) that we send through Buddy Ride’s mobile applications, electronic messages (e.g. SMS or on instant messaging platforms) and/or emails (see section on Direct marketing below).
  12. To generate and provide users with receipts, inform users of changes to our terms, services or policies, or send other communications that aren’t for the purpose of marketing the services or products of Buddy Ride, its affiliates, its subsidiaries or its commercial partners.
  13. To investigate or address claims or disputes relating to the use of Buddy Ride’s services, to satisfy requirements under applicable laws, regulations, or operating licences or agreements with any third party, in connection with any actual or potential legal process or governmental request, including from law enforcement authorities, or where the disclosure is otherwise appropriate due to safety or similar concerns, when required or requested to do so, or where required or permitted to do so by law, regulation or court order (or any other form of legal compulsion).
  14. In connection with any potential or actual corporate transactions, including a merger, sale of company assets, consolidation or restructuring, financing or acquisition of all or a portion of our business or of the company (Buddy Ride) by or into another company, including discussions with a third party preparatory to any of those events.
  15. To make decisions relating to the use of our services, including matching available hire car companies to users, determining user ratings and deactivating users with low ratings, flagging users who are identified as having engaged in fraud, unsafe activity or other activities that may harm Buddy Ride, its hire car companies and others, including decisions made through automated decision making.

Disclosure of personal data

Some of Buddy Ride’s services and features require that we share personal data with other users or at a user’s request. We may also share such data with our affiliates, subsidiaries, service providers, agents, professional advisors, commercial partners and other third parties (who may be located outside of Hong Kong), including:

  1. Our affiliates and subsidiaries to help us provide our services or conduct data processing on our behalf.
  2. For the hire car companies
  3. Buddy Ride’s vendors, consultants, marketing partners, research firms, electronic payment processing, clearing and settlement service providers, data storage providers, map tracking service providers (including Google), social media companies, marketing partners and marketing service providers, research partners, IT mobile application service vendors, call centres, consultants, lawyers, accountants, and other professional service providers, insurance and financing partners and third-party vehicle suppliers, including fleet and car hire partners and other service providers, collaborators or commercial partners.
  4. Law enforcement officials, public health officials, other government authorities, or other third parties as necessary to enforce our Terms of Service, user agreements or other policies, to protect Buddy Ride’s rights or property or the rights, safety or property of others, or in the event of a claim or dispute relating to the use of our services. In the event of a dispute relating to the use of another person’s credit card, we may be required by law to share your personal data, including trip or order information, with the owner of that credit card.
  5. In connection with any potential or actual corporate transactions, including a merger, sale of company assets, consolidation or restructuring, financing or acquisition of all or a portion of our business or of the company (Buddy Ride) by or into another company, including discussions with a third party preparatory to any of those events.
  6. In connection with any actual or potential legal process or governmental request, including from law enforcement authorities, or where the disclosure is otherwise appropriate due to safety or similar concerns, when required or requested to do so, or where required or permitted to do so by law, regulation or court order (or any other form of legal compulsion).

Direct marketing

Buddy Ride intends to use the personal data set out in the Collection of personal data section above for direct marketing and Buddy Ride requires your consent to do so (which includes an indication of no objection).

This direct marketing may include sending users communications about Buddy Ride’s services, features, promotions, news, updates and events. We may do so via various methods, including email, electronic messages (e.g. SMS or on instant messaging platforms), push notifications, in-app communications and advertisements, and advertisements on third-party platforms. We may also inform users about products and services offered by Buddy Ride’s affiliates, subsidiaries and commercial partners.

In addition to marketing the above, we also intend to provide the personal data described above to our affiliates, subsidiaries and/or commercial partners to conduct direct marketing, and we require your consent to do so (which includes an indication of no objection).

We may use the data we collect, including in combination with advertising partners’ data, to personalise and improve the direct marketing communications (including advertisements) that we send through Buddy Ride’s mobile applications, electronic messages (e.g. SMS or on instant messaging platforms) and/or emails, including based on user location, use of Buddy Ride’s services, and user preferences and settings.

Buddy Ride does not sell users’ personal data to such partners or others for purposes of their own direct marketing or advertising, except with users’ consent.

Users can opt out of direct marketing communications and use of their data for direct marketing by following the unsubscribe instructions in those messages.

Others

Under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance, you have a right to request access to and/or correction of your personal data held by us. If you wish to access or correct your personal data, please contact our customer service team (hello@buddyride.io).

Buddy Ride may retain user data after a deletion request due to legal or regulatory requirements or for reasons stated in this statement. retains user data for as long as necessary for the purposes described above. This means that we retain different categories of data for different periods of time depending on the type of data, the category of user to whom the data relates and the purposes for which we collected the data.

We may occasionally update this statement. If we make significant changes, we will notify users in advance of the changes through the Buddy Ride mobile application or through other means, such as email. We encourage users to periodically review this statement for the latest information on our privacy practices.

Use of our services after an update constitutes consent to the application of the terms of an updated Privacy Statement to personal data about you collected both before and after the date of the updated notice to the extent permitted by law.