PRIVACY POLICY
Tips for Parents
Last Modified: December 2nd 2021
We have built our Services at TalkLife to the best interest of children 16 and above (‘teen’).
This page is to reassure parents that we protect their children’s interests, and our service is appropriate for their use.
Basic Info
We do not provide parental controls.
Under applicable laws and our Terms of Service, your teen is meant to be able to manage TalkLife without your consent, however, we recognise your role in protecting and promoting the best interests of your child and support them in this task.
The reason we created a Parent’s Guide to TalkLife is because we know parents often think about what their teens are doing online and how they can help their teens navigate social media safely, which is why we created “A Parent’s Guide to TalkLife” in accordance with the privacy standards of ICO (UK GDPR and applicable privacy laws) and EU GDPR.
It focuses on how to manage privacy, interactions and security on TalkLife. It also explains the basics of our web service and a description of our tools. If you are aware of your teen using TalkLife, we encourage and support you to have a discussion with them about TalkLife.
We hope you will find this page helpful.
What is TalkLife?
TalkLife provide ways for users to communicate with other TalkLife members through our peer to peer community. At TalkLife your teen can share the ups and downs of life in a safe environment. Members from around the world will then share advice or react and if they can, offer peer support. Your teen can also support others through a peer-based community. Users will not make critical decisions based on feedback from the TalkLife community or experts in the TalkLife community.
Please note that TalkLife does not provide professional support or counselling. TalkLife is not intended to replace professional support, it is not a crisis support service and we cannot support users who are suicidal.
If we become aware of or consider that any individual is likely to cause harm to themselves or other people we may report such incidents to the appropriate authorities or social workers at our sole discretion.
Want to learn more? Here are some of our popular help topics:
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TalkLife’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Use.
Can I have access to my teen's TalkLife account?
You cannot control the privacy settings of your teen's account.
We appreciate your concern for your child's use of our app, but unfortunately we can't give you access to the account or take any action on the account at your request. We're generally forbidden by privacy laws against giving unauthorised access to someone who isn't an account holder.
Please note that all users ages 16 and older are considered authorised account holders and are included in the scope of this policy.
TalkLife requires everyone to be at least 16 years old before they create an account. You can learn more about how to report underage accounts.
If you are concerned about your teen on TalkLife, learn more from this Parent’s Guide to TalkLife. This guide was developed to give you confidence about your teen’s use of TalkLife.
How does my teen can change privacy settings on TalkLife?
As part of our compliance with laws in the U.K. and the European Union, users have more control over how we process their data. If your teen chooses to access a more personalised version of TalkLife they can consent to them and manage their consent in accordance with our Cookie Policy.
Your teen is provided with more information on tools to help them manage their account and keep TalkLife a safe place for self-expression. To learn more about our policies, please review our Privacy Policy, Community Guidelines, Help Center and Safeguarding.
Privacy and Safety
We say what we do, and we do what we say.
We are committed to our policies, and we have systems in place to ensure that your teen meet those commitments. When your teen provides with their personal data to join or access our service, they can expect the service to operate in the way that we say, and us to do what we say we are going to do.
When we designed our online service we recognised children’s right to privacy, their right to have a voice in matters that affect them, and freedom from economic exploitation. Children between 16-17 are approaching adulthood, which stage of development is at the heart of our design of service, and we tailored the protections and safeguards we give to their personal data accordingly.
How does my teen manage their privacy on TalkLife?
We work hard to keep TalkLife a safe and enjoyable place for everyone. Please read through these tools we've built and the best practices we've defined to help users stay safe on TalkLife:
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To give children confidence, we use privacy settings of ‘high privacy’ by default. TalkLife must receive or collect some information to operate, provide, improve, understand, customise, support, and market our Services, including when users install, access, or use our Services. The types of information we receive and collect depend on how they use our Services.
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Your teen will not share phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses or other personal information on the public areas of our site or our app.
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We use privacy settings to support your child’s data protection rights (such as the rights to object to or restrict processing). They can remove posts, comments and photos shared on TalkLife.
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If your teen gets questions that make them feel uncomfortable, they can ignore them or report them to the system administrators. We encourage them not to engage in conversations with people that make them feel uncomfortable in any way.
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Your teen is responsible for keeping their device and their TalkLife account safe and secure, and they must notify us promptly of any unauthorised use or security breach of their account or our Services.
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They can block users and/or report to system administrators.
Who can see my teen’s posts and comments on TalkLife?
Our sites allow users to connect and share their actions, comments, content, and information publicly or with friends. We ask users to be mindful of their own privacy needs and the privacy needs of others as you choose whom to connect with and what to share and make public. We cannot control the privacy or security of information they choose to make public or share with others.
They can also use our block feature to manage the users with whom they communicate.
For example: When users submit a post or comment to the Services, visitors to and users of our Services will be able to see the content of their posts and comments, the username associated with their posts or comments, and the date and time you originally submitted the post or comment. Although some parts of the Services may be private or quarantined, they may become public (e.g., if content users have shared in a one-to-one conversation is shared by another member without users’ consent) and users should take that into consideration before posting to the services.
How can my teen remove their post and comments from TalkLife?
Users can access tools to rectify, update, and erase their information directly in-app as described in the Managing and Deleting Your Information section.
Users can remove posts, comments and photos shared on TalkLife by the deletion tool provided on each post, comment or photo. They can also remove posts via their profile and the Previous Posts feature.
Why was a post or comment that my teen posted on TalkLife removed?
To help keep TalkLife a supportive and safe place, we require everyone to follow our Community Guidelines.
We reserve the right to remove any communication or post which is not in compliance with our Guidelines for Use or otherwise may in our absolute discretion be found to be inappropriate or offensive by any of our users.
Reporting
How can my teen report abusive behaviour or inappropriate/offensive material on TalkLife?
We do not tolerate bullying, threat, harassment, inappropriate or other explicit content and we have adequate mechanisms to deal with these incidents swiftly and effectively.
We ask that all people follow our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use. If your teen notices any user acting in violation of these rules, is experiencing abuse from other people on TalkLife or is harassed in any way, ask them to use blocking and/or they can report it to our system administrators at support@talklife.co or other appropriate authorities immediately.
If we learn of people or activity like this, we will take appropriate action by removing such people or activity or contacting law enforcement. We share information with other affiliated companies when we learn of misuse or harmful conduct by someone using our Services.
Although we monitor the use of our app, TalkLife may contain explicit material uploaded by users. Teens need to exercise caution when using TalkLife for themselves or if authorising the usage for others. We are not responsible for any direct or indirect exposure to explicit images or comments. Please talk regularly with your children about the way they and other users respond to each other on TalkLife, talk to and educate your teen about internet safety.
How do I report a child under the age of 16 on TalkLife?
TalkLife requires everyone to be at least 16 years old before they can create an account, If you know that your child has a TalkLife account and they are younger than 16, you can show them how to delete their account.
If you'd like to report an account belonging to someone under 16 or if you believe someone is impersonating your teen who's under 16, please report the incident at support@talklife.co. We will delete the account and issue bans if we can't verify the account is managed by someone over 16 years old.
If you want to make sure that your child (younger than 16) will not be able to access TalkLife, you will certainly find Support Apple and Support Google helpful.
To learn more about our policies, you can read our Terms of Service.