8pod Privacy Statement

Whether through helping you discover stories about brands, or examining a job application you submit, 8pod is led to process some information about you.

In this story, though, you are the protagonist, and we wish you to reassure you that we safeguard your rights. Read through this Privacy Statement to find out the reasons we have for processing your data as well as the context. Each topic also comes with a handy summary (labelled as “Essentials”), which is intended as a guide to help you easily find information that is specific to this Privacy Statement.

1. Who are we?2. What personal data do we collect and how?3. The purpose and legal basis for collecting and using personal data 4. Profiling and automated decision making 5. Children’s personal dataSharing personal data with third parties 6. Sharing personal data internationally 7. How we protect your personal data 8. How long we store your personal data 9. Your rights 10. How to contact us 11. Changes to our Privacy Statement

1. Who are we?

Essentials: 8pod is in charge of the processing of your personal data in the cases described here, and only sometimes together with others.
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We are 8pod Inc. (8pod), a company with registered offices at 251 Little Falls Drive, Wilmington, Delaware 19808, United States of America.8pod is a technology and distribution business that builds upon actionable data to create hyper-personalised brand experiences.When this or any other of our activities described further in this Privacy Statement leads us to process personal data, 8pod is the one acting as the “controller” within the meaning of regulations on the processing of personal data.For specific personal data processing activities, we also act as a “joint controller” together with other entities. This is the case for the use of certain consent and user choice signals called TC Strings (see section 2 – what personal data do we collect and how – for more information on this). As manager of a standard that allows us to set user preferences in an open manner, IAB Europe can also be considered as a “joint controller” with 8pod for the processing of TC Strings, though IAB Europe has no way of accessing the TC Strings that you create on websites and applications linked to us.

2. What personal data do we collect and how?

Essentials: The data we have regarding you comes normally from your interaction with us (communications, competition entries, etc.) and your interaction with 8pod-powered brand experiences. For brand experiences, we do not need to know who you are precisely, so we limit the amount of information we collect and use.
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Sources of personal data
‍We collect personal data from the following sources:Directly from you. For example, when you reach out to us, interact with 8pod pages , use an 8pod-powered brand experience or otherwise interact with us.From third parties (where we have a valid reason for obtaining data through them). For example, if we receive information from a social media platform or a website or app publisher on interactions with 8pod pages and brand experiences. Some of this data is collected automatically via cookies and other tracking technologies.
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‍Personal data that we collectWe collect personal data as necessary to perform our purposes for processing. This means that the personal data we collect varies depending on our relationship with you. Depending on the circumstances we, or third parties on our behalf, may collect and process the following categories of personal data:

General:

Contact data: your name, email address, physical address and telephone number(s).
Information about your use of 8pod-powered brand experiences: content you submit in brand experiences managed by 8pod (such as contact details for a competition entry or a quiz or to request more information on a product) or data automatically collected as you use 8pod-powered brand experiences, including:
1. technical information – this includes your device’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, device characteristics (such as device, language, timezone, operating system), device identifiers (such as identifiers set at the level of your device’s operating system);technical information – this includes your device’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, device characteristics (such as device, language, timezone, operating system), device identifiers (such as identifiers set at the level of your device’s operating system);
2. interaction data – this includes information about your visit and your behaviour in 8pod-powered brand experiences, such as the time and length of viewing of certain pages, scrolling, clicks, traffic data, location data regarding the moment of interaction with the 8pod-powered brand experience (“non-precise”, i.e. within a 500m radius, or “precise” in certain scenarios and then only subject to consent), data you provide yourself (such as when filling out a form within an 8pod-powered brand experience) and identifiers to enable a better experience;
3. inferred information to help provide more relevant brand experiences (such as typical interests, content preferences, content formats, topics and themes);
Privacy choices: choices you set, through our websites and apps or the 8pod-powered brand experiences, regarding the purposes for which certain information can be collected and shared;
any other information that you provide to us in the course of our interactions with you (for instance through e-mail communications).

Special categories of data:

As a rule, we will not be led to process information regarding you that could be considered as falling within more strictly regulated “special” or “sensitive” categories of personal data.

3.Objectives & justification: purpose and legal basis for collecting and using personal data

Essentials: Your data is collected and used for purposes such as responding to your enquiries, providing a personalised 8pod-powered branded experience (including its marketing), improving our products, services and processes, complying with our obligations or defending our rights. The legal ground for the processing depends on the precise purpose, but can be based on your consent, based on 8pod’s legitimate interests (see detail in the explanation) or based on 8pod’s own legal obligations.

8pod processes your personal data for specific purposes and only where we have a legal basis for doing so. The purposes and legal basis depend on our relationship with you:

Purposes for processing your personal data

Legal basis

Relationship & enquiry management
‍For all: receiving and responding to enquiries from you (including through our websites) about 8pod’s services.

Legitimate interests of 8pod to manage its relationship with you

Advertising and personalising your brand experiences, including marketing
Selecting and presenting brand experiences and other advertising to you, whether based on limited data (such as information about the content or non-precise geolocation data) or based on a profile (based on interests or personal aspects such as demographic data)
Recognising your device (or you as a user) when you visit digital properties with (or relevant for) brand experiences, to store information about your preferences, and allow us to customize our Apps according to your individual interests
Creating profiles (e.g. groups that may have common characteristics) based on shared interests, preferences and other information (or a combination of them) that help us to understand which products and services will appeal to you
Assessing the effectiveness of brand experiences and other advertising

Consent

Marketing to customer organisations
‍For supplier & customer representatives: Sending of marketing materials and service information to you regarding 8pod services, by various means of communication

Legitimate interests for existing customers; consent for prospects

Managing and improving our processes and services
‍Providing, improving, maintaining and securing 8pod’s services as well as brand experiences
Carrying out fraud and cyberattack prevention and mitigation
Internal corporate reporting, business administration and process management, as well as application and recruitment process improvement

Legitimate interests of 8pod in providing and improving its services and processes and in broadening its service offering, including by way of quality assurance and training of staff

Other purposes
‍Keeping a record of your privacy choices and consent, and managing any requests you submit to exercise your rights as a data subject
Managing possible claims regarding 8pod’s own processing activities or broader activities, including to establish, exercise or defend 8pod’s rights and to investigate and take action against illegal or harmful behaviour of users

Legitimate interests of 8pod in ensuring compliance with legal obligations, in respecting your choices and in defending itself

When we collect and use your personal data for new purposes, we will inform you before or at the time of collection (and ask for your consent where appropriate) unless we reasonably consider that this purpose is compatible with the original one as detailed above.

4. Profiling and automated decision making

Essentials: We do not carry out any automated decision-making on the basis of your personal data.

If you interact with the digital properties (websites, apps) of 8pod or of partnering brands, we may analyse information about you in order to create profiles (e.g. by compiling individuals into groups that we believe to have certain common characteristics). We use these profiles to personalise 8pod-powered brand experiences and to select and display relevant advertising. While this profiling may use automated means (without human intervention), this is not automated decision-making within the meaning of data protection rules, as we do not make decisions with any legal effect or similarly significant effect on you.If 8pod decides to undertake such processing, we will ensure that you are informed separately prior to any such automated decision-making and that you are told how to have a human review of the decision.

5. Children's Personal Data

Essentials: We take care not to process the personal data of children without specific safeguards, such as parental consent where required.

We understand the importance of taking extra precautions to protect the privacy and safety of children. The brand experiences on which we work are designed and intended for use by adults, not children. If we discover that we have collected personal data from a child without legally required consent, we will delete that personal data as soon as practicable.

6. Sharing Personal Data with Third Parties

Essentials: Subject to adequate safeguards, your personal data may be shared, depending on the purposes of processing, with third-party service providers and subcontractors, advertising partners and social media platforms (e.g. through social media functionalities in websites or apps), business transfer recipients (e.g. in the event of an acquisition) and legal disclosure recipients (such as authorities, but only where they are legally entitled to demand access).

In order to perform the purposes set out in section 4 above, we may share your personal data with the organisations described below. Consistent with applicable legal requirements, we take commercially reasonable steps to require third parties to adequately safeguard your personal data.

In particular we will share with:

Subcontractors: We make limited personal data available to subcontractors where this is necessary for the provision of a service, as is for instance the case for hosting service providers.
Advertising partners and social media platforms: We share limited personal data with marketing partners (including social media platforms) in order to show you suggestions and targeted advertising regarding 8pod-powered brand experiences. Social media platforms may receive and use personal data about you if you accept the rights required for social media functionalities within an 8pod-powered brand experience. For more information on how these businesses use personal data, please read their privacy policies.
Business transfer recipients: We may disclose personal data, as part of any actual or contemplated merger, sale, transfer of 8pod assets, acquisition, bankruptcy, or similar event, including related to due diligence conducted prior to such event, where permitted by law.
Legal disclosure recipients: Where we are obliged by law to disclose your personal data (e.g. to government or law enforcement bodies) or where disclosure is required to protect our rights or those of our staff, customers or other third parties.

Outside of these situations, we will never share, sell or rent any of your personal data to any third party without notifying you and, where necessary, obtaining your consent.

The above only restricts our sharing of personal data as such. We do for instance share aggregate or anonymous information with brands regarding user interaction with brand experiences made for them, and we take steps to ensure that this information does not identify a particular individual.

7. Sharing Personal Data Internationally

Essentials: If we need to share your personal data to organisations in different countries, we take legally required safeguards to ensure that the transfer is lawful.

8pod itself is established in the U.S., and we put in place safeguards to ensure that appropriate safeguards recognised under applicable data protection legislation apply to any sharing of personal data from certain jurisdictions (such as the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom), both to 8pod and from 8pod to third parties. This includes the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or other approved data transfer or certification mechanisms (such as the UK’s international data transfer agreement as well as the UK addendum to the Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses).

In each instance, 8pod will assess the transfer and ensure that any additional technical and organisational measures are put in place to ensure that an adequate level of protection is provided.

8. How long we store your personal data

Essentials: We keep personal data until it is no longer needed to fulfil the purpose of processing, taking into account how long we might need to have it as well for evidence purposes or to manage complaints or queries. In many cases, this is 13 months.

We keep your personal data for no longer than necessary for the purposes for which the personal data is processed including as required to comply with applicable laws and regulations as well as to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights. For example, where you send us a job application, we will keep the personal data related to your job application, so we can assess the job application and carry out the necessary follow-up. Similarly, for interaction with 8pod-powered brand experiences, we manage your personal data for as long as is needed to provide the brand experience and to provide reporting to the brand.

In the case of contact and recruitment, we also keep the relevant personal data for a period which enables us to handle or respond to communications as well as any complaints, queries or concerns relating to the purchase or registration.

9. Your rights

Essentials: You have various rights in relation to your personal data, such as (depending on applicable laws) access to your personal data (including portability in some cases), the right to adapt or delete some personal data, the right to limit our processing in certain cases (e.g. through withdrawing consent) and the right to complain to a data protection authority.

Subject to applicable laws, you are entitled to a number of rights over the processing of your personal data. You may exercise these rights at any point by contacting us here at privacy@8pod.com. We will consider all such requests and, in accordance with the applicable laws, will provide our response within a reasonable period, or within the period prescribed by law. We may request you to provide us with information necessary to confirm your identity before responding to any request you make.

You have the following rights:

The right to access: subject to exceptions, you have the right to request access to the personal data we hold about you;
‍The right to rectification: if the personal data we hold is inaccurate you are entitled to have it updated or rectified;
The right to deletion: subject to exceptions, you can ask us to delete your personal data;
The right to object: under certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to stop processing your personal data. For example, as a representative of an existing customer you may object to processing for direct marketing activities (for example, by clicking on the unsubscribe link in our emails) and where we are relying on ours or a third party’s legitimate interests to process the personal data (unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds to continue processing your personal data);
The right to withdraw consent: where we rely on your consent to process personal data, you have the right to withdraw consent at any time;
The right to restriction of processing: under certain circumstances you have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data such as if you believe (i) the personal data we have about you is accurate; (ii) the personal data is not being processed lawfully, but instead of deleting the personal data, you would prefer us to restrict processing instead; or (iii) we no longer need your personal data for the purposes we collected it, but you require the data in order to establish, exercise or defend legal claims;
The right to data portability: under certain circumstances you have the right to obtain a copy of the personal data that you have provided to us (in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format) and to reuse it elsewhere or to ask us to transfer this to a third party of your choice; and
The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: you also have the right to file a complaint to the data protection authority in the country where you usually live or where the alleged infringement of applicable data protection laws has taken place.

The lead authority for 8pod is the Belgian Data Protection Authority.

10. How to contact us

Essentials: Use e-mail to reach us.

If you have any questions, comments or complaints regarding this Privacy Statement or the processing of your personal data, please write to us at privacy@8pod.com.

11. Changes to our Privacy Statement

Essentials: Check frequently to see if there are any updates, but we may also notify you of changes where legally required.

We may update our Privacy Statement from time to time (for example, to comply with changes in laws or our processing activities). Any changes we make to our Privacy Statement in the future will be posted on this page and will be applicable on the effective date of implementation. Where we are legally required to do so, we will notify you of any changes. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our Privacy Statement.

‍This Privacy Statement was last updated on 20 October 2025.