Privacy Notice and Membership Agreement

On the ThankFor “thank-you” platform, you can make use of various services such as saying thanks, reading the messages on the platform, writing comments, liking messages and taking part in Golden Idea Contests. You can contact the brands/companies registered on the platform directly, or they can reach you. How and for what purpose your membership information and your activities on the site will be used, the terms of membership, and how the security of your information is ensured are explained below.

The security and confidentiality of the information you share on ThankFor are important to us. For this reason, under Article 10 of Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (KVKK), we have an obligation to inform you and give you notice. Our privacy policy, how and for what purpose information is collected, with whom the data will be shared, the legal aspects and your rights are explained in detail below.

Without logging in to the platform, you can only view or read as a visitor. You are not authorized to write comments, interact, write any message, give ratings or share. Those who register by accepting the terms of membership on ThankFor are referred to as “Members.”

Your permissions as a ThankFor member: taking part in the Golden Idea Contests on the platform, viewing and reading messages, writing comments, giving ratings, interacting, writing new messages, sharing on social media, adding photos and videos, and more. When creating an account, you need to enter information such as a password, an email address and a phone number. You can also add a photo or other contact details to your profile information.

The following activities relating to your actions on the platform are recorded (provided that this complies with the laws in force): the messages you send and receive; information about messages (the type of message and the date and time it was sent); the content you view and interact with; how you interact with it; the applications and features used, and the actions you take in them. Which applications, posts, videos, ads, brands and other content you view or interact with; the time, frequency and duration of your actions on the platform; application, browser and device information; which device and software you are using, your IP address and information about your activity on our website. For example, the brands you visit on our site, how you interact with them, user profiles, cookie data and the geographic region from which you access the site.

Your first and last name, email and contact details: processing online visitor data under Law No. 5651; responding to requests for information from administrative and judicial authorities; fulfilling legal responsibilities; carrying out membership procedures; conducting and auditing company activities; developing and improving services; providing user-specific content; ensuring information security and preventing malicious use; legal proceedings; providing information to official persons, institutions and organizations; improving the user experience, getting to know users and visitors, and being able to use the data in customer base analysis; helping the brand get in touch with you; carrying out analysis work.

If you have given your explicit consent: informing you by email or through other channels about developments and changes on ThankFor; evaluating requests, complaints and suggestions regarding our activities; conducting and auditing the company’s business activities.

If other users already have your email address or other information that identifies you, we may show them information such as your name and photo, which may be publicly visible on your ThankFor profile. When you contact ThankFor, we keep a record of your communications to help resolve any problems you may encounter. Under no circumstances do we associate information from cookies or other channels with sensitive, divisive categories such as religion, language, race or sexual preference, and we do not keep records of them.

ThankFor collects personal data received through social media accounts, cookies, websites, official notifications from administrative and judicial authorities and other communication channels, in audio, electronic or written form, in accordance with the conditions for processing personal data set out in the KVKK and on the legal grounds stated in this policy.

Your personal data is processed on the basis of the lawful grounds set out in Articles 5, 8 and 9 of the KVKK:

• •Based on the legal ground that it is expressly provided for in the Turkish Commercial Code No. 6102, Law No. 6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce, the Turkish Penal Code No. 5237, Law No. 6502 on the Protection of Consumers and the legislation to which our site is also subject; carrying out the activities on the platform and ensuring information security in compliance with the legislation, and fulfilling our obligations arising from the legislation.
• •Based on the legal ground that data processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or protection of a right; conducting legal affairs and litigation.
• •Based on the legal ground that data processing is necessary for the legitimate interests of our site, provided that it does not harm your fundamental rights and freedoms; developing and improving the products and services offered.
• •Based on the legal ground of your explicit consent.

Because conducting or auditing its activities, ensuring business continuity and operating digital infrastructure require a continuous flow of data with various stakeholders, ThankFor has to share the personal data we process with third parties for specific purposes. For us to fully meet our contractual and legal obligations, it is very important that your personal data is accurate and up to date; for this, we need to work with various business partners and service providers.

Sharing takes place to the extent necessary, limited to the purposes of carrying out activities aimed at improving the experience and satisfaction of our members/visitors, providing information about developments and new features on the platform, developing products and services, ensuring business continuity and information security, and fulfilling legal obligations, as well as the purposes set out in Section 2 of this notice.

If ThankFor merges with another company, acquires a company or sells assets, we will continue to ensure the confidentiality of personal information, and we will notify the users affected before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Your personal data may be shared with public institutions and organizations authorized to request it, with regulatory and supervisory authorities, and with courts and enforcement offices; within the scope of fulfilling legal obligations, with lawyers, auditors, digital forensics experts, cybersecurity consultants and tax advisors; and, if you have given your explicit consent, with business partners providing services in the fields of ad serving, analytics, marketing, quality control, and request and complaint management, and with the service providers that provide our technical infrastructure.

Most of our services allow you to share information with other users. When you share information publicly, remember that it may be indexed by search engines. For example, the THANK-YOU NOTES you have written are publicly shared information.

ThankFor retains the personal data it processes, in compliance with the KVKK, for the periods stipulated in the relevant legislation or required by the purpose of processing. In our Personal Data Retention and Destruction Policy, these periods are approximately as follows:

• •Records relating to membership: 10 years / Law No. 6098.
• •All records relating to accounting and financial transactions: 10 years / Laws No. 6102 and 213.
• •Cookies: 2 years / Internet Law No. 5651.
• •Records of consent to commercial electronic messages: 1 year from the date consent is withdrawn / Law No. 6563 and related secondary legislation.
• •Traffic data relating to online visitors: 2 years / Law No. 5651.

Personal data shared with ThankFor is under ThankFor’s supervision and control. Your personal data that reaches ThankFor through the website and the mobile site is protected using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology. Access and authorization controls are applied to prevent unauthorized access to personal data. In this context, we would like to point out that we always keep our data processing policies up to date.

Your rights under Article 11 of the KVKK:

• •To learn whether your personal data is being processed.
• •To request information about it if your personal data has been processed.
• •To request the erasure or destruction of your personal data under the conditions set out in Article 7 of the KVKK.
• •To learn the purpose for which your personal data is processed and whether it is used in accordance with that purpose.
• •To know the third parties, within the country or abroad, to whom your personal data is transferred.
• •To request the correction of your personal data if it has been processed incompletely or inaccurately.
• •To request that the actions taken be notified to the third parties to whom your personal data has been transferred.
• •To request compensation for the damage if you suffer damage as a result of the unlawful processing of your personal data.

We allow you to make corrections and deletions in your profile. We retain the data until your account is deleted. When you delete your account, we delete the content you have shared, such as your photos and the THANK-YOU NOTES you have written; you cannot recover this information afterwards. If you would like to delete your account, please use the “Delete account” button in the My profile section.

In accordance with Articles 7 and 17 of the KVKK and Article 138 of the Turkish Penal Code, ThankFor retains the personal data it processes for the periods stipulated by the relevant laws and/or required by the purpose of processing. When these periods expire, the data is erased, destroyed or anonymized in accordance with the provisions of the relevant regulation.

We strive to run our services in a way that protects them from accidental or malicious damage. For this reason, after you delete your information from our services, we may not immediately delete the remaining copies from our active servers or remove this information from our backup systems; we may keep it for a certain period as a precaution.

If you ask us to delete your account or your content, it may take up to 60 days to delete your information after we start the account deletion process or receive a content deletion request. After the information has been deleted, it may take an additional 60 days for us to remove this content from backups and disaster recovery systems. The deletion process starts automatically within 30 days. Content you have deleted is no longer visible to other users.

To exercise your rights over your personal data, you can access your account from the My profile section of the ThankFor website and make the necessary changes, updates and/or deletions. In addition, every email sent to info@thankfor.net is treated as a request and will always be answered and decided upon. To request the deletion of your personal data, you can contact info@thankfor.net.

You can change or update, at any time, the opt-in or opt-out preferences for receiving commercial electronic messages that you gave when signing up to the ThankFor website or at a later time, by going to the “My profile” section.

ThankFor reserves the right to update its KVKK notice in line with changes made to the legislation in force. Our privacy policy may change over time. We publish any changes we make on this platform, and if they are of critical importance, we provide a more prominent notice. We also keep earlier versions of this policy so that you can review them.

• •The Member accepts in advance that they will not introduce malicious software such as spyware, Trojan horses, worms, viruses, dialer programs and the like.
• •If ThankFor or third parties suffer pecuniary or non-pecuniary damage because of the information used when signing up, the Member bears full responsibility.
• •The Member agrees not to damage any material, post or message on the platform other than their own posts.
• •The Member agrees not to post advertisements, listings, promotional material, junk mail, spam mail, bulk messages, letters, commercial announcements, or images, audio, text, graphics or similar material for commercial purposes.
• •The Member accepts, declares and undertakes that messages and comments will be checked against social values, customs and traditions, general morality and the rules of the Turkish language, that changes will be made to the content of a message when necessary, and that they will have no claim for compensation or the like because of such changes.
• •Members are responsible for the security of their user password and for protecting their privacy. The Member is personally responsible for any problems arising from the use of their member information by themselves or by third parties.
• •The companies concerned have the right to use the messages shared by members on their own social media pages. The Member may not claim any royalty, fee or right of use from any party in this regard.
• •The agreement is concluded once the Member ticks the “I accept” box when signing up. The agreement is not limited to any period of time.
• •The Member or ThankFor may terminate the agreement unilaterally at any time. Neither party will pay the other any entitlement or compensation.