Be The Realness - Stories & meditations about tough life stuff to inspire mental well-being. — Our mission is to inspire conversations around mental well-being, create a space for real connection, and fight stigma. Stories & meditations about tough life stuff to inspire mental well-being.

Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Last Updated: July 23, 2020

If you are in danger or need emergency help, call a helpline, the police or your local authorities.

You may contact Be The Realness by email at hello@betherealness.com with questions about these Terms. Emails will be addressed by our customer service team. If you are in crisis and want help, please call a helpline, your local authorities or police — as we do not provide crisis counseling support via email or any other means.

You can find a list of helplines at www.betherealness.com/reach-out-for-help.

ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS

At Be The Realness (“Be The Realness”, “we”, or “us”), our mission is to inspire conversations around mental health, create a space for real connection, and fight stigma.

Before using or accessing our website, any content on the website (and/or any content found on other media or social platforms) (“Content”), or any support services operated by Be The Realness and/or any partner of ours (collectively the “Services”), please read the following. By accessing or using the Services you agree to these Terms of Service (“Terms of Service”) and our privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”; and together with the Terms of Service, “Terms”) described below.

These Terms govern your access and use of the Services, describe what information we collect through the Services, and explain how we use, transfer, and store your information after we collect it. If you don’t agree to these Terms, you may not use the Services.

CONSENT

We care about you and we want to be thoughtful about the Terms and how Be The Realness works. So, these terms may be changed from time to time. Any changes will be effective immediately upon our posting them to our website at betherealness.com. Continuing to use the Services after we’ve changed the Terms will mean that you accept the revised Terms.

NATURE OF THE SERVICES

Our Services are intended to educate, inspire and learn new skills. Be The Realness is not a substitute for professional health care, mental health treatment, psychiatric care, or therapy of any kind. If you believe you are experiencing a medical emergency, clinical or long-term issue, you should immediately call a doctor or other medical professional.

RISKS

You assume all risk for use of the Services. Neither Be The Realness nor any of our employees, consultants, agents, service providers, or any other entities with whom Be The Realness has contracted shall have any liability for or in connection with (1) actions taken or not taken by you or a third party, during, after, or as a result of your use of the Services, or (2) the unavailability of the Services. You agree to indemnify us and hold us harmless for damages arising out of (A) your use of the Services and/or consumption of the Content, (B) your breach of these Terms, (C) your violation of the law, (D) claims asserted by third parties that you are in breach of these Terms or (E) information provided by you to Be The Realness. Additionally, in no event shall Be The Realness be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, exemplary, or indirect damages.

The Services are provided on an “as is” basis and “as available” basis. We do the best we can, but can’t make any guarantees. Be The Realness and its service providers expressly disclaim all warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Without limiting the above, Be The Realness and its service providers make no warranty that Be The Realness will (A) meet your requirements; (B) be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; or (C) meet your expectations. The foregoing disclaimers of liability apply to all damages or injury, including those caused by any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect or delay in operation or transmission, whether for breach of contract, tortious behavior, including negligence, or any other cause of action.

PROHIBITED USES; RIGHT TO TERMINATE ACCESS

You agree to use our Services only for lawful and legitimate purposes and in accordance with these Terms. You agree not to use the Services and/or Content:

in any way that violates any applicable law, including federal, state, local, or international law or regulation;

for the purpose of exploiting, harming, or attempting to exploit or harm persons, including minors in any way;

in any way to sell, copy, distribute and/or license any of the Content or Services for commercial gain;

to threaten, harass, or otherwise inappropriately abuse Be The Realness, its employees, partners, agents, subcontractors, volunteers, or others;

to send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use, or re-use any content which does not comply with these Terms;

to impersonate or attempt to impersonate another person or entity;

to engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits anyone’s use or enjoyment of the Services, or which, as determined by us, may harm Be The Realness or users of the Services, or expose them to liability;

to copy, adapt, decompile, reverse engineer, attempt to discover the source code of or make derivative works of the Services or Content or any portion of the Services or Content; or

to otherwise attempt to interfere with the proper working of Be The Realness or the Services.

Be The Realness reserves the right to terminate your access to the Services if you violate these Terms, including doing anything on the list above.

Be The Realness may unilaterally terminate your access to the Services. We also may adjust your access if we determine that you’d be better served by a different kind of support.

Be The Realness further reserves the right to terminate the Services or your access to them for any other reason, at our sole discretion.

COLLECTION AND USE OF PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

“Personally Identifiable Information” is data that can be used to uniquely identify you, like your full name or home address. During your use of Be The Realness you may be asked (but never required) to voluntarily provide Personally Identifiable Information, including but not limited to your name or home address. We will only ask for this if we believe it would help us to better serve you.

While we may collect Personally Identifiable Information, we will not share it with any third parties except as noted in this Privacy Policy.

PURPOSES FOR PROCESSING DATA

Our lawful purposes for processing your data include consent (where you have given consent), contract (where processing is necessary to deliver the Services), protecting your vital interests, performing tasks carried out in the public interest, and the legitimate interests of Be The Realness.

Where we rely on your consent to process personal data, you have the right to withdraw or decline your consent at any time by contacting hello@betherealness.com.

WHAT PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

The only Personally Identifiable Information that we collect from you through the Services is the information you voluntarily provide to us.

DONOR PRIVACY

Be The Realness keeps a record of each donor’s giving history for tax reporting purposes, to analyze giving patterns, make budget projections, and solicit future donations. We do not share our donor file with any other party or organization.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

Any information, including Personally Identifiable Information, that you share with the Services may be viewed by Be The Realness staff for quality control, to contact emergency services, or to better assist you. We may use and share the Personally Identifiable Information that we collect via the Services amongst our employees, consultants, agents, and service providers in order to help us operate, analyze, research, develop, deliver, audit, maintain, and improve our products, content, advertising, communications, and the Services.

If you provide feedback or any of your content to us (such as through an anonymous survey, audio recording or othersie ), that feedback or content may also be shared on our website. We may also ask for your consent to share your feedback or content — with your name edited out, of course, if you so wish.

NON-PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

We also collect, use, and share non-Personally Identifiable Information, which is data that cannot be directly used to identify or contact you, such as podcasts listened to and other related data.

Additionally, after scrubbing and anonymizing data containing your Personally Identifiable Information such that it can no longer be used to personally identify you (rendering it non-Personally Identifiable Information) we also may use and share such anonymized data with third parties.

We may collect, use, transfer, and disclose anonymized non-Personally Identifiable Information to third parties for any purpose, including but not limited to improving our Services, generating support for Be The Realness, or as required by law.

USAGE INFORMATION

We may collect and analyze non-personally identifiable information through third-party applications and services, such as Google Analytics, regarding how people use our Services, which may include our website users’ operating system, Internet browser, mobile device, screen resolution, or general usage information such as the number and frequency of our website’s visitors, or which links were clicked. This information helps us improve our website and Services. (For information on Google Analytics, please visit http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.)

OUTSIDE REFERRALS

If you would like to receive support from any of the Helpline services mentioned on our website, please note that different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information. We don’t control the privacy policies of others. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your Personally Identifiable Information to others. We also cannot be help liable for any activity (or lack thereof) of such Helplines.

RETENTION OF INFORMATION

Be The Realness retains data for the purposes described above. We retain Personally Identifiable Information for seven years, and then scrub it to render it anonymous, so it can no longer be used to identify you personally. We retain non personally identifiable data — including the data we scrub — indefinitely, so that we may continue to use it to improve our Services.

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

Be The Realness cares about you and the security of your Personally Identifiable Information. We take reasonable security precautions, including encryption, administrative, technical, and physical measures, to protect your Personally Identifiable Information from loss, theft, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. We store all information on servers and we only permit approved Be The Realness employees and third parties to access those servers pursuant to the practices described above. Although we take appropriate measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that your Personally Identifiable Information or communications with Be The Realness will never be disclosed in a manner inconsistent with this policy, and make no representations or warranties regarding the sufficiency of our security measures to prevent unauthorized access or interception by third parties.

ACCESS/CHANGES TO PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

You may request access to or changes to Personally Identifiable Information of yours which we have stored by emailing hello@betherealness.com. You will be asked to verify your identity in order for us to grant you access to or process changes to your Personally Identifiable Information.

You may request that we delete your Personally Identifiable Information. We will make reasonable efforts to process requests promptly, but may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require unreasonable technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of you or others, are otherwise impractical, or which would conflict with a law enforcement matter. Additionally, we will decline to process requests if we believe preservation of your Personally Identifiable Information is necessary: (A) to comply with the law or in response to a subpoena, court order, government request, or other legal obligations; (B) to protect the interests, rights, safety, or property of Be The Realness, its employees, agents, or volunteers, including but not limited to Crisis Counselors; (C) to enforce our Terms; (D) in connection with a sale, merger, or change of control of Be The Realness or its affiliates, or (E) to address fraud, security, technical issues, or to operate the Services or their infrastructure systems properly.

CHILDREN UNDER 13 YEARS OLD

We take children’s privacy seriously and encourage users and their parents to review our Terms to understand our information collection practices.

GOVERNING LAW; INTERNATIONAL USERS

These Terms and the provision of the Services are governed solely by, and shall be interpreted according to, the laws of the Republic of South Africa. By using the Services and/or providing us with your information, you consent to the collection and transfer of your information in or out of South Africa as described in this policy.

ENTIRE AGREEMENT

If a court finds any provision of these Terms to be invalid or unenforceable, that provision shall be enforced to the maximum extent possible and the remaining Terms shall remain in full force and effect. These Terms constitute the entire agreement between you and Be The Realness, superseding any other written or oral agreements or understandings. (Basically, the stuff you’re reading now is what you and Be The Realness agree to, and even if we later fight about some words, the rest of the words still stick around.)