Last updated: 12 Jul 2019

You don’t want to worry about the whereabouts of your private information when you’re searching for travel inspiration or planning your next adventure in Vietnam. Here we’re committed to protecting the personal information you share with us. This notice tells you who we are, the ways we collect your information, what we do with it, and who we share it with.

Who we are

Founded on Apr 8th, 2017 by a group of backpackers in Vietnam. Backpackers Vietnam office is based in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.

Backpackers Vietnam is a leading travel media company in Vietnam who provides free travel information & supports travellers around the world when taveling to Vietnam.

Our mission

Be kind, fair & supportive in the community.

Discover the hidden gems, provide accurate and latest relevant information, encourage nice travel spirit, keep the non-commercial media, maintain travel beauty.

With BackpackersVietnam, you’ll travel wild & wise.

Our vision: The only reliable Vietnam travel information hub which remains up-to-date & contributes the best to the sustainable development of Vietnam travel and the society.

For more information, visit us at:https://backpackersvietnam.com/

Your information – how we collect it, what we collect, and why

We collect information about you when:

• you give it to us or one of the social media channels hosted by us (for example, when you sign up to receive our emails or create a profile on our website),
• you post content in our Facebook group, products and services (for example, you share a photo of your beautiful trip in the BackpackersVietnam Facebook group) or via our social media accounts, and
• sometimes automatically (for example, technical information that transfers when you view our sites or applications on your phone or computer).

We explain each of these in more detail below, but to be clear, Backpackers Vietnam does not, and will not, sell information about you to anyone. We only use your information as set out in this notice and we will only share your information with third parties for commercial purposes such as marketing or promotions if we have your consent to do so; or where we’ve engaged a company outside Backpackers Vietnam to provide a service for us (which might involve them handling your information, but this is only when we have proper safeguards in place); or where we’re obliged by law to share information with authorities.

When your information is given?

You sometimes give us information like your name, email address, phone number, and/or postal address. You might also give us information about yourself such as your favourite places to go and an avatar or profile photo as part of creating a profile with us. We use this information to:

• receive and reply to feedback and queries from you (see our note on feedback below)
• personalize or improve the way our products and content are presented to you
• where you specifically ask us to, we’ll send you emails containing travel and product information, third-party offers chosen by us from our commercial partners and other companies in Backpackers Vietnam group, surveys, contests and advertisements. You can unsubscribe any time using the unsubscribe link at the end of all emails.
• manage our competitions and contact the winners
• create partnership with us by giving information about your product, service or event

Except where we are relying on your consent, or fulfilling some aspect of a contract with you (which will include not only purchases and competition entries, but may also include administration of your account or related feedback or queries), we will be processing your data in these ways – including for marketing purposes – because we believe it is in our legitimate interests to do so.

When you post content

We also collect and use personal information contained in photographs and stories that we publish (like faces and other information about people contained in a video or photo, or a story) and that you post to our apps, social media sites or send directly to us. This is so we can:

• allow you to share your experiences with fellow travellers on our web forums, mobile applications, and social media sites
• allow us to manage communications among our community and make sure that posts and messages comply with our community guidelines, plus any terms posted on our websitesand mobile applications, or on other sites that we use to interact with you like Facebook or Instagram.

For more information on the intellectual property rights in the material you post, please see our terms and conditions.

When we receive your information automatically

When you view our sites and applications on your devices, we collect technical information like: the type of device you are using (e.g. phone, computer, other); the version of the operating system running on the device; the version and build of the application being used; anonymous usage statistics and crash reporting data; and unique identifier details for your device such as the IP address (a unique number that identifies your computer whilst accessing the internet), IMEI number (a unique number that identifies your mobile phone), or advertising identifier (unique ID that enables us to show you ads that are targeted to you). However, unique identifiers are anonymised and we do not use this information to identify you as an individual.

We consider this necessary either to process and administer your contractual use of our sites and applications, or for our legitimate interests in operating and improving them (including personalising your user experience). Specifically, we use these details to:

• display information correctly on your device
• provide you with location-specific information where you ask us to, such as serving you restaurants and bars near to you, or showing you where you are on a map in Guides by Backpackers Vietnam(if you want to turn this off, you can go to the “Settings” section of your phone and turn off location services for our apps)
• show you advertising that we think will be more relevant to you (see our “Cookies Policy” for more information, including how to opt-out of receiving cookies)

This data will only be shared with third parties who assist us to provide these services to you. This data may be cached on your device for short periods of time in order to improve user experience and make our applications and websites more responsive.

We also use this automatically gathered information about you to understand how our websites and applications are used by our community and to make sure any technical problems are reported to us. We use Google Analytics to gather and process this data. For details about the information Google Analytics collects and how Google Analytics treats that information please visit their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy or see our Cookies Policy.

Businesses and people that we work with

We may also collect the above sorts of information in relation to businesses we work with and the people who work in them. Again, this falls within our core function as a media and publishing organisation providing journalistic content. This is so we can:

• prepare listings and reviews in our publications. Our writers may collect personal information in the course of gathering material for inclusion in our products – this could include things like the name of an individual who runs a hotel, restaurant or tour company.
• send information about Backpackers Vietnam and our products to our media and other industry contacts
• deliver products to our clients like advertisers, distributors and retailers

If you work for Backpackers Vietnam (as an employee or as a freelancer) we keep information about you in the context of that employment or contractual relationship. There are some differences in how we deal with that type of personal information because of the different relationships with our Backpackers Vietnam people worldwide and the different locations that you’re all working in. If you are in this group and want further information on how we deal with information about you, please contact your local Human Resources manager or the person who you report to when you work with us and they will provide you with the privacy notice that applies to you.

Who do we give personal information to?

Where relevant, we might provide your information to businesses and individuals that we engage to assist us to provide our products and services to you (for example, our printers, software developers, and international language partners, travel writers, photographers, and editors). If you make a purchase from our online shop or one of our sales teams using your credit card, we may provide your information to credit card payment processing companies. When we give your information to these businesses and individuals, this may involve transferring your data from one country to another. However, their use of your data will always be limited to acting on our instructions and regulated under a contract that adequately protects your data.

If legal or health and safety issues arise we may also have to make disclosures to relevant organisations (like the police or relevant government departments and regulators) to deal with these matters.

Your use of other people’s information on our services

One of the best things about the Backpackers Vietnam community is that everyone is keen to share their views and experiences with others. We welcome your contributions, but please respect the privacy of others and don’t share their information.

If you want to post information about yourself to our sites or applications we’ll assume that you understand how our services work and are happy for your information to be shared. If you later decide you’d like your information removed from a site or an application, please let us know. Where reasonable and possible, and subject to considerations of public interest and freedom of expression, we will remove that information at the next practical opportunity. Where it has been included in one of our printed publications (like our guidebooks or magazines) that may be the next reprint or next edition.

Your rights

You have rights in relation to our use of your personal information. We have set out the rights available to people within the European Economic Area below. If you want to contact us about any of your rights, please be specific in your request and send it by email to [email protected] . We will do our best to respond to any request within 2 weeks of receiving it, but if your request is complex it may take longer. We aren’t always obliged to say yes to every request: if our answer to your request is no, we’ll explain to you why that is. If you don’t like our answer, you can get in touch with your local supervisory authority.

Right to request access – you can ask us what information we hold about you and check that we are complying with the laws that apply to the way we use your information. We won’t charge you a fee for this, unless you ask for excessive information or you repeatedly contact us or you don’t have a proper reason to contact us. If you make repeat requests or we don’t believe you have a proper reason for asking us, we might refuse your request. We might ask you for more information about yourself so that we can make sure you are who you say you are before providing you with any information.

Right to request correction – if you think that we have incorrect or incomplete information about you, you can request that we correct or update it. If we think the information is actually correct, we will tell you why. While we are assessing whether or not the information is incorrect or incomplete we will restrict the information. If we have provided incorrect or incomplete information about you to someone else, we will request that they also update your information following your request.

Right to request deletion (“right to be forgotten”) – in the following situations you have the right to ask us to delete your information:

• if we no longer need your information for the purpose that we collected it
• if we asked you for consent to use your information, but you want to withdraw that consent
• if you object to our use of your personal information and there is no legitimate business interest for us to keep using it
• where we’re using your information against the law
• where there is a legal obligation that means your information has to be erased

We aren’t always obliged to delete your information when you request it, but if we don’t think we need to delete your information we will tell you why. If we are obliged to delete your information and we have provided that information to someone else, we will, where possible, ask them to delete the information.

Right to object to or restrict processing – you have the right to object to us processing your information where we are processing your personal data for reasons of our legitimate interests and that processing is now causing you harm or you believe it is unlawful. When we receive any objection to processing on these grounds, we will generally restrict access to the information you’ve contacted us about while we assess whether our legitimate interests are lawful and override your objection. If we can demonstrate that our lawful reasons override your objection or that we need to keep your information for legal claims, we are allowed to continue to process your personal information. Otherwise we will either restrict processing of your information or stop processing it altogether.

Right to transfer of your information – where you have provided information to us with your consent, you have the right to request that we provide your information to you, or to someone else, in a commonly used electronic form. We will not charge you for the transfer of your information unless your request is excessive. Also, we have to protect other people’s personal information which means that we may have to remove some information before transferring your information.

Right to withdraw consent – if we have asked you for your consent to process particular items of your personal information, you are entitled to withdraw that consent at any time. If you wish to do so please send an email to [email protected] explaining which information you are referring to. We will stop processing this particular personal information as soon as possible after receiving your withdrawal. You will not be penalised in any way for withdrawing consent to any processing of your personal information. Alternatively, if you’d like to unsubscribe from one of our emails, you can simply go to the “UNSUBSCRIBE” link in the footer of any email to remove yourself from our list.

As stated above, none of these rights are absolute and we may have lawful reasons to continue processing, whether or not linked to our core public interest activity as a publisher of journalism and travel writing.

Retention of your data

We will only retain your personal data for as long as we have a lawful reason to do so, linked to the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice (including arts and journalism). This is subject to any reasonable requests by you which will be considered as above.