Privacy Policy

Table of Contents

1. Definitions

Undefined terms in this Privacy Policy have the same definition as in our Terms of Service (“Terms”).

2. Personal Information We Collect

2.1 Information needed to use the Mereka.io.

We collect various personal information regarding you when you use Mereka.io. Without it, we may not be able to provide you with all services requested. This information includes, but is not limited to:

  • Contact Information, Account, Profile Information. Such as your first name, last name, email address, date of birth, password, some of which will depend on the features you use.
  • Payment Information. Such as the last four digits of your payment card number, country of issuance, expiration date of the payment card or billing information. 

2.2 Information you voluntarily disclose. 

You may choose to provide us with additional personal information. Any personal information that you voluntarily disclose in public areas becomes publicly available and can be collected and used by other users for any reason. Your profile pages (“Profile”) are typically publicly available. This information may include:

  • Additional Profile Information. Such as your interests, achievements, memberships, portfolios, education background, employment history, profile picture, skills, city or area, language(s), and personal description. 
  • Other Information. Such as when you fill in a form, add information to your account, respond to surveys, post to community forums, participate in promotions, communicate with other users, enquire with customer support, or share your experience with us via email or other communication methods. This may include health information if you choose to share it with us.

2.3 Information Automatically Collected by Using the Mereka.io.

When you use the Mereka.io, we automatically collect personal information. This information may include:

  • Geo-location Information. Such as precise or approximate location determined from your IP address or mobile device’s GPS depending on your device settings. We may also collect this information when you’re not using the app if you enable this through your settings or device permissions.
  • Usage Information. Such as the pages or content you view, searches for any Hub Services, bookings you have made, and other actions on the Mereka.io.
  • Log Data and Device Information. Such as details about how you’ve used the Mereka.io (including if you clicked on links to third party applications), IP address, access dates and times, hardware and software information, device information, device event information, unique identifiers, crash data, cookie data, and the web pages you’ve visited prior or after using the Mereka.io. We may collect this information even if you haven’t created an Mereka.io account or logged in.
  • Cookies and Similar Technologies. We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to administer our Services, and to analyze traffic patterns on the Services. The Services also use cookies and similar technologies such as pixel tags, web beacons, clear GIFs, and JavaScript (collectively, “Cookies”) to enable our servers to recognize your web browser and tell us how and when you visit and use our Site and Services, to analyze trends, learn about our user base and operate and improve our Services. For example, we use Cookies to deliver content specific to your interests, to save your password so you don’t have to re-enter it each time you visit, and to track whether emails we send you have been viewed. Cookies are small files – usually consisting of letters and numbers – placed on your computer, tablet, phone, or similar device when you use that device to visit our Site. We sometimes combine information collected through Cookies that is not Personal Information with Personal Information that we have about you, for example, to tell us who you are or whether you have an account with us. We may also supplement the information we collect from you with information received from third parties.

Cookies can either be “session Cookies” or “persistent Cookies”. Session Cookies are temporary Cookies that are stored on your device while you are visiting our Site or using our Services, whereas “persistent Cookies” are stored on your device for a period of time after you leave our Site or Services. The length of time a persistent Cookie stays on your device varies from Cookie to Cookie. We use persistent Cookies to store your preferences so that they are available for the next visit, and to keep a more accurate account of how often you visit our Services, how often you return, how your use of the Services may vary over time. We also use persistent Cookies to measure the effectiveness of advertising efforts. Through these Cookies, we may collect information about your online activity after you leave our Services. Your browser may offer you a “Do Not Track” or “DNT” option, which allows you to signal to operators of websites, and web applications, and services that you do not wish such operators to track certain of your online activities over time and across different websites. Because we collect browsing and persistent identifier data, the Services do not support Do Not Track requests at this time, which means that we may collect information about your online activity both while you are using the Services and after you leave our properties.

Some Cookies are placed by a third party on your device and may provide information to us and third parties about your browsing habits (such as your visits to our Site or Services, the pages you have visited and the links and advertisements you have clicked). These Cookies can be used to determine whether certain third party services are being used, to identify your interests, to retarget advertisements to you and to serve advertisements to you that we or others believe are relevant to you. We do not control third party Cookies.

We use the following types of Cookies:

  • Essential Cookies. Essential Cookies are required for providing you with features or services that you have requested. For example, certain Cookies enable you to log into secure areas of our Site or Services. Disabling these Cookies may make certain features and services unavailable.
  • Functionality Cookies. Functional Cookies are used to record your choices and settings regarding our Services, maintain your preferences over time and recognize you when you return to our Services. These Cookies help us to personalize our content for you, greet you by name, and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
  • Performance/Analytical Cookies. Performance/Analytical Cookies allow us to understand how visitors use our Site and Services such as by collecting information about the daily number of visitors to the Services, the daily requests we receive for particular files on the Services, and what geographical areas those requests come from. These aggregated statistics are used internally to better provide services to the public and may also be provided to others. Performance/Analytical Cookies also help us measure the performance of our advertising campaigns in order to help us improve our campaigns and the Services’ content for those who engage with our advertising. For example, Google, Inc. (“Google”) uses cookies in connection with its Google Analytics services. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to the Services is subject to the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. You have the option to opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page at https://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html or the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/.
  • Retargeting/Advertising Cookies. Retargeting/Advertising Cookies collect data about your online activity and identify your interests so that we can provide advertising that we believe is relevant to you. For more information about this, please see the section below titled “Third Party Advertising”.

You can decide whether or not to accept Cookies. One way you can do this is through your internet browser’s settings. Most browsers have an option for turning off the Cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new Cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your browser software) allow you to decide on acceptance of each new Cookie in a variety of ways. You can also delete all Cookies that are already on your computer. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some Services and functionalities may not work.

To explore what Cookie settings are available to you, look in the “preferences” or “options” section of your browser’s menu. To find our more information about Cookies, including information about how to manage and delete Cookies, please visit https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/ or http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

2.4 Personal Information We Collect from Third Parties.

We collect personal information from other sources, such as:

  • Third-Party Services. If you link, connect, or login to the Mereka.io with a third party service (e.g. Google, Facebook, Apple), you direct the service to send us information such as your registration, friends list, and profile information as controlled by that service or as authorized by you via your privacy settings at that service. This also includes situations when you make payments using our payment processor or via a mobile app store. Currently, our payment processor is Stripe. Stripe uses and processes your complete payment information in accordance with Stripe’s privacy policy.
  • Referrals and guests. If you are invited to the Mereka.io such as a guest on an experience, the person who invited you can submit personal information about you such as your name, email address or other contact information.
  • Other Sources. To the extent permitted by applicable law, we may receive additional information about you, such as demographic data or information to help detect fraud and safety issues from third party service providers and/or partners, and combine it with information we have about you. For example, we may receive background check results or fraud warnings from identity verification service providers for use in our fraud prevention and risk assessment efforts. We may receive information about you and your activities on and off the Mereka.io, or about your experiences and interactions from our partners. We may receive health information, including but not limited to health information related to contagious diseases.

3. How We Use Information We Collect

3.1 Provide, Improve, and Develop the Mereka.io. We use personal information to:

  • enable you to access the Mereka.io and make and receive payments,
  • enable you to communicate with other Users,
  • perform analytics, debug and conduct research,
  • provide customer service,
  • send you messages, updates, security alerts, and account notifications,
  • if you provide us with your contacts’ information such as your friends or guests, we may process this information: 

(i) to facilitate your referral invitations, 

(ii) to share your booking details, 

(iii) for fraud detection and prevention, and 

(iv) to facilitate your requests or for any other purpose you authorize,

  • personalize and customize your experience based on your interactions with the Mereka.io, your search and booking history, your profile information and preferences, and other content you submit, and
  • enable your use of our enterprise products.

3.2 Create and Maintain a Trusted and Safer Environment. We use personal information to:

  • detect and prevent fraud, spam, abuse, security and safety incidents, and other harmful activity,
  • study and combat discrimination
  • conduct security investigations and risk assessments,
  • verify or authenticate information provided by you,
  • conduct checks against databases and other information sources, including background or police checks,
  • comply with our legal obligations, protect the health and well-being of our Users, Hubs, Hubs’ employees and Users of the public,
  • resolve disputes with our Users,
  • enforce our agreements with third parties,
  • comply with law, respond to legal requests, prevent harm and protect our rights (see section 4.5)
  • enforce our Terms and other policies, and
  • In connection with the activities above, we may conduct profiling based on your interactions with Mereka.io, your profile information and other content you submit to Mereka.io, and information obtained from third parties. In limited cases, automated processes could restrict or suspend access to the Mereka.io if such processes detect activity that we think poses a safety or other risk to Mereka.io, our community, or third parties. If you would like to challenge the decisioning based on the automated process, please contact us via the Contact Information section below.

3.3 Provide, Personalize, Measure, and Improve our Advertising and Marketing. We may use personal information to:

  • send you promotional messages, marketing, advertising, and other information based on your preferences and social media advertising through social media platforms,
  • personalize, measure, and improve our advertising,
  • administer referral programs, rewards, surveys, sweepstakes, contests, or other promotional activities or events sponsored or managed by Mereka.io or its third-party partners,
  • analyze characteristics and preferences to send you promotional messages, marketing, advertising and other information that we think might be of interest to you, and
  • invite you to events and relevant opportunities.

3.4 Provide payment services. Personal information is used to enable or authorize third party payment processor:

  • Detect and prevent money laundering, fraud, abuse, security incidents.
  • Conduct security investigations and risk assessments.
  • Comply with legal obligations (such as anti-money laundering regulations).
  • Enforce payment policies contained in Terms of Service.
  • With your consent, send you promotional messages, marketing, advertising, and other information that may be of interest to you based on your preferences.

4. Sharing & Disclosure

4.1 Sharing With Your Consent or at Your Direction.

Where you provide consent, we share your information as described at the time of consent, such as when authorizing a third-party application or website to access your Mereka.io account or participating in promotional activities by Mereka.io partners or third parties.

Where permissible with applicable law, we may use certain information about you, such as your email address, de-identify it, and share it with social media platforms, to generate leads, drive traffic to Mereka.io or otherwise promote our products and services.

4.2 Sharing Between Users.

To help facilitate bookings or other interactions between Users, we may need to share certain information such as:

  • When a booking request is made or dispute is submitted, certain information may be shared between User(s) and Hubs(s), including profile, name, names of any additional Users, cancellation history, review information, age of user (unless prohibited by applicable law), dispute outcome (when applicable) and other information you choose to share and submit. When a booking is confirmed, additional information is shared to assist with coordinating the booking, like profile photo and phone number. When you as a Hubs have a confirmed booking, certain information is shared with the User (and the additional Guests they invite, if applicable) to coordinate the booking, such as your profile, full name, phone number, and Experience address.
  • When you as a User invite additional Guests to a booking, your full name, Hubs name, Experience details, the Experience address, and other related information will be shared with each additional Guest.

4.3 Information You Publish in Profiles, Experiences, and other Public Information.

You can make certain information publicly visible to others, such as:

  • Your public profile page, which includes your profile photo, first name, description, education background, employment history, interests and city.
  • Experience pages that include information such as the Experience’s approximate or precise location description, calendar availability, profile photo, aggregated demand information (like page views over a period of time), and additional information you choose to share.
  • Reviews, ratings and other public feedback.
  • Content in a community or discussion forum, blog or social media post.

We may display parts of your public profile and other Content you make available to the public like Experience details on third-party sites, platforms and apps.

Information you share publicly on Mereka.io may be indexed through third-party search engines. In some cases, you may opt-out of this feature in your account settings.

4.4 Hubs Service Providers.

Hubs may use third-party services to help manage or deliver their services. Hubs may use features on the Mereka.io to share information about the User (like User name, User phone number) with such third-party service providers.

4.5 Complying with Law, Responding to Legal Requests, Preventing Harm and Protecting our Rights.

We may disclose your information to courts, law enforcement, governmental or public authorities, tax authorities, or authorized third parties, if and to the extent we are required or permitted to do so by law or where disclosure is reasonably necessary: 

(i) to comply with our legal obligations, 

(ii) to comply with a valid legal request or to respond to claims asserted against Mereka.io, 

(iii) to respond to a valid legal request relating to a criminal investigation to address alleged or suspected illegal activity, or to respond to or address any other activity that may expose us, you, or any other of our users to legal or regulatory liability , 

(iv) to enforce and administer our agreements with Users, or 

(v) to protect the rights, property or personal safety of Mereka.io, its employees, its Users, or Users of the public. For example, if permitted due to the forgoing circumstances, Hubs tax information may be shared with tax authorities or other governmental agencies.

Where appropriate, we may notify Users about legal requests unless: 

(i) providing notice is prohibited by the legal process itself, by court order we receive, or by applicable law, or 

(ii) we believe that providing notice would be futile, ineffective, create a risk of injury or bodily harm to an individual or group, or create or increase a risk of fraud upon or harm to Mereka.io, our Users, or expose Mereka.io to a claim of obstruction of justice.

For jurisdictions where Mereka.io facilitates the collection and remittance of Taxes where legally permissible according to applicable law, we may disclose Hubs’ and Users’ information about transactions, bookings, and occupancy Taxes to the applicable tax authority, such as Hubs and User names, Experience addresses, transaction dates and amounts, tax identification number(s), the amount of taxes received (or due) by Hubs from Users, and contact information.

In jurisdictions where Mereka.io facilitates or requires a registration, notification, permit, or license application of a Hubs with a local governmental authority through Mereka.io in accordance with local law, we may share information of participating Hubs with the relevant authority, both during the application process and, periodically thereafter, such as the Hubs’s full name and contact details, Hub address, tax identification number, Experience details.

4.6 Service Providers.

We share personal information with affiliated and unaffiliated service providers to help us run our business, including service providers that help us: 

(i) verify your identity or authenticate your identification documents, 

(ii) check information against public databases, 

(iii) conduct background or police checks, fraud prevention, and risk assessment, 

(iv) perform product development, maintenance and debugging, 

(v) allow the provision of the Mereka.io Services through third-party platforms and software tools (e.g. through the integration with our APIs), 

(vi) provide customer service, advertising, or payments services, 

(vii) process, handle or assess insurance claims or similar claims, or 

(viii) facilitate non-profit and charitable activities consistent with Mereka.io’s mission. These providers are contractually bound to protect your personal information and have access to your personal information to perform these tasks.

4.7 Business Transfers.

If Mereka.io undertakes or is involved in any merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets, bankruptcy, or insolvency event, then we may sell, transfer or share some or all of our assets, including your information in connection with such transaction or in contemplation of such transaction (e.g., due diligence). In this event, we will notify you before your personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

4.8 Corporate Affiliates.

To support us in providing, integrating, promoting and improving the Mereka.io, and our affiliates’ services, we may share personal information within our corporate family of companies that are related by common ownership or control. Some examples are:

  • Sharing with Mereka Innovative Education Sdn Bhd (1239397-T). Even if your country of residence is not Malaysia, your information will be shared with Mereka Innovative Education Sdn Bhd (1239397-T). which provides the technical infrastructure for the Mereka.io.

5. Other Important Information

5.1 Analyzing your Communications.

We may review, scan, or analyze your communications on the Mereka.io for reasons outlined in the “How We Use Information We Collect” section of this policy, including fraud prevention, risk assessment, regulatory compliance, investigation, product development, research, analytics, enforcing our Terms of Service, and customer support purposes. 

For example, as part of our fraud prevention efforts, we scan and analyze messages to mask contact information and references to other sites. In some cases, we may also scan, review, or analyze messages to debug, improve, and expand product offerings. We use automated methods where reasonably possible. Occasionally we may need to manually review communications, such as for fraud investigations and customer support, or to assess and improve the functionality of these automated tools. We will not review, scan, or analyze your messaging communications to send third-party marketing messages to you and we will not sell reviews or analyses of these communications.

5.2 Linking Third-Party Accounts.

You can link your Mereka.io account with certain third-party services like social networks. Your contacts on these third-party services are referred to as “Friends.” When you direct the data sharing by creating this link:

  • some of the information provided to us from linking accounts may be published on your public profile,
  • your activities on the Mereka.io may be displayed to your Friends on the Mereka.io and/or that third-party service,
  • a link to your public profile on that third-party service may be included in your Mereka.io public profile,
  • other Mereka.io users may be able to see any Friends that you may have in common with them, or that you are a Friend of their Friend if applicable,
  • other Mereka.io users may be able to see any schools, hometowns or other groups you have in common with them as listed on your linked social networking service,
  • information you provide to us from the linking of your accounts may be stored, processed and transmitted for fraud prevention and risk assessment purposes, and
  • publication and display of information that you provide to the Mereka.io through this linkage is subject to your settings and authorizations on the Mereka.io and the third-party service.

5.3 Third-Party Partners & Integrations.

Parts of Mereka.io may link to third-party services, not owned or controlled by Mereka.io, such as Google Maps/Earth. Use of these services is subject to the privacy policies of those providers, such as Google Maps/Earth Additional Terms of UseGoogle Privacy Policy (see here for more information on how Google uses information), and Citi Privacy Policy. Mereka.io does not own or control these third parties and when you interact with them you are providing your information to them.

6. Your Rights

You can exercise any of the rights described in this section consistent with applicable law. Please note that we may ask you to verify your identity and request before taking further action on your request.

6.1 Managing Your Information.

You can access, correct and update some of your personal information through your Account settings. If you connected your Mereka.io Account to a third-party service, like Facebook or Google, you can change your settings and unlink from that service in your Account settings. You are responsible for keeping your personal information up to date.

6.2 Data Access and Portability.

In some jurisdictions, applicable law may entitle you to request certain copies of your personal information or information about how we handle your personal information, request copies of personal information that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format, and/or request that we transmit this information to another service provider (where technically feasible).

6.3 Data Erasure.

In certain jurisdictions, you can request that your personal information be deleted. Please note that if you request the erasure of your personal information:

  • We may retain your personal information as necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as prevention of money laundering, fraud detection and prevention, and enhancing safety. For example, if we suspend an Mereka.io Account for fraud or safety reasons, we may retain information from that Mereka.io Account to prevent that User from opening a new Mereka.io Account in the future.
  • We may retain and use your personal information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations. For example, Mereka.io may keep information for tax, legal reporting and auditing obligations.
  • Information you have shared with others (e.g., Reviews, forum postings) will continue to be publicly visible on Mereka.io, even after your Mereka.io Account is cancelled. However, attribution of such information to you will be removed. Some copies of your information (e.g., log records) will remain in our database, but are disassociated from personal identifiers.
  • Because we take measures to protect data from accidental or malicious loss and destruction, residual copies of your personal information may not be removed from our backup systems for a limited period of time.

7. Security

While no organization can guarantee perfect security, we are continuously implementing and updating administrative, technical, and physical security measures to help protect your information against unauthorized access, loss, destruction, or alteration.

8. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time in accordance with applicable law. If we do so, we will post the revised Privacy Policy and update the “Last Updated” date at the top. In case of material changes, we will also provide you with notice of the modification by email at least thirty (30) days before the effective date. If you disagree with the revised Privacy Policy, you can cancel your Account. If you do not cancel your Account before the date the revised Privacy Policy becomes effective, your continued access to or use of the Mereka.io will be subject to the revised Privacy Policy.

9. Contact Information

You may submit your complaints, request for access to and/or request correction of your Personal Information, request to limit the processing of your Personal Information for the Additional Purposes and/or make any inquiries regarding your Personal Information by contacting:

  • Designation : Business Development Associate
  • Address : Lot 1A-3, Level G1, Publika Shopping Gallery, Solaris Dutamas, Jalan Dutamas 1, Kuala Lumpur 50480 Malaysia
  • Email : 
  • Telephone Number : 603 6419 4755
  • Operating Hours : 9am – 6pm from Mondays – Fridays (excluding Public Holidays)

We may impose a fee for processing the aforesaid requests. 

In respect of your right to access and/or correct your Personal Information, we have the right to refuse the your requests to access and/or make any correction to your Personal Information for the reasons permitted under law, such as where the expense of providing access to you is disproportionate to the risks to your or another person’s privacy.

If you do not wish for your Personal Information to be collected via cookies on the Websites, you may deactivate cookies by adjusting your internet browser settings to disable, block or deactivate cookies, by deleting your browsing history and clearing the cache from your internet browser.