APUS Browser Privacy Policy

1. Overview

APUS Browser (hereinafter referred to as “this Product”) is a browser product developed, operated and managed by Qilin Hesheng Network Technology Co., Ltd. (“APUS”,“We”, “us” or “our”). We fully respect and protect users’ personal privacy. While providing you with quality services, we will collect, use, disclose, store and protect your personal data in accordance with this Privacy Policy (hereinafter referred to as “Policy”).

We will explain how we process your personal data in this Policy and how you may access and control your personal data.

Please completely read and fully understand this Policy before using this Product. If you have any questions about this Policy, or have any complaints or suggestions, please contact us via the methods as described in this Policy. This policy will help you understand the followings:

2. How We Collect and Use Your Personal Data

We may collect your personal data as follows while we are providing services. These data is critical for us to realize various functions of this Product. We will use these data to help us develop and improve our products to provide better services. We will use your personal data in strict compliance with the purposes set forth in this Policy. We will inform you in advance and obtain your consent before we use these data for any other purposes than set forth in this Policy or we use the personal data collected for specific purposes for other purposes.

2.1. Category and purpose of your personal data we collect

This Product is a full functionality browser product with rich content and services. We will collect different categories of your personal data in different scenarios according to various product features, and will use these data to realize such product features.

2.1.1. Pre-activation service

In order to strictly comply with the laws and policies of the relevant countries or regions, we need to use pre-activation services to know your country or region. During pre-activation, we will send your IP address, country code (MCC), mobile phone language, system version and other information to our server. This information is only used to know your country or region, thus providing you with agreements and services that comply with that country or region. This information will be deleted within a short period of time after knowing your country or region, and will not be permanently saved.

2.1.2. Browsing History

In order to make it easier for you to find and use web pages you have viewed, we have provided you with the ability to save your browsing history. When you visit the website, we will record the website link address, title, favicon and time of your visit to the website, etc. In the history page, you can quickly find the page records you have previously browsed; on the input page, based on the keywords you entered, we can quickly match the records of the pages you have previously viewed. You can click on these historical records to browse without re-entering the URL. We provide the function of deleting history records. You can delete history records one by one or delete them all at one time according to your needs.

2.1.3. Safe browsing

In order to provide you with a safe web browsing environment, we provide you with safe browsing capabilities. When you visit a webpage, we will send the URL of the webpage you visit to our server to detect if the current website is risky. If the site is at risk, we will remind you on the interface.

2.1.4. Bookmarks

In order to facilitate you to quickly browse and save your favorite web pages, we provide you with a bookmark function. You can bookmark popular or favorite web pages. When you add a bookmark, we save this page’s link address, title, favicon, and time information locally. When you want to visit this page again, you can open this page directly from the bookmarks list without re-entering the URL. We provide the function to delete the bookmarks, you can delete them one by one or delete them all at one time.

2.1.5. Download Management

The download management function allows you to download multiple files at the same time, manage the download progress of each file, switch specified download destination folders, quickly find or delete already downloaded files, and can automatically start a download task that has not been completed due to network anomalies. In order to achieve these functions, we will save the download status information, such as: wait for download, pause download, network interruption, etc.; perform status display, and use this information to determine whether to continue downloading.

In order to switch to accept the downloaded folder, we will read the directory information of your memory card in order to switch the storage directory of the file download. We also save download file information and when the download started and completed so that you can quickly find or delete downloaded files by name and time. We provide the ability to delete download tasks. You can delete the download tasks one by one or delete them all at one time according to your needs.

2.1.6. Quick Search

In order to facilitate your faster search or visit the website, we provide you with a quick search function. On the input page, we will check if your clipboard has new content. If the clipboard has new content, we will get it and display it so that you can click on the content directly for search or for access.

2.1.7. Search History

In order to facilitate you to view and use past search keywords, we provide search records. To do this, we need to save the keywords that you have searched for, to display them on the search page, so that you can click directly from the search page to finish searching without entering keywords again.

2.1.8. Voice Search

On mobile phones that support speech recognition, we provide you with voice search capabilities. We support speech recognition programs that evoke the system. The system’s speech recognition program recognizes your speech and converts it into text and returns it to us. We search for this text through the search function. We will not apply for permission throughout the entire process and will not collect and store any data related to your voice.

2.1.9. Homepage navigation

For your quicker access to the website, we provide you with homepage navigation. By default, we provide some URLs that you may visit. You can add more URLs that you frequently visit through the URL adding function. You can also adjust the URLS or delete them. In order to implement these functions, we need to save information such as the title of the navigation page, the address of the page, the icon of the page, the location of the navigation etc… This information is only saved locally and will not be uploaded. When adding a URL, we need to obtain your current navigation data in order to avoid duplicates.

2.1.10. Content and information

For your convenience, we provide news and information on the homepage. In order to provide you with news and videos in your country or region, we need to obtain your geographical location to know your country; Need to get news and videos browsing record info to recommend content you may like.To save traffic and avoid frequent network requests, we will cache the latest content locally. In a certain period of time, data is read from the cache without network requests. When the time exceeded, the network request will be renewed, the latest news or information will be obtained, the previously cached data will be cleared, and the latest data will be cached locally. The cache is only saved locally and will not be uploaded.

2.1.11. Marked Ads

To help you successfully block ads, we offer you Marked Ads. To do this, we need to store the location of the ad on your browsing page.

2.1.12. Privacy Sites

In order to protect your personal privacy, encrypt your favorite URLs, we provide a privacy sites, for which we need to store the login password and security question you set.

2.1.13. Restore Last Webpage on Startup

In order to restore the last page you browsed when you open the app, we provide webpage recovery. To do this, we need to save the page information you have viewed.

2.1.14. Offline Pages

In order to save the current webpage so that you can view it offline, we need to store webpage information and read your phone’s storage space.

2.1.15. Web-page Translation

In order for you to be able to use web content translation, we need to read your phone system language and send a link to the URL you are currently visiting.

2.1.16. Points Mall

We provide you with the point mall function, you can get points rewards (including signing in, inviting friends, etc.) in the product by completing tasks, and use the points you get to exchange virtual prizes or physical goods. In order to realize the permanent preservation and redemption of points, you need to register and log in. For detailed policies on the use of accounts and points, please refer to Account Privacy Policy

When you’re not signed in to a APUS Account, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers tied to the device you’re using.

When you’re signed in, we also collect information that we store with your APUS Account, which we treat as personal information.

2.1.17. Cloud service

We provide you with a wealth of features and services through cloud service interfaces, such as news, video, navigation, event, website security detection, and product updates. In order to ensure the operation of cloud services, we need to collect some necessary data, including: application information such as application package name, application version, and application installation time; system information such as country code, system language, and system time zone; screen resolution and other devices Information; network information such as operators.

2.1.18. Service quality measurement

In order to measure the quality of service of a product and thus provide you with better services experience and other new services, we will collect the following information during your use of the service, and the information obtained will only be used for this purpose.

Activation information: application information including application package name, application version, and application installation time; system information such as Android ID, country code, system language, system version, system time zone, and Google service version; screen resolution, mobile phone brand, mobile phone model, etc.; Network card information and other devices information; network types, operators and other network information.

Usage information: application information including application package name, application version, and application installation time; system information such as country code, system language, and system time zone; screen resolution and other device information.

2.1.19. Provide stable services

In order to provide you with a stable service, we will collect the following related information for locating, analyzing ,and improving problems in the event of product. And the information is only used for this purpose.

Crash information: When our product crashes, you can choose whether to upload crash information. Then we will get the uploaded crash information, including application name, application version, application installation time, application signature and other application information; country code, system language, system time zone, memory information and other system information; screen resolution, mobile phone brand, horizontal screens, vertical screens and other information; crash process name, crash time, system non-sensitive log at crash, and crash log of this application.

Feedback: If you have any questions or suggestions about this policy, you can give us feedback through the product’s feedback function. We will get your feedback, including email address, feedback content, mobile phone brand, mobile phone model, system version and other information.

2.1.20. Anti-Fraud and Anti-Cheating

To prevent fraud and cheating, in order to ensure the normal operation of our business that provide you with better services and ecological environment, we need to obtain some necessary data, including: application package name, application version, application installation time, application signature and other applications Information; Android ID, country code, startup time, system time, memory information, system version, power, volume information, Bluetooth information, SIM card status and identification information, storage information and other system information; screen resolution, mobile brand, mobile phone Type, sensor information, camera information, CPU information, GPU information and other device information; location information, headset pluggable information, application installation and use information, screen unlocking information, Wi-Fi list information, network information and other user use information. The information obtained is used only for this purpose and is stored on the server as a pseudonym.

2.2. Your personal data we obtain from a third party

For now, we do not obtain your personal data from any third party. If certain services may require your personal data from a third party, we will notify you in advance and obtain your consent.

2.3. What permissions do we use to get your data
2.3.1. Get your location (GPS and network-based)

This permission allows APUS Browser provide weather service. Also, some websites want to know your location so that they offer better service according to your location. You can still decline them in pop-up window or clear them in settings. This information can’t be traced back.

2.3.2. Read phone status and identity

This permission allows APUS Browser to smartly recommend news to display contact ws and other content to you. It does not require any user personal identified information.

2.3.3. Read, modify or delete the contents of your storage as your instructions

We use this permission so that you can download pictures, videos, music etc. to your SD card.

2.3.4. Read browser bookmarks

This permission allows APUS Browser to import other browsers’ bookmarks.

2.3.5. Draw over other apps

This permission allows the APUS Browser to display a floating window on other apps so that browser can quickly search your copied texts.

2.3.6. Install shortcuts

This permission is used to install shortcuts on launchers, so users can continue using APUS Browser related function.

2.3.7. Modify system settings

This permission is used to switch or adjust volume and brightness level of the screen for video playing.

2.3.8. Receive GCM notification

This permission allows users to receive GCM notification for subscription services.

2.3.9. Find accounts on the devices

This permission allows APUS to check if users have logged in Google Play and provide relative app installation service for users.

2.3.10. Run at startup

APUS Browser will run at startup to provide users with services.

2.3.11. Prevent Phone from sleeping

The only purpose for using this permission is to prevent the phone from going to sleep when you are playing videos in full screen mode, otherwise we won’t do it .

2.3.12. SMS, contact and account information

(1) Read your contacts

Used to display contact name of missed calls or SMS on lock screen. No contact identified information will be collected.

(2) Send and view SMS

Used in messaging service in Smart Locker, including receive, reply. No Message content will be collected.

(3) Read call log

Used in phone call service in Smart Locker, including display phone number and time of missed calls, and users can spontaneously change status of missed calls. No calls information will be collected.

(4) Information you give us

Many of our services require you to sign up for a Account. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information, like your name, email address, telephone number to store with your account.

3. How We Use Cookie and Similar Technologies

Cookie is a small piece of text sent to a browser by a website visited by a user. It helps the browser to record user access information, such as preferred language and other settings. In this way, users will have an easier and more practical experience when they visit the same website the next time. Cookie play a vital role. Without cookie, the user’s experience of Internet will be greatly reduced, and some website features or services may not even work properly. We use cookies to provide you with a complete web browsing service. We do not collect cookie information ourselves. Please note that the websites you visit may use cookie to store your preferences, settings, login status, etc. For example, when you visit a webpage that has a login function for the first time, you need to enter a user name and password to log in. After logging in, the website will record your login status, When you switch different pages under the site, you do not need to re-enter the user name and password, you can directly browse the content of the web page. Websites may use cookie to recommend advertisements. For example, some websites use cookie to record websites that you click on to prevent you from seeing duplicate advertisements. We provide the ability to disable and delete cookies. You can disable or delete cookies.

To make it easier for you to open web pages, we provide web page caching. We allow websites you visit to store some web page data, such as web page pictures and other information. When you visit the site next time, the site will directly read the saved data for display, thereby to open the webpage faster. The cache will expire due to expiration or manual removal. We will not upload any cached content.

4. How We Share, Transfer and Disclose Your Personal Data

We will share with or transfer or disclose your personal data to a third party with your consent or explicit instructions. In addition, to improve the quality of our service, we may also share with or transfer or disclose your personal data to a third party under the following circumstances.

4.1. Subsidiary Products
We may share your personal data with our subsidiary products to provide a more consistent experience and better service. We guarantee that our subsidiary products will treat your personal data in accordance with the purposes and requirements shown in this Policy. We will obtain your prior consent again if our subsidiary products wish to use your personal data for purposes other than those set forth in this Policy.
4.2. Affiliated Company
We may share your personal data with our affiliated companies and will ensure their processing of your personal data is in compliance with the purposes and requirements of this Policy. We will obtain your prior consent again if affiliated companies intend to use your personal data for other purposes than set forth in this Policy.
4.3. Third party service provider

We may engage third party service providers to provide specific services. Third party service providers may collect data when providing services, and we will ensure that they follow our instructions, follow the purposes and requirements set out in this policy to process your personal data, and take appropriate confidentiality and security measures to safeguard data security.

4.3.1. Search Function
In order to provide you with comprehensive search results, we provide you with a variety of different search engines for your choice. The search engines we use include: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Aol, Ask, Baidu, Sogou, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Naver, Daum and their corresponding contracting agencies. You can choose your favorite search engine. When you search, we will use your search keywords, go to the search engine server you selected or its corresponding contracting agency server, and finally display the query results to you.
4.3.2. Search Suggestions

In order to help you quickly find the content you want to search for, and provide more accurate search results, when you enter keywords, we recommend some search suggestions that you may need based on your language, your locale and what you entered. In this process, we go to the third-party search suggestion server according to your language, your locale and the keywords you entered. The third-party search suggestion servers include: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Aol, Ask, Baidu, Yandex, Naver, and Affinity, etc. We will show the results to you when the other party query the search suggestions that matches your language, your locale and the keywords you entered. You can directly select the search suggestions you want to search for. In the process, we will not collect any of your personal data.

4.3.3 Visiting a Web Page

In order to realize the function of browsing the webpage, we will request the content of the webpage according to the webpage link address you provided, and then display the content of the webpage returned by the server. In this process, website may collect your relevant data,such as user agent, cookies, browsing track and so on. In addition, to implement special functions in certain web pages, the website may use the browser to apply for the location of your address or mobile phone file information, for example: pictures that need to be uploaded to the avatar, and microphone information. After you authorize it, the website can display related functions.

4.3.4. Attribution of installation channel

In order to attribution of installation channel and provide you with better services, we use the services of a third party service provider. The service needs to obtain your information including: application package name, application version, application installation time, system version, and other applications Information; Android ID, country code , language, system version and other system information; power, charging type, sensor information, mobile phone language information, mobile phone brand, mobile phone model.Type, network information, CPU information and other device information. The information obtained is only used for this purpose.

4.3.5. Anti-fraud and Anti-Cheat

In order to prevent fraud and prevent cheating, and to provide you with better services and better ecological environment, we use Digital Union’s services. The service needs to obtain your information including: application package name, application time information, application version number, installation path, application size and other application information; CPU, screen resolution, total memory information and other hardware general information; country code, start-up time, system time and other system information; mobile phone brand, mobile phone model, memory, CPU and other equipment hardware information. The information obtained is only used for this purpose.

4.4 Share of your personal data as required by law

Subject to compliance with this Policy, we may be required to share or disclose your personal data under certain circumstances, such as in accordance with laws and regulations, and compulsory requirements of government orders; to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of yours, ours, and third parties; and to prevent or deal with fraud, secure or technical problems.

4.5 Change of organization and existing status of our company

For any change of the organization or existing status of our company (such as restructuring, merger or bankruptcy), your personal data may be transferred to the company entity after change or our affiliated company (the “Data Transferee”). The Data Transferee will continue to be bound by this Policy.

5. Process Your Personal Data Using Third Party Services

The Product may contain a hyperlink directing to third party products or services, such as a hyperlink to another website. You may click the hyperlinks in this Product to access third party products or services. Meanwhile, we may also embed third party links in this Product and you may click these links to access or use third party products or services on the interface of this Product. We hereby remind you that when you access or use third party products or services via the above methods whereby your personal data will be obtained by such third party products or services, the privacy policies of such third party products or services will apply to such personal data.

6. How We Store and Protect Your Personal Data

6.1. Security protection of personal data

We are committed to protecting your personal data. We have adopted all possible security technologies and procedures to protect your personal data against unauthorized access, use, revision, damage, destruction or disclosure. These security measures mainly include the following:

a) Your personal data is stored in the computer systems located in a controlled site with security measures such as encryption.

b) Only APUS employees who have the necessity to process relevant data for the purpose of product operation are authorized to access your personal data and such employees are required to comply with strict confidentiality obligations.

c) We are constantly striving to ensure the security of your personal data, and we adopt encryption technologies during data transmission to prevent your information against unauthorized access, use, revision, damage, destruction or disclosure.

d) We are more prudential when we transmit and store special categories of your personal data and adopt encryption technologies and other security measures to ensure data security.

In case of personal data security incident, according to the requirements of relevant laws and regulations, we will promptly inform you via push notification, announcement, etc. the basic situations and possible influence of the security incident, response measures we have taken or will take, suggestions for you regarding self-prevention and risk reduction, remedial measures for you, etc. We will timely deal with system vulnerabilities, cyber-attacks, virus intrusion, and other security risks.

6.2. Personal data storage term

We will store your personal data for the necessary period for data collection and processing purposes. Beyond the above-mentioned period, we will delete or anonymize personal data.

Browsing history, bookmarks, web page data, cookie, downloading file information, and search history are all stored locally and are available throughout the application lifecycle. You can manually clear this data at any time.

The access records, application execution logs, and application debug logs of the cloud service are stored on the server for a short period of time, typically 7 days. If this period expires, we will delete or anonymize the data.

Application usage data is pseudo-persistently stored on the server for data analysis. You can access, edit or delete your data in the manner described in section 7. : How to Access and Control Your Personal Data.

After you cancel your account, we may not be able to delete your personal data immediately due to technical reasons; however, we will delete it during the next system update, and we undertake not to process your personal data during the period between cancellation of your account and the next system update.

7. How You Access and Control Your Personal Data

7.1. Access and revise your personal data

You may access and edit your personal data online through APUS User Information Center.

7.2. Change of your authorization scope

You may select on the page of APUS User Information Center to change your authorization scope for us to process your personal data. Please be minded that since all functions of the Product need certain basic personal data for normal operation, certain functions of the Product may not operate normally when you withdraw your consent to processing of some personal data.
When we receive your withdrawal of consent, we will no longer process your corresponding personal data.

7.3. Rejection of personalized advertising

You may always choose whether to receive promotional emails, messages, calls, and mails from us or third parties. You may also choose to no longer receive personalized advertisements through APUS User Information Center.

We will no longer use your personal data for the above-mentioned commercial promotion purposes when you refuse to receive interest-based advertisements. Non-personalized ads don’t use mobile ad identifiers for ad targeting, they do still use mobile ad identifiers for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting, and to combat fraud and abuse.

7.4. Delete your personal data

You may submit a request to us to delete your personal data when:

a) Your personal data is no longer necessary for data collection or processing;

b) You have withdrawn your consent to our processing of your personal data ;

c) Your personal data has been processed illegally;

d) We are obligated to delete your personal data in accordance with the laws of EU members.

We may not be able to delete your personal data immediately due to technical reasons. We will delete it during the next system update. We will not process your personal data in any way during the period between your request of deleting your personal data and the next system update.

7.5. Respond to your requests

We may first verify your identity upon receipt of your request, and may request you to provide the necessary information for authentication.

We will respond to your request on the 30th day after we receive your request and communicate with you in an appropriate way. If necessary, we may extend it (by an additional 30-day at most), and will inform you of the reason for the extension of the deadline on the 30th day after receiving your request. If we have reasonable reasons to believe that no measures are needed to respond your request, we will inform you of our decision 30 days from the date of receipt of your request and provide you with appropriate explanation.

We will use best efforts to help you resolve relevant problems. If you are not satisfied with the response you received, you may refer the complaint to the relevant regulatory authority, or file a lawsuit before a competent judicial authority.

8. How We Process the Minor’s Data

This Product is not intended for a minor under 16 years old (or equivalent minimum age set by the laws of EU members). We will only process the information of these minors to the extent permitted by law and with the consent of their guardians.

We will implement relevant technical measures and make our best efforts to verify whether the processing of minors’ information has been approved by their guardians. We will try to delete relevant data as soon as possible if we are aware that we have collected the personal data of a minor without the prior consent of their certified guardians.

9. Contact Us

If you have any questions or suggestions about this policy, or you need to do your data management power to manage your privacy data, please feel free to contact us: b_privacy@apusapps.com.

If you find any violation of this policy, please feel free to contact our DPO: dpo@apusapps.com.

10. Update of Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to revise or modify this Policy. For any update of this Policy, we will send you notice on the interface of this Product to remind you of relevant updates and indicate the updated provisions for your ease of reading. Please do completely read and fully understand the updated Privacy Policy. By continuing to use this Product, you will be deemed to have accepted the updated version of this Policy. We will not reduce your rights under this Policy without your explicit consent.

11. How Your Personal Data Is Transferred Globally

We provide APUS products and services around the world, which means to conduct business globally, your personal data might be transmitted to a jurisdiction or accessed from such jurisdiction outside of the country/region where you use this Product. These jurisdictions include but are not limited to Singapore, United States, and China.

Please note that we only return demographic information to China and we do not include information on individual user identities. At the same time, in order to provide you with better services, our third party partners may transmit your data to other countries. For example, in order to detect robots or cheating, we have purchased a Chinese supplier’s traffic monitoring service. The merchant may return the user information to China in order to assist us in analyzing whether there is cheating in the user.

Personal data protection legislation in such jurisdiction might be different or even absent. Under such circumstance, we will adopt various measures to ensure security of your personal data. For instance, we will ask you for your explicit consent before transmission of your personal data, or implement security measures such as encryption and pseudonymisation during data transmission; when your personal data is transferred to such jurisdictions, we will apply the same protection of your personal data in accordance with the Policy. We will endeavor to protect your personal data with the measures stipulated in Article 46 and Article 47 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

The content of this Privacy Policy shall be adjusted according to the local legal or statutory requirements.

Last updated: 19 May 2018