Privacy Policy - Crezly

1. Introduction and Scope

Welcome to Crezly ("Crezly", "we", "us", or "our"). Crezly is an online marketplace platform designed to connect commercial brands and businesses ("Brands") with independent creative talent ("Creators") for promotional campaigns, video sponsorships, and related creative deliverables.

This Privacy Policy describes our practices regarding the collection, use, storage, disclosure, and protection of personal data and third-party API data when you use the Crezly mobile application, our website, and associated services (collectively, the "Platform").

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By creating an account, accessing our Platform, or linking your YouTube channel with Crezly, you acknowledge that you have read and understood the practices described herein.

2. Information Users Provide Directly

When you register and interact with Crezly, you provide certain information directly to us, including:

• Identity & Contact Details: Display name, username, email address, and optional phone contact.
• Profile & Creative Bio: Bio description, category selections (e.g., tech, lifestyle, gaming), profile photo, and external portfolio links you submit voluntarily.
• Commercial & Collaboration Terms: Service pricing, package descriptions, creative requirements, and chat messages exchanged with potential collaboration partners through the platform messaging interface.
• Support Communications: Inquiries, dispute evidence, feedback, or verification requests submitted to our support team at omkaarstudios@gmail.com.

3. Account and Profile Information

Crezly maintains two primary types of marketplace accounts:

• Creator Accounts: Profiles created by independent content creators to showcase their portfolio, content niches, and verified social metrics to prospective brand partners.
• Brand Accounts: Profiles utilized by marketers, business owners, or agency representatives seeking to discover, negotiate with, and hire creators for marketing collaborations.

Certain creator profile details—such as display name, bio, niche categories, and authorized channel metrics—are publicly viewable within the Crezly marketplace to allow brands to discover and evaluate creators.

4. YouTube Channel Linking and Authorization

Creators on Crezly may voluntarily connect their YouTube channel to their Crezly creator profile. Channel linking operates through Google's official OAuth 2.0 authorization framework.

During the connection flow:

1. The creator initiates the connection by selecting "Link YouTube Channel" in their Crezly profile settings.
2. A secure Google OAuth consent dialog is displayed requesting authorization for the minimal read-only scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.readonly.
3. Upon the creator's explicit approval, Google issues a secure one-time authorization code, which is transmitted securely over TLS to Crezly's backend Cloud Function for verification and token exchange.
4. Crezly's backend verifies channel ownership, locks channel uniqueness (preventing duplicate claims of the same YouTube channel across different Crezly accounts), and queries the YouTube Data API for the channel's public statistics.

5. YouTube API Data Accessed by Crezly

In accordance with the principle of data minimization and Google API Services User Data Policy, Crezly strictly requests and accesses only the data points necessary to display channel credibility indicators:

• Channel Identity: YouTube Channel ID and YouTube Channel Title.
• Audience & Reach Statistics: Public subscriber count, total cumulative video view count, and published video count retrieved via channels.list with part=snippet,statistics.

6. Why Subscriber Counts and Video Views Are Used

Crezly accesses and utilizes YouTube channel statistics for specific, legitimate marketplace purposes:

• Creator Discovery: Subscriber counts provide an objective indicator of approximate audience size, while total video views reflect cumulative content reach, enabling brands to search and filter creator profiles relevant to their target market.
• Campaign Matching: Brands evaluate whether a creator's audience scale aligns with campaign objectives, budget tiers, and expected distribution scope.
• Creator Credibility & Transparency: Displaying statistics retrieved directly from the official YouTube Data API enables creators to prove channel ownership and metrics authentically, without needing to submit manual screenshots or unverified third-party claims.
• Informed Collaboration Decisions: Channel metrics provide objective contextual background for collaboration discussions.

Important Non-Guarantee Disclosure: Subscriber counts and view counts are historical indicators of channel reach, not guarantees of engagement, click-through rates, product conversions, sales, or campaign success. Crezly never presents these metrics as guarantees of promotional efficacy.

7. How Retrieved Statistics Are Displayed on Creator Profiles

When a creator links their YouTube channel, Crezly displays the verified channel metrics directly on the creator's marketplace profile card and public profile view.

Specifically, prospective brand partners exploring the marketplace can view:

• The connected channel name and a badge indicating authorized YouTube linking.
• The creator's verified subscriber count (e.g., "125K Subscribers").
• The creator's cumulative video views and published video count.

These statistics are displayed alongside the creator's other voluntary portfolio assets (such as sample portfolio links) to give brands a holistic, authentic representation of the creator's creative capabilities.

8. Creator Authorization for Displaying Information to Brands

Creators retain full control over whether their YouTube metrics are linked and displayed on Crezly. Linking a YouTube channel is completely optional.

By initiating the Google OAuth linking flow, the creator explicitly authorizes Crezly to retrieve their channel statistics from the YouTube Data API and display those statistics to brands browsing the Crezly marketplace. The creator may revoke this authorization and remove their channel statistics from public display at any time.

9. Other Parties That Receive or Process Information

Crezly handles your data responsibly:

• No Sale of Personal Data: Crezly does not sell, rent, or trade your personal data, contact details, or YouTube API data to data brokers, advertising networks, or third parties for monetary or commercial consideration.
• Prospective Brands & Marketplace Users: Authorized public profile details, including retrieved YouTube subscriber and view counts, are viewable by registered brands and marketplace visitors for collaboration evaluation.
• Service Providers & Infrastructure: We utilize Google Cloud Platform and Firebase (hosted securely in the asia-south1 region) for data storage, serverless functions, authentication, and secure hosting. These providers process data strictly on our behalf pursuant to strict data processing and confidentiality terms.
• Legal & Compliance Requirements: We may disclose data only if required by applicable law, regulation, subpoena, or legal process, or to protect the safety, rights, or property of our users and the public.

10. Data Storage and Retention

Crezly stores information in secure Google Cloud Firebase infrastructure:

• OAuth Credentials: Encrypted OAuth access and refresh tokens are stored exclusively in isolated, server-side private subcollections accessible only to authenticated backend Cloud Functions, protected by strict Firestore security rules. Tokens are never exposed to client-side browsers or other users.
• Channel Statistics Cache: Retrieved public channel metrics (subscriber count, view count, video count) are stored in the user profile document to provide fast, reliable profile rendering.
• Separation of Records: YouTube API data retention is governed strictly by YouTube Developer Policies. In contrast, Crezly marketplace transaction records, collaboration milestone evidence, and dispute histories are retained separately for legitimate accounting, tax, fraud prevention, and legal compliance obligations.

11. YouTube API Data Refresh and Deletion

In strict adherence to Section II.E of the YouTube API Services Developer Policies:

• Data Freshness & Automated Refresh: Crezly does not store YouTube API data indefinitely without refresh. Crezly operates an automated background synchronization service (scheduledYouTubeSync) that periodically refreshes cached channel statistics directly from the YouTube Data API, guaranteeing data freshness well within the mandatory 30-day policy ceiling.
• Immediate Deletion upon Unlinking: When a creator unlinks their YouTube channel in their Crezly profile, Crezly immediately executes an atomic backend transaction that purges stored OAuth tokens, deletes the social identity reservation, and resets all channel statistics on the profile to zero.
• Account Deletion Purge: When a user account is deleted on Crezly, our automated deletion lifecycle (onUserDeleted) permanently deletes all associated private tokens, removes identity locks, and deactivates the profile.

12. Security Safeguards

We employ technical and organizational measures designed to protect your personal information and API data against unauthorized access, loss, alteration, or disclosure:

• Encryption in Transit: All communications between your device, Crezly servers, and Google APIs are encrypted using modern Transport Layer Security (TLS 1.2+ / HTTPS).
• Secure Secret Management: Google OAuth client secrets and API keys are stored in Google Cloud Secret Manager and injected at runtime into Cloud Functions, never hardcoded in client applications or web pages.
• Strict Database Rules: Granular Firestore security rules restrict access to user data. Private subcollections containing OAuth tokens can never be read or written by client SDKs.
• No Unsupported Guarantees: While we implement rigorous industry-standard safeguards, no internet transmission or electronic storage method is 100% immune from security vulnerabilities. We encourage users to maintain strong account credentials.

13. User Access, Correction, and Deletion Requests

You have rights regarding your personal data:

• Access & Review: You may review your profile details and connected account indicators at any time within the Crezly application.
• Correction & Update: You may edit your profile description, portfolio links, and preferences at any time.
• Full Account Deletion: You may request the permanent deletion of your Crezly account and associated data at any time by contacting our support team at omkaarstudios@gmail.com. We process deletion requests within 30 days, subject to legitimate legal and financial recordkeeping requirements.

14. How Users Disconnect or Revoke YouTube Authorization

Creators have multiple straightforward methods to disconnect Crezly from their YouTube channel at any time:

Method 1: In-App Disconnection (Instant)

Open the Crezly application → Navigate to Profile Settings → Select "Unlink YouTube Account". Crezly's backend immediately terminates the connection, purges your stored OAuth tokens, and clears all channel statistics from your profile.

Method 2: Google Security Permissions Page (External Revocation)

In compliance with YouTube API Services Developer Policies, creators may revoke Crezly's access directly through Google's centralized security management page at:

https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions

Revoking access via Google Security Settings invalidates Crezly's OAuth tokens immediately. On the next synchronization cycle, Crezly recognizes the revocation, flags the status, and discontinues data retrieval.

15. Applicable Google and YouTube Policies

Because Crezly utilizes YouTube API Services to access channel statistics, your use of these features is subject to the policies and terms established by Google and YouTube. Please review:

• YouTube Terms of Service: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
• Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• Google API Services User Data Policy: https://developers.google.com/terms/api-services-user-data-policy
• YouTube API Services Developer Policies: https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/developer-policies

16. Third-Party Services and Links

The Crezly Platform may contain links to external third-party websites, creator portfolio channels, or services not owned or operated by Crezly. We are not responsible for the privacy practices, content, or data processing activities of any third-party websites or services. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party services you visit.

17. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect operational, legal, or regulatory updates, or improvements to our marketplace functionality.

When we make changes, we will update the "Last Updated" date at the top of this document. Material changes will be communicated via an in-app notice, email notification, or a prominent announcement on this website prior to the change taking effect. Continued use of Crezly after changes become effective constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

18. Contact Information

If you have any questions, concerns, requests for data deletion, or inquiries regarding this Privacy Policy or Crezly's data practices, please reach out to our dedicated team: