Use of Personal Data

There may be cases in which LY Corporation provides personal data to a third party according to the provisions of the Privacy Policy. However, when we actually disclose the personal data, we do so after we remove personally identifiable information, such as names and addresses, as well as special care-required personal information, and information such as messages, communicating parties, and send/receipt times as to the communication app LINE, except as otherwise provided by laws and regulations or when we separately obtain the consent of the customer.

Even in such cases, LY Corporation provides personal data to a third party within the necessary limits after carefully assessing the impact on the customer's privacy and comprehensively considering matters such as: a) the necessity and method of disclosure to the third party (e.g. whether to provide the data by granting limited access rights only to this third party on LY Corporation's system instead of granting physical access to the data, or physically providing the information itself, etc.); b) the safety management measures put in place by this third party; and c) the relationship between LY Corporation and this third party (e.g. the relationship between the service provided by LY Corporation and the service provided by this third party, the existence of capital ties, etc.).

Furthermore, LY Corporation takes the utmost care to prevent personal data from being used to the disadvantage of customers, such as fraud and infringement of privacy, by establishing internal regulations.

*1 “Services” means all services including products, apps, services, and websites, provided by LY Corporation. Furthermore, the Services include services, products, advertisements, and contents for partners*2 and for customers other than the customer themselves.
*2 “Partner” means a group company (which means a subsidiary or affiliate of LY Corporation, and the definition includes subsidiaries and affiliates located outside of Japan, in accordance with the “Regulation on Terminology, Forms, and Preparation Methods of Financial Statements” of Japan) and information provider, advertiser, ad distributor, and other partner.

When resetting the login method, in addition to the registered information, etc. described above, we also use the customer's history of use of the Services at the time of login.

*"History of use of the Services at the time of login" includes search keywords, webpages viewed, apps used, products purchased, and location information, etc.

Provision of Personal Data to Overseas Group Companies and Partners in Relation to R&D, etc.

Currently, LY Corporation is conducting development verifications of the search engine and search-linked ad system to be used in Yahoo! JAPAN services, and in relation to such development verifications, we will allow NAVER*1, to which we have entrusted services, to access the following search-related data*2, including past data acquired by LY Corporation prior to the start date:

(November 2024 addition)
As stated above, the outsourcing to NAVER Corporation in relation to the development verification is planned to be ended as separately announced (https://www.lycorp.co.jp/ja/news/2024/20240701_appendix2_ja.pdf).

〈Search-related data〉
・Information entered into search services
・Time spent to use the search services
・Identifiers
・Device information
・IP addresses
・Location information (to municipality/village section level)
・Age
・Gender
etc.
※Names, addresses, and Yahoo! JAPAN ID will not be included
※Please refer to the search setting from the following for location information (to municipality/village section level) settings and detailed contents:
・PC version
・Smartphone version
※In addition to user data, data related to Partner advertisers (e.g., data related to ad submission, such as ad content and ad placement conditions, as well as data for effectiveness measurement) is included for the purpose of providing certain functions for ad distributions.

Access is granted to data after such data has been processed so that individuals cannot be identified by NAVER.
The Access is granted during the term of agreement with LY Corporation, on the premise that Access will be limited to the scope of the Privacy Policy and to the extent required for the purpose of entrustment. Furthermore, such data will be saved in LY Corporation’s domestic data centers and network environments and sufficient safety management measures will be taken. For example, we will take measures to make it physically impossible to copy information, except when handling only statistical information or information with identifiers removed so that search behavior of each customer cannot be tracked. We implement these safety management measures in order to strictly manage the Access by NAVER. We have begun this Access from September 29, 2023, but as stated above, the outsourcing to NAVER Corporation in relation to the development verification is planned to be ended as separately announced (https://www.lycorp.co.jp/ja/news/2024/20240701_appendix2_ja.pdf).

In addition, access to search-related data by Partners including the group companies such as LINE Plus Corporation (location: South Korea) may also be granted to services other than Yahoo! JAPAN's search service. The purposes of such grants to access are for the provision and improvement of services and development verifications of new services. When such access are made, access is limited to the minimum required for the purposes and to the extent of the Privacy Policy. Furthermore, there may be instances where the subject search-related data may contain location information that is more detailed than the municipality and village section (100m mesh, etc.), depending on the population density of the point indicated by the location information, and whether such point is in an urban area or a commercial area. In such cases, we will remove identifiers concerning the related location information. In any case, individuals will never be identified by the Partners who are granted access.

The handling by Partners of such search-related data in the research and development of these search services and other services will be properly managed and utilized upon fully considering the protection of customer privacy. Similarly, we will also fully consider the protection of customer privacy in light of the nature of the location information acquired in other services.
In addition, we will take sufficient safety management measures, as necessary, in light of the nature of such search-related data and location information.

*1 The principal shareholder of LY Corporation’s parent company, A Holdings Corporation.
*2 Access to personal data by Partners will be considered to be a provision of personal data to the Partners under the Act on Protection of Personal Information in Japan as long as the personal data accessed by the Partners corresponds to “personal data” under such Act.

The communication app LINE provides a reporting function, and customers may make a report to LY Corporation when they witness any unauthorized or other use by other customers. LY Corporation will acquire the contents of posts of chats and VOOM through the report, and will use them for the purpose of preventing and responding to unauthorized use.

The customers' use history of the Services includes information such as search key words, browsed webpages, apps used, items purchased, location information, etc. In addition, LY Corporation may use information collected from multiple environments (devices, apps, browsers, etc.).

LY Corporation analyzes information such as the customer's area of domicile, gender, month and year of birth, and use history of the Services (search key words, browsed webpages, apps used, items purchased, etc.), and estimates the customer's interests to optimize content and the Services to meet the interest of the customer.

For example, in the LINE STORE, the order of the LINE STORE stickers may be changed based on prior purchase history in order to make finding stickers that match the customer’s preferences easier.