This is the Privacy Policy for all Web sites and mobile applications owned or operated by Colorado Springs Gazette LLC (“The Gazette”), located at 30 E. Pikes Peak Avenue, Suite #100, Colorado Springs, CO 80903, including, without limitation the following Web sites, Gazette.com and all other sites under The Gazette’s ownership or control and featuring a link to this Privacy Policy (each a “Site” and collectively, the “Sites”) and The Gazette’s owned or operated mobile applications (the “Mobile Applications”). The Mobile Applications and Sites are defined collectively as our “Digital Services.”
Your access to and use of the Digital Services is subject to the following Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) and all applicable laws. The terms “gazette.com”, “we”, “us” and “our” when used in this Privacy Policy means The Gazette. The terms “you” and “your” when used in this Privacy Policy means a user of any of the Digital Services. Any other capitalized terms used in this Privacy Policy but not defined in this document will have the meanings as defined in the Terms of Service for our Digital Services.
Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us, and we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe. This Privacy Policy describes how we protect your privacy when you use our Digital Services. This Privacy Policy applies only to information, including personally identifiable information, collected through our Digital Services. “PII” means “personally identifiable information,” which is information that identifies you personally, either alone or in combination with other information available to us (including without limitation you name, address, email address, telephone number, age, background, or other personal information). “Non-PII” means “non-personally identifiable information” or other information which alone does not identify you (however, in some circumstances Non-PII may be combined with PII in order to identify a specific individual). This Privacy Policy is part of and incorporated into the Terms of Service for our Digital Services.
YOUR CONSENT TO THE PRIVACY POLICY
By using any of our Digital Services, you are agreeing to the collection, use, and disclosure of your PII and Non-PII as described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not consent to the collection, use, and disclosure of your PII or Non-PII as described in this Privacy Policy, you may not use our Digital Services. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please email us at privacy@gazette.com.
THIS PRIVACY POLICY MAY CHANGE
We reserve the right to update or modify this Privacy Policy with regard to any or all of the Digital Services, at any time and without prior notice, by posting the revised version of this Privacy Policy on the applicable Digital Service. Your use of that Digital Service following any such change constitutes your agreement that all PII or Non-PII collected from or about you through any Digital Service after the revised Privacy Policy is posted will be subject to the terms of the revised Privacy Policy. You may access the current version of this Privacy Policy at any time by clicking on the link marked “Privacy Policy” at the bottom of each page of our Digital Services. To the extent rules or guidelines affecting your use of the Digital Services are found elsewhere using the Digital Services, those rules and guidelines are hereby incorporated by reference into this Privacy Policy.
INFORMATION COLLECTED ON OUR SITES
We or our third party service providers may collect and track the following types of information about users on our Digital Services: Optional Voluntary Information. In order to access or use certain services and capabilities on our Digital Services, you may be required to voluntarily submit certain PII. The use of these services or capabilities is purely optional, so you are not required to submit any PII through our Digital Services if you do not wish to use them. Some of these capabilities include subscribing to our publications, making a payment or donation through our Digital Services, e-mailing or otherwise sharing articles with others through our Digital Services; participating in surveys, contests, or sweepstakes; placing classified advertisements on our Digital Services or submitting feedback to us. In some cases, (including without limitation placing classified advertisements or making payments on some sites) the PII you submit will be provided directly to third party service providers rather than to us (see sections regarding sharing information below).
Usage data. The Gazette tracks user traffic patterns and content accessed throughout our Site. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. The Gazette sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms users of our Site enter in our Search function, but this tracking is not associated with individual users. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers’ needs and to help our advertisers and sponsors better understand our audience.
Cookies and similar technologies. In order to improve your experience when using our Site, we, our third party service providers, or advertisers may place a text file called a “cookie” in the browser files of your computer, which may store preferences or other information, and may be used to help personalize your experience. The cookie itself does not contain PII, although it will enable us to relate your use of the Sites to information that you have specifically and knowingly provided. A cookie can’t read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. We, our third party service providers or advertisers may also use “web beacons” or other technologies to monitor behavior and collect certain data regarding the actions of our users online, or “pixel tags,” which are small pieces of code embedded in emails sent to users.
We generally use third party advertising companies to serve ads when users visit the Sites. In the course of serving advertisements to the Sites, our third-party advertisers may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser or may use web beacons, pixel tags or similar technologies for purposes of generating advertisements and other content targeted to your interests, and for other data collection, response measurement, marketing and related business purposes. In some cases, these cookies or other technologies may track users over time or across their use of different websites. This Privacy Policy does not cover the collection methods or use of the information collected by these third parties. These third parties have their own privacy policies and may be members of The Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”), a cooperative group of ad serving providers that has developed a set of privacy principles to which its members adhere. To remove yourself from some or all NAI member advertising programs, please visit the NAI Opt Out Page at www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp. Please note that if you use a different computer or Internet browser, you may need to renew your opt-out choices.
The Gazette uses cookies to track user traffic patterns, to enhance your experience when using our Sites, to persist information through your session, and to personalize the Sites for you based on your preferences and selections. You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you’ve set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. Disabling cookies may result in errors while using the Sites. Because there is not yet a common standard regarding how to interpret web browser based “do not track” signals, our Site does not currently respond to undefined “do not track” signals.
Information Sent to Us by Your Web Browser. We may collect information that is sent to us automatically by your web browser, such as your IP address, the address of the web page you were visiting when you accessed our Sites, information on your operating system and browser, and the date and time of your visit. Such information does not by itself identify you personally. However, if you have registered on any of our Sites, it may be possible for us to link the information provided by your browser to information that identifies you personally. In addition, we may review our server logs for security purposes, such as detecting intrusions into our network. If we suspect criminal activity, we might share our server logs, which contain visitors’ IP addresses, with the appropriate investigative authorities who could use that information to trace and identify individuals.
USE OF INFORMATION COLLECTED ON THE SITE
The Gazette may use PII collected on our Digital Services: to enhance your experience using our Digital Services (whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the Digital Services or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users), to provide information you have requested, to maintain your registration on any Digital Service, to process your customer service or payment requests, to improve our Digital Services, for purposes related to the business of The Gazette, for any other purpose described in this Privacy Policy, or otherwise as we may disclose to you from time to time. We may also use Non-PII sent to us by your web browser or by cookies to perform statistical analyses of our server logs in order to study the use and popularity of various areas of our Digital Service. We also review IP addresses to analyze where we are getting our audience. Our Classified Advertising Providers will use your Non-PII to place the advertisements you have requested, and to manage the profile you created when placing such advertisements.
The Gazette creates aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for advertisers, sponsors and partners. This allows our advertisers to advertise more effectively, and allows our users to receive advertisements that are pertinent to their needs. We will not collect (nor provide to an advertiser or sponsor) information that a specific identifiable user clicked on any particular ad. However, by clicking on, otherwise interacting with or viewing an ad, you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will make the assumption that you meet the targeting criteria used to display the ad, and this may lead to similar ads being targeted to you on our Digital Services and potentially on other Digital Services. If you wish to take steps to opt-out of tracking by certain online advertisers, you can visit the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page at http://www.aboutads.info/choices.
SHARING OF THE INFORMATION
We may inform advertisers of the results of our analyses of our server logs, including details regarding Digital Service usage and general information about our audience, however, such disclosures will refer only to general, aggregate usage data from these analyses – never specific identifying information. We may share your PII with: (i) our current or future affiliates, subsidiaries, parent company, or other related entities; (ii) companies and organizations that perform services on our behalf, for example, companies that provide support services to us (such as data storage and web hosting services), classified advertising, or payment processing; and (iii) carefully selected third parties for marketing or other purposes not expressly described herein. We may disclose the PII we collect through our Digital Services when we, in good faith, believe disclosure is appropriate to comply with the law (or respond to any legal process such as a court order or subpoena); to prevent or investigate a possible crime, such as fraud or identity theft; to enforce the Terms of Service or other agreements that govern your use of our Digital Services; to protect the rights, property or safety of The Gazette, our users or others; or to protect your vital interests. Information submitted to our Digital Services is an asset of The Gazette and will become part of our normal business records. Any information collected on our Digital Services, including without limitation PII, may be transferred to any entity related to The Gazette now or in the future, including without limitation our parent company, subsidiaries or affiliates, or to another company that has acquired the stock or assets of The Gazette, for example, as the result of a sale, merger, reorganization, dissolution or liquidation. If such a transfer occurs, the acquiring company’s use of your PII will still be subject to this Privacy Policy, and the privacy preferences you have expressed to us. If you provide PII to our Classified Advertising Providers and certain payment processing providers, they may share the PII you provide to them with The Gazette and its related entities, and they may also use and share your information collected directly by them in accordance with their own privacy policies.
Please be aware that although we may request your consent for some disclosures described in this section, by using any of our Digital Services you are deemed to have accepted and agreed to the sharing of your information collected through our Digital Services in the manner described in this Privacy Policy, and we will not be required to obtain your consent for any disclosure described in this Privacy Policy.
CHOICES ABOUT DATA COLLECTION AND SHARING
At any time, you may opt-out of having your information provided to third parties for marketing or other commercial purposes, and opt-out of other communications from us. You can unsubscribe from email newsletters or similar communications by clicking on the unsubscribe link in every email, and you can subscribe or unsubscribe from various Gazette.com email newsletters by visiting gazette.com/settings and clicking on “Newsletters” (you must be logged in to change your preferences). You may opt-out of all information sharing with third parties for marketing purposes, or you may request that our affiliated companies not send you future emails, by emailing us at privacy@gazette.com or by sending a letter to The Gazette, attn.: Privacy; 30 E. Pikes Peak Avenue, Suite #100, Colorado Springs, CO 80903.
THIRD PARTY SITES
Third party sites, including our Classified Advertising Providers, partners, advertisers, affiliates and other content or service providers accessible through our Digital Services, may have their own privacy and data collection policies and practices. For example, during your visit to our Digital Services you may link to, or view certain content that is actually created or hosted by a third party, including without limitation our classified advertisements, which are hosted by our Classified Advertising Providers. Through the Digital Services you may be introduced to, or be able to access, information, third party sites, advertisements, features, contests or sweepstakes offered by other parties. The Gazette is not responsible for the actions or policies of such third parties and is not liable to you for any claims that may arise from your interaction with those third parties or their sites. You should exercise caution and check the applicable privacy policies of those third parties when providing PII or another party’s information on a feature or page operated by a third party.
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
Consistent with the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), we will never knowingly request PII from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting parental consent. The Digital Services are not directed at nor targeted to children under the age of 13 and we do not use the Digital Services to knowingly solicit PII from or market to children under the age of 13. If you are under the age of 13, do not provide us with any PII. If we learn that someone under 13 has provided Personal Information to the Digital Service, we will use reasonable efforts to remove such information from our databases.
SECURITY
The Gazette operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary. Only authorized individuals have access to the PII provided by our Digital Service’s users.
ACCESSING YOUR INFORMATION
To obtain a list of the personal information that The Gazette holds about you, or the kinds of personal information The Gazette has disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year, or for residents of California (as required by California law) to receive a list of the names and addresses of all third parties that received your personal information from The Gazette for direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year, please write to: The Gazette, Attn: Advertising Dept., 30 E. Pikes Peak Avenue, Suite #100, Colorado Springs, CO 80903.
MODIFYING YOUR INFORMATION
We respect your right to make choices about the ways we collect, use and disclose your PII. You may update or modify your information or change your preferences at any time by emailing privacy@gazette.com.
EFFECTIVE DATE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICYThis Privacy Policy is effective as of Oct 22, 2014.