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Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Jun 16, 2022
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Scope And Application

The Washington Independent ("The Washington Independent," "our" or "we") wants you to be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose information from and about you. This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information collected through services such as websites, mobile sites, applications ("apps"), and widgets that link to or are otherwise subject to this privacy policy (collectively, the "The Washington Independent Services"). California residents, please see the California Consumer Privacy Act Notice in Section 8 below. By using The Washington Independent Services, you agree to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy. As set forth in our Terms of Use, The Washington Independent Services are for a general audience, are not targeted to children, and do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18 years of age.
This Privacy Policy applies to all users, including both those who use the The Washington Independent Services without being registered with or subscribing to a The Washington Independent Services and those who have registered with or subscribed to a The Washington Independent Service. This Privacy Policy applies to our collection and use of your personal information (i.e., information that identifies a specific person, such as full name or email address). It also describes generally our practices for handling non-personal information (for example, interests, demographics and services usage).

Collection Of Information

The Washington Independent and our service providers may collect the following information from and about you:
Registration Information is the information you submit to register for a The Washington Independent, for example, to create an account, post comments, receive a newsletter, or enter a contest or sweepstakes. Registration Information may include, for example, name, email address, gender, zip code, user/display name, household income, political views, and birthday.
Public Information and Posts consist of comments or content that you post to The Washington Independent Services and the information about you that accompanies those posts or content, which may include a name, user/display name, comments, predictions, likes (or "kudos"), status, profile information and picture. Public Information and Posts are always public, which means they are available to everyone and may be displayed in search results on external search engines.
Information from Social Media. If you access or log-in to a The Washington Independent Service through a social media service or connect a The Washington Independent Service to a social media service, the information we collect may also include your user ID and/or user name associated with that social media service, any information or content you have permitted the social media service to share with us, such as your profile picture, email address or friends lists, and any information you have made public in connection with that social media service. When you access The Washington Independent Services through social media services or when you connect a The Washington Independent to social media services, you are authorizing The Washington Independent to collect, store, and use such information and content in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Activity Information. When you access and interact with The Washington Independent Services, The Washington Independent and its service providers may collect certain information about those visits. For example, in order to permit your connection to The Washington Independent Services, our servers receive and record information about your computer, device, and browser, including potentially your IP address, browser type, and other software or hardware information. If you access The Washington Independent Services from a mobile or other device, we may collect a unique device identifier assigned to that device, geolocation data (including your precise location), or other transactional information for that device.
Cookies and other tracking technologies (such as browser cookies, pixels, beacons, local storage, and other mechanisms) use various approaches to collect and store data. Some of these technologies store data in the browser or on your device. Other technologies may use network-related or other information to recognize your device (e.g., IP address). Our websites, apps and other services use these technologies, for example, when you first request a web page and data is then stored on your computer or other device so the website or app can access information when you make subsequent requests for pages from that service. These technologies may also be used to collect and store information about your usage of the The Washington Independent Services, such as pages you have visited, search history, and the video and other content you have viewed.
Other parties that support the The Washington Independent Services by serving advertisements or providing services, such as allowing you to share content or tracking aggregate The Washington Independent Services usage statistics, may also use these technologies to collect similar information when you use the The Washington Independent Services or other parties’ services. Those parties may also use these technologies, along with activity information they collect, to recognize you across the devices you use, such as a mobile device and a laptop or other computer. The Washington Independent does not control these technologies and their use is governed by the privacy policies of parties using such technologies. For more information about third-party advertising networks and similar entities that use these technologies, including your choices with respect to them, see the section entitled "To deliver relevant advertisements," below.
Your browser may be initially set to accept cookies, but you can change your settings to notify you when a cookie is being set or updated, and to block cookies altogether. Please consult the "Help" section of your browser for more information, including on how to clear data from local storage and, depending on your browser, how to turn off other data collection by the browser. Please note that by blocking any or all cookies you may not have access to certain features, content or personalization available through the The Washington Independent Services.
Information from Other Sources. We may supplement the information we collect with information from other sources, such as publicly available information about your online and offline activity from social media services, advertising technology companies, advertisers, commercially available sources, and information from our The Washington Independent Affiliates or business partners.
Do Not Track Signals. At this time we do not respond to browser ‘Do Not Track’ signals, as we await the work of interested stakeholders and others to develop standards for how such signals should be interpreted.

Use And Disclosure

We may use the information we collect from and about you to provide the The Washington Independent Services and features to you, including: to measure and improve those The Washington Independent Services and features and to develop new products and services; to improve your experience with both online and off-line The Washington Independent Services by delivering content you will find relevant and interesting, including advertising and marketing messages; to allow you to comment on content, and participate in online games, contests, other promotions, or rewards programs; to provide you with customer support and to respond to inquiries. In order to provide you with content and advertising that is more interesting and relevant to you, we may use the information from and about you to make inferences and predictions about your potential areas of interest. When the information collected from or about you does not identify you as a specific person, we may use that information for any purpose or share it with other parties, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
We use the information we collect from and about you for these additional purposes:
To complete a merger or sale of assets. If The Washington Independent sells all or part of its business or makes a sale or transfer of its assets or is otherwise involved in a merger or transfer of all or a material part of its business (including in connection with a bankruptcy or similar proceedings), The Washington Independent may transfer your information to the party or parties involved in the transaction as part of that transaction.
To protect the rights of The Washington Independent and others. There may be instances when The Washington Independent may use or disclose your information, including situations where The Washington Independent has a good faith belief that such use or disclosure is necessary in order to: (i) protect, enforce, or defend the legal rights, privacy, safety, or property of The Washington Independent, our The Washington Independent Affiliates, or their employees, agents and contractors (including enforcement of our agreements and our terms of use); (ii) protect the safety, privacy, and security of users of The Washington Independent Services or members of the public; (iii) protect against fraud or for risk management purposes; (iv) comply with the law or legal process; or (v) respond to requests from public and government authorities.
To share with business partners. The Washington Independent may share your information with business partners to permit them to send you marketing communications consistent with your choices.
To share with our The Washington Independent Affiliates. The Washington Independent may share your information with The Washington Independent Affiliates for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. A link to a website that lists The Washington Independent Affiliates can be found at the beginning of this policy. Users who visit The Washington Independent Affiliates’ services should still refer to their separate privacy policies, which may differ in some respects from this Privacy Policy.
To contact you. The Washington Independent may periodically send promotional materials or notifications related to The Washington Independent Services. If you want to stop receiving promotional materials, you can change your account setting or follow the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email. There are certain service notification and other non-promotional emails that you may not opt-out of, such as notifications of changes to the The Washington Independent Services or policies. If you have installed a mobile app and you wish to stop receiving push notifications, you can change the settings either on your mobile device or through the app.
To deliver relevant advertisements. The Washington Independent and our service providers may use the information we collect from and about you as described in this Privacy Policy to deliver relevant ads to you when you use The Washington Independent Services or another service (on any of your devices). This may include, for example, sharing email address (in hashed form), IP address, or information about your browser or operating system, with our identity partners/service providers. In some instances, these entities may return an online identification code that we may store in a first party cookie, or other similar technology, for our use in online and cross-channel advertising and it may be shared with advertising companies to enable interest-based and targeted advertising. To opt out of this use, please click here As noted above, advertising technology companies and advertisers may use cookies and similar technologies to collect and track information such as demographic information, inferred interests, aggregated information, and information about the different devices and/or browsers you use and your activity on such devices and browsers, to assist them in delivering advertising that is more relevant to your interests. The information may also be used to deliver more relevant advertising to you across marketing channels, including email.
To provide co-branded services and features. We may offer co-branded services or features, such as contests, sweepstakes or other promotions together with other companies ("Co-Branded Services"). These Co-Branded Services may be hosted on The Washington Independent Services or on that other party’s service. By virtue of these relationships, we may share the information you submit in connection with the Co-Branded Service with that party. That other party’s use of your information will be governed by its privacy policy.
To allow social sharing functionality. If you log in with or connect a social media service account with The Washington Independent Services, we may share your user name, picture, and likes, as well as your activities and comments with other The Washington Independent Services users and with your friends associated with your social media service. We may also share the same information with the social media service provider. By logging in with or connecting your The Washington Independent Services account with a social media service, you are authorizing us to share information we collect from and about you with the social media service provider, other users and your friends and you understand that the social media service’s use of the shared information will be governed by the social media service’s privacy policy. If you do not want your personal information shared in this way, please do not connect your social media service account with your The Washington Independent Services account and do not participate in social sharing on The Washington Independent Services.
To allow service providers to assist us in providing and managing the The Washington Independent Services. The information we collect from and about you may be made available to certain service providers, such as contractors, analytics and other measurement companies, agents or sponsors, who help us analyze and understand your use of The Washington Independent Services, and manage and/or provide the The Washington Independent Services.

Security

The Washington Independent uses commercially reasonable administrative, technical, personnel, and physical measures designed to safeguard information in its possession against loss, theft and unauthorized use, disclosure, or modification. However, no one can guarantee the complete safety of your information.

User Access And Control

If you would like to review, correct, update, suppress, or otherwise limit our use of your personal information, you may contact us as outlined in Section 7; or using the mechanisms provided below. In your request, please include your email address, name, address, and telephone number and specify clearly what information you would like to correct, update, or suppress. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable and consistent with applicable law.
If you are under 18 and a registered user of The Washington Independent Services, you may ask us to remove content or information that you have posted to The Washington Independent Services by writing to twi.news@washingtonindependent.org. Please note that your request does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content or information, as, for example, some of your content may have been reposted by another user.
You may request that we not share your personal information on a going-forward basis with The Washington Independent Affiliates or unaffiliated third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

Other Important Information

Updates to Privacy Policy. The Washington Independent may modify this Privacy Policy. Please look at the Effective Date at the top of this Privacy Policy to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on The Washington Independent Services.
Location of Data. The Washington Independent Services are hosted in and managed from the United States. If you are a user located outside the United States, you understand and consent to having any personal information processed in the United States or in any other country in which we have facilities or in which we engage service providers. United States and other countries’ data protection laws may not be the same as those in your jurisdiction. In certain circumstances, courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies or security authorities in the United States may be entitled to access your personal information.
Linked Services. The Washington Independent Services may be linked to sites operated by unaffiliated companies, and may carry advertisements or offer content, functionality, games, newsletters, contests or sweepstakes, or applications developed and maintained by unaffiliated companies. The Washington Independent is not responsible for the privacy practices of unaffiliated companies, and once you leave The Washington Independent Services or click an advertisement you should check the applicable privacy policy of the other service. In addition, The Washington Independent is not responsible for the privacy or data security practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Apple, Google, Microsoft or any other app developer, app provider, social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider, or device manufacturer, including in connection with any information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with the The Washington Independent Services.
Collection of Personal Financial Information by a Payment Service. In some cases, we may use an unaffiliated payment service to allow you to purchase a product or make payments ("Payment Service"). If you wish to purchase a product or make a payment using a Payment Service, you will be directed to a Payment Service webpage. Any information that you provide to a Payment Service will be subject to the applicable Payment Service’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, any Payment Service’s use of information collected through any Payment Service.
Data Retention. We will retain your information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law.
Remember that even after you cancel your account, or if you ask us to delete your personal information, copies of some information from your account may remain viewable in some circumstances where, for example, you have shared information with social media or other services. Because of the nature of caching technology, your account may not be instantly inaccessible to others. We may also retain backup information related to your account on our servers for some time after cancellation or your request for deletion, for fraud detection or to comply with applicable law or our internal security or record-keeping policies. It may not always be possible to completely remove or delete all of your information due to technical constraints or contractual, financial or legal requirements.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:
Email: twi.news@washingtonindependent.org
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