Effective Date: September 21, 2020
UPDATED PRIVACY POLICY
Note: The POPSUGAR Privacy Policy has been updated. This Privacy Policy applies to all users of the Services besides those users located in the European Union. For our privacy policy applicable to users in the European Union, refer to our Privacy Policy (EU). Please review this updated privacy policy carefully before using the POPSUGAR Services. By using any of the POPSUGAR Services, you consent to the terms of this updated Privacy Policy.
POPSUGAR Inc. and its subsidiaries (collectively, "POPSUGAR", "us" or "we") take your privacy seriously and have developed this Privacy Policy ("Privacy Policy") to explain what we collect from our users ("users" or "you") and how we use and share this information. This Privacy Policy applies to your use of our websites, mobile websites, mobile applications, and any related services (please see our Terms of Service) (collectively, the "Services").
For purposes of clarity, this Privacy Policy applies only to POPSUGAR Inc. and its subsidiaries, and not to Group Nine Media, Inc. and/or any of its other subsidiaries, affiliates, brands, and/or entities that it controls, including NowThis Media, Inc.; Seeker Media, Inc.; TheDodo.com, Inc.; and Thrillist Media Group, Inc. (collectively, "GNM"). As of the Effective Date of this Privacy Policy, GNM maintains a separate privacy policy, which can be viewed here.
We may change this policy from time to time and will notify you by revising the date at the top of the Privacy Policy. Please review this Privacy Policy whenever you access the Services to stay informed of our practices.
1. WHAT INFORMATION WE COLLECT OR RECEIVE
Personal Information
We may collect or receive "personally identifiable" information, which means information that might reasonably be used to specifically identify you and may include information such as the following (collectively, "Personal Information"):
Other Information
We also collect or receive "Other Information" from you or other sources which is information not considered Personal Information. Other Information may include, but is not limited to, information such as:
All Personal Information and Other Information that we hold about you is referred to in this Privacy Policy collectively and generally as "User Information."
This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of any other company or individual that is not owned or controlled by POPSUGAR.
2. HOW WE COLLECT OR RECEIVE INFORMATION
We collect User Information across our Services, including as follows:
Cookies and Web Beacons
Some of the User Information is collected on the Services through the use of Cookies and/or Web Beacons. "Cookies" are small data file identifiers that are transferred to your computer or mobile web browser that allow us, and third parties with whom we partner, to recognize your browser or mobile device and transfer information about you and your use of our Services. For example, Cookies that we use tell us how many times you have visited one of our websites, your search preferences, and if you have clicked on an advertisement that has been displayed to you. We use "persistent" Cookies to save your login information for future logins to the Services. We also use "session ID" Cookies to enable certain features of the Services, to better understand how you interact with the Services and to monitor aggregate usage by users and web traffic routing on the Services. Unlike persistent Cookies, session ID Cookies are deleted from your computer when you log off from a Service and close your browser.
We (and third parties with whom we partner) may also deliver a file known as a web beacon, pixel or pixel tag (i.e., "Web Beacons") to you through our Services. Web Beacons are small, invisible graphic images that may be used on the Services interface or in emails relating to the Services to collect certain information and monitor user activity on the Services interface, such as to count visits, access Cookies, understand usage effectiveness and to determine if an email has been opened and acted upon. "Pixels" or "Pixel Tags" also known as clear GIFs, beacons, spotlight, tags or web bugs, are a method for passing information from the user's computer to a third party website. We (and third parties with whom we partner) may deliver Web Beacons or Pixel Tags to you through our Services. Web Beacons allow ad networks, marketing partners and other service providers that we use to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for us, for advertisers and our other partners. Web Beacons also enable ad networks and other partners to track your behavior for their own analysis and use, and to serve targeted advertisements to you when you visit other websites or platforms. These Web Beacons enable third party companies to view, edit, or set their own Cookies when you visit the Services, just as if you had visited a web page from their site.
3. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
User Information is used to provide Services to you by POPSUGAR and its partners, which includes using such information to:
We may use your User Information to contact or communicate with you, for example, by email, postal mail, notices on our websites or applications, newsletters or other means available through the Services, including push notifications and mobile text messages. Such communications may contain messages of a commercial or non-commercial nature, including but not limited to, messages necessary to provide the Services to you, responses to an inquiry that you submitted, marketing and promotional messages for our Services or the products and/or services of our partners and advertisers, messages sent for administrative purposes related to the Services, and other communications as needed to carry out other purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
When you receive email messages or newsletters from us, we may use Web Beacons, customized links, clear GIFs or similar technologies to determine whether the email has been opened and which links you click in order to provide you more focused email communications or other information, and/or aggregate such data with other data we collect for some or all of the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy.
We and our partners use Cookies and other tracking technologies to administer the Services, analyze trends, track users' movements around the Services and on third party sites, devices and applications, and to gather demographic information about our user base.
We may also receive certain data (on an individual and/or aggregated basis) collected by our partners (including but not limited to e-commerce partners, affiliates, and analytics providers) through the use of Pixel Tags, e-tags, IP Addresses, Local Shared Objects, Local Storage, and Browser cookies, which allows us to:
POPSUGAR also works with third parties to provide analytics information regarding your usage of our Services or to help us track the advertisements that are delivered to you to determine the effectiveness of advertising on our Services. We may also link this information to User Information.
4. WHAT INFORMATION WE SHARE WITH THIRD PARTIES
Advertising and marketing
Certain third party vendors and partners authorized by POPSUGAR (including, but not limited to, advertisers, advertising agencies, ad networks, ad measurement providers, and other marketing and advertising service providers and partners) ("Advertisers") may collect information about you on the Services in order to provide you with relevant advertising on the Services and on other websites, platforms and media channels, and to analyze the performance of advertising campaigns. These Advertisers may use tracking technologies such as Cookies, Web Beacons, and other similar technologies, and may collect many different kinds of data, such as your IP Address, Device ID, Advertising ID and Precise Location Data where made available by your mobile device. The specific Advertisers we work with are subject to change at any time. For a list of some of the applicable providers or for more details on opting out of tracking for advertising purposes, go to our Cookie Consent Tool by clicking on the button in the lower right corner of your screen labeled "Cookie Consent". The use of tracking technologies by these third parties is subject to their own privacy policies.
To opt out of collection of your information by Nielsen, or to obtain information about the technologies they use or their own privacy policies, please visit the Nielsen consumer opt out page located here.
We may also sell or transfer Interaction Data to certain Advertisers who will use this data to serve ads that they believe are relevant to your interests. Some of these third parties may combine the Interaction Data with their own data about you to form a more detailed picture. We may also share your information with Advertisers for the purpose of allowing them or their clients to send you marketing communications related to your use of the Services, their services or programs featured and/or advertised on the Services (e.g., through ads, Promotions, or Sparkle application), or their products, services and/or programs generally. For example, if you request to receive more information from an Advertiser featured in a social media post by submitting your email through the Sparkle application, we will share your email with such Advertiser to allow the Advertiser to send you future marketing communications.
Our third party vendors and partners use your User Information to display ads on both the Services and on third party websites, applications, platforms and other media channels (collectively, "Channels"). For example, if you read content about a particular subject on the Services, we may use Cookies from a vendor to later serve you an advertisement for a particular product or service related to the viewed content. These third party vendors may connect information about pages you visit on the Services with information about pages you visit on other Channels and show you advertising based on this combined information. These advertisements may appear when you are visiting a different section of the Services or on another Channel. Likewise, third party vendors may serve you advertisements when you visit the Services based on your interaction with the Services and other Channels.
Some of our Services may use Facebook and Instagram features and tools, including Pixel Tags, which send data regarding your use of the Services to Facebook and/or Instagram for the purpose of tracking your interaction with the Services and with our brand on Facebook and Instagram, and to create custom audiences on the Facebook and/or Instagram platforms. Facebook and Instagram link the data collected on our Services with your account on their platforms and we and/or our Advertisers may use that data to serve you with advertisements both on and off of Facebook and Instagram.
We may provide certain Advertisers with information regarding your interactions with our emails and newsletters or as to whether your information matches certain information held by the Advertiser and/or their customers. Those Advertisers may combine this data with information they collect for their own marketing purposes and in turn, may provide this information to their customers for their customers' marketing purposes.
In order to help us sell advertising on the Services and otherwise publicize POPSUGAR and its products and services, we may share aggregate statistics that describe our online audience. Those statistics are often based on the information you provide when you subscribe, register, or browse the Services and describe, among other things, the demographics of our visitors.
Sparkle application pages are developed and hosted by POPSUGAR and licensed to Advertisers. In connection with Sparkle, you may provide certain information to us in response to specific questions and prompts, such as providing your email address to sign up for marketing emails or newsletters, or tapping or clicking on an "Add to cart" feature for specific products. Information provided through Sparkle may be stored by POPSUGAR (such as which products are added to a cart) and may be shared with the Advertiser(s) we have partnered with in connection with that Sparkle page. We may use your IP address to understand trends within a specific zip code or geographical area. Advertisers may use such information to complete your transaction or send you emails or other communications, including communications to market their products and/or services to you, or for other internal uses. When you enter information using a Sparkle "Add to cart" feature, we may share your information with a third-party retailer (who may in some cases also be an Advertiser) to complete your transaction, which is subject to such retailer's terms and conditions and privacy policy.
Third party service providers
We employ or utilize the services of other third party vendors, consultants and service providers who need access to your User Information (such as your name, address, email, or other identifiers) in order to enable them to perform services on our behalf or to provide us with additional information necessary to provide you one of our Services to you. We use third party vendors for a variety of services across our Services, such as email message deployment, email address validation, subscription fulfillment, research, statistical analysis, cross-device user tracking, data and website hosting, marketing, advertising, and other data and transaction processing.
We also engage third party service providers for the purpose of processing payments for purchases of content, subscriptions and physical goods through our Services, to fulfill your orders for product purchases, to honor your request to be removed from promotional mailings, and to monitor, analyze and prevent fraudulent traffic or other suspicious activities on our Services or on other services. For our Voices and Influencer platforms, we may also provide your User Information to third party processors in order to process payments for services if you are selected for a paid assignment under those platforms.
In addition to receiving your User Information from us, our service providers may also:
Third party partners and websites
Our third party partners may sell items or provide services to you through our Services (either alone or jointly with us). In some of these cases, you will be routed through to the third party's website, where you will complete the purchase. When you make a purchase or activate the partner's service (for example, through our POPSUGAR Must Have Service) we may share your Personal Information, such as an email address, with that partner, who may use this Personal Information in accordance with its own privacy policy.
For example, portions of the Services utilize the YouTube API, through which Google collects, stores and processes certain user data as described in its Privacy Policy, available here. You may revoke POPSUGAR's ability to access to your user data through the YouTube API via the Google security settings page found here.
Please note that we are not responsible for any applicable third party terms or policies and you should review them carefully.
Social plug-ins and embeds
We may use social plugins on our Services, for instance plugins of the social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr, and may feature icons, like the "thumbs up" icon or text like "Recommend", "Like" or "Comment". We also feature certain embedded content on our Services such as text and video content embedded from social networks and other third party platforms including, but not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Vimeo. Your browser may create a connection to the servers of such social networks and other third parties and/or transmit data to such third party servers when you view a page on our Services. This Privacy Policy does not cover the practices of these third party social networks.
User profiles and submissions
Certain User Information from your profile such as your user name, display name, biographical information, or any comments or video or image content that you have uploaded to the Services may be displayed to other users to facilitate user interaction within the Service or address your request for Services. In some applications, information you share in your profile will be publicly available to other users. For our POPSUGAR Voices and Influencer platforms, User Information from your profile may be shared with third parties including advertisers in connection with an advertising campaign, which may include publicly-available metrics related to your social media channels and a description of your blog or other content you have created in the past.
Third party offers
In connection with some advertising campaigns or otherwise in connection with the Services, we may create and/or distribute custom digital promotional cards that you can elect to save into your digital wallet on your mobile device (examples of such digital wallets include Apple Wallet and Android Pay), which may feature a coupon, rebate, promotional discount or other offer from an advertiser or sponsor and/or POPSUGAR (each an "Offer"). When you engage with, download, share, or redeem an Offer, certain information about you may be collected by our third party advertising partners, including, but not limited to, data about your device such as user agent, operating system, advertising identifiers, Device IDs, Precise Location Data, and other data about your interaction with such Offer. Certain information may also be collected by or shared with third party providers who offer mobile wallet services on your device (for example, Apple for Apple Wallet or Google for Android Pay). The collection and use of such data by these third parties is subject to their respective terms and privacy policies. POPSUGAR is not responsible for any applicable third-party terms or policies and you should review them carefully. To opt out of such third party Offers, see the section below entitled HOW YOU CAN CHANGE OR CONTROL WHAT IS COLLECTED.
Promotions
We may collect and share User Information you provide in connection with a Promotion with an advertiser who sponsors the Promotion and/or a service provider may collect your information in connection with such Promotion on our behalf. In the event that your User Information is shared with a sponsor or other third party, it would also be subject to the sponsor's or such other third party's privacy policy, and it may be used by us, the sponsor, and/or such other third parties for follow up or other marketing purposes. For all Promotions, please read the official rules and any other terms and conditions for that Promotion carefully before you submit your User Information or otherwise participate in the Promotion.
Text message services
By signing up for our text messages services such as POPSUGAR Must Have It, or providing your mobile number in connection with GLOW by POPSUGAR, you expressly agree that we may share your mobile phone number and the contents of any message you send or receive through such Service with our third party partner, Twilio. For more information regarding how Twilio may store or use your information, please review Twilio's Privacy Policy.
Payment card information
To use certain aspects of our Services, such as subscribing to our Must Have Box Service, or participating in our Must Have It Service, and selling or purchasing content products or subscriptions through our GLOW by POPSUGAR service, we may require you to submit credit or debit card account information. In order to participate as a seller on our GLOW by POPSUGAR service and receive payments from buyers in connection with the sale of content products, you will be required to connect your GLOW by POPSUGAR service account to a valid account with one of our designated third party payment processors. By submitting your credit or debit card account information or other financial information through the Services, you expressly consent to the sharing of this information with third party retailers, subscription and billing processors, and payment processors.
We may use Stripe to collect your credit or debit card account information, to allow buyers to purchase content products directly from and pay sellers through the GLOW by POPSUGAR service, and/or to process transaction such payments with our financial institutions. Stripe may store your credit or debit card account information and other financial information so you can use our Services in the future. We do not have access to your complete credit or debit card account information, social security number, or other financial information. We do not store or have direct control over or responsibility for your credit or debit card account information, social security number, or other financial information as transmitted to Stripe. We cannot guarantee that transmissions of your credit or debit card account information, social security number, other financial information, or other personal information will always be secure or that unauthorized third parties will never be able to defeat the security measures taken by us or our third party service providers. Please see the Stripe Terms and Conditions, Stripe Privacy Policy, and the Stripe Connected Account Agreement.
We assume no liability or responsibility for disclosure of your information due to errors in transmission, unauthorized third party access, or other causes beyond our control.
GLOW by POPSUGAR
As part of the buying and selling process through our GLOW by POPSUGAR service and by making a purchase on the GLOW by POPSUGAR service, you agree that we may share your buyer information, such as your email, with the seller as necessary to complete the transaction. As a seller on the GLOW by POPSUGAR services you may only use buyer user information for communications related to the GLOW by POPSUGAR service and transactions facilitated through the GLOW by POPSUGAR service. Seller may not use buyer user information for any other purpose, including without limitation, unauthorized transactions or sending unsolicited commercial messages in violation of any applicable laws.
Twinning and Aura by POPSUGAR
For our Twinning and Aura Services, we collect photos you submit and may provide them to our third party service providers for analysis and matching with similar-looking celebrities or public figures. When you submit your photo to Twinning, you agree that your photo may be shared with Clarifai, and when you submit your photo to Aura by POPSUGAR, you agree that your photo may be shared with Microsoft, and that their respective uses of your photo is subject to their separate privacy policies. The Clarifai privacy policy may be found here, and the Microsoft privacy policy may found here. Any information about your photo that is provided by Microsoft is used by POPSUGAR only to provide the results and is not stored by POPSUGAR.
When you submit a photo to Twinning, we post a composite image of your photo and your celebrity look-a-likes on a public URL for you to reference and share with your friends. When you submit a photo to Aura by POPSUGAR, we post an image of your photo with your aura reading results on a public URL. While For both Twinning and Aura by POPSUGAR, while we only provide this unique URL to you, the URL is public and may be viewed by anyone who has the link. You can request removal of any unique URL created in connection with your photos through Twinning or Aura by POPSUGAR by contacting us at community@popsugar.com.
What the Face
When you use the What the Face application (currently available on iPhone X only), the app uses Apple's ARKit Face Tracking technology and the front-facing camera of the iPhone X to analyze your facial expressions to match emoji images in the game. Apple's technology processes the information and communicates a confirmation to the app if you make the correct expression. The app uses this information to determine whether you made a particular expression at the appropriate time in order to score your performance in connection with the game. Scores based on your performance in the game are generated by the app but are not collected, stored or transferred off your device by POPSUGAR. You may share a GIF from a video of your performance recorded during your game, which remains stored only locally on your mobile device and can be deleted by your deleting the app. For purposes of clarity, no facial recognition data or other biometric information is collected, accessed, stored or transferred off your device by POPSUGAR in connection with this app.
International partners
On some occasions, we may host websites that are operated by international partners. We may share your User Information with these partners in order for them to provide the Services on those international websites. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of our international partners and each international website is subject to its own posted privacy policy.
Business transfers
We may share your User Information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing or acquisition, or in any other situation where User Information may be disclosed or transferred as one of our business assets.
Enforcement of terms and policies
We may share your information to enforce or apply our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, or our other policies or agreements.
Protection of POPSUGAR and others
We may access, read, preserve, and disclose any User Information where we reasonably believe a disclosure is necessary to comply with law or court order; or protect the rights, property, or safety of POPSUGAR, our employees, our users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
With your consent
We may share your User Information in other circumstances with your consent, for example when you have chosen to link an account with our Services with a social media network like Facebook or Google.
5. HOW YOU CAN CHANGE OR CONTROL WHAT IS COLLECTED
Changing your account settings
You may add, update or delete information through your user account settings, which limits the ability of other users to see the information in your user profile. The information you can view, update, or delete may be different depending on which area of the Services you are using and may also change as the Services change.
If you have any trouble accessing, correcting or deleting any of your information, or would like to make a request about whether POPSUGAR holds any of your Personal Information, please contact us at community@popsugar.com and we will respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe.
Cookies
You can usually instruct your browser by changing its settings to stop accepting Cookies or to prompt you before accepting a Cookie from our websites that you visit. If you choose to disable Cookies, you may not be able to use all portions of the Services or all functionality of the Services. For more details on opting out of tracking for advertising purposes, go to our Cookie Consent Tool by clicking on the button in the lower right corner of your screen labeled "Cookie Consent".
Precise location data
You may opt out of having your Precise Location Data collected by us at any time by editing the appropriate setting on your mobile device (which is usually located in the Settings area of your device).
Newsletter and email subscriptions
If you do not want to receive email or other mail from us, please indicate your preference by changing your account settings, contacting us at community@popsugar.com, or by clicking the "unsubscribe" link in an email we send to you. If you do not wish to receive email or other mail from Advertisers, or other third party partners, please refer to the applicable third party privacy policy and request an opt-out directly from the Advertiser or other third party partner.
Deactivating Your Account
You can always choose not to disclose information to us or delete information, but keep in mind some information may be needed to register with us or to take advantage of some of our special features. You may request deactivation of your account by contacting us at community@popsugar.com.
De-linking your account
In order to de-link your POPSUGAR account from an account on another service such as a social media account, you must adjust your account settings with the third party application. For example, if you want to de-link your Facebook account with POPSUGAR, you must de-link your accounts in both your POPSUGAR account settings and in your Facebook application settings.
Push notifications
You may adjust the "Settings" on your mobile device settings (or within the "profile" tab of certain applications) to disable push notifications for any of our mobile applications for which you would like to stop receiving such notifications. You may adjust the "Notification" settings usually found in your browser "Preferences" or "Settings" to block or remove certain browser-based push notifications.
Third party offers
To remove Offers (described in the section above entitled "WHAT INFORMATION WE SHARE WITH THIRD PARTIES") from your mobile device, go into your mobile wallet and delete or remove the applicable Offer. When you remove the Offer from your mobile wallet, your data will no longer be collected by POPSUGAR or its partners in connection with such Offer. To opt out of the collection of Precise Location Data by third parties in connection with Offers in your mobile wallet, go to the privacy settings on your device and turn off location data collection for the mobile wallet.
Text messages
If you no longer wish to receive text messages from our Must Have It Service, you can reply "STOP" to any text message sent by us through such Service or text "STOP" to 441-76. For our Must Have It Service, if you have a POPSUGAR account linked to the phone number you provided for the Must Have It Service, you can also visit the "Account Settings" page in your Must Have account and change the Must Have It Phone Number settings from "on" to "off."
Do Not Track
We currently do not participate in any "Do Not Track" frameworks that would allow us to respond to signals or other mechanisms from you regarding the collection of your information. We may engage third parties, such as marketing or analytics partners, who may collect information about your online activities over time and across different websites when you use our website.
6. INFORMATION AND NOTICES APPLICABLE TO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS ONLY
In accordance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act (see California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.84), California residents are entitled to ask us for a notice identifying the categories of certain Personal Information that we share with our affiliates and/or third parties for marketing purposes, and providing contact information for such affiliates and/or third parties. If you are a California resident and wish to make such a request, please submit your request in writing to community@popsugar.com.
If you are a California resident, you may be entitled to additional rights with respect to your personal information pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). For more information about these rights and how to exercise them, please see our California Privacy Notice here, which is hereby incorporated by reference into this Privacy Policy.
7. OTHER USEFUL INFORMATION REGARDING YOUR PRIVACY
Security
We use commercially reasonable safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of information collected and maintained through our Services. However, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you provide to us or guarantee that information on the Service may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by unauthorized persons or hardware or software failure. You are ultimately responsible for the security of your email address and password.
Children
The Services are not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for the Services or send any information about yourself to us. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that their child has provided us with Personal Information without their consent, please contact us at community@popsugar.com.
International transfer
Your User Information may be transferred to and maintained on computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the privacy laws may not be as protective as those in your jurisdiction. If you are located outside the United States and choose to provide information to us, POPSUGAR transfers personal information to the United States and processes it there. By submitting such information, you consent to that transfer.
Data retention
The time period for which we keep information varies according to the information's use. In some cases, there are legal requirements to keep data for a minimum period. Unless there is a specific legal requirement for us to keep the information, we plan to retain it for no longer than is necessary to fulfill a legitimate business need.
8. HOW TO CONTACT POPSUGAR
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, please send us a detailed message to community@popsugar.com. We can also be contacted at the following address:
POPSUGAR Inc.
111 Sutter Street, 16th Floor
San Francisco, California, 94104
United States