New York Media Privacy Policy – Highlights
The New York Media Privacy Policy describes the information that the New York Magazine, Grub Street, Vulture and The Cut websites (collectively, the “Sites” or “we”) collect about you, how we use that information, and the choices you can make about the uses of your personal information. This summary gives some highlights from our Privacy Policy, but you should read the whole Privacy Policy to fully understand New York Media’s privacy practices.
What Information Do We Collect?
- We collect personal information you give us, either by registering as a member on our Sites or by participating in Interactive Areas available on our Sites. Personal information is information that identifies a person, like a name or address.
- We may collect demographic information about you (e.g., age, gender, geographic location) from third parties to enhance our advertising activities.
- We collect certain other non-identifying information automatically, such as statistics on website usage patterns through the use of cookies and other technologies, when you visit our Sites.
How Do We Use the Information We Collect?
- Our Sites use your personal information to communicate with you and to complete transactions.
- We may share your personal information and aggregate information with third parties who co-sponsor surveys, contests or sweepstakes or with whom we partner for joint activities.
- We may share your personal information with operational providers that help us fulfill certain business functions and with other third parties to comply with legal processes such as subpoenas and court orders and when we believe in good faith that the law requires the sharing of your personal information.
- We or our operational providers use information collected through cookies and other technologies to analyze site usage activity and patterns to help improve the Sites.
- Our third party advertising company partners may collect non-identifying information derived from cookies and other technologies about your visits to our Sites. They may combine this information with data about your web activities at third party websites or with demographic information to identify your likely interests so that they and we can provide you with more useful and relevant advertisements. This is often called Behavioral Advertising.
What Choices Do I Have About How My Personal Information Is Used?
- Once you provide our Sites with personal information, we will correct, update, or remove your details or process your request to be removed from future communications if you contact us using the information listed below.
- Additionally, you can opt out of any email communications you receive from our Sites using the opt-out links found at the bottom of each email we send.
- If you would like to opt-out of the Behavioral Advertising done by our Sites’ third party advertising company partners, most are NAI members. You can click here for more information on NAI, including instructions on how to opt out of this advertising.
How Can I Ask Questions or Raise Concerns?
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy.
Contact us at:
Attn: Privacy Department
75 Varick Street, 4th Floor, New York, New York 10013
Phone: (212) 508-0700
Email: privacy@nymag.com
Amended as of February 10, 2011
Click below for specific information about:
What Does This Privacy Policy Cover?
What Information Do We Collect?
How Do We Use the Information We Collect?
Who Do We Share Your Personal Information With?
What Choices Do I Have About How My Personal Information Is Used?
What About Links to Third Party Websites?
Is My Personal Information Protected?
What About Changes to This Privacy Policy?
What if NYMag.com, Vulture.com, GrubStreet.com or TheCut.com is Sold or Goes Out of Business?
What About Children’s Privacy?
How Can I Ask Questions or Raise Concerns?
Terms of Usage Agreement
What Does This Privacy Policy Cover?
New York Media LLC ("New York Media") owns and operates the New York Magazine ("NYMag.com"), Grub Street ("GrubStreet.com"), Vulture ("Vulture.com") and the The Cut ("TheCut.com") websites ("MenuPages.com") (collectively, the "Sites" or "we"). New York Media respects and values your privacy. We have created this Privacy Policy to describe the personal information we collect when you visit our Sites and how we use that information. This Privacy Policy applies to NYMag.com, GrubStreet.com, Vulture.com and MenuPages.com.
What Information Do We Collect?
Personal Information
Personal information is any information that allows our Sites to identify an individual consumer, such as a name, phone number, home address or email address. Certain information is only personal information when it is linked to other information, such as your name. For example, your birth date and gender are only personal information when associated with you. To become a member of one of our Sites or to access certain of our services, such as contests, you may be required to provide personal information such as your name, home and email addresses, birth date and gender. Similar information may also be required to participate in other online activities, special events, contests, sweepstakes or Interactive Areas. "Interactive Areas" include, when offered, chat rooms, bulletin boards, message boards, article or blog comment areas, reader photo upload, reader ratings and reviews, saving favorite restaurants or fashion looks, SMS text messaging and mobile alerts.
Posting Reviews or Comments and Use of Interactive Areas
We collect information when you submit it for posting on our Sites. Any communication you submit or that may be posted to any publicly viewable area of our Sites, such as a comment on a blog posting or a review, is a public communication and may be viewed by the general public. Therefore, you acknowledge and understand that you have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality in the content you submit to such services over our Sites, whether or not it includes personal information. If you display your personal information in any communication submitted to such services or features, other individuals may collect and use your personal information. The Sites are not responsible for, nor can we guarantee the protection of, any personal information you disclose in a communication submitted to such services or features for posting or contained in an email or other communication submitted to us for such posting, and thus, you acknowledge that if you disclose personal information in any such material, you do so at your own risk.
Non-Personal Information
To gauge the effectiveness of our Sites, we may collect non-personal information about our members and visitors, such as Internet server and browser identification, the Internet service provider used, clickstream information, the web page from which a person enters our site, webpages visited, duration of visit and domain type. However, this information does not reveal your identity. We gather this information through the use of cookies and similar devices as discussed below.
How Do We Use the Information We Collect?
Use of Personal Information
We collect personal information for several important purposes, including to operate our membership base, protect the security of our visitors and the Sites, improve our service and Sites, distribute our newsletters, notify the winners of our contests and sweepstakes, allow participation in Interactive Areas, and for future marketing and/or promotional use. We may also survey visitors about various topics, including local events and experiences, media consumption preferences and how we can improve our Sites and services. Response to our surveys is entirely voluntary. The Sites or our operational providers may enhance or merge the information we collect with other data collected from other sources, such as demographic data including age and gender, to enhance our marketing activities.
We may offer SMS text message mobile alerts for our restaurant and bar listings. We may also offer an "Email This” feature that allows visitors to email a link to another person to inform them about an article or feature on the Sites. On NYMag.com, we may also offer an “Email Album” feature that allows members to share a fashion album they create with others. If you email your fashion albums to others, the emailed albums will automatically be made public for anyone to access. You can also choose to make your albums private so only you can access them. We do not retain telephone numbers or email addresses collected for these purposes after sending the SMS text message or email.
We may produce contests, sweepstakes and special events with the support of promotional partners. Personal information collected by our Sites in conjunction with such events may also be used for the marketing of additional services and events by the Sites and/or their promotional partners. Please see the rules of each individual event and any applicable privacy policies for information on the choices you can exercise with respect to the use of your personal information. To the extent there is a conflict between this privacy policy and the rules or policies applicable to a special event, the rules and policies associated with the special event shall govern.
For your convenience, we may provide the opportunity to purchase certain goods, merchandise and services through the Sites (including, without limitation, print magazine subscriptions and special events). Companies other than New York Media process these transactions. We may also use outside companies to provide or operate Interactive Areas. We call these companies that conduct our e-commerce operations, order and contest fulfillment and/or contract services "operational providers." They are third parties that perform services on our behalf. If you choose to use these optional services, our operational providers will request certain personal information in order to fulfill your order or request. The voluntary submission of your personal information to these operational providers, including your order or request, will be governed by the specific provider's terms of use and privacy policies. We will store this information in our membership database. We may also share personal information with operational providers for the purpose of facilitating your experience on our Sites, for example, to allow you to register, log in, post a comment or receive an email newsletter. We also request that these providers only use the personal information for the purpose of conducting the sale or fulfilling the requested service or order. However, the Sites are not responsible for the collection, use and disclosure practices of operational providers.
Use of Non-Personal Information Including Cookies
The Sites use cookies and other tracking devices. A cookie is a small data file that contains a unique identification number that a website places on your hard drive when you visit a website. The cookie is able to store information such as data about your computer, the type of browser you use and how many times your computer visits a certain site. The cookies we use on the Sites do not contain any personal information. Cookies enable us to track how often visitors are visiting our Sites and specific pages, the number of entries in specific events, the estimated audience size for sponsors and advertisers and user preferences. You can refuse to use cookies by turning them off in your browser. Please contact your browser software manufacturer for questions on how to disable your cookies. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use most of the content on our Sites. However, you may find that some areas on the Sites will be slower, or may not function at all, and you may not be able to participate in certain activities, such as commenting, contests or sweepstakes, if the cookies are disabled. We do not use so-called “Flash cookies” or other “Locally Stored Objects,” which allow persistent storage and retrieval of information about your browsing sessions, even if you delete or block standard cookies, however, some third party audience measurement companies which provide services to us may use such objects during your visit to our Sites, including, but not limited to Nielsen and Quantcast. If you would like more information about these companies’ use of cookies and how to opt out, please click these links: Nielsen; Quantcast.
Our Sites also uses clear GIFs [Graphics Interchange Formats] (also known as pixel tags, web beacons or web bugs). A clear GIF is a tiny line of code, only 1 by 1 pixel in size, that is programmed to collect certain information about a visit to a particular website. We use clear GIFs to gather non-personal, aggregate information on visits to our Sites, track usage of website links and email delivery, and assist with registration and log-on features, including in chat rooms and email. We do not disclose personal information that may be linked to our clear GIF collection practices to third parties. The Sites are not responsible for the use of clear GIFs by other website operators.
You should review other website operators' privacy policies to determine the type and extent of tracking devices used at other websites you visit.
Use and Collection of Information by Operational Providers
For the convenience of our visitors, we may provide the opportunity to purchase certain goods, merchandise and services through this website (including, without limitation, on-line personals services). Companies other than New York Media, its parents, partners, affiliates or subsidiaries may handle some of these transactions. We call these companies that conduct our e-commerce operations, order fulfillment and/or contract services "operational providers." If you choose to use these optional services, our operational providers will request your personal information to fulfill your order or request. The voluntary submission of your personal information to these operational providers, including your order or request, will be governed by the specific provider's terms of usage and privacy policies. To facilitate an order or request, we may share your personal information with the provider. The operational provider may also share your personal information with us. We will store this information in our membership database. In most instances, we request that our operational providers adhere to the provisions in New York Media's Privacy Policy and that such providers only share visitors' personal information with New York Media, unless necessary to complete a visitor's request or order. We also request that these providers only use the personal information for the purpose of conducting the sale or fulfilling the requested service or order. However, you must read an operational provider's privacy policy to determine the extent of use and disclosure of your personal information collected online. New York Media, its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries are not responsible for the collection, use and disclosure practices of operational providers, nor is New York Media responsible or liable for the products or services provided by operational providers.
Who Do We Share Your Personal Information With?
Sharing of Information with Partners
We may collect and provide aggregate information about our visitors to our advertisers, sponsors, promotional partners and affiliates, such as how many persons visited a particular page or activity, the average age of our visitors on the site or page, or the likes and dislikes of our visitors, but this information does not include personal information about any individual visitor. We may obtain geographic information such as zip code clustering from other sources, but this aggregate information will not reveal any personal information about a specific visitor. We may also obtain other demographic information from third parties for marketing purposes or to display more relevant advertising.
Online advertising for the Sites is delivered by third-party advertising companies. These companies create networks of websites to facilitate the delivery of ads and conduct market research on our Sites and other sites. These companies place cookies on your hard drive so that their systems can identify your computer. By placing such cookies on your system, they are able, among other things, to determine automatically whether you have seen a particular advertisement before and avoid sending you duplicate advertisements. These cookies also enable the companies to serve you ads tailored to things you have shown interest in based on the Sites and other sites you have visited. For example, if you frequently read movie reviews, you may see ads relating to upcoming movie openings. Online advertising companies generally conduct this activity in an anonymous format, with online information not combined with information that would allow for your identification, such as a name, address or email address.
The third-party companies that currently serve advertisements or provide ad targeting data on the Sites include, but are not limited to DoubleClick, Google, Blue Kai and Omniture. If you would like more information about the collection, use and disclosure practices of these third party advertising companies and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click on the company names above and follow the links to the company websites.
The Sites’ third party advertising company partners typically belong and/or conform to the standards and principles of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI). The NAI allows you to opt-out of the cookies used to tailor advertisements to you through the NAI website. If you would like to opt-out of the storage of anonymous information used by our third party advertising company partners, visit www.nai.org. The NAI opt-out tool is cookie based. In order for it to work on your computer, your browser must be set to accept third party cookies.
Other Information Sharing
Other than as disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we only share or disclose your personal information with companies other than New York Media LLC and its affiliates when it is required by law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request; when we believe disclosure would enhance or improve operation of the Sites or certain website services and/or when we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the safety of our visitors.
The Sites may in the future share personal information with our parents, partners, and affiliates to conduct joint activities.
When you send us an email, we will reasonably safeguard your email address and other personal contact information. However, we may disclose the content of your email to other persons in accordance with our Terms of Use Agreement.
What Choices Do I Have About How My Personal Information Is Used?
You can choose not to provide our Sites with any personal information. If personal information you provide our Sites changes, if you no longer wish to receive a service or marketing communications from us or if you wish to inquire about the information we hold about you, please contact us using the contact information below and we will correct, update or remove your details or process your request to be removed from future communications. Additionally, you can opt out of any email communications you receive from us using the opt-out links found at the bottom of each email we send.
What About Links to Third Party Websites?
The Sites contain links, sometimes in the form of ads or links to other sites, such as information about other services such as online personals services, to other sites, including sites operated by other entities. These advertisers and sites that have links on our Sites may collect personal information directly from you and/or use their own tracking technologies. When you link to or visit an advertiser's or sponsor's website, we may frame the site with one of our Sites’ logos; however, you will be subject to the privacy policy and terms of use agreement of that website operator. New York Media is not responsible for the privacy policies or contents of our advertisers, sponsors or other sites or businesses to which we provide hyperlinks or access. Please visit the sites of these businesses to review their privacy policies.
Is My Personal Information Protected?
We endeavor to safeguard and protect you personal information. When you submit personal information on our Sites, such information is protected both online and offline. Only employees and supervisors with specific authorization have access to databases containing visitors' personal information. The databases are protected in a secure facility. Credit card information is transmitted via encrypted technology. Please be advised that, although we take reasonable technological precautions to protect your data, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Therefore, our Sites cannot warrant that your information will be absolutely secure. Any transmission of data through our Sites is at your own risk.
What About Changes to This Privacy Policy?
We may periodically modify, alter or otherwise update this Privacy Policy. We may also change or update our Privacy Policy if we add new services or features. We will notify you of any material changes to this Privacy Policy by posting the revised policy with the date it was revised on this page. We encourage you to review our Privacy Policy on a regular basis to stay informed about how we are protecting the personal information we collect. Your continued use of our Sites constitutes your agreement to this Privacy Policy and any updates.
What if NYMag.com, GrubStreet.com, Vulture.com or TheCut.com is Sold or Goes Out of Business?
In the event of a corporate change in control resulting from, for example, a sale to, or merger with, another entity, or in the event of a sale of assets or a bankruptcy, New York Media reserves the right to transfer your personal information to the new party in control or the party acquiring assets.
What About Children’s Privacy?
We have developed our Sites to appeal to visitors over the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from persons under the age of 13. If we learn that we have personal information for a child under the age of 13, we will delete that information.
How Can You Ask Questions or Raise Concerns?
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy.
Contact us at:
Attn: Privacy Department
75 Varick Street, 4th Floor, New York, New York 10013
Phone: (212) 508-0700
E-mail: privacy@nymag.com
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