Consumerist Privacy Policy
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This privacy statement covers all of the Gawker Media sites (“GM Sites”). Please read this statement carefully before using proceeding to access GM Sites. Your use of GM Sites indicates your agreement to abide by the Terms in effect.
Information Collection
Gawker Media is the sole owner of the information collected on the GM Sites. Gawker Media may collect information from our users at several different points on the GM Sites.
Comments
In order to enhance their use of the GM Sites, users can choose to leave comments on particular articles of interest. Commenters may register anonymously. However, if a third party complains that a comment breaches our Terms of Service (e.g. libels them), then in accordance with our Terms, we will make reasonable efforts to contact the commenter and alert them to the situation. If we are required to by law to disclose commenters’ contact information, we will attempt to contact commenters to give them the opportunity to respond to such requests. Please refer to our Terms of Use for more information.
Mailing List
Gawker Media may launch a mailing list for some or all of the GM Sites. In order to sign up to receive regular emails from a site?s mailing list, users must submit information including a valid email address and demographic information such as location and interests. This information will be used in aggregate form only in order to assess general user interest in various internal and third party products and services, and your personal and contact information will not be passed to any other organization. Users who choose to sign up for a mailing list will receive regular emails from the site, including new articles added to the site as well as emails from third party site sponsors. If you do not wish to receive emails from third party advertisers, do not sign up for the mailing list.
Discussion Group and Cookies
In order to further enhance the user experience, Gawker Media may launch a discussion board service on some or all of the GM Sites where users can discuss common topics of interest. Users will have the option of signing up for this service, and to do so must submit information including a valid email address. Gawker Media uses this information to screen out users who leave comments prohibited by our terms and conditions of use and to pick out topics of interest to discussion board users. Gawker Media will not pass this information to any other organization except in aggregate form.
The discussion board service may use cookies. A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. We may use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. For the session ID cookie, once users close the browser, the cookie simply terminates. A persistent cookie is a small text file stored on the user?s hard drive for an extended period of time. Persistent cookies can be removed by following Internet browser help file directions.
By setting a cookie on a GM Site, users will not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on the site?s discussion board. We store a cookie on each user’s machine that contains a username and encrypted password. You can configure your browser to accept all cookies, reject all cookies, or notify you when a cookie is set. If you reject all cookies, you will not be able to use Gawker Media products or services that require you to “sign in,” and you may not be able to take full advantage of all offerings. However, not all Gawker Media services require that you accept cookies.
Third Party Advertising
The ads appearing on this Web site are delivered to you by DoubleClick, our Web advertising partner. Information about your visits to this site, such as number of times you have viewed an ad, is used to serve ads to you. For more information about DoubleClick, cookies, and how to “opt-out”, please click here .
Third Party Cookies
In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertiser may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.
Log Files
Like most standard Web site servers we use log files. This includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user?s movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses, etc. are not linked to personally identifiable information. We may use a tracking utility that uses log files to analyze user movement.
Legal Disclaimer
Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, Gawker Media may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on any of the GM Sites.
Business Transitions
In the event Gawker Media goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of a portion of its assets, users’ personal information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred.
Links
The GM Sites contain links to other sites. Please be aware that Gawker Media is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by Gawker Media.
Third Party Cookies
Some of our business partners may use cookies on our site (for example, advertisers). However, Gawker Media has no access to or control over these cookies, once we have given permission for them to set cookies for advertising. This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by Gawker Media only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
Third Party Advertising
The ads appearing on this Web site are delivered to users by Google, among other services. Information about users’ visit to this site, such as number of times they have viewed an ad (but not username, date of birth, or any other personal information), is used to serve ads to users on this site. For more information about Google and cookies, please click here.
Notification of Changes
Whenever Gawker Media changes its privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
Contact Information
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact the editor of the GM site in question, or send an email to questions AT gawker.com, or by mail to Gawker Media, 76 Crosby St, New York, NY 10012
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