Privacy Policy Summary: Contextly prides itself on respecting the privacy of sites and readers. Contextly was co-founded by Ryan Singel, who spent ten years at Wired covering privacy and security, acting as a watchdog for digital privacy. Those values are at the core of Contextly.
We don't sell personally identifiable information about readers. We don't disclose identifiable data about publishers's readers or traffic to any third parties without publisher consent. We collect information to make our recommendations better. We collect only the information necessary for that purpose and store it for reasonable time frames.
On Publishers' Sites: Contextly collects basic usage information to help improve our services and create aggregate statistics. Cookies are small text files set in your browser by sites you visit so they can remember information about you.
We set small text files in browsers, known as cookies, so that we can track how well our recommendations work and improve them. They also help us create personalized recommendations.
Knowing how people like the stories we recommend helps us make better recommendations. None of the information stored in the cookie is personally identifiable. Cookies allow us to create anonymous, aggregate statistics reports for our publishers and third parties. Users do not have to have cookies turned on to get recommendations.
We also collect IP addresses in order to troubleshoot and prevent fraud and abuse. We delete IP addresses after 90 days. IP addresses can be used by law enforcement or in a civil case to identify a particular computer. That would take two legal processes - one to Contextly and then one to the Internet Service Provider that assigned that IP address.
Email Addresses: We collect email addresses from readers who wish to subscribe to getting notifications about updates on content from our publishers. We collect emails solely for notification purposes and do not sell them.
Readers may unsubscribe from these notifications at any time, using the links in the emails. Email addresses are communicated to publishers only if readers agree to us doing so when they sign up or if they indicate so by clicking links in notification emails. Contextly is not liable
Each publication has its own set of privacy policies and opt-out systems. If you have chosen to have your email address passed to one of our publishers, opting out of our notifications will not opt you out of their system.
Contextly may use one or more third-party email sending services to ensure delivery of email communications to readers. Contextly works only with services that have strict privacy policies that prohibit the sharing of emails.
Contextly notification emails may include sponsored content or ads. In such cases, reader emails are not shared with the sponsor or advertiser, including via links to the sponsor or advertiser's site or promotion.
Contextly may connect one or more cookie ID numbers with an email address for the purpose of tailoring recommendations and preventing recommendations of content to a reader that the reader has already seen.
No Third Party Tracking Cookies and Beaconson Publisher's Sites: Contextly does not include any third party tracking cookies, beacons or other technologies in its display on publisher's sites. Contextly may, in its discretion, choose to have its email delivery service provider use a small beacon in emails, solely for the purpose of knowing if an email was opened or not. Such beacons or pixels are not used to create third-party data about the reader.
California 'Do Not Track' Legislation: Contextly does not currently take into account the Do Not Track ("DNT") or related signal as we are waiting for the technical, legal and policy stakeholders to issue recommendations on how to respond.
We Do Not Sell Personal Information: We do not sell user-level information to any third parties.
Anonymous, aggregated information that cannot be linked back to an individual user may be made available to third parties or used in aggregate reporting.
Information Disclosure: Contextly will not disclose information about readers to authorities, unless required by court order or law, or when the company believes that there is an imminent danger to life.
We may disclose, or be forced to preserve, information about reader, if Contextly believes that is reasonably necessary to comply with valid legal process or subpoena. We will take what steps we can to notify users in advance, unless prohibited to do so by law. However, since we do not collect email addresses from all users, such a notification may be technically impossible.
Due to the limited data we collect, Contextly has never received a legal request for user data and has never turned over data to any law enforcement or government agency.
Those who want to opt-out of Contextly's cookies can do so with a privacy tool such as Abine, Disconnect or Ghostery.
On Contextly.com: We use Google Analytics to see how many people visit our site/blog and where they came from in order to improve our site. Those who want to opt-out of Google Analytics can do so with a privacy tool such as Abine, Disconnect or Ghostery.
Twitter advertising: We advertise on Twitter and use tracking codes from Twitter to understand what ads are working and which are not. If you want to opt out of Twitter ad tracking, you may do so here.
Publisher Information: We collect email addresses and names of administrative contacts when publishers sign up or adjust their information. We also provide a way for publishers to provide email addresses and names of additional persons to receive email reports about their sites and Contextly's performance. These reports may be unsubscribed from at any time.
Active publishers: We sign new publishers up to a short series of introductory emails explaining how Contextly works. These can be unsubscribed from at any time using the links in the emails.
We occasionally send updates to active publishers about new features and service notifications. These are core communications to our service and can only be unsubscribed from by deactivating Contextly.
Contextly collects usage information and may use cookies and other tracking technologies in our Control Panel to pinpoint bugs, track feature usage, facilitate security and optimize services. For example, we may track when a client attempts to logs into the control panel and whether they encountered an error when trying to do so.
Publisher Payment Information: We use several third-party services to facilitate subscriptions and recurring payments. These services may not sell or disclose personal information about our publishers. In particular, we use Stripe to collect Publisher credit card information and store it on our behalf in a secure manner compliant with credit card processing rules. Neither Contextly nor Stripe shares such information with any outside party, except for what is necessary to process transactions.
Inactive Publishers: At our discretion, we occasionally may update inactive publishers about new features or offerings. Publishers may unsubscribe from these at any time.
Interested Publishers: Contextly provides a way for potential publishers to inquire about our services by providing their email address, name, site and phone numbers. Contextly may use this information to follow-up and to provide notifications when new features or offerings are released (e.g. if a publisher using a publishing system that was unsupported asked for info, we may contact them at a later date when that publishing system becomes supported.)
On Publishers' Sites: Contextly collects basic usage information to help improve our services and create aggregate statistics. Cookies are small text files set in your browser by sites you visit so they can remember information about you.
We set a couple of cookies so that we can track how well our recommendations work and improve them. This helps us track first-time visitors to a publisher's site and recommend stories that are engaging.
Knowing how people like the stories we recommend helps us make better recommendations. None of the information stored in the cookie is personally identifiable. Cookies allow us to create anonymous, aggregate statistics reports for our publishers and third parties. We also collect IP addresses in order to troubleshoot and prevent fraud and abuse. We delete IP addresses after 90 days.
We do collect IP addresses, which could be used to identify a particular computer. That would take two legal processes - one to Contextly and then one to the Internet Service Provider that owns that IP address. This is the case with nearly every site on the Web.
California 'Do Not Track' Legislation: Contextly does not currently take into account the Do Not Track ("DNT") or related signal as we are waiting for the technical, legal and policy stakeholders to issue recommendations on how to respond.
We Do Not Sell Personal Information: We do not collect any directly personally identifiable information (such as email addresses or names), and we do not sell user-level information to any third parties.
Anonymous, aggregated information that cannot be linked back to an individual user or publication may be made available to third parties or used in aggregate reporting.
Information Disclosure: Contextly will not disclose information about you unless required by court order or law.
We may disclose, or be forced to preserve, information, if Contextly believes that is reasonably necessary to comply with valid legal process or subpoena. We will take what steps we can to notify users in advance, unless prohibited to do so by law. However, since we do not collect email addresses, such a notification may be technically impossible.
Due to the limited data we collect, Contextly has never received a legal request for user data and has never turned over data to any law enforcement or government agency.
Those who want to opt-out of Contextly's cookies can do so with a privacy tool such as Abine, Disconnect or Ghostery.
On Contextly.com: We use Google Analytics to see how many people visit our site/blog and where they came from in order to improve our site. Those who want to opt-out of Google Analytics can do so with a privacy tool such as Abine, Disconnect or Ghostery.
Twitter advertising: We advertise on Twitter and use tracking codes from Twitter to understand what ads are working and which are not. If you want to opt out of Twitter ad tracking, you may do so here.