HERE MEDIA PRIVACY POLICY
Effective Date: May 16, 2013
This Privacy Policy describes the privacy practices for Here Media Inc. ("Here Media"), including the types of information we collect, how that information may be used, with whom it may be shared, and your choices about such collection, use and disclosure. In this policy, "Here Media" refers to Here Media Inc. and its subsidiaries, parent companies, joint ventures and other corporate entities under common ownership. We may also refer to Here Media as "we" or "us" or “our.”
Unless a separate privacy policy is specifically noted, this Privacy Policy applies to all of the products and services of Here Media, including Heremedia.com, Gay.com, Gay.net, Out.com, Advocate.com and all country-specific or foreign language versions of these websites, web plug-ins and applications, mobile services, applications for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, and any other features, content, or applications offered from time to time by Here Media (the “Services”).
You should read this Privacy Policy carefully before using any of our Services. By using our Services, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy, which covers the following:
1. Types of Information We Collect About You
2. How We Collect Your Information
3. How We Use Your Information
4. How Your Information Is Shared
5. Your Choices and Controls
6. Privacy Policies of Linked Sites and Advertisers
7. Children’s Privacy
8. Data Security
9. International Transfer of Data
10. Notice to California Residents
11. Changes to This Privacy Policy
12. How to Contact Us
1. Types of Information We Collect About You
When you use the Services, we may collect two basic types of information: personally identifiable information (PII) and non-personally identifiable information (Non-PII). PII consists of any information that can be used to specifically identify you as an individual, whereas Non-PII consists of activity or aggregate information that does not reveal your identity. We collect the following categories of information:
- Registration information you provide when you create an account, including your first name and surname, country of residence, gender, date of birth, email address, username and password.
- Transaction information you provide when you request information or purchase a product or service from us, whether on our sites or through our applications, including your postal address, telephone number and payment information.
- Information you provide in public forums on our sites and applications.
- Information sent either one-to-one or within a limited group using our message, chat, post or similar functionality, where we are permitted by law to collect this information.
- Information you provide to us when you use our sites and applications, our applications on third-party sites or platforms such as social networking sites, or link your profile on a third-party site or platform with your registration account.
- Location information when you visit our sites or use our applications, including location information either provided by a mobile device interacting with one of our sites or applications, or associated with your IP address, where we are permitted by law to process this information or have your permission.
- Usage, viewing and technical data when you visit our sites, use our applications on third-party sites or platforms or open emails we send, including your device identifier or IP address, browser type, language preference, operating system, referring/exit pages, and date and time of site visits or application use.
- With your permission, we access information on your device, such as your phone book, calendar or messages, in order to provide certain products or services to you.
Linking Information. We may link your PII with your activities in the course of providing the Services to you (such as purchase history, what content you viewed, which web pages you visited, or things you click on or search).
Location Information. If you give us permission, we may collect, store and share your precise geographic location for certain Services. Many devices will indicate through an icon when location services are operating. If you allow these services, we may determine your location either through the GPS in your mobile devise or through an approximation of your location based on the IP address of your general location. We use this information to provide the requested location-based service, not to identify you. Examples of requested location-based services include:
- Providing you content based upon your location.
- Checking you in to a store or other location to let others know where you are.
- Providing you local search results.
- Providing you special local offers.
- Enabling you to share your location with friends or other users of the Services.
2. How We Collect Your Information
Information You Provide. We collect information you provide to us when you request products, services or information from us, register with us, participate in public forums or other activities on our sites and applications, respond to customer surveys, or otherwise interact with us. Please keep in mind that when you provide information to us on a third-party site or platform (for example, via our applications), the information you provide may be separately collected by the third-party site or platform. The information we collect is covered by this Privacy Policy and the information the third-party site or platform collects is subject to the third-party site or platform's privacy practices. Privacy choices you have made on the third-party site or platform will not apply to our use of the information we have collected directly through our applications. You can always refuse to supply information, with the caveat that it may prevent you from using certain Services.
Information Collected Automatically. When you access the Services (including on third-party sites and platforms), we collect certain technical information in order to analyze the usage of our Services, provide a more personalized experience, and manage advertising. Types of technologies used to automatically collect information include:
- Cookies. Cookies are pieces of information that is placed on the hard drive of your computer when you visit a website. Cookies may involve the transmission of information from us to you and from you directly to us, to another party on our behalf, or to another party in accordance with its privacy policy. We use cookies to help us identify and track visitors, their usage of our websites, and their website access preferences.
- Flash cookies. Flash cookies are local shared objects used to store your preferences or display content based upon what you view on our Services in order to personalize your visit. Our advertisers and third-party service providers also may use Flash cookies to collect and store information.
- Web beacons. Web beacons (also known as “clear gifs” and “pixel tags”) are small transparent graphic images that are often used in conjunction with cookies in order to further personalize our Services for our users and to collect a limited set of information about our visitors. We may also use web beacons in email communications in order to understand the behavior of our customers.
Information From Others. We also obtain information from business partners, contractors and other third parties to update or supplement the information you provided or we collected automatically. For example, we purchase marketing data about our customers from third parties and combine it with information we already have about you, to create more tailored advertising and products. We also collect and store personal information about other people that you provide to us, such as their name, address and email address. If you use our Services to send others (friends, relatives, colleagues, etc.) a product as a gift, we may store your personal information, and the personal information of each such recipient in order to process those requests or facilitate future activities.
3. How We Use Your Information
We may use information we collect about you to:
- Provide you with products, services and information you requested (e.g., location-based services).
- Administer your accounts and provide you with customer support.
- Communicate with you about products, services or promotions from us or a third party that may be of interest to you.
- Provide personalized content based upon your activities with our Services.
- Send you notices about updates to the Services and changes to any of our policies or agreements.
- Provide you with advertising based on your activity with our Services and with third party products and services. This advertising may appear with our Services or with third party products or services.
- Send you push notifications when you are using our apps. If you do not want these notifications, you can manage your preference through your device or app settings depending on your device type.
- Conduct research and analysis about your use of, or interest in, products, services or content from us or a third party.
- Create and publicly display or share with others aggregate statistics about the behavior of users of our Services (e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of our websites).
- Administer contests and sweepstakes that you entered.
- Improve our products and services and manage our business.
- Detect, investigate and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be illegal.
4. How Your Information Is Shared
Personally Identifiable Information. We do not share your PII with others except as follows:
- Service Providers. We may share your PII with third parties that provide products or perform services on our behalf, such as fulfilling orders; providing customer service and marketing assistance; performing business and sales analysis; member screenings; developing, hosting and supporting functionality for our websites and apps; and supporting contests, sweepstakes, surveys and other features offered through our Services. We may also share your name, contact information and credit card information with our authorized service providers who process credit card payments. While our service providers may have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, they are not permitted to share or use such information for any other purposes.
- Business Partners. When you register or make purchases on our websites and apps, or click-through our advertisements offered on third party websites, we may share PII with the businesses with which we partner to offer you the applicable products, services or any advertisements. When you elect to engage in a particular merchant's offer or program, you authorize us to provide your email address and other information to that merchant.
- Gay.com Members. If you are a registered member of the Gay.com website, application or other product or service, we may share information we collect, including your profile and personal information such as your name and contact information, photos, interests, activities and transactions, with Stark Mobile Technologies and their service known as GuySpy, which is a location-based gay dating app, mobile web service, and web service for gay, bi or curious men who want to connect with the same sex. Specifically, as part of the Gay.com services, your profile may be registered on the GuySpy services and/or appear in search results or other areas of GuySpy.
- Our Businesses. We may share PII, including your profile, your name and contact information, photos, interests, activities and transactions from the specific Services you use with all of Here Media’s companies.
- Your Permission. When you allow us to share your PII with another company, e.g., electing to share your PII with carefully selected companies so that they can send you offers and promotions about their products and services, or directing us to share your PII with third-party sites or platforms, such as social networking sites. Please note that once your personal information is shared with another company, the information received by the other company becomes subject to that company’s privacy practices.
- Legal and Other Situations. We disclose PII and any other information we have collected about you or that you have submitted to us (1) in response to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to comply with applicable law or cooperate with law enforcement in any way, or to establish, protect, or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims or demands, or to enforce our website terms and conditions or other agreements or policies; (2) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, fraud or other wrongdoing, or to protect and defend the rights, property or safety of our company, our users, our employees, or others; (3) if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding situations that involve abuse of our systems and infrastructure or the Internet in general, such as voluminous spamming, denial of service attacks, or attempts to compromise the security of our Services or related infrastructure; or (4) if Here Media is involved in a substantial corporate transaction, such as the sale of our business, a divestiture, merger, consolidation or asset sale, in which case we will require any new person or entity to assume our obligations under this Privacy Policy .
Non-Personally Identifiable Information. We may share Non-PII under any of the above circumstances. We may also share it with all any of our companies or third parties to develop and deliver targeted advertising with our Services including on our and third party websites and apps, and to analyze and report on advertising you see. We may combine Non-PII with additional non-personal information collected from other sources. We also may share aggregated, Non-PII, or PII in hashed, non-human readable form, with third parties, including advisors, advertisers and investors, for the purpose of conducting general business analysis or other business purposes.
Profile and Other Information You Share. For certain Services (e.g. Gay.com) your member profile information will be public and other users of the Services can see your profile information. Do not include information in your profile that you want to keep private. You may also choose to share information with others via email, chat rooms, personal ads or message boards. We cannot control the actions of others with whom you choose to share your information and cannot guarantee that the content you share will not be viewed by others within or outside our Services. Any information shared publicly may be indexed by internet search engines such as Google.
5. Your Choices and Controls
You may exercise certain choices and controls regarding the collection, use and sharing of your information. Please know, however, that if you choose not to provide us with certain personal information, you may be unable to use some of our Services because such information may be required in order for you to register as a member, purchase products or services, participate in a contest, promotion, survey or sweepstakes, ask a question, or initiate other transactions on our websites or apps. Your controls and choices may include:
- Your Registered Account. If you have a member or other registered account with us, you can review and update your personal information or change your choices for subscriptions, newsletters, or alerts and notifications by logging into your account and clicking on your account settings. You also may close your account at any time by visiting the account settings page for your account or writing to us at the address listed below. If you choose to close your account, you will not be able to sign in to some of the Services or access any of your personal information. Following changes to your account, or if your account is closed, we may still retain certain information associated with your account for analytical purposes and recordkeeping integrity, as well as to prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, enforce our terms and conditions, take actions we deem necessary to protect the integrity of our Services or our users, or take other actions otherwise permitted by law.
- Promotional Communications. When you register an account with us, you may consent to receiving email or other messages from us or permit us to share your PII with third parties. You may modify this consent later by visiting the account settings page associated with your account or by writing to us at the address below. In any commercial email that you receive from us, you will be given the opportunity to opt out of receiving such messages in the future. Following our receipt of your request to cease using your PII for marketing purposes, we will require a reasonable period of time to update our systems to fully implement your request. We may send you other types of transactional and relationship communications, however, such as service announcements, administrative notices, and surveys, without offering you the opportunity to opt out of receiving them.
- Cookies. You can control information collected by cookies. You can set your web browser to warn you about attempts to place cookies on your computer, limit the type of cookies you allow, or delete cookies from your computer. Flash cookies operate differently than browser cookies and cookie management tools available in a web browser may not remove flash cookies. To learn more about and manage flash cookies you can visit Adobe.com. If you delete or turn cookies off, you may not have access to some of our Services or related features and some Services may not function properly. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Here Media only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers. Some third-party advertising companies and networks may be members of the Network Advertising Initiative or the Digital Advertising Alliance, both of which offer information about behavioral advertising practice and the ability to opt out of ad targeting from their member companies.
- Do Not Track Disclosure. Do Not Track (“DNT”) is a privacy preference that users can set in certain web browsers. DNT is a way for users to inform websites and services that they do not want certain information about their webpage visits collected over time and across websites or online services. We are committed to providing you with meaningful choices about the information collected on our website for third party purposes. However, we do not recognize or respond to browser-initiated DNT signals, as the Internet industry is currently still working toward defining exactly what DNT means, what it means to comply with DNT, and a common approach to responding to DNT.
Please note that changes to your personal information, deleting your account, or opting out of receipt of promotional communications will only affect future activities or communications from us. If information has already been provided to third parties as described in this Privacy Policy, retention of that information will be subject to those third parties' policies and you may have to change your preferences directly with that third party.
6. Privacy Policies of Linked Sites and Advertisers
There are a number of places on our websites and apps where you may click on a link to access other products or services that do not operate under this Privacy Policy. For example, if you click on an advertisement on one of our websites, you may be taken to a website that we do not control. These third-party products and services may independently solicit and collect information, including personal information, from you and, in some instances, provide us with information about your activities in connection with their products and services. We recommend that you consult the privacy statements of all third party products and services.
7. Children’s Privacy
Children under the age of 13 should not use our Services at any time. Here Media does not knowingly contact or collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have inadvertently collected such information, please contact us so we can promptly remove the information.
Certain Services, such as the website Gay.com and its related apps, are restricted to individuals age 18 and above. Please review our User Agreement for additional information about user eligibility.
8. Data Security
We take commercially reasonable steps to protect your PII against unauthorized access or disclosure. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss, or other breaches will never occur.
9. International Transfer of Data
Because certain Services are global, information about you that we collect or that you submit may be transferred to, processed in, and held in countries other than the one in which you reside. By using the Services, you explicitly consent to such use of your information. This Privacy Policy complies with the EU Safe Harbor Privacy Framework of the European Commission's Directive on Data Protection.
10. Notice to California Residents
Under California Civil Code section 1798.83, a California resident has the right to request and obtain either (1) information about certain companies' disclosures of personal information to third parties for direct marketing purposes, or (2) access to a cost-free means of preventing such disclosures. You may request that Here Media Inc. not disclose your personal information to third parties, either at the time you register an account with us or by writing to us at: 10990 Wilshire Blvd., Penthouse, Los Angeles, CA 90024.
11. Changes to This Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy may change from time to time to accommodate new technologies, industry practices, regulatory requirements or for other purposes. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices. If we make any material changes to our policies, we will place a prominent notice on the applicable Services. If the change materially affects registered users, we will require you to indicate your acceptance of the changes by way of “click and accept” or similar affirmative action. If you do not agree to the changes made to our privacy practices, you should discontinue your use of the Services. All changes will become effective immediately or upon a Member’s confirmed acceptance, as applicable. Changes will not apply retroactively.
12. How to Contact Us
If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this Privacy Policy, or if you would like to request information about our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes, please contact us by postal mail as follows:
Here Media Inc.
Attention: Customer Care
10990 Wilshire Blvd. Penthouse
Los Angeles, CA 90024