At TheBlot Magazine (“theBlot”), we appreciate your readership and support and place a high value on your personal privacy. This policy (the “Privacy Policy”) may be revised or updated at any time and we encourage you to check back often to ensure that you are familiar with the most recent version and the terms of our Privacy Policy, as well as TheBlot Magazine’s Terms of Use. By continuing to use of theBlot after the Effective Date posted above you are acknowledging that you have read this Privacy Policy as of that Effective Date and agree to its terms.
When does theBlot collect my personal information?
You may provide personal information to theBlot several ways including: (1) by sharing your e-mail address when subscribing to our newsletter, (2) by sharing personal information when you submit news tips to our editorial team or by submitting a report via our Contact Form, (3) by sharing personal information when you post comments on our posts or stories, (4) by sharing contact information (Twitter username and Facebook account name) through our contests and theBlot Awards, (5) by signing up to be a member of our online social network, theBlot Follow, (6) by posting a job listing via our Jobs Board, or (7) by participating in a survey where an email address is requested. We may also ask for other information at other times but at no time will you be required to share any personal information to gain complete access to our site. theBlot is an open community but email addresses are requested to participate in some of our member-only features.
In addition to basic contact information, our analytics trackers may also collect other information. This may include the operating system you are working on, the Internet browser you are using, and the screen resolution of your computer.
We may use cookies or other similar devices in order to collect information concerning your use of TheBlot. Cookies are text files placed in your computer’s browser to store your preferences. Cookies do not contain personally identifiable information; however, once you choose to furnish a site with personally identifiable information, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie. You can change your browser settings to reject all cookies, accept only certain cookies or notify you when a cookies is set. Please note that you may need to review these settings if you delete your cookies after these preferences are made. Refer to your browser instructions to perform any of these actions. You may control certain cookies called “flash cookies” by visiting the Adobe Macromedia website located at http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html. Please note, rejecting cookies may affect you user experience on theBlot.
How does theBlot use my personal information?
Depending on the portion of our site that you have subscribed to or interacted with, we may use your information in a number of ways.
- The email address you provided through our newsletter subscription form enables us to send you a daily digest of theBlot news stories. This subscription is entirely opt-in by the user. (We cannot subscribe you to the newsletter as you personally must have access to the email account in order to verify the subscription.) Subscribers can opt-out of our newsletter at any time by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link that is present on every email at the very bottom of the newsletter.
- The email address that you use when contacting us with an editorial tip or via our Contact Form is used for the purposes of responding to your inquiry
- The email address associated with your account when you comment on our stories may be used in conjunction with contests and promotions hosted on theBlot’s website to notify you if you have won. Email addresses provided in comments may be used for customer service or as a policy violation contact mechanism.
- If you choose to comment on theBlot stories through Twitter and/or Facebook Connect, we do not get access to your email address nor do we have any access to your personal data or private information.
- We ask for a Twitter or Facebook account to verify the legitimacy of accounts voting in our theBlot Awards. We do not get any access to your personal data or private information on Twitter or Facebook.
- We may at times request your participation in a survey. While we will not provide your email addresses to any third party in connection with such surveys, we may contact you via third parties to distribute prizes in associated giveaways.
- We may also share your email address or other non- personal information with third-party vendors. Such information will be used for data analytics and advertising targeting. However, we do not sell individual personal data or email addresses or allow them to be used for mailings you have not asked to receive.
To maintain a site that is free of charge, we display advertisements on our website. We also use information you give us through surveys to help our advertisers target the audience they want to reach and to provide you with potentially interesting advertisements. Unless you give consent, at no time does any party other than theBlot and its service providers working for theBlot have access to your personally identifiable information. Service providers working for theBlot who have access to your personal information are required to protect that information in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy. The only exceptions to the foregoing are that we may disclose personally identifiable information (i) in response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order or subpoena, (ii) in response to a law enforcement agency’s request, or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take actions regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of another person, violations of our terms of use, or as otherwise required by law, or (iii) in the event we are acquired by or merged with another company.
When you sign up for our updates or receive e-mail messages from theBlot, you will always be given the chance to opt-out of our communications. You may change your preferences at any time and will only be contacted in a manner consistent with your stated preferences.
Non-personally identifiable information (such as stated above) may be shared in aggregate form with our advertisers, business, or marketing partners but we do not share your personally identifiable information with them.
Who else has access to my personal information?
The ads appearing on theBlot’s website are delivered to you by DoubleClick, our Web advertising serving partners. Information about your visit to this site, such as number of times you have viewed an ad (but not your name, address, or other personal information), is used to serve ads to you on this site. And, in the course of serving advertisements to this site, third party advertisers may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information about DoubleClick, cookies, and how to “opt-out”, please go to http://www.doubleclick.net/us/corporate/privacy
We have also contracted with a number of advertising network partners to monitor certain pages of our website and RSS feeds for the purpose of reporting website and RSS traffic, statistics, advertisement “click-throughs,” and/or other activities on our website. Where authorized by us, these advertising network partners may use cookies, web beacons, and/or other monitoring technologies to compile anonymous statistics about our website visitors. No personally identifiable information is collected by or transferred to these network partners. For more information about how the information is collected and used, please see the following:
[Google Analytics and DoubleClick]
Third parties and web sites that have links on our site may also collect or use information about you. The information practices of other companies or people that theBlot does not employ or manage are not covered by this Privacy Policy.
Accounts associated with theBlot are all ‘public.’ By ‘public,’ we mean that certain information will be viewable by all users. What you see on other user profiles is the same information that other users can see about you.
Is there anything else I should know about my privacy and TheBlot?
Any information you disclose voluntarily on our comments page or in any properties hosted by theBlot becomes public information. theBlot.com is a public forum. We cannot control the action of our site users and advise you to use your discretion in sharing information about yourself on the Internet. All information sharing is optional and done so at your own risk. Privacy is a very personal matter and we encourage you to be careful and responsible when disclosing personal information online.
We use security features reasonably designed to protect your personal information from unauthorized access from third parties. There is no absolute security on the Internet, however, and we cannot assure that your personal information will not be accessed without authority in a manner inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.
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