Our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Introduction

At Alabama Political Reporter (“we” and “us”), accessible from alreporter.com, one of our main priorities is the privacy of our visitors. This Privacy Policy and Terms of Service document contains types of information we collect and use, and how and when we disclose it and how we protect your personal information.

If you have additional questions or require more information about our Privacy Policy, please contact us.This Privacy Policy applies only to our online activities (“The Services”) and is valid for visitors to our website with regard to the information that they share and/or provide to us. This policy is not applicable to any information collected offline or via channels other than this website — such as text, email or social media communication with APR, staff or its affiliates.

Personal information

“Personal Information” includes information that alone or when in combination with other information may be used to readily identify, contact, or locate an individual. This include name, address, telephone number, email address and location.

We do not consider “Personal Information” to include information that has been anonymized so that it does not allow a third party to easily identify a specific individual. This may include search analytics and other anonymized information we may collect via third-party cookies.

By disclosing your Personal Information to us or using The Services, you consent to our collection and use of it consistent with applicable data protection law and this Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Consent

By using our website, you hereby consent to our Privacy Policy and agree to our Terms of Service.

Information we collect

The personal information that you are asked to provide, and the reasons why you are asked to provide it, will be made clear to you at the point we ask you to provide your personal information.

If you contact us directly, we may receive additional information about you such as your name, email address, phone number, the contents of the message and/or attachments you may send us, and any other information you may choose to provide.

We do not require individuals to register to view our content, which is provided free of charge. The use of our website does not require the disclosure of any personal information.

How we use information

We use the anonymized information we collect in various ways, including to:

• Provide, operate, and maintain our website
• Improve, personalize, and expand our website
• Understand and analyze how individuals use our website
• Develop new products, services, features, and functionality

We use personal information we collect in various ways, including to:

• Communicate with you, either directly or through one of our partners, including for customer service, to provide you with updates and other information relating to the website, and for marketing and promotional purposes
• To send you email newsletters, should you sign up for one
• Find and prevent fraud

Log Files

Alabama Political Reporter follows a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this and are part of hosting services' analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users' movement on the website, and gathering demographic information.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Like any other website, Alabama Political Reporter uses 'cookies'. These cookies are used to store information including visitors' preferences, and the pages on the website that the visitor accessed or visited. The information is used to optimize the users' experience by customizing our web page content based on visitors' browser type and/or other information.

For more general information on cookies, please read "What Are Cookies".

Disabling cookies may affect how our website is displayed to you (i.e. you may see the same ad more than once or you may continue to see popups after you’ve dismissed them); however, we will not block our website to you should you choose to disable cookies through your browser.

Our Advertising Partners

Some advertisers on our site may use cookies and web beacons. Our advertising partners are listed below. Each of our advertising partners has their own Privacy Policy for their policies on user data. For easier access, we hyperlinked to their Privacy Policies below.

• AdvertServe (https://privacy.advertserve.com/)
• Google AdSense (https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads)

Advertising Partners Privacy Policies

You may consult this list to find the Privacy Policy for each of the advertising partners of Alabama Political Reporter.

Third-party ad servers or ad networks uses technologies like cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons that are used in their respective advertisements and links that appear on Alabama Political Reporter, which are sent directly to users' browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. These technologies are used to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and/or to personalize the advertising content that you see on websites that you visit.

Note that Alabama Political Reporter has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

Analytics services

We use third-party analytics services (“Analytics Services”), to help analyze how users use our website. The information generated by the cookies or other technologies about your use of our website is transmitted to the Analytics Services. The Analytics Services use Analytics Information to compile reports on user activity.

The Analytics Services may also transfer the Analytics Information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process Analytics Information on their behalf.

Each Analytics Service’s ability to use and share Analytics Information is restricted by such Analytics Service’s terms of use and privacy policy. By using our website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Analytics Services in the manner and for the purposes set out above. We also collect anonymized, cookie-based demographics data from third parties to analyze the composition of our audience.

Third Party Privacy Policies

Alabama Political Reporter's Privacy Policy does not apply to other advertisers or websites. Thus, we are advising you to consult the respective Privacy Policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information. It may include their practices and instructions about how to opt-out of certain options.

You can choose to disable cookies through your individual browser options. To know more detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers, it can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

Third Party Websites

As a news organization, we often include links to other websites in our articles and throughout our website. Please be aware that these websites may collect personal information about you, and we do not have control over their privacy and information practices. Please exercise caution when you visit third-party websites and consult their privacy policies for further information about how they may collect and use your information.

Newsletters

Should you sign up for our newsletters, you may be asked to provide personal information like name, phone number, email address and date of birth. We use this information only to improve our newsletters and to deliver those newsletters to you at the addresses you may provide. You are not required to sign up for newsletters to access any of our content. We serve newsletters through MailChimp, which has its own privacy protection practices and policies. We encourage you to review their privacy policy and terms of service to understand their practices.

If you have opted in to one of our newsletters via an embedded form or otherwise, you will always have the opportunity to unsubscribe. Should you want to unsubscribe, each newsletter email includes an unsubscribe link at the end of the email. Alternatively, we can manually unsubscribe you from our newsletter. To request a manually unsubscribe, please email newsletter@alreporter.com.

Embedded content

We may occasionally embed third-party content in our articles. We do our best to only include embedded content that is from reputable websites with adequate privacy practices; however, we cannot guarantee any third-party content’s privacy protections. Below is a non-exhaustive list of some services that we have embedded on our website at some point. We encourage you to review their privacy policies and terms of service.

• Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/privacy) to embed video content.
• YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/overview/) to embed video content.
• Flourish (https://flourish.studio/privacy/) to embed graphics and visualizations.
• Twitter (https://twitter.com/en/privacy) to embed Tweets.
• Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/policy.php) to embed Facebook posts.

CCPA Privacy Rights

Under the CCPA, among other rights, California consumers have the right to:

• Request that a business that collects a consumer's personal data disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal data that a business has collected about consumers.
• Request that a business delete any personal data about the consumer that a business has collected.
• Request that a business that sells a consumer's personal data, not sell the consumer's personal data.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us.

International users

Our website is operated in the United States and is intended for a U.S.-based audience. If you are located outside the United States, please be advised that any information you provide through our website will be transferred to the United States.

Children's Information

Another part of our priority is adding protection for children while using the internet. We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in, and/or monitor and guide their online activity.

Alabama Political Reporter does not knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately, and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

Privacy Policy last updated: July 11, 2020