Privacy Policy

Last Updated: January 17, 2023

Social News Desk, Inc. (“SND”) provides a social media management platform for newsrooms. While our website at www.socialnewsdesk.com and the various mobile applications we have created (collectively, the “Sites”) are accessible to anyone, our customers are media companies. Our primary audience is the people who work for those companies. Thus, this privacy policy primarily explains how SND collects, uses, discloses and otherwise processes information about you if you work for the companies we do business with or with whom we hope to do business with, and the rights you have with respect to that collected information. In other words, it governs our B2B relationships and the associated processing of information for our business purposes.

SND is a subsidiary of Graham Media Group (“GMG”). We receive services and support from GMG and its business units. You can learn more about GMG by visiting https://www.grahammedia.com.

Eligible Users

Persons accessing the Sites should be clients or potential clients of SND’s services.

No Use of Sites by Persons Under 16. SND is committed to protecting the safety and privacy of young people using the Internet. The Sites are not directed at or intended for use by persons under 16 years old. If you are under the age of 16 you should not be visiting the Sites. We do not knowingly collect or retain personal information from persons under the age of 16. If you are under the age of 16 and are visiting the Sites please exit immediately and do not disclose or provide any information to us. If you are a parent or guardian who thinks your child has disclosed information to us, please contact us so that we can remove that from our systems.

Users Outside of the United States. SND is a U.S.-based company serving newsrooms primarily located in the United States and Canada. Please be advised that if you are located in the European Union or another region of the world that restrict data transfers to the United States, your personal information will be processed in the United States and may not have the same protection as provided in your jurisdiction. Your acceptance of this privacy policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer, to the fullest extent allowed under the law.

Information We Collect

While legal definitions of personal information can vary in different jurisdictions, we consider “personal information” to be any information that identifies you as an individual or is directly relatable to an identifiable individual. Not all information we collect is personal information under this definition. For example, information that has been de-identified or aggregated in a way that no longer allows identification of a particular person would not meet this definition.

In order to provide you with our products and services, we may collect, store, and process personal information from the categories shown in the table below. Our listing of these categories does not mean that all categories or the examples listed in each category are collected about everyone who uses the Sites. We are providing a full list here in the spirit of transparency.

Categories of Personal Information

CategoryExamples
IdentifiersName; postal address; physical address; telephone number; email address; date of birth; and account password
Demographic informationAge, national origin, race, citizenship, or gender
Internet or other electronic network activityBrowsing history; search history; session information; site navigation; referring source (including referring URLs); exit URL; browser type; browser identifier; IP address and other similar information collected via the use of cookies, web beacons and other similar technologies about how you use the Services
Audio, visual, or similar informationPhotos, videos or other recordings you choose to share with us
Geolocation dataPhysical location, including latitude or longitude, and movement data
Device informationInformation about your device and software characteristics; connection information; device brand and model; device operating system; device type; and device Identifier for Advertiser (IFA)
Commercial informationRecords of products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies
Inferences drawn from other informationAny profile created about you that reflects likely preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, or aptitude

How We Collect Your Information

Directly from you. We collect personal information directly from you when you provide it to us, for example, when you create an account to use our services; request a demo; submit an inquiry or comment to us online; or sign up to join our mailing list.

Indirectly from you. We may automatically collect personal information from you when you visit the Sites through the use of tracking technologies or by other passive means. This “passively collected” information helps us to improve our offerings and allows us to ensure the services work as designed and in a way that meets your expectations. Some examples of the sources of this passively collected personal information include:

  • Viewing History and Preferences. When you browse the Sites, we may collect information about your use. For example, if you search our blog database, particularly while logged into the services, we may collect information about that action and form inferences about what information our users find most helpful.
  • Log Information. We may automatically record information that your browser or mobile device sends whenever you access the services, and especially when you are logged into your account. These logs may include information such as, IP address, access times, the referring website, browser type, browser language, your computer operating system, your mobile device and mobile operating system, the name of your Internet service provider or your mobile carrier, and one or more cookies (discussed below) that may uniquely identify your browser.
  • Cookies and Similar Tracking Technologies. When you visit or access the Sites, we may utilize cookies (small text files containing a string of characters sent to your computer) or similar tracking technologies that uniquely identify your browser to track your activity and hold certain information. Cookies can be necessary for site navigation and performance, or used for targeting or advertising. We may use the following types of cookies:
  • Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of the Sites. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of the Sites. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the Sites may not work properly or at all.
  • Analytical/performance cookies. These cookies allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around the Sites when using it. This helps us to improve the way the Sites operate, for example, by ensuring that users can find what they are looking for easily.
  • Preference cookies. These cookies are used to recognize you when you return to the Sites. This enables us to personalize content for you and remember your preferences.
  • Marketing cookies. These cookies record your visits to the Sites, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We use this information to make the information presented on the Sites and the information we provide to you through updates more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

Most web browsers accept cookies automatically but can be configured not to do so or to notify the user when a cookie is being sent. If you wish to disable cookies, refer to your browser help menu to learn how to disable cookies. Please note that if you disable all cookies, you may not be able to use some features of the Sites.

  • Web Beacons. Portions of our Sites and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit us, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity). We may employ web beacons to facilitate services administration and navigation, to track the actions of users on the Site, to compile aggregate statistics about usage and response rates, and to provide an enhanced online experience for our visitors. We may also include web beacons in HTML-formatted e-mail messages that we send to determine which e-mail messages were opened.

 

From third parties. We may collect personal information about you from third parties for our business purposes. These third-party sources vary, but could include the following:

  • Technical Service Providers. We work with a variety of third-party service providers to enhance the services and to make the Sites function the way you expect. These third-parties may include, for example, companies that provide website hosting, analytics, and maintenance services or companies that provide marketing and advertising solutions. Many of these categories overlap with the passively collected personal information described above. In working with our service providers, we may share personal information with them and receive personal information back from them so that we may improve the Sites. The third-party service providers we work with are authorized to use your information that we provide to them only to carry out the service they are providing for SND. We require that the third-party processors securely store any personal information we provide to them and maintain it so that it can be accessed when needed for future purposes. Where appropriate, we enter into binding contracts to protect the use of your personal information by third parties. As an example, we use Google Analytics to analyze how users interact with the Sites. Google Analytics has its own terms of use that we agree to and its own policy that describes how it collects and processes data, located here. You can opt out of Google Analytics’ collection and use of data generated by your use of the Sites by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. For more details please refer to Google Analytics’ article, “Safeguarding your data.”
  • Your Employer or Its Authorized Agents. Because our services are directed at other businesses, most of the people visiting and using our Sites do so on behalf of the company they work for. We may communicate with other people who work for your employer and, as part of those communications, we may be provided with personal information about you. For example, the person who initially sets up the SND services for a company may provide us with contact information for someone in the accounts payable department for purposes of paying for the services or contact information for someone in the IT department for purposes of integrating our services with the newsroom website. We may maintain information about all of these persons even though we have not yet communicated with them directly. All of these uses are for our and our clients’ business purposes, but out of an abundance of caution we list them here as they are potentially “third-party” sources of information we collect under certain laws.

 

How We Use the Information Collected

We use your personal information to provide you with services, to operate and improve our Sites, to send you messages, and for other purposes described in this policy or disclosed to you on our Sites or in connection with our services. For example, we may use the information we collect from you on our Sites:

  • To create and maintain your SND account.
  • To personalize and improve your experience on our Sites.
  • To respond to comments and questions and provide customer service.
  • To deliver service messages and other services and content you request and to send information related to accounts and services, including confirmations, invoices, technical notices, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages.
  • To send you information about new promotions, products, and services offered by SND and our selected partners.
  • To analyze the performance of promotional efforts.
  • To create de-identified or aggregated lists of information for any of the uses stated above.
  • To diagnose problems with the Sites and to improve, upgrade or enhance the Sites and our services.
  • To comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce agreements.
  • To notify you regarding any concerns with the services, including, as required by law, in the event that personal information you provided to us is exposed to unauthorized third parties.
  • To carry out other purposes that are disclosed to you and/or to which you consent.

 

How We Share Your Information

The categories of personal information that we may have shared for a business or commercial purpose include any of the categories of personal information shown in the table at the beginning of this section. We do not “sell” your information in the traditional sense of the word, but out of an abundance of caution and in light of very broad views of what it means to “sell” information in certain privacy laws, we are disclosing that the ways in which we share information about you could be considered a sale in some jurisdictions. Some examples of ways in which we may share personal information include:

  • We may share personal information with third parties that perform services on our behalf, for example, our technical service providers. By using the services, you consent to the processing and handling of your personal information by our service providers in the manner and for the purposes described here and in their respective privacy policies. We will not authorize these third parties to use your personal information except as necessary to provide services to us or for purposes authorized by us.
  • Just as we may receive information from your employer about you, we may provide information to your employer for their business purposes related to the services we provide to them.
  • Additionally, we may disclose your personal information (1) to comply with a law, regulation or other governmental request, for example, to comply with subpoenas, court orders, legal process or requests by law enforcement or governmental entities; (2) to investigate or defend against third-party claims against us; (3) where we believe the rights, property or safety of SND, its users or the public is at risk; (4) to detect, prevent or investigate fraud or other illegal activity or to enforce this policy; (5) to repair or resolve technical issues in the operation of the Sites; (6) if required by law, to respond to a request by you to disclose the information, including a request to allow access to your personal information by third parties designated by you; (7) with your knowledge and consent; (8) to address emergencies or acts of god; and (9) as an asset of the business in the event of a sale, merger or other business combination or transfer involving us or our affiliated entities.

 

How Do We Protect Your Information?

SND takes the security of your personal information seriously. We implement commercially reasonable technical, physical and administrative security measures to protect against the loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction of personal information collected through the Sites.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. We cannot and do not guarantee that your personal information will never be accessed by an unauthorized party or otherwise breached during transmission through the Internet. Additionally, any contact with us by email or by way of our Sites might not be secure. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Sites.

In the event that we believe any information that you provided to us has been exposed to unauthorized third parties, we will notify you as required by law or upon our own choice. In the event of such unauthorized exposure, we expressly reserve the right to provide notice to you electronically via any email address you have provide to us if permitted to do so by law. If you have reason to believe that your personal information, including the password you created for access to the Sites, is no longer secure, please notify us immediately by contacting us via one of the methods listed below.

 

Consumer Rights Regarding Personal Information

Depending on where you live you may have certain privacy rights created by law. While laws vary between jurisdictions, we strive to provide the same basic level of privacy rights to everyone regardless of where you live. Thus, the rights described here may be used by anyone with whom we interact or about whom we collect personal information, subject to the legitimate business needs of customers on whose behalf your information was provided to us.

Right to KnowWhen you request that we provide you with the information we collect or disclose we will provide you with an individualized response about our collection and use of your personal information. Unless we are required to provide more information by an applicable law in your jurisdiction, that response will be limited to the following:

  • Specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you.
  • The categories of personal information we have collected (for reference see the table above for categories and examples of personal information that we may collect).
  • The sources from which we have collected your personal information.
  • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling personal information.
  • Whether we have sold your personal information for a business or commercial purpose.
  • The categories of third parties to whom we have sold personal information, if any.

Right to Correct. You have the right to ask us to correct inaccuracies in the personal information we have collected, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing.

Right to Request DeletionWhen you request that we delete your personal information, we will delete personal information we maintain about you from our records as of the date of your request subject to certain limitations—primarily those created by our business relationship with your employer. We will also request that any service providers that we know maintain your data on our behalf also delete your personal information. In some cases, deletion may be accomplished through de-identification of the information.

Please note that certain information may be excepted from your deletion request. For example, we may keep your information where necessary to detect and resolve issues related to system security and fraud detection.

Exercising Your Right to Know, Correct or DeleteTo exercise the rights to know, correct or delete information described above contact us via our online Contact Us form or email or write to us at the addresses listed in the How to Contact Us section below.

If you have any questions about your rights to know, correct or delete information described above, you may contact us via the contact information contained below in this privacy policy.

We cannot respond to your rights requests if we cannot verify your identity or the authority of your agent to make the request and confirm that the personal information we maintain relates to you. When you make a request, we may verify your identity as required by law.

You must also describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it. If we have questions regarding your request you must make an effort to respond to our inquiries. If we do not understand your request we may not be able to comply.

Where possible, we will respond to a verified rights request within 45 days of receipt. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and the need for an extension. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request. In certain cases we may contact your employer with this information.

Authorized Agents. You may designate an authorized agent to make requests on your behalf. We will require verification that you did in fact give that person your authorization. Unless the law requires otherwise, your authorized agent must provide contact details for you. We will contact you to confirm that you authorized the agent to act on your behalf. Once you confirm, we will promptly respond to the rights request. Please note, we will not share information about a business customer with anyone not clearly affiliated with that business.

Non-DiscriminationWe will not discriminate against you for exercising any of the rights listed in this section. Specifically, we will not:

  • Deny you or your employer services, except to the extent that not having personal information prevents us from providing the services.
  • Provide you or your employer a different level or quality of services, except to the extent that not having personal information limits our ability to provide the services.
  • Charge or suggest that we will charge your employer different prices or rates for the services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.

 

Other Privacy Choices

In addition to the rights discussed above, there are various other ways you can choose to access, update, or limit the personal information you provide to us.

  • Tracking and Advertising Technologies. Most web browsers allow you to set controls to accept or refuse cookies. If you choose to reject cookies, you may still use the Sites though your access to some functionality and areas of the Sites may be restricted. The means by which you can refuse cookies through your web browser controls vary from browser-to-browser so you should visit your browser help menu for more information.
  • Unsubscribe from Emails.If you have registered for our mailing list you may opt-out of receiving those communications by following the “unsubscribe” instructions that are included in our emails.
  • Mobile Application Users.You may choose to uninstall our applications from your mobile device and delete the associated data.
  • Social Media Accounts. You may be able link your social media or other third-party accounts to your SND account. By linking our services to these third-parties, you authorize us to collect, store and use any information they may give us as a result of that connection. You can disconnect your SND account from these third-party accounts at any time following the instructions available from those companies.

 

Do-Not-Track Disclosure

Do Not Track (“DNT”) is a privacy preference that users can set in certain web browsers. Please note that we do not respond to or honor DNT signals or similar mechanisms transmitted by web browsers.

Retention of Personal Information

We will retain your personal information collected pursuant to this privacy policy for as long as we deem reasonably necessary or desirable for our and our business customers’ legitimate business purposes, unless a different retention period is required by any applicable law, rule or regulation. We reserve the right to delete or destroy any information collected, including personal information, at any time.

Links to Third Party Sites

Our Sites contain links to other websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of other websites. If you submit personal information to any of those websites, your information is governed by their privacy statements. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our Sites and to read the privacy policies of other websites and online services.

YouTube

Some of our features use YouTube API Services. If you use these services you are agreeing to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service and Google Privacy Policy. You may revoke our API Client’s access by visiting your Google security settings page. Learn more at http://www.google.com/policies/privacy

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update or change our privacy practices and this policy from time to time. If we update the policy, we will publish the revised policy on this page or as otherwise required by law. The date at the top of this policy reflects the date of the most recent update. Your continued use of this Website after we make changes is deemed, to the extent allowed by law, to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates.

How to Contact Us

If you have questions about this privacy policy, or if you wish to correct, update, amend or inquire about deleting/removing personal information that you have provided to us, you may contact us contact us via our online Contact Us form or by email at info@socialnewsdesk.com.