When you access, use, subscribe to, sign-up for, or register to use any of the websites, mobile apps, products, services, publications, or other Products and Services owned or operated by Advance Local or one of our brands, Personal Information about you. In this section we provide an overview of our privacy practices. You'll find the full Advance Local Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) below. We encourage you to read the full Privacy Policy in addition to this overview. All Capitalized terms used in this overview are defined in the full Privacy Policy below.
In general, we only collect the Personal Information that is reasonably necessary for and proportional to the purposes for which we process it.
We collect Personal Information:
We and our Identity Resolution Partners may use Personal Information, including your name, email address, phone number, and Activity and Device Information to deliver Targeted Advertising and identify the different devices and browsers you may use to access our Products and Services. Where required by applicable law, we and/or our Identity Resolution Partners will obtain your consent, provide you with the opportunity to opt out of such use, or take other appropriate action. Please note we are not responsible for the privacy practices and policies of our Identity Resolution Partners, which are separate from our own and not covered by this Privacy Policy.
To fulfill all the purposes described in our Privacy Policy, we may need to share your Personal Information with our subsidiaries, service providers, social media companies such as Meta (Facebook & Instagram), YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snap and X, third-party consumer marketing, advertising, and business partners, including those referenced in the Tracking Techniques and Technologies and Targeted Advertising section of this Privacy Policy, and others who support our business operations, as well with organizations and our parent company that may be involved in an acquisition or other substantive change of our business.
If you have an account with a social media company you may have agreed to allow them to use tools, features, or other technologies that collect Personal Information about your activities across the internet, including in connection with your use of our Products and Services.
The activities of social media companies and their collection and use of your Personal Information is subject to their privacy policies, and we encourage you to review those privacy policies.
You may have rights related to your Personal Information, including the right to access, delete, correct, transfer, and opt out of the use of it for certain purposes. Those rights vary, depending on your relationship with us, where you are located, and the laws that apply in your location.
For example, residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Oregon, Texas, Montana, and certain other states have a variety of privacy rights, including, but not limited to, the right to opt-out of “sales” and/or “sharing” of Personal Information, which includes Targeted Advertising; and limit, opt-out, or opt-in, as applicable, to the use and disclosure of your Sensitive Personal Information. For a more detailed description of these and other rights that may be available to you, please see these sections below:
There is more detail, including on the topics above, in the Privacy Policy, and we encourage you to read it.
Last Updated: July 1, 2024
This Advance Local Privacy Policy ("Privacy Policy") describes how Advance Local Media LLC and its Local Media Groups (“Advance Local” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collect, use, disclose, and retain Personal Information about the individuals and the devices and browsers that interact with each website, mobile site, application, email/text/SMS campaign, event, and/or other activity, offering, or publication (regardless of how distributed, transmitted, published, or broadcast) provided by us that links to, or references, his document, including without limitation all Content, features and functionality thereof, such as widgets, plug-ins, and embeddable players (collectively, the “Services”), as well as any merchandise, item, product and/or service, or other online or offline activity, offering, product or services that links to or references this Privacy Policy, including without limitation Content, sweepstakes, contests, surveys, events, email newsletters, newspapers, magazines and other publications that may be featured, mentioned, reviewed, described, auctioned, given away, rented, sold, distributed, or otherwise available on or through the Services either by us or third parties (collectively, the “Products”). This Privacy Policy also describes the rights that you may have regarding our processing of your Personal Information under applicable local law.
By accessing or using any of our Products and Services, you acknowledge that your Personal Information will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Your use of the Products and Services, and any dispute over privacy, is subject to this Privacy Policy and our User Agreement, including its applicable limitations of liability and the resolution of disputes by Arbitration, absent an appropriate exception or if you opt-out. The Advance Local User Agreement is incorporated by reference into this Privacy Policy.
You may download a printable copy of this Policy (PDF): here.
All Capitalized terms not defined in this section are defined or described below.
For purposes of this Privacy Policy, Personal Information means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly to you or to devices and browsers reasonably linked to you. Anonymous, de-identified, or aggregate information is not Personal Information as the term is used in this Privacy Policy.
Depending on the Products and Services you use, we may collect the following categories of Personal Information directly from you, automatically through your use of the Products and Services, and from third parties:
Information We Collect Directly From You
We collect Personal Information directly from you when you provide
it to us in connection with your use of the Products and Services. For example, you may provide us with Personal Information:
Information We Collect From Other Sources
We collect Personal Information about you from other sources,
such as data brokers, data enrichment providers, industry co-ops, consumer marketing providers, advertising networks, data analytics
providers, social media companies, publicly available sources, other users, and our affiliates and other related entities.
Social Media Company Integration
If you choose to interact with our Products and Services on third-party
social media company platforms such as Meta (Facebook & Instagram), TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snap, and X, we may receive Personal
Information that the social media companies make available to us, including Personal Information about your activities and contacts on
those platforms.
Additionally, if you have an account with a social media company you may have agreed to allow them to use tools, features or other technologies that collect Personal Information about your activities across the internet, including in connection with your use of our Products and Services. Some social media companies also will facilitate your registration for our Products and Services, such as through social sign-on, or will enhance or personalize your experience on our Products and Services, such as through technologies that enable you to easily share Content from our Products and Services on their platforms. For more information, please refer to the Tracking Techniques and Technologies and Targeted Advertising section below.
We encourage you to review the privacy policies of the social media companies you engage with as we are not responsible for their privacy practices or their collection and use of your Personal Information.
Information We Collect Automatically
We and our partners use various tools and technologies such as
cookies, pixels, localStorage, web beacons, software development kits, and similar technologies to collect data when you interact with
our Products and Services, including our websites, mobile applications, and email communications. This data may also include information
about your operating system(s), device(s) and browsers. For more information, please refer to the Tracking Techniques and
Technologies and Targeted Advertising section below.
We and our third-party business partners may combine the Personal Information we collect from you with Personal Information we collect from other sources. Where required by applicable law, we obtain your consent before using your Personal Information for the purposes described below. We may also collect non-Personal Information for the purposes described below. However, when we combine it with Personal Information, we treat it as Personal Information.
We may disclose each of the categories of Personal Information described above for our business and commercial purposes as follows:
Where required by applicable law, we enable you to opt out of or provide you with the ability to consent to the disclosure of your Personal Information to these third parties or related parties.
Tracking Techniques and Technologies
We and our third-party business partners use various tools and technologies
such as cookies, pixels, localStorage, web beacons, software development kits, and similar technologies (collectively, “Tracking Technologies”)
to collect data when you interact with our Products and Services, including our websites, mobile applications, and email communications. Some of
these technologies store data in the browser or on your device. Other technologies may use network-related or other information to recognize your
device (e.g., IP address).
Our Products and Services use Tracking Technologies, for example, when you first request a web page and data is then stored on your computer or other device so the website can access Personal Information when you make subsequent requests for pages from that Product or Service. These technologies may also be used to collect and store information about your usage of the Products and Services, such as pages you have visited, and Content you viewed or searched for. We may also use these technologies to save your preferences, consent, and choices; determine if you opened or interacted with our emails or newsletters; troubleshoot and resolve technical issues or outages; conduct research; deliver editorial Content and advertising; maintain subscription and registration information; and store information you may want to retrieve on a regular basis. Additionally, we may use these technologies to collect analytics and measure the use of our Products and Services.
The use of these Tracking Technologies helps us serve you better by understanding what you are interested in, track trends, measure the effectiveness of ads, conduct frequency capping, and tailor offers about our Products and Services to you. We also allow specific, approved third-party business partners and/or service providers, including Google Analytics, to collect data from your browser or device for Targeted Advertising, analytics, and measurement purposes using their own similar tools. For more information about Google Analytics including how to opt out, visit How Google Uses Information and to Opt-out of Google Analytics.
We and our third-party business partners may also use these Tracking Technologies to gather Personal Information, including Sensitive Personal Information, about how you view and use our Products and Services and to connect your activity with other data we maintain about you.
Targeted Advertising and Identity Resolution Partners
We and our third-party business partners may
collect and share Personal Information about your online and offline activities over time and across unaffiliated websites and mobile
applications to predict your preferences and interests, and, in conjunction with third parties, may use your Personal Information for
cross-context behavioral advertising and to serve advertising believed to be of interest to you
("Targeted Advertising").
We may collaborate with our service providers and our third-party Identity Resolution Partners to deliver Targeted Advertising and identify the different devices and browsers you may use to access our Products and Services. We and these Identity Resolution Partners facilitate identity resolution by creating probabilistic and deterministic identifiers. These identifiers may use Personal Information, including your name, email address, phone number, and Activity and Device Information to generate an online identifier reasonably linkable to you and/or your device or browser.
For example, we may disclose hashed email address, phone number, or other information about your device to our Identity Resolution Partners, who may, in turn, return an online identifier that we may store in a first party cookie or similar technology and disclose to our advertising partners to provide you a more personalized advertising experience. These identifiers may also help us with fraud detection and security, to enforce our User Agreement, verify user authentication for accessing Content behind a paywall, and to determine eligibility for offers available exclusively to new subscribers, among other things. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of our Identity Resolution Partners, which are separate from our own and which are not covered by this Privacy Policy. You can Opt-Out of Identity Resolution Partner LiveRamp’s use of your Personal Information for these purposes by visiting https://optout.liveramp.com/opt_out, or, as described in the Opting Out of a “Sale” or “Sharing” of Your Personal Information or of its Use for Targeted Advertising section below.
As noted in the Social Media Company Integration section above, we may utilize Tracking Technologies to disclose information about your use of our Products and Services to social media companies and other third-party business partners to serve you and other segments of users Targeted Advertising and to facilitate marketing communications.
We and our advertising partners may make inferences about your interests and these inferences may be used for Targeted Advertising. In certain U.S. states, these inferences may be considered Sensitive Personal Information. When we obtain this information from our third-party business partners, we will, where required by law, contractually ensure that they have obtained your consent or offered you an opportunity to opt out before sharing it with us. Similarly, if we collect Sensitive Personal Information directly from you, where required by law, we will obtain your consent, provide you an opportunity to opt out, or take other appropriate action. For more information about your rights regarding Sensitive Personal Information under local laws, please refer to the Exercising Your Privacy Rights, Including the Right to Opt Out of Targeted Advertising section below.
As noted above, when you use our Products and Services, our third-party advertising partners, social media companies, and analytics providers may collect Personal Information about your online activity on our Products and Services and on third-party websites. These providers may use Tracking Technologies to deliver advertisements to you when you visit third-party websites within their networks.
There are a variety of methods available to you to opt out of certain third-party Tracking Technologies, including using tools provided within your device, browser, or the settings menu within a mobile application which may include an option that allows you to refuse the placement of certain Tracking Technologies.
If you would like more information about this practice and your choices with respect to it, please visit YourAdChoices.com, NAI Opt Out of Interest-Based Advertising, or Your Online Choices, and/or click the “Ad Choices” icon that appears in Targeted Advertising on our websites. Please note that if you exercise these choices, you may continue to receive ads that are not based on your preferences.
The states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Oregon, Texas, and Montana provide its residents certain rights regarding our processing of your Personal Information, including the right to opt-out of Targeted Adverting and/or what is sometimes called “sales” or “sharing” of your Personal Information, and other rights detailed immediately below.
You may also have additional rights related to our use and disclosure of your Sensitive Personal Information. To learn more, please see Exercising Your Privacy Rights, Including the Right to Opt Out of Targeted Advertising below.
Note that these rights are not always absolute and may be limited or denied where required or under applicable law. For example, if you are an active subscriber to one of our Products or Services and you make a deletion request, we will retain Personal Information to enable your subscription to continue, and in other circumstances may retain a record of your request and our response.
To exercise your rights under applicable local law, or if, in accordance with applicable local law in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Oregon, Texas, and Montana, you are an authorized agent, or a parent or guardian seeking to exercise rights on behalf of a minor, please follow the instructions provided below.
Opting Out of a “Sale” or “Sharing” of Your Personal Information or of its Use for Targeted Advertising
Please note that when following the processes described below, you may need to make your Opt-Out choices on each
website, mobile application, browser, and device that you use, and if your browser's cookies are cleared, you may
need to repeat the process. However, if you have created an account to log in across several of our apps and/or websites,
we will make reasonable efforts to apply your opt-out request to each of those apps and websites.
California residents may view metrics for California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”)-related requests we have received during calendar year 2023, by clicking here.
In certain regions, including California, we are also required by applicable local law to provide information, including as described above, about our business and commercial purposes for processing your Personal Information, and the categories of third parties with whom we may disclose, “sell,” or “share” your Personal Information for cross-contextual behavioral advertising (Targeted Advertising) in a manner that is highlighted for residents of those regions. That presentation of information is available in the section, Additional Information Under Applicable Local Law, below.
Additional Rights Requests
To exercise your rights to know, access, correct, delete, restrict,
object, or portability, under applicable local law as described above, contact us at 1-888-914-9661, using the PIN 981105, or
submit a request by completing this
form.
If you have any questions or need assistance exercising your rights, please contact our Privacy Policy Coordinator by email or as described in the Contact Us section of this Privacy Policy.
Verification
We reserve the right, and in some cases may be required by law, to take
reasonable steps to verify your identity before fulfilling your requests to know, correct, or delete. For example, we
may seek to establish your identity to a reasonable or a reasonably high degree of certainty by matching information
that you submit alongside your request with information that we have in our records. We may ask you or your authorized
agent for supplemental information as needed to establish your identity. Authorized agents may also be required to provide
a copy of the consumer's signed permission authorizing the agent to submit requests on the consumer's behalf under
applicable local law.
Appeals
You may have a right to appeal a decision we make relating to requests to exercise your rights under applicable local
law. To appeal a decision, please contact us our Privacy Policy Coordinator by email or as described in the
Contact Us section of this Privacy Policy.
Financial Incentive
By providing us your Personal Information, such as your email
address, to register or otherwise create an account on our websites or mobile apps we may give you access to Content that
would otherwise require a paid subscription (“Program”). California and other states may consider this Program to be a
financial incentive or loyalty program. Personal Information you provide to us as part of this Program may be used for
Targeted Advertising and disclosed to our Identity Resolution Partners, as described in this Privacy Policy. You retain
all rights that you otherwise have, including to Opt-Out of Targeted Advertising, and to make requests about your Personal
Information, and any such requests will not affect your access to or participation in the Program, including if you leave
the Program. You may withdraw from the Program at any time by logging into your account or emailing our Privacy Policy
Coordinator at privacy_inquiry@advancelocal.com.
The value of the Personal Information you provided is reasonably related to the benefits you get from the Program and includes the value of your access to our Content; our costs to provide you with the Content and to collect and process your Personal Information; and the potential benefits, such as additional advertising revenue and improvements we can make to our Products and Services through the Program.
California Online Erasure
California's "Online Erasure" law, Business and Professions Code §§ 22580-22582, requires operators of certain websites
and online services to allow registered users who are under the age of 18 and residents of California to request removal
of content they post. If you fit that description and posted Content on a section of our Products and Services that is
directed to California residents at least 13 and younger than 18 years of age, you may request removal of the content
by contacting our Privacy Policy Coordinator by email or as described below. In response to your request, we may elect
to make the content invisible to other users and the public (rather than deleting it entirely), in which case the content
may remain on servers we control and/or may be publicly available elsewhere if a third party copied and reposted the
content.
If you do not wish to receive future marketing or other commercial messages from us, follow the unsubscribe instructions contained within the message you receive. Note, however, that you may continue to receive certain communications from us that are necessary for the Products and Services, such as renewal notifications, invoices, technical notices, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative service bulletins.
We will retain Personal Information from or about you as reasonably necessary and proportionate to achieve the purpose(s) for which the Personal Information was collected or processed as outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law.
We implement physical, technical, and organizational security measures designed to safeguard Personal Information. These measures aim to protect the Personal Information we collect from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. Please be aware that despite our efforts, no measures can guarantee security.
Our Services may contain links to third-party websites and applications. Any access to and use of such linked websites and applications is not governed by this Privacy Policy but is instead governed by the privacy policies of those third-party websites and applications. We are not responsible for the information practices of such third-party websites and applications. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party websites or applications that you choose to visit
Please be aware that Personal Information and Content that you disclose in publicly accessible portions of the Products and Services may be available to other users and may also be made available outside the Products and Services by third parties, so you should be mindful of all Personal Information, especially Sensitive Personal Information, that you may wish to post. Where required by applicable local law, we may ask you to obtain consent from any individual before posting that individual’s Personal Information on our Products and Services.
Your Personal Information may be processed, transferred to, and maintained on servers and databases located outside of the jurisdiction in which you are based and where the privacy laws may not be as protective as your jurisdiction. Where required by applicable law, we have put in place appropriate safeguards (such as contractual commitments) in accordance with applicable legal requirements to ensure that your Personal Information is adequately protected. For more information on the appropriate safeguards in place, please contact us as noted in the Contact Us section of this Privacy Policy.
As noted above, our Products and Services are not designed for or directed to, children under the age of 13. If we discover that a child under the age of 13 has provided us with Personal Information, we will delete such information from our systems.
We do not have actual knowledge of selling or sharing the Personal Information of consumers that are younger than 16 years of age. To the extent we have actual knowledge that a consumer is at least 13 and less than16 years of age, we will request affirmative authorization from the individual before selling or sharing the Personal Information, to the extent required under applicable local law.
We may use CCTV video recording to protect the physical security of our property and Products and Services in line with applicable laws. We do this to comply with our contractual obligations (e.g., with customers and insurers) and our internal physical security policies to safeguard our properties, workplaces, people, and data.
Advance Local is the controller of your Personal Information. If you have any questions about the privacy aspects of our Products or Services or would like to make a complaint, request, or have a question about your rights under this Privacy Policy please contact our Privacy Policy Coordinator as follows:
Privacy Policy Coordinator
Advance Local Media LLC
30 Montgomery Street
Suite 430
Jersey City, NJ 07302
privacy_inquiry@advancelocal.com
Make sure to include enough information for us to help you, including for example your name, contact information, and the specific website, mobile site, application, and/or other service you’re contacting us about.
This Privacy Policy is current as of the Last Updated date set forth above. We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time, so please be sure to check back periodically. We will post any changes to this Privacy Policy on our Products and Services. If we make any changes to this Privacy Policy that materially affect our practices with regard to the Personal Information, we have previously collected about you, we will endeavor to provide you with notice in advance of such change by highlighting the change on the Product or Service or otherwise communicating such change to you.
As may be required under applicable local law, below is a chart that describes our business and commercial purposes for processing your Personal Information, as well as the categories of third parties to whom we may disclose, “sell,” or “share” for cross-contextual behavioral advertising (Targeted Advertising), as those terms are defined under applicable law.
Depending on how you interact with our Products and Services, we may have processed Personal Information about you for each (or any) of these purposes:
In addition, we use and disclose certain Personal Information as described below:
Category of Personal Information: Identifiers
Categories of third parties to whom we may disclose identifiers for a business purpose:
Categories of third parties to whom we may “sell” or “share” identifiers:
Category of Personal Information: Activity and Device Information
Categories of third parties to whom we may disclose Activity and Device Information, for a business purpose:
Categories of third parties to whom we may “sell” or “share” commercial information or Activity and Device information:
Category of Personal Information: Payment Information
Categories of third parties to whom we may disclose payment information for a business purpose:
Categories of third parties to whom we may “sell” or “share” payment information: None.
Category of Personal Information: Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information
Categories of third parties to whom we may disclose Personal Information for a business purpose:
Categories of third parties to whom we may “sell” or “share” audio, electronic, visual, or similar information: None.
Category of Personal Information: Professional information
Categories of third parties to whom we may disclose professional information for a business purpose
Categories of third parties to whom we may “sell” or “share” payment information: None.
Category of Personal Information: Inferences
Categories of third parties to whom we may disclose inferences for a business purpose:
Categories of third parties to whom we may “sell” or “share” inferences:
Category of Personal Information: Information that may be treated as sensitive or otherwise protected under applicable local law
Categories of third parties to whom we may disclose Personal Information that may be treated as sensitive or otherwise protected under applicable law for a business purpose:
Categories of third parties to whom we may “sell” or “share” Personal Information that may be treated as sensitive or otherwise protected under applicable law:
Category of Personal Information: Geolocation data
Categories of third parties to whom we may disclose geolocation data for a business purpose:
Categories of third parties to whom we may “sell” or “share” geolocation data: