Technology Financials is committed to protecting your privacy. Our brands and their associated websites and products are committed to upholding the highest standards when it comes to your privacy, and to processing your personal data fairly and transparently.
Please read on for more information on how Technology Financials and its associated brands handle your personal information and safeguard your privacy.
At Technology Financials, we take privacy seriously and we respect the privacy concerns of our community of users. This Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) describes how the Technology Financials publishing family and any other digital properties that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collect, use, disclose, and otherwise process personal information in connection with our websites (the “Sites”), mobile applications (the “Apps”), and the related content, services, products, and other features and functionality offered on or through those Sites and Apps (collectively, the “Services”).
What Personal Information Do We Collect?
The personal information we collect from, and about, you may vary depending on how you engage with our Services and the information you provide voluntarily. We may collect personal information directly from you or otherwise in connection with your use of the Services, such as:
● Contact Information, including your name, contact details (such as a postal address and email address), event or conference registration and related information (including dietary restrictions or photos and videos taken at events), and communication preferences.
● Inquiry Information, including information provided in messages sent through forms or surveys, to our email addresses, or via phone. This also may include information provided when you sign up for our newsletters.
● Account Information, including name, username, account ID, date of birth, contact information, profile information, saved, “liked,” or bookmarked items (e.g., articles or recipes), payment and purchase history information, subscription information, courses enrolled in and completed, Stock Simulator results, and any other information you provide to us.
● Financial Information, including credit and debit card information, bank account and routing number, and billing and shipping address.
● Demographic Information, including age, gender, race, income, occupation, marital status, and information about your household/family status, including your household size and the length of time at your residence.
● Health- or Fitness-Related Information, including exercise and activity levels, weight-loss objectives, dietary preferences, and other health and wellness information.
● User-Generated Content, including personal information you choose to provide about yourself when you participate in forums or discussions on the Services, post comments or reviews, and participate in any Services. Please be aware that information you post may be viewed, used, or captured by anyone who visits the Services, therefore, you should avoid posting sensitive personal information that you would not want to be available to the public.
● Contest, Sweepstakes, and Survey Information, iAs is true of many digital properties, we and our third-party partners may automatically collect certain information from or in connection with your device when visiting or interacting with our Services, such as the types of information listed below and in the sub-sections here:ncluding information provided when you enter a contest or sweepstakes, information included in any responses submitted through surveys or questionnaires, or the content of any testimonials.
● Inferences About Your Interests, Preferences, and Other Behavioral Data, including hobbies, interests, and characteristics, e.g., your favorite foods, purchases, or recipes, consuming tendencies, and health and fitness information.
Information Automatically Collected
General
As is true of many digital properties, we and our third-party partners may automatically collect certain information from or in connection with your device when visiting or interacting with our Services, such as the list below and in the sub-sections here:
● Device data, including internet protocol (IP) address, operating system, device type and version, browser type and version, browser id, the URL entered and the referring page/campaign, date/time of visit, other user agent string data, the time spent on our Services, and any errors that may occur during the visit to our Services. Device data may overlap with the other categories of data listed below.
● Analytics data, including the path taken to our Services, through our Services, and when exiting our Services, usage and activity on or in connection with our Services, metrics on how many emails we send are actually opened and which attachments or links are opened, clicked, or viewed (such as via pixels, as described further below).
● Location data, including precise or coarse geographic location we or our third-party providers may collect, such as via permissions within the app operating system or browser functionality.
● Advertising/Advertising measurement data, including data associated with your view of, or your clicks on, advertisements served on our Services, cookie IDs or other digital or proprietary identifiers (e.g., iOS IDFA, Google AAID) assigned to such device, and device metadata, analytics data, and location data described above, in each case, for purposes of serving advertising (personalized or otherwise) or facilitating advertising measurement/attribution to better optimize or otherwise understand the effectiveness of ad campaigns. For more information on our and third-party partners’ data collection and online advertising practices, please see the “What are Our Third-Party Data Collection and Online Advertising Practices?” section of this Privacy Policy.
Note that we and our third-party partners may combine information that each of us collects automatically with other information about you, including information you choose to provide.
Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies
We and our third-party partners may use cookies on our Services to store information about users on the users’ computers as well as other tracking technologies, such as web beacons, pixels, SDKs, scripts, location-identifying technologies, and logging technologies to automatically collect the personal information described in this section (and otherwise expanded upon in other sections). See the “What Controls Do I Have Over My Information?” section below to learn more about how you may limit or disable cookies or certain other tracking technologies on your device.
“Do Not Track” Signals
Your browser settings may allow you to automatically transmit a “Do Not Track” (DNT) signal to websites and online services you visit. At this time there is no consensus among industry participants as to the meaning of “Do Not Track” in this context. Like many other websites, our Sites are not configured to respond to “Do Not Track” signals from browsers.
Third-Party Sources
We also obtain personal information from third parties, which we often combine with personal information we collect either automatically or directly from an individual. For example, we may receive the same categories of personal information as described above from the following third parties:
● Other Users who Interact with our Services: We may receive your information from other users who interact with our Services.
● Business Partners: We may receive your information from our business partners, such as companies that offer their products or services on our Services or on other properties (e.g., digital properties, offline locations) or marketing/advertising and analytics partners, including third-party brands/agencies or other partners that facilitate the buying and selling of advertising inventory on our Services, measure of the effectiveness of those related ad campaigns, or inform business analytics (e.g., view rates, bounce rates, audience composition).
● Social Media Networks: When an individual interacts with our Services through various social media networks, such as when someone logs in through a social network, “Likes” us on Facebook, or follows us or shares our content on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or other social networks, we may receive some information from those social networks including your profile information and any other information you permit the social network to share with third parties. We use this information to allow you to log into your account, to communicate or interact with individuals on the social network, to better understand the demographics of our visitors, and to personalize content and advertising. Individuals should always review and, if necessary, adjust their privacy settings on third-party websites and social media networks and services before sharing information and/or linking or connecting them to other services.
● Information We Receive From Authentication Services: Some parts of our Service may allow you to login through a third-party social network or authentication service such as Facebook or Google. These services will authenticate the individual’s identity and provide the option to share certain personal information with us, which could include a name, email address, address book and contacts, or other information. The data we receive is dependent on that third party’s policies and the individual’s privacy settings on that third-party digital property. We use this information to authenticate the individual’s account, to provide our Services, to communicate with our users, and for advertising and marketing purposes.
● Service Providers: Our service providers that perform services solely on our behalf, such as payment processors or survey and third parties who conduct marketing/advertising and analytics activities on our behalf, collect personal information and may share some or all of this information with us.
● Information Providers: We may from time to time obtain information from third-party information providers to correct or supplement personal information we collect. For example, we may obtain updated contact information from third-party information providers to reconnect with an individual or obtain demographic information (e.g., interests, preferences).
● Other Sources: We may also collect personal information about individuals that we do not otherwise have from, for example, publicly available sources, third-party data providers, brand partnerships, or through transactions such as mergers and acquisitions.
How Do We Use Personal Information?
We may use your information for various purposes, including:
To fulfill your requests and provide our Services to you. This includes:
● Making our Services and Technology Financials products and services available to you;
● Coordinating access to your account
● Responding to requests, suggestions, questions, and comments, and providing other types of user support;
● Fulfilling your payments and transactions;
● Sending you service/transaction-related messages, such as changes to your account;
● Saving your reading lists, recipes, or other searches; and
● Communicating about, and administering your participation in, events, conferences, programs, contests, surveys, polls, panels, questionnaires, and other offers or promotions.
● To personalize your experience on our Services: This includes providing you with content or other products or services you might be interested in and de-emphasize content you’ve already read or viewed.
● For marketing purposes: We may send you communications about new features, updates, products, and special offers. We may also use your information to serve you ads about our products or other products or services we (or our advertising partners, such as other third-party brands/agencies) think you might find interesting. We may also use individual and aggregate information about you to inform our, and our third-party partners, marketing and advertising campaigns more broadly. For more information on your choices about marketing communications, see the “What Controls Do I Have Over My Information?” and “What are Our Third Party Data Collection and Online Advertising Practices?” sections of this Privacy Policy.
● To communicate with you: For example, we may communicate with you about your account activities, such as by providing you transaction confirmations or alerting you when a subscription is up for renewal. If you register with us, we may enroll you in our email newsletters or other periodic electronic communications and may also send you user surveys and promotional communications. We may communicate with you by email, postal mail, telephone, text message, or other means. We may use push notifications on Apps to your mobile device. For more information on how to adjust your communications preferences, see “What Controls Do I Have Over My Information?” below.
● To monitor, improve, and develop our products and services: We may use your information to understand our users and to tailor or optimize our Services. For example, we may analyze statistics and trends to make our Services better and to develop or better personalize the Services or new services or features.
● To protect the security and integrity of our business, comply with legal requirements and obligations, or as otherwise permitted by law: We may use your information to protect our company, our affiliates, including other Technology Financials brands, our customers, and our Services. We may also use information in order to comply with laws, regulations, court orders, or other legal obligations or to assist in an investigation, protect and defend our rights and property, or the rights or safety of third parties, enforce our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy, or agreements with third parties, detect and prevent fraud or for crime-prevention purposes, or for any other reason permitted by law. We may take part in or be involved with a corporate business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or financing or sale of company assets and may use information in connection with or as an asset in such a corporate business transaction. Personal information may also be used in the event of insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership.
● For any other purposes with your consent, at your direction, or where notice is provided: We may use your personal information for any other purposes with your consent, at your direction, or where notice is otherwise provided.
How Do We Share Personal Information?
The personal information we collect from you is used by all the companies and brands in the Technology Financials publishing family. We may also disclose personal information to third parties, including:
- Third Parties At Your Request: You may choose to share your activities on the Services with your friends through email, text, or on various social media networks.
- Promotional partners: We may share information with third parties with whom we partner to provide contests, surveys, and sweepstakes, or other joint promotional activities.
- Marketing and Strategic Business Partners: We may share information with marketing/advertising, analytics, and other business partners (such as those that provide their own products or services on other properties) for purposes such as providing you with information, undertaking marketing/advertising activities about products or services that may interest you, informing business analytics, or for other business or commercial purposes in accordance with their own privacy policies.
- Online Advertising Partners: We may share information with third-party online advertising partners or permit these partners to collect information from you directly on our Services to facilitate online advertising.
- The Public: When you provide feedback or post user content on our Services (e.g., if you post a comment on an article or comment on our social media sites), your information (e.g., your first name, last initial, state of residence, and your comments) may be displayed on our Services or on our social media pages. When you engage with us on social media, we may tag your social media account or the social media account of others (e.g., to give photo credit to another user).
- With Your Consent, At Your Direction, or Where Notice is Provided: In addition to the sharing described in this Privacy Policy, we may share information about you with third parties whenever you consent to or direct such sharing or where notice is otherwise provided.
- Service Providers and Advisors: Personal information may be shared with third-party vendors and other service providers who perform services for us or on our behalf. This may include certain vendors and providers who engage in marketing or advertising activities, analytics, or provide mailing or email services, tax and accounting services, product fulfillment, delivery services, payments processing, data enhancement services, fraud prevention, web hosting, or analytic services.
- Purchasers and Third Parties in Connection With a Business Transaction: Personal information may be disclosed to third parties in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a merger, sale of any or all of our company assets or shares, reorganization, financing, change of control or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by an affiliate or third party, or in the event of a bankruptcy, or related or similar proceedings.
- Law Enforcement, Regulators and Other Parties For Legal Reasons: Personal information may be disclosed to third parties, as required by law or subpoena, or if we reasonably believe that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement, (b) to enforce our Terms of Use or to protect the security or integrity of our Services, or (c) to exercise or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of our organization, our visitors, or others.
In connection with any of the above, we may share information with others in an aggregated or otherwise anonymized form that does not reasonably identify you.
What are Our Third-Party Data Collection and Online Advertising Practices?
General
We participate in interest-based advertising and use third-party marketing/advertising companies to serve you targeted advertisements based on your interests and to measure the effectiveness of those ads.
We permit third-party online advertising networks or exchanges (or other entities, such as demand-side or sell-side platforms or ad servers), measurement/attribution companies, ad fraud verification companies, social media companies, and other third-party services to collect information about your use of our Services so that they may display ads on our Services, including interactions with ads, on other websites or services you may use, and on other devices you may use.
How We Collect This Information
Typically, though not always, the information used for interest-based advertising is collected through tracking technologies, such as cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies, and similar technologies, which recognize the device you are using and collect information, including clickstream information, browser type, time and date you visited the Sites, mobile ad ID or other digital identifier (e.g., iOS IDFA, Google AAID, cookie ID, click ID, other proprietary IDs such as open source “universal IDs” or other ID solutions) precise or coarse geolocation, and other information.
We may share a common account identifier (such as a hashed or encrypted email address or user ID) with our third-party advertising partners to help identify you across devices.
Why We Collect This Information
We and our third-party partners use this information to make the advertisements you see online more relevant to your interests, to optimize marketing and advertising campaigns more broadly, as well as to provide marketing/advertising-related services such as reporting, analytics, market research, and measurement/attribution.
We may also use services provided by third parties (such as Nielsen, Google, and social media platforms) to serve targeted ads to you and others on such platforms.
For example, we may do this by providing your email address (typically in hashed or encrypted format) or other information (such as phone number, which also is typically provided in hashed or encrypted format) to the platform provider, such as via API, direct file upload, server-to-server transfer, or integrating the tracking technologies of those platform providers (e.g., pixel).
How To Exercise Your Choices Regarding Online Ads
Please see the “What Controls Do I Have Over My Information?” section below to learn how you can opt out of interest-based advertising.
More On Social Media Platforms and Advertising
Our Services may include social media features, such as the Facebook “Like” button, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, or other widgets. These social media companies may recognize you and collect information about your visit to our Services, and they may set a cookie or employ other tracking technologies. Your interactions with those features are governed by the privacy policies of those companies.
We display targeted advertising to you through social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media forums. For example, these companies have interest-based advertising programs that allow us to direct advertisements to users who have shown interest in our services while those users are on the social media platform, or to groups of other users who share similar traits, such as likely commercial interests and demographics. As mentioned in the section above, we may share a unique identifier, such as a user ID or hashed or encrypted email address or phone number, with these platform providers or they may collect information from our website visitors through a pixel (or other mechanism, such as API, direct file upload, or server-to-server integration), in order to direct targeted advertising to you or to a custom audience (including “look-a-like” audiences, such as audiences that are similar to you or other users) on the social media platform. These advertisements are governed by the privacy policies of those social media companies that provide them. If you do not want to receive targeted ads on your social networks, you may be able to adjust your advertising preferences through your settings on those networks.