Effective As Of 08/31/2011
The Washington Post Company, and its subsidiary, Express Publications Company, LLC, (“Express”), recognize the importance of protecting the privacy of your personally identifiable information. This privacy policy applies to Express’s collection and use of information on its readexpress.com Web site. In adopting this privacy policy, our intent is to balance our legitimate business interests in collecting and using personally identifiable information and your reasonable expectations of privacy. Please note: This policy applies only to information collected by readexpress.com online, as specified below, and does not govern or apply to information collected or used by The Washington Post Company or its affiliates through other means.
What personally identifiable information (PII) do I provide to readexpress.com?
While users are not required to register to use the features of readexpress.com, Express collects some PII from users on some areas on readexpress.com (the “Site”). In particular, prior to posting a blog entry, Express requires users to provide contact information including a user name and e-mail address. We may also ask you for PII at other times – such as when you enter a contest, participate in a promotion, or when you post an online ad. Whenever you provide PII to us, we will make an effort to link to our privacy policy. See below about “cookies” and what other non-personally identifiable information is collected.
How does readexpress.com use my PII?
Our primary goal in collecting PII is to ensure that we are able to contact you in connection with your use of the site if it becomes necessary. For example, Express uses the PII you provide to us to administer the Site’s blogs. Express shall have the right (but not the obligation) to monitor the Site’s blog entries and in its sole discretion to refuse, delete, or remove any content that it deems inappropriate.
In addition, you provide your e-mail address to Express when you place a free online ad in our Classified section. That e-mail is used to transmit messages from other users interested in contacting you about your listing and is collected by a third-party vendor on the behalf of readexpress.com. When placing a paid ad, washingtonpost.com collects contact and billing information; the washingtonpost.com privacy policy applies to the collection and use of that PII. For more information about this service, link to the readexpress.com User Agreement.
In order to provide services free of charge, we display advertisements throughout the Site. Some Site advertisements may be targeted by Express on behalf of advertisers. Advertisers may give us an advertisement and we may use keyword targeting to provide relevant advertisements. In this process, the advertiser would never have access to PII that you have provided to us.
Readexpress.com may research our users’ interests, and behavior based on the information collected by us including on order forms, during a promotion, as well as from our server log files or from surveys. We do this to better understand and serve our users. This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregated basis and Express may share this aggregated data with advertisers or other businesses. In addition, under confidentiality agreements, Express may match user information with third party data.
Do other companies or people have access to PII that I provide to readexpress.com?
When you are on an area of readexpress.com and are asked for PII, you are providing that information to The Washington Post Company, its divisions or affiliates, or vendors providing contractual services for readexpress.com such as hosting vendors, list managers, and software service providers. If PII is being provided to and/or maintained by any company other than these, our policy is that we will not transfer that PII unless notice is given prior to the transfer. If you do not want your information to be shared with Express vendors, you can choose not to allow the transfer by not using that particular service or by expressing this preference, if requested. Additional information about PII follows.
Promotions: Promotions that run on readexpress.com may be sponsored by companies other than Express or may be co-sponsored by Express and another company. Some or all of the PII provided by you during a promotion may be shared with the sponsor. If information will be shared, we will disclose such sharing prior to the transfer. You can decide not to participate in the promotion if you don’t want your PII to be shared. In certain circumstances, you may not be able to participate in a particular promotion if you chose not to share PII. Currently, most promotions offered by Express are limited to U.S. or North American residents.
Advertisers and Links: Express advertisers, or Web sites that have links on our Site, may also collect PII directly from you. The information practices of companies collecting data on our Site or Web sites linked to readexpress.com are not covered by this privacy statement.
Classifieds: If you make a purchase or request a service from a business or individual in the Classified Marketplace section, the information you provide for that transaction will only be provided to the business or individual you select to contact regarding the Classified ad. Businesses listed in the Express Classified Marketplace section have separate privacy and data collection practices. Express has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. For more information regarding the business and its privacy policy, go to that business’ home page and click on the appropriate link if available.
Other: If we run competitions or contests on the site, you may be required to provide additional information such as your telephone number and address in order to participate. The exact rules may vary in each case but the specific rules for any contest will state how that information may be used.
We do not control the privacy policies of our advertisers, sponsors, or other sites or businesses to which we provide hyperlinks or access. Please visit the sites of these businesses to review their privacy policies.
Express users should also be aware that, when you voluntarily disclose personal information in blog entries or classified ads, that information may be collected by others and may result in unsolicited messages from others.
Except as stated in this privacy policy or at the time of collection, a user’s PII will not be transferred to a party outside The Washington Post Company, its divisions or affiliates, or its service vendors unless notice is given at the time of collection or prior to transfer. Express may also disclose account information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to comply with state or federal law, or to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating our User Agreement or may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) Express’ rights or property, other readexpress.com users, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities.
Data Security: We have in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to protect the information we collect online. However, as effective as these measures are, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our database, nor can we guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the internet.
What information do web servers collect?
Web servers serving the Site automatically collect certain non-personally identifiable information, such as which pages each user visits and the domain name (e.g., earthlink.net) of visitors. This information is used for various purposes including internal review, to tailor information to individual visitors, and for traffic audits. We also provide this information (as well as information from third-party market researchers) about our users on an aggregated, anonymous basis to our advertisers.
What are cookies and how does readexpress.com use them?
Express places a “cookie” on the browser of your computer to store and sometimes track information about you. A cookie can be used to tell when your computer has contacted a Web site; we may also use the information for editorial purposes and for other purposes such as measuring certain traffic patterns. For example, cookies may be used to ensure that you don’t see the same ad too many times in a single session. We may also use cookies to track your progress and number of entries in some of our promotions and contests. Advertising service vendors that serve ads into our site may also use their own cookies. You may opt-out of the cookies delivered by Express by changing the setting on your browser. Please be aware that this will disable all cookies delivered to your browser, not just the ones delivered by Express.
How can I opt-out of online advertising cookies?
Online advertising for this site is delivered by the vendor DoubleClick. DoubleClick places cookies on your browser to facilitate serving particular ads – for instance, to help determine whether you have seen a particular advertisement before, to tailor ads to you if you have visited our site before, and to avoid sending you duplicate advertisements. You can opt out of DoubleClick’s use of cookies for these purposes by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/index.aspx.
In some cases, we and advertisers on the site work with other third-party vendors to help deliver advertisements tailored to your interests. These vendors include ad networks and audience segment providers, and they place cookies on your browser to collect information about your online activity (e.g., the sites and pages you have visited) in order to help advertisers deliver particular ads that they believe you would find most relevant. You can opt out of those vendors’ use of cookies to tailor advertising to you by visiting http://www.aboutads.info/.
Often our advertisers contract with a third-party service to host their ads. In this case, an ad serving vendor contacts the advertisers’ hosting service for a particular advertisement. In that case, an independent cookie may be used by the third-party service. We do not have a mechanism to allow visitors to opt-out of cookies from vendors with whom we do not have a contractual relationship.
Kids under 13: Do not send any information about yourself to us – including information like your name, address, or e-mail address. In general, we do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. If, in limited circumstances, we do knowingly collect personally identifiable information from a child under the age of 13, we will do so only with verified parental consent prior to collection. In the event that we learn that we have collected any personal information from a child under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information from our database as quickly as possible.
Technology on the Internet is developing at a rapid pace, and we need to maintain our flexibility in the online arena. If we need to change our policy in the future, we will post these changes as soon as they go into effect. If Express materially changes the way we use your PII, we will notify you prior to any change via the e-mail you have provided to us.
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