Privacy Policy
The information we gather about you depends on the context. By and large, it’s information about you that can personally identify you — either on its own or when combined with other information.
The following describes the information we collect and how we obtain it.
A) Information Collected Through Times Services.
- Information You Voluntarily Give Us
- For Registration:
When you sign up for a Times Service (e.g., a subscription), we collect your contact information and account credentials. Once you’re registered, we assign you a unique ID number. This ID number helps us recognize you when you’re signed in.
For some Times Services, you can instead sign up by linking your Apple, Facebook or Google account. See “From Other Sources” below.
If you register for an event or conference, we might ask for additional information (e.g., your company name, your job title or your dietary restrictions).
- For Billing:
To process payments or donations, we collect and use your payment information.
This can include your name, your address, your telephone number, your email address, your credit or debit card information and any other relevant information.
- For User-Generated Content:
We offer you the ability to post content that other users can read (e.g., comments or recipe reviews). Anyone can read, collect and use any personal information that accompanies your posts. See the Comments F.A.Q., or read “User-Generated Content” in our Terms of Service for more information.
We do not have to publish any of your content. If the law requires us to take down, remove or edit your personal information, we will comply to the required extent.
- For Contests, Sweepstakes and Special Offers:
When you sign up for these, you give us your name, email and any other required information.
- For Reader Surveys, Research, Panels and Experience Programs:
We gather information through questionnaires, surveys and feedback programs. We also conduct similar research for advertisers. We ask you for your consent to use this information when you participate in these programs and events.
- During Contact With Our Call Centers:
We collect information from you when you place an order over the phone or contact customer service through one of our toll-free numbers.
- Personal Contacts Data:
We never scan your device for your contacts or upload that data.
With your consent, we do comply with your requests to collect data about your friends, family or acquaintances (e.g., Refer a Friend campaigns). This functionality is only meant for U.S. residents. By using it, you acknowledge and agree that both you and your contacts are based in the United States — and that you have everyone’s consent for us to use their contact information.
- For Registration:
- Information Collected Automatically
- With Tracking Technologies in Your Browser and Mobile Apps:
These technologies include cookies, web beacons, tags and scripts, software development kits (or SDKs) and beyond.
We track and store data about how you visit and use Times Services, particularly through our websites and apps. The items we log include:
- Your IP address
- Your location
- Your operating system
- Your browser
- Your browser language
- The URLs of any pages you visit on our sites and apps
- Device identifiers
- Advertising identifiers
- Other usage information.
We combine this data with other information we collect about you. For more information about tracking methods on Times Services, and how to manage them, read our Cookie Policy.
If your browser doesn’t accept our cookies, you can’t access certain parts of our websites (e.g., your account on nytimes.com). Because the “Do Not Track” browser-based standard signal has yet to gain widespread acceptance, we don’t currently respond to those signals. We however respond to the Global Privacy Control in certain territories, such as Europe and California.
- With GPS Technologies:
Some of our apps can provide content based on your GPS location, if you enable this feature (e.g., the New York Times Real Estate app). Your GPS location is your exact location.
You choose whether to enable GPS features when you first install the app. You can edit that setting on your device at any time. If you enable these features, your GPS location can be found by satellite, cell phone tower or Wi-Fi and used by the app. If you save a location-based search in your history, that data moves to our service provider’s servers — see below for the definition of service provider.
If you do not enable GPS location-based services, or if a specific app does not have location-based features (e.g., the New York Times app), we don’t collect your precise GPS location. We do collect your IP address, which can establish your approximate location. Ads on our sites and apps may be targeted based on this approximate location, but are never targeted based on your GPS location.
- With Tracking Technologies in Your Browser and Mobile Apps:
B) Information Collected From Other Sources.
- Privately Owned Databases:
Marketing, data analytic and social media-owned databases give us access to a range of information — like public data, survey data and beyond. This data sometimes includes your mailing address, your gender, your age, your household income and other demographic data.
- Social Media Platforms and Other Third-Party Services:
(Social media platforms include Facebook. Third-party services include Google and Nook.)
You can link your social media or other third-party account to a Times Service. By linking the services, you authorize us to collect, store and use any information they may give us (e.g., your email address). You can disconnect your nytimes.com registration from third-party accounts at any time.
We also receive information from you when you interact with our pages, groups, accounts or posts on social media platforms. This includes aggregate data on our followers (e.g., age, gender and location), engagement data (e.g., “likes,” comments, shares, reposts and clicks), awareness data (e.g., number of impressions and reach) and individual users’ public profiles.
For more information, refer to our social login and Nook F.A.Q.
- Workplace and Schools:
When your employer or school buys an organizationwide subscription to nytimes.com, they sometimes provide us with your name and organization email address to grant you access as a user.
A note about future updates:
We are always improving our products and services, and we create new features regularly. These updates sometimes require us to collect new information, or use what we already have differently. If there is a significant or material change in the way we handle your personal information, we will notify you as detailed below.
Back to topA) We provide the Times Services.
We use your information to help you use and navigate Times Services, such as:
- Making a Times Service available to you
- Arranging access to your account
- Providing customer service
- Responding to your inquiries, requests, suggestions or complaints
- Completing your payments and transactions
- Sending service-related messages (e.g., a change in our terms and conditions)
- Saving your reading list, recipes or property searches
- Displaying your Crossword stats
- Letting you take part in paid services, polls, promotions, surveys, panels, research and comments.
B) We Personalize Your Experience.
We track your interests and reading habits (e.g., the articles you read) to personalize your reading experience using technology like algorithmic recommendations and machine learning. This is how we highlight articles you might be interested in and de-emphasize articles you’ve already read. For more information about content personalization on Times Services, you can read the Personalization F.A.Q. We also show you prices, promotions, products or services we believe you’ll find interesting, based on demographic and usage data.
C) We Allow You to Share User-Generated Content.
Any information you disclose in your content becomes public — along with your chosen screen name and uploaded photo.
D) We Develop Products and Services, and Do Analysis.
We analyze data on our users’ subscription, purchase and usage behaviors. This helps us make business and marketing decisions.
For example, our analysis lets us predict preferences and price points for our products and services. It helps us determine whether our marketing is successful. It also shows us characteristics about our readers, which we sometimes share in aggregate with advertisers.
Google Analytics is one of the analytics providers we use. You can find out how Google Analytics uses data and how to opt out of Google Analytics.
E) We Carry Out Administrative Tasks.
- For auditing: We verify that our internal processes work as intended and comply with legal, regulatory and contractual requirements.
- For fraud and security monitoring: We detect and prevent cyberattacks or unauthorized robot activities.
- For customer satisfaction: We assess users’ satisfaction with Times Services and our customer care team.
The above activities can involve outside companies, agents or contractors (“service providers”) with whom we share your personal information for these purposes (discussed further below).
F) We Offer Sweepstakes, Contests and Other Promotions.
You can take part in our sweepstakes, contests and other promotions. Some might have additional rules about how we use and disclose your personal information.
G) We Allow for Personalized Advertising on Times Services and Create Audiences for Third-Party Advertisers.
We gather data and work with third parties to show you personalized ads on behalf of advertisers. This data comes from ad tracking technologies set by us or the third party (e.g., cookies), the information you provide (e.g., your email address), your use of Times Services (e.g., your reading history), information from advertisers or advertising vendors (e.g., demographic data) and anything inferred from any of this information. We only use or share this information in a manner that does not reveal your identity. For example, we use Google to serve ads on Times Services. Google uses cookies or unique device identifiers, in combination with their own data, to show you ads based on you visiting nytimes.com and other sites. You can opt out of the use of the Google cookie by visiting the related Google privacy policy.
We also identify groups of users to whom to serve personalized ads on behalf of our advertisers. To do this, we combine information we collect through surveys or registration with information we collect automatically using tracking technologies while you browse our sites and apps. This combined information is used to build models. These data models are then used to measure users’ attributes, like their demographic information or their interests. Working with service providers, we use these measurements to group users by common attributes. Each group is associated with a random ID which is then passed to our ad server for use in targeting ad campaigns on our sites and apps.
Another example is our affiliate link vendors, which we use in our guides and product recommendations. Times Services include links that will send you to vendor URLs and other services not operated or controlled by us. These vendors use cookies and other technologies to collect information about your navigation from the Times Services to the merchant you are visiting. If you buy a product after following a link to a link vendor’s URL, we may earn a commission.
Additional notes:
- For more about targeted advertising, and how to opt out with your specific browser and device, go to the DAA Webchoices Browser Check and NAI Opt Out of Interest-Based Advertising. You can download the AppChoices app to opt out in mobile apps. You can also follow the instructions in the What Are Your Rights? section below.
- We try to limit how our third-party advertising technology vendors use the information they gather from you. Many of these providers require us to enter into contracts that allow them to optimize their own services and products, or that help them create their own.
Essentially, these providers combine any information they gather about you through Times Services with information they receive from their other clients. This helps them target ads to you on behalf of their other clients, not just us. - These third parties sometimes use other services in order to serve ads; check their privacy policies for more details. For further information on tracking technologies and your rights and choices regarding them, see the applicable Cookie Policy.
H) We Advertise Times Services to You.
We market our properties to you. Sometimes we use marketing vendors to do this.
We serve ads through websites, locations, platforms and services operated and owned by third parties. Often these ads are targeted at people who have visited or registered for a Times Service but have not subscribed or purchased anything. The ads are also targeted at people with similar traits or behaviors to our subscribers or customers.
We target our advertising to these users by uploading an encrypted customer list to a third party, or by incorporating a tracking technology from a third party onto our Times Service. The third party then matches individuals who appear in both our data and their data. Because of how this matching process works, the third party can’t read our encrypted customer list if they don’t already have it.
To opt out of receiving these matched ads, contact the applicable third parties. For example, when we use “Custom Audience” to serve you our ad through Facebook, you should be able to hover over the box in the right corner of that Facebook ad and opt out. We are not responsible for any third party’s failure to comply with opt-out requests.
We periodically send you targeted email newsletters or promotional emails. For information on opting out of these emails, see What Are Your Rights?
I) We Aggregate (or De-identify) Personal Information Into Larger Findings.
Sometimes we aggregate or de-identify information so that it can no longer identify you, under applicable laws. This helps us better understand and represent our users, such as when we measure ad performance, create advertising interest-based segments or compile survey results. We can use and disclose this aggregated or de-identified information for any purpose, unless an applicable law says otherwise.
Back to top