Privacy Policy

Effective Date: February 27, 2024

About Proof News

Proof is a nonprofit news studio dedicated to pursuing data-driven reporting and analysis of the most important questions of our time. Join our mailing list at proofnews.org for updates.

Scope of this Policy

This privacy policy (“Policy”) applies to:

Proof News and its affiliates (“Proof,” “we,” “us,” “our”).
Proof News’s online properties (including our websites and websites or mobile applications that link to it), our social media pages or handles, our products, and services (the “Services”).

This Policy applies when you interact with us through our Services. It also applies anywhere it is linked. It does not apply to third-party websites, mobile applications, or services that may link to the Services or be linked to from the Services. Please review the privacy policies on those websites and applications directly to understand their privacy practices.

We may change this Policy from time to time. If we do, we will notify you by posting the updated version.

Information we collect

We collect information from you directly, from the devices you use to interact with us, and from third parties. We may combine information from the Services together and with other information we obtain from our business records. We may use and share information that we aggregate (compile to create statistics that cannot identify a particular individual) or de-identify (strip information of all unique identifiers such that it cannot be linked to a particular individual) at our discretion.

Information you give us

You may provide the following information to us directly:

Contact information, including name and email address.
Content you may include in survey responses.
Information contained in your communications to us, including call recordings of customer service calls.
Information you make available to us via a social media platform.
Any information or data you provide by commenting on content posted on our Services. Please note that these comments are also visible to other users of our Services.
Any other information you submit to us.

We use a service provider to provide payment processing services. Information that you provide in connection with donations you make (e.g., amount of donation, payment information) will be collected and processed directly by this service provider.

Information we collect automatically

We and partners working on our behalf may use log files, cookies, or other digital tracking technologies to collect the following information from the device you use to interact with our Services. We also create records when you make purchases or otherwise interact with the Services.

Device information, including IP address, device identifiers, and details about your web browser.
Analytical information, including details about your interaction with our website, app, and electronic newsletters.
Diagnostic information, including web traffic logs.
Business record information, including records of your purchases of products and services.

How we use your information

We may use any of the information we collect for the following purposes.

Service functionality: To provide you with our products and services, including to process payments, fulfill orders, send service communications, and conduct general business operations, such as accounting, recordkeeping, and audits.
Service improvement: To improve and grow our Services, including to develop new products and services and understand how our Services are being used, our customer base and purchasing trends, and the effectiveness of our marketing.
Security: To protect and secure our Services, assets, network, and business operations, and to detect, investigate, and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be fraudulent or illegal.
Legal compliance: To comply with legal process, such as warrants, subpoenas, court orders, and lawful regulatory or law enforcement requests and to comply with applicable legal requirements.

We may share any of the information we collect with the following recipients.

Affiliates: We share information with other members of our group of companies.
Service providers: We engage vendors to perform specific business functions on our behalf, and they may receive information about you from us or collect it directly. These vendors are obligated by contract to use information that we share only for the purpose of providing these business functions, which include:
- Supporting Service functionality, such as vendors that support customer service and customer relationship management, application development, payment processing, and email communications.
- Auditing and accounting firms, such as firms that assist us in the creation of our financial records.
- Professional services consultants, such as firms that perform analytics, assist with improving our business, provide legal services, or supply project-based resources and assistance.
- Analytics and marketing services, including entities that analyze traffic on our online properties and assist with identifying and communicating with potential customers.
- Security vendors, such as entities that assist with security incident verification and response, service notifications, and fraud prevention.
- Information technology vendors, such as entities that assist with website design, hosting and maintenance, data and software storage, and network operation.
- Marketing vendors, such as entities that support distribution of marketing emails for Proof products.
Social media platforms: If you interact with us on social media platforms, the platform may be able to collect information about you and your interaction with us. If you interact with social media objects on our Services (for example, by clicking on a Facebook “like” button), both the platform and your connections on the platform may be able to view that activity. To control this sharing of information, please review the privacy policy of the relevant social media platform.
Government entities/law enforcement: We may share information when we believe in good faith that we are lawfully authorized or required to do so to respond to lawful subpoenas, warrants, court orders, or other regulatory or law enforcement requests, or where necessary to protect our property or rights or the safety of our employees, our customers, or other individuals.
Other businesses in the context of a commercial transaction: We may change our ownership or corporate organization while providing the Services. We may transfer to another entity or its affiliates or service providers some or all information about you in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, acquisition, sale of assets or any line of business, change in ownership control, or financing transaction. We cannot promise that an acquiring party or the merged entity will have the same privacy practices or treat your information as described in this policy.

Security

We use a combination of physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect the information we collect through the Services. While we use these precautions to safeguard your information, we cannot guarantee the security of the networks, systems, servers, devices, and databases we operate or that are operated on our behalf.

Your options and rights regarding your information

Your account: Please contact us at privacy@proofnews.org to update your account information.

Email unsubscribe: If you do not wish to receive marketing information from us or wish to opt out of future email promotions from us, please contact us. Please note that all promotional email messages you receive from us will include an option to opt out of future email communications.

Jurisdiction-specific rights: You may have certain rights with respect to your personal information depending on your location or residency. Please see “privacy disclosures for specific jurisdictions” below. Please contact us to exercise your rights.

Other important information

Data retention: We may store information about you for as long as we have a legitimate business need for it.

Cross-border data transfer: We may collect, process, and store your information in the United States and other countries. The laws in the United States regarding information may be different from the laws of your country. Any such transfers will comply with safeguards as required by relevant law.

Information about children: The Services are intended for users age 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If we discover that we have inadvertently collected information from anyone younger than the age of 13, we will delete that information. Please contact us with any concerns.

Privacy disclosures for specific jurisdictions

Residents of the state of Colorado have the following rights:

Opt out of “profiling” under certain circumstances, as defined under applicable law.
Confirm processing of and access to personal information under certain circumstances.
Correct personal information under certain circumstances.
Delete personal information under certain circumstances.

Residents of Colorado can exercise their rights by contacting us using one of the methods listed below.

Contact information, submitting requests, and our response procedures

Please contact us if you have questions or wish to take any action with respect to information to which this privacy policy applies.

Email: privacy@proofnews.org

Telephone: 415-839-6456

Mail: Proof News @ Aspiration Tech, P.O. Box 880264 San Francisco, CA 94188

Making a request to exercise your rights

Submitting requests: You may request to exercise your rights by making a request using the contact information above.

If you are a resident of Colorado, you may, under certain circumstances, authorize another individual or a business, called an authorized agent, to make requests on your behalf.

We may have a reason under the law why we do not have to comply with your request, or why we may comply with it in a more limited way than you anticipated. If we do, we will explain that to you in our response.

Verification: We must verify your identity before responding to your request. We verify your identity by asking you to provide personal identifiers that we can match against information we may have collected from you previously. We may need to follow up with you to request more information to verify identity.

We will not use personal information we collect in connection with verifying or responding to your request for any purpose other than responding to your request.

Appeals

Residents of Colorado have the right to appeal a denial of their request by contacting us as described in the notice of denial.