Privacy Policy
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is operated by Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF). FPF is committed to protecting the privacy of visitors to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker website. FPF has established this privacy policy to explain what information we collect through our website and how it is used.
In this policy, "FPF" refers to FPF staff, board members, interns, volunteers, and consultants, all of whom are bound by law or contract to keep confidential information they receive as part of their assistance to FPF.
FPF does not sell or rent donor or website visitor information under any circumstances, and we do not share donor or visitor information without prior consent except as compelled by law. (See discussion below.)
Information Gathered by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker Site
Logging: We generally log website requests and do internal analytical logging for up to 30 days from when the data was collected.
Circumstances in which FPF may need to log and retain technical information for longer than 30 days include when we believe it is reasonably necessary for FPF’s mission and functionality, including situations such as:
- site testing
- diagnosis of technical problems
- defending against attacks to the site
- handling a spike in traffic or other abnormal, short-term circumstances
In those and similar situations we will delete the information as soon as it is apparent that the information is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was retained.
How FPF internal analytics works: FPF endeavors to gather sufficient information for analyzing our website and how visitors move within it without compromising the privacy of our visitors. FPF's internal analytical logging involves logging, for up to 30 days, two bytes of the IP address, as well as the referrer page, time stamp, page requested, user agent, language header, website visited, actions taken while on the page (such as selecting particular search filters or clicking particular buttons), and a hash of all of this information. After 30 days we keep only aggregate information from these logs. We also geolocate IP addresses before anonymizing them and store only the country.
Cookies: FPF does not set persistent ID cookies on this site. We use session cookies on certain portions of the website. Session cookies expire when you close your browser. You can use Tor if you wish to keep your connection information anonymous.
Newsletter and Other Communications: If you choose to subscribe to our mailing lists, we will keep your name and email address. If you unsubscribe, we will delete this information.
We may ask for additional personal information when you provide feedback or comments, or otherwise communicate with us.
Third-Party Service Providers to FPF
FPF uses third-party hosting providers who have their own privacy policies that may apply.
FPF's web hosting provider is DigitalOcean. FPF also uses the content delivery network CloudFlare.
FPF uses Mailgun for sending out newsletters. Mailgun does hold your email address, however they do not store any other identifying information about you. You can read Mailgun's privacy policy here.
FPF uses Google Recaptcha to prevent unwanted spam submissions to our contact forms. You can click the "Privacy" link in the Google Recaptcha dialog box to read the privacy policy.
FPF's site also provides links to and may embed content from third-party websites, including social networking and video hosting sites. FPF is not responsible for, and does not have any control over, the privacy practices or the content of such third parties. We encourage users to read the privacy policies of any third parties to FPF’s website.
FPF may change the specific third-party providers from time to time.
Disclosure of Your Information
While FPF endeavors to provide the highest level of protection for your information, we may disclose personally identifiable information about you to third parties in limited circumstances, including: (1) with your consent; or (2) when we have a good faith belief it is required by law, such as pursuant to a subpoena or other judicial or administrative order.
FPF strives to keep very limited data about any of our website visitors or donors.
If we are required by law to disclose the information that you have submitted, we will attempt to provide you with notice (unless we are prohibited) that a request for your information has been made in order to give you an opportunity to object to the disclosure. We will attempt to provide this notice by email if you have given us an email address. If you do not challenge the disclosure request, we may be legally required to turn over your information.
In addition, we will independently object to requests for access to information about users of our site that we believe to be improper.
Updating or Removing Your Information
The only personally identifying information we might save about you is your name and email address if you are subscribed to our mailing list. If you unsubscribe, we will not send you any more emails. Each bulk email we send you will contain a personalized unsubscribe link in the footer.
Changes to Our Policies
FPF's Privacy Policy may change from time to time. However, any revised privacy policy will be consistent with FPF's mission. If we make any substantive changes to our policies, we will place notice in our newsletter and post notice of changes on this page.
Security
FPF employs industry standard security measures to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. FPF has turned on HTTPS by default.
Although we make good faith efforts to store information collected by FPF in a secure operating environment, we cannot guarantee complete security. Information collected by FPF will be maintained for a length of time appropriate to our needs.
Changes
The following updates have been made to our privacy policy:
- Aug. 24, 2023: Added "actions taken while on the page (such as selecting particular search filters or clicking particular buttons)" to the list of logged items under "How FPF Internal Analytics Works"