Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy For Visitors of Detroit Public Media d/b/a Detroit PBS Websites
Thank you for visiting Detroit Public Media's websites. As an extension of our broadcast mission, we want your visit to our websites to enlighten, inform, and entertain you. We know you do not want the information you provide us shared indiscriminately. Here we explain what information Detroit Public Media (and our third-party vendors [collectively “we”] acting on our behalf to help deliver the services and operate and analyze use of the website), collect, what we do with the information, and what controls you have over the information collected. We are committed to ensuring the privacy of your personally identifiable information, and to protecting your ability to make financial transactions and transmit your personal data with full confidence.
The privacy policy set forth here refers solely to DetroitPBS.org and its associated websites including WRCJFM.org, DetroitPBSMedia.org, MiWeek.org, MiVote.org, DetroitPerforms.org, GreatLakesNow.org, MiLearns.org, MiAmericanGraduate.org, BeyondTheLightSwitch.org, ArabAmericanStories.org and any other web property associated with Detroit PBS. Please read it carefully, and if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us. Also, note that Detroit Public Media and its associated websites link to numerous other websites, such as PBS. Please consult those websites to learn more about their policies. This Privacy Policy may change from time to time so please check it often.
1. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
We collect two types of information from you: a) Personally identifiable information, includes personal information (such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, credit card information and/or other identifying information including IP Addresses) you voluntarily supply upon request including when you register for our website, make a donation, complete a survey, register for an online discussion, enter a contest or provide your email address; and b) Non-personally identifiable information, for example cookies, which includes tracking information collected as you navigate through our website. Use of this information is discussed in Section 2 below.
A. Personally Identifiable Information
We will not collect personally identifiable information from you, other than what you supply to us on a voluntary basis upon request.
- Paid Products and Services: While the majority of our website is free, we may now or in the future, charge fees for select products and services, such as purchases made through an online shop. To enable the purchase of these and other products we collect your telephone number, email address, billing address and credit card information.
- Support of Detroit Public Media: On certain pages within the website we may now or in the future offer visitors the opportunity to make a donation in support of our programming. The information provided by you will be handled according to current standards of PCI compliance (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).
- Forums, Feedback and Content Submissions: On certain pages within the website you can submit content to be published, make community postings, comments, suggestions and vote. We may collect your name, address, and email addresses in connection with these activities. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. We may contact users regarding their submissions in certain circumstances.
- Your submission of others’ Personally Identifiable Information: On certain pages within the website you can submit information about other people. For example, you may submit a person’s name and email address to send an article. This information will only be stored for its intended purpose.
- Contests, Sweepstakes, Surveys and Special Offers: On occasion, we may collect personal information from users in connection with optional sweepstakes, surveys, contests or special offers. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. Such information will be used, stored or saved as indicated at the time of collection.
- Email and Email Newsletters: On occasion, we may collect and store personal information from users in connection with optional email and email newsletters. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. Such information will be used as you indicate at the time of collection.
- Marketing and Promotional Communications: On occasion, we may collect personal information from users in connection with optional marketing and promotional communications from Detroit Public Media, PBS, or a public broadcasting station. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. Such information will be used as you indicate at the time of collection.
B. Non-personally Identifiable Information
In addition to information that you provide to us, we may also collect and store certain non-personally identifiable information automatically when you use the website. This information helps us improve the experience you and other visitors have with the website.
For example, we may collect your IP address, browser information and reference website domain, as well as related information such as the date on which you visit the website. This information does not identify you personally and is only used in the aggregate.
As is common practice among websites, we may use “cookies” and similar technologies. In general, cookies– the informational files that your web browser places on your computer when you visit a website– are used on this website to track and analyze how you and other visitors use our website. Cookies cannot pass viruses, harm your computer or pass on private information such as an email address without the computer user’s intervention. We use these cookies in order to improve the website, to identify the source of visitors and what pages you use while on our website, to offer visitors interactive and/or personalized features that would not be possible without the cookies, to recall specific information to save visitors time when they return to the website, to provide our sponsors targeted sponsorship opportunities, to provide visitors customized sponsorship messages or list of customized videos of interest, and to identify usage and statistical trends. By looking at this traffic we can better understand our community, which allows us to improve our website and to provide you with an optimal experience and better service. Our sponsorship service vendors, which serve sponsorship messages onto our website, and third party vendors that measure and analyze the use of the website for us, may also use their own cookies. At no time does the cookie reveal your name, address, or email address (even if you have entered these in specific areas of the website). The website pages cannot extract any personally identifying information about you from what we receive via a cookie and your browser.
You can accept or reject cookies used in the site from the cookie consent banner.
You can also set your browser preferences to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. However, some parts of the website may not function properly if you do so. Further information on how to prevent cookies from being stored on your device can be found on http://www.allaboutcookies.org under the ‘manage cookies’ section. Alternatively, you can access further information by going to the help menu within your internet browser. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
2. HOW DO WE USE INFORMATION GATHERED ON THE WEBSITE
Neither Detroit Public Media, nor our third-party vendors acting on our behalf to help deliver the services and operate the website, will willfully disclose any personally identifiable information about our online users to any non-affiliated third party without first receiving the user’s permission, unless required by law. Detroit Public Media's affiliates currently include Detroit PBS, WRCJ-90.9FM, local productions, PBS, and other public broadcasting stations or programming.
In terms of our own use of information, we may use your personally identifiable information for the activities described in the previous sections, for the activities described when you submitted the information, or for internal and marketing promotional purposes as further described in this policy.
We will typically explain the extent of use at the time you are asked to provide personal information. If you do not want this information to be collected or used by us for these purposes, you can simply “opt out.” Under certain circumstances, opting out may prevent your participation in activities for which personal information is needed, as in contests.
In certain cases, we contract with other companies to provide services on our behalf. These service providers maintain customer databases with email addresses of website visitors who have provided them to us by registering at our website, signing up for a newsletter or email, emailing us questions about the service, donors who submit online contributions, or online buyers who make a purchase. We (which includes our service providers) will use these addresses to respond to the general purposes for which we collected the information, to provide services and to operate the website, including to respond to inquiries; to process credit card payments, billing, and shipping; to process email distribution; for list processing and analysis; for promotions management; to send information about Detroit Public Media's programs, services, membership/fundraising; or, to correspond about a purchase or product offers. Our service providers have access to your personally identifiable information as necessary to provide certain services on our behalf. They are required to maintain the privacy of all such information in their possession or control and can only use the information on our behalf for the purpose that we have contracted them, for example sending you a newsletter. They are not authorized to use your information for any other purpose.
Similarly, personally identifiable information provided in connection with a donation will be shared with third parties who perform services to process the donation.
Like many nonprofits, we occasionally exchange some of our donors’ names and postal addresses with carefully selected nonprofit educational, cultural, health, and social service organizations. When you make an online contribution, your name and postal address will be included as eligible for an exchange. Our exchange program provides other nonprofits with only your name and postal address. We offer individuals the opportunity to opt-out if they do not wish to have their information shared.
If at any time you would like to check or update our record of your information, please let us know by using the DetroitPBS.org Contact Us page, calling our customer support (248) 305-3900 Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm EST, or writing to us at Detroit PBS, Riley Broadcast Center, 1 Clover Court, Wixom, MI 48393.
We will not exchange, or lend email addresses to any non-affiliated third party, without your permission. However, we or our service providers may release personally identifiable information if we believe in good faith that the law or legal process requires it, we have received a valid administrative request from a law enforcement agency, or such release is necessary to protect anyone’s rights, property or safety.
On certain pages, we may now or in the future, offer visitors the opportunity to provide comments, messages or other user-generated text, content or materials (collectively “User Materials”). Any information that you disclose when posting a message to these areas, such as your name, screen name or ID used, becomes public. In addition, we may use the information that you disclose in these areas for promotional and marketing purposes. We are not responsible for any personally identifiable information that you choose to disclose in these public areas. Further, Detroit Public Media, its production units, public broadcasting station affiliates and their licensees, may use, copy, sublicense, modify, transmit, publicly perform, display, create derivative works of, host, index, cache, tag, encode, and/or adapt any User Materials, and any information contained therein, in any and all media formats or channels, whether now known or hereafter devised, including, but not limited to, the website, public broadcasting station websites, other third party websites, over the air (on radio or television), and on mobile platforms. If Detroit Public Media uses a third party to host a public forum, chat or town hall the third party will be responsible for how it handles user-posted information. Please refer to those individual policies.
We reserve the right to send you email relating to your account status. This includes order confirmations, renewal/expiration notices, notices of credit-card problems, other transactional emails and notifications about major changes to our website and/or to our Privacy Policy. If you have registered for online discussions or other services, you may receive email specific to your participation in those activities.
We offer several email newsletters and emails. We will always provide a clear and convenient method of unsubscribing to our email communications. If you no longer wish to receive a specific newsletter, follow the “unsubscribe” instructions located in each newsletter or email, or by going to the website’s Contact Us page and send us a message. We will update our records as soon as possible.
3. SECURITY OF INFORMATION
Detroit PBS has in place what we believe to be appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. Credit card information provided on the website is protected against unauthorized use by Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security features. The SSL protocol is the industry standard method for creating an encrypted, secure connection between your web browser and a web server, such as the website’s server. We seek full compliance with the Data Security Standard (PCI Compliance) as prescribed by the Payment Card Industry when credit card information is provided. You should, however, keep in mind that no Internet or email transmission is ever fully secure or error free. Because most email is not encrypted, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via email.
4. CHILDREN’S GUIDELINES
Detroit Public Media is a general audience website and does not knowingly collect or store personally identifiable information about children under the age of 13.
Any portions of our website that are directed to children under the age of 13 comply with COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) standards, which are in addition to Detroit Public Media's Privacy Policies.
From time to time, we may offer contests, quizzes, and surveys in the Kids section of any Detroit Public Media website. Our sole objective in these endeavors is to offer young visitors appropriate and entertaining interactive content. When we showcase online content specifically for young people that requires identifying information, we ask children to gain permission from a parent or caregiver first (e.g., “Hey, kids, before you enter our contest, make sure you get permission to participate from a parent or whoever takes care of you.”)
Detroit Public Media does not willfully disclose to any third party any personally identifiable information about our online visitors who have identified themselves as younger than 18. If we know a visitor is younger than 18, we collect parental/caregiver permission offline (by U.S. mail, fax, or phone) before we mail any prizes to the child. If your child submits stories, artwork, written comments, or anything else for us to post on our website, he or she will be identified only by first name, age, and state.
You and your child’s use of this website are conditioned on your having accepted these terms. Please check this policy frequently, as it is subject to change from time to time, and your child’s continued use of the site is conditioned upon your acceptance of any modifications hereto.
We want to make this site a safe haven for where families come to surf together, and where parents and caregivers are happy to have their children interact, learn, and play.
5. CORRECTIONS TO PERSONAL DATA; OPTING OUT
Please contact us to: a) correct or update any personal information in the Detroit Public Media database that you state is erroneous; b) opt-out of future communications from Detroit Public Media; or, c) request Detroit Public Media to make reasonable efforts to remove your personal information from the Detroit Public Media online database, thereby canceling your profile, newsletter registration and other Detroit Public Media registrations. This will not necessarily remove previous public comments and other User Materials submitted for public display on the website. You should understand that it may be impossible to delete personal information entirely because of backups and records of deletions.
6. OPTING OUT OF SHARING WITH OUR BUSINESS PARTNERS
We may use third party analytics vendors to evaluate and provide us with information about the use of our Services and viewing of our content. Some of the information you see on our Sites may be customized based on automated predictions about your interests, which predictions are generated from your visits over time and across different websites, using tools such as Google Analytics. This information allows us to create content of greater interest to you and can also be used to serve ads based on your past visits to our Sites. Note that you can opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies, including use by Google, by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page (http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/).
For more information about how targeted Network Advertising works, please visit: http://www.youradchoices.com/ or http://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising.
You may opt-out of third party targeted advertising or analytics in two ways: 1) By directly notifying a Network Advertising service provider via its opt-out tools (Please see above) or 2) using your browser’s Do Not Track (DNT) settings to indicate that you do not wish to receive targeted advertising based on your overall internet usage. For more information about DNT and how it works, please visit the Future of Privacy Forum’s website: http://www.allaboutdnt.com/.
We will make a good faith reasonable effort to honor your DNT browser settings for opting out of receiving targeted third party advertising based on your overall Internet usage. Please note that various browsers frequently update technology or change their settings and business practices without advance notice, and we may not have the latest information on how to honor your preferences. If you exercise either opt-out option – the cookie opt-out or the browser opt-out – you will continue to receive advertising, but such advertising may not relate to your specific interests, previous purchases or search history.
However, you cannot opt-out of our contextual analytics and advertising, which is based on your usage of only our Services. We will continue to serve you contextual advertising. We will also continue to monitor your usage and search or transaction history to provide us with analytics on how well our Services, features and activities are functioning and used. We will also share this information in an aggregated form (meaning that no one individual person can be identified) within our company.
7. CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS
If you are a California resident and have an established business relationship with us and want to receive information about how to exercise your third party disclosure choices, you must send a request to the following address with a preference on how our response to your request should be sent (email or postal mail). You may contact us in two ways. Send email to email@detroitpbs.org.
Alternatively, you may contact us at:
Detroit PBS – WTVS, 48325 Alpha Drive, Suite #150, Wixom, MI 48393.
Attn: Your California Privacy Rights
c/o Privacy Administrator
For requests sent via email, you must put the statement “Your California Privacy Rights” in the subject field of your email. All requests sent via postal mail must be labeled “Your California Privacy Rights” on the envelope or post card and clearly stated on the actual request. For all requests, please include your name, street address, city, state, and zip code. (Your street address is optional if you wish to receive a response to your request via email. Please include your zip code for our own recordkeeping.) We will not accept requests via the telephone or by facsimile.We are not responsible for responding to notices that are not labeled or not sent properly, or do not have complete information.
If you are a California resident under the age of 18, and a registered user of any site where this policy is posted, California Business and Professions Code Section 22581 permits you request and obtain removal of content or information you have publicly posted. To make such a request, please send an email with a detailed description of the specific content or information to email@detroitpbs.org. Please be aware that such a request does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content or information you have posted and that there may be circumstances in which the law does not require or allow removal even if requested.
8. ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY
By using this website, you signify your agreement to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy for Detroit Public Media. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, please do not use this website. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this policy at any time. Please check this page periodically for any changes. Your continued use of Detroit Public Media websites following the posting of any changes to these terms shall mean that you have accepted those changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.
9. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
Whenever this Privacy Policy for our website changes, we will post the changes to the website, and such changes will be effective immediately upon posting. If you do not agree to the changes, please do not continue to use the website. Under certain circumstances, we may also elect to notify you of changes or updates to our Privacy Policy by additional means, such as posting a notice on the front page of our website or sending you an email if we have your email address.
10. TERMS OF USE
Please also make sure to read Detroit Public Media Terms of Use to understand the additional terms and conditions which apply to your use of our website.
Privacy Policy last updated April 19, 2018.