privacy policy

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following information:

a. User Provided Information. You may provide certain personally identifiable information to HubPages directly, such as Your first and last name, telephone number, address, tax information (such as a Social Security Number), credit card or PayPal® information, and email address (collectively, “Personally Identifiable Information”) when choosing to register, to purchase through the Service, to participate in promotions or surveys, or to subscribe to any newsletters or other distribution lists. You may also choose to provide us with Personally Identifiable Information in your User Content.

When You use our Service, we may collect and store information about Your use, including the following:

b. Cookies. When You visit the Service, we may send one or more cookies – a small text file containing a string of alphanumeric characters – to your computer that identifies your web browser. You can set your web browser to refuse cookies; however, this may limit the functionality our Service can provide to You.

c. Log Files. Log file information is automatically reported by your web browser each time You view a web page. When You register with or use the Service, our servers automatically record certain information that your web browser sends whenever You visit a website. These server logs may include information such as your IP address, browser type and language, number of clicks, domain names of websites visited, pages viewed, and the order of those pages, the amount of time spent on particular pages, the date and time.

d. Clear Gifs. When You use the Service, we may use clear gifs (a.k.a. web beacons) which are pieces of data used to track the online usage patterns of our Users anonymously. In addition, we may also use clear gifs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened by recipients. The information is used to enable more accurate reporting, improve the effectiveness of our marketing, and make HubPages better for our Users.

Information collected through clear gifs and cookies, and log file information is largely non-personally identifiable information because such information is not collected or used in such a way that an individual User can be identified, for example, by name or email address (collectively, “Non-Personally Identifiable Information”). Collected information may be Personally Identifiable Information or Non-Personally Identifiable Information.

e. Third-party service-based information. This includes linked services (such as Facebook Connect) that You authorize to share information about You with HubPages. If You elect to use Facebook Connect with HubPages, You agree that HubPages may use (as described in Section 2) information about You provided by Facebook, including (but is not limited to) Your: name, email, gender, birthday, current city, profile picture URL, as well as any additional information (such as “Like” information) that You specifically consent for HubPages to access and use.

Other third-party supported services, such as Google Analytics, that You might use on the Service may collect information through similar methods. Such information is not shared with us and is subject to the privacy policy of each such third-party service.

Integrated services that require Google Analytics to collect data for advertising purposes (such as Remarketing with Google Analytics, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting), including the collection of data via advertising cookies and identifiers. For information about opting out of Google Analytics see the currently available Google Analytics opt-out tool.

You may also opt-out of receiving targeted ads from third party advertisers and ad networks who are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) with the NAI tool available here.

2. Use of Information

Collected information is used to operate, maintain, and provide to You the features and functionality of the Service.

We may use your Personally Identifiable Information for billing purposes, payment purposes (including any tax-related purposes), administrative purposes, such as notifying You of major changes in Service, news, and for other customer service purposes. You hereby consent to our use of your email address to send you such information. Also, we may provide credit card and ordering information to payment processors, including Paypal®, but we do not retain such information.

We may use collected information to (a) remember information so that You will not have to re-enter it during your current or subsequent visits to the Service; (b) provide custom, personalized content, and information; (c) monitor the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns; (d) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors and traffic; (e) track User Content, and status in any promotions, sweepstakes, and contests; (f) diagnose or fix technology problems; (g) access your information after You sign in; (h) market our Service to advertisers and other third parties; (i) to improve the quality and design of the Service and to create new features by storing, tracking, and analyzing your preferences and trends; and (j) verify your identity for payment and taxation purposes