Privacy Policy

Find answers about our privacy policy here.

Your privacy is critically important to us. At By Reference, we have a few fundamental principles:

We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
We use as few cookies as possible.
We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.
We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a By Reference account to provide an email address and their name — that’s it.
Public profile information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. Our system uses your email to add you to our newsletter by default, but you can always modify this option in your account settings.
Content information: You may provide us with information about you in draft and published content (a blog post or comment that includes biographic information about you, or any media or files you upload).
Communications with us: You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with us about a support question, post a comment, or sign up for become a contributor. When you communicate with us via form, email, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications.
Contributor Account: If you become a By Reference conributor, we will ask for additional information to set up your contributor account. This includes your name, email, profile picure and a bio. This information is collected to provide the service and enhance your account's credibility for our readers. You may also choose to provide further information, such as your location, social media links, or your own website link. These additional details are used solely to enrich your account profile and are not used for marketing purposes.

Links to other websites and services

Our website may integrate with or contain links to other third party sites and services, such as an embedded Tweet or YouTube video. While we strive to keep cookies to a minimum, we are not responsible for the practices employed by third party websites or services embedded in, linked to, or linked from our website. Your interactions with any third-party website or service are subject to that third party’s own rules and policies.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

Usage information: We collect information about the usage of By Reference. For example, we collect information about when you visit. We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, get insights on how people use our Services so we can make our Services better, and understand and make predictions about user retention.
Location information: Our system may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.
Analytics information: We collect informations by using third-party tools and cookies. These third-party tools might be used to provide a better experience and additional features. Please see the Cookie section for more information about our use of cookies and similar tracking technologies.

Cookies

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier, that is sent to your browser from a website's computers and stored on your computer's hard drive. Cookies are required to use the By Reference service. We use cookies to record current session information. You are required to re-login to your By Reference account after a certain period of time has elapsed to protect you against others accidentally accessing your account contents.

We may use tools, including third-party tools and cookies, like Google Analytics, to collect analytics data. Some of this information is collected through the use of cookies and other tracking technologies. This includes technical details such as browser types, operating systems, ISPs, platform types, device types, and mobile device identifiers like make and model, and mobile carrier. Google Analytics specifically collects data such as IP address, user demographics (age, gender), interests, and interaction with our website. We collect this information to understand how you use the Services and your actions on the Services, helping us to improve our platform and provide a better user experience. You can manage and change your cookie preferences at any time by modifying your preferences via the "Manage Cookies" link in the page footer.

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We and our partners use information about you for the purposes listed below:

To provide our Services. For example, to set up and maintain your account, deliver newsletters, provide customer service, and verify user information.
To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services. For example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy or make our Services easier to use.
To protect our Services, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights of By Reference, which may result in us, for example, terminating Services.
To fix problems with our Services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
To customize the user experience. For example, to personalize your experience by serving you relevant notifications, recommending content through our Service, and providing newsletters and content that we think will be of interest to you.
To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on By Reference.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:
(1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device; or
(2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
(3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
(4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; or
(5) You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on.

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy.

Subsidiaries and independent contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries and independent contractors who need the information to help us provide our Services or process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.
Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like cloud storage services, postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you, registrars, registries, those that host our website; those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers); those that make tools to help us run our operations (like programs that help us with task management, scheduling, word processing, email and other communications, and collaboration among our teams); and other third-party tools that help us manage operations. We only use vendors that agree to similar privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of By Reference, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
Business transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that By Reference goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorize us to do so, for example when you accept to use our cookies.
Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about how many subscribers we have, the use of our Services, or share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
Site owners: If you have a By Reference account and interact with another site using our Services, your information may be shared with the administrators of the site. For example, if you leave a comment on a post creted on By Reference, your IP address and the email address associated with your By Reference account may be shared with the administrator(s) of the site where you left the comment.
Published support requests: If you send us a request for assistance (for example, via a support email or one of our other feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request (without your name or identifying information attached) in order to clarify or respond to your request, or to help us support other users.
Information Shared Publicly: Information that you choose to make public is — you guessed it — disclosed publicly. That means information like your public profile, posts, other content that you make public on our Service, your "Likes" and comments are all available to others — and we hope they get a lot of views!

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share publicly.

We do not sell our users' data.

We aren't a data broker, we don't sell your personal information to data brokers, and we don't sell your information to other companies that want to spam you with marketing emails.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we and our partners work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We and our partners monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you and communications:

Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services may not be accessible.
Set your browser to reject cookies: Upon your first visit to our services, you will be asked if you agree to the use of our cookies. If you prefer, you have the option to reject the use of tracking cookies. You can do this either from the banner that automatically appears or by modifying your cookie preferences through the "Manage Cookies" link in the page footer.
Unsubscribe from our newsletters: Subscribers may unsubscribe from our newsletter at any time, either through the unsubscribe link at the end of every newsletter or on the website in your account settings. You may not opt out of Service-related communications (e.g., account verification, payment confirmation, changes/updates to our products or features, technical and security notices.)
Close your account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, you can close your account if you no longer want to use our Services.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including some US states and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

Request access to your personal data;
Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
Request portability of your personal data.

You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is:

Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and email address);
Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services, like the actions you take);
Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:

Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
Opt out of any sale of personal information; and
Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.

Contacting Us About These Rights

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to or you’d like to contact us about one of the other rights, contact us by going to your account on our site and clicking Contact Support.

When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

Creative Commons Sharealike License

We built this privacy policy using the template created by Automattic, the makers of WordPress, who made their Privacy Policy available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. By Reference's privacy policy is licensed that way, too. You can grab a copy of their Privacy Policy and other legal documents on GitHub. You’re more than welcome to copy ours or theirs, and adapt and repurpose them for your own use. Just make sure to revise the language so that your policy reflects your actual practices.