Privacy Statement

 

Thank you for visiting TheSmokingGun.com. Your privacy is important to us. As such, we provide this privacy statement explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used at this site.

The Information We Collect

At The Smoking Gun (TSG), you can order products, enter contests, vote in polls or otherwise express an opinion, subscribe to one of our services such as our online newsletters, or participate in one of our online forums or communities. In the course of these various offerings, we often seek to collect from you various forms of personal information. Examples of the types of personally identifiable information that may be collected at these pages include: name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, fax number, credit card information, and information about your interests in and use of various products, programs, and services.

At TSG, you may also be able to submit information about other people. For example, you might submit a person's name and e-mail address to send an electronic greeting card and, if you order a gift online and want it sent directly to the recipient, you might submit the recipient's name and address. Examples of the types of personally identifiable information that may be collected about other people at these pages include: recipient's name, address, e-mail address, and telephone number.

We, our service providers, advertisers and partners may collect various types of non-personally identifiable information when you visit any of our sites. A representative list of the types of non-personally identifiable information we may collect include: current Internet protocol address and type of browser you are using (e.g., Firefox, Internet Explorer), the type of operating system you are using, (e.g., Microsoft Windows or Mac OS), the domain name of your Internet service provider (e.g., Comcast, Verizon or AT&T), the web pages you have visited, sites visited before and after you visit TSG, the type of handheld or mobile device used to view the site (e.g., iPhone, Blackberry), location information, the content you have accessed and the advertisements you have been shown and/or clicked on.

You also can engage with our content, such as video, games, applications, and other offerings, on or through third-party social networking sites, such as Facebook and third-party social media plug-ins and applications.   When you engage with our content on or through third party social networking sites, plug-ins and applications, you may allow us to have access to certain information from your social media profile (e.g., name, e-mail address, photo, gender, birthday, location, your list of friends, people you follow and/or who follow you, the posts or the ‘likes’ you make) to deliver the content or as part of the operation of the application.  We may also obtain non-personally identifiable information (e.g., content viewed, game performance, high scores, and information about advertisements within the content you have been shown or may have clicked on) from your interaction with our content.

When you provide information from your social media account, it can help enable us to do things like (1) give you exclusive content, (2) personalize your online experience with us within and outside our applications or websites, and (3) contact you through the social networking sites or directly by sending you the latest news, special offerings, and rewards.  By doing so, you consent to the use of this information in accordance with our privacy policy. When you provide personal information to us through an application, on our sites, or on social networking sites, it may be publicly viewed by other members of these sites and we cannot prevent further use of the information by third parties.

Through some social networking sites’ privacy settings, you can control what data you share. For more information about how social networking sites handle your personal information, please refer to their privacy policies and terms of use.

How We Use the Information

We may use the information you provide about yourself to fulfill your requests for our products, programs, and services, to respond to your inquiries about our offerings, to offer you other products, programs or services that we believe may be of interest to you, to enforce the legal terms that govern your use of our sites, and/or for the purposes for which you provided the information.

We sometimes use this information to communicate with you, such as to notify you when you have won one of our contests or when we make changes to our terms of service, to fulfill a request by you for an online newsletter, or to contact you about your account with us.

We use the information that you provide about others to enable us to send them your gifts or cards or emails you may wish to send them from our sites, and for such other purposes as may be stated at the point where the information is collected.

The information we collect in connection with our online forums and communities is used to provide an interactive experience. We use this information to facilitate participation in these online forums and communities and, from time to time, to offer you products, programs, or services.

If you choose to submit content for publication (e.g., a letter to our editors, a posting to a blog or a discussion board, a video), we may publish your screen name and other information you have provided to us. We may on occasion combine information we collect through our sites with information that we collect from other sources.  Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, if you register and create a profile with our site, the screen name you select as well as other content you submit to your profile (e.g., photos, comments, video, reviews) will be displayed publicly on the Site and may be reused and redistributed by us in our discretion.

We use the non-personally identifiable information that we collect to improve the design and content of our sites, to deliver more relevant marketing messages and advertisements and to enable us to personalize your Internet experience. We also may use this information to analyze usage of our sites, as well as to offer you products, programs, or services.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

We may disclose personally identifiable information in response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena. We also may disclose such information in response to a law enforcement agency's request, or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our terms of use, to verify or enforce compliance with the policies governing our sites and applicable laws or as otherwise required or permitted by law or consistent with legal requirements.

In addition, we may transfer personally identifiable information about you if we, or one of our business units, are acquired by, sold to, merged with or otherwise transferred to another entity.

Our agents and contractors who have access to personally identifiable information are required to protect this information in a manner that is consistent with this privacy statement and are not authorized to use the information for any purpose other than to carry out the services they are performing for us.

Although we take appropriate measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personally identifiable information that we collect will never be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this privacy statement.

We may disclose personally identifiable information to third parties whose practices are not covered by this privacy statement (e.g., other marketers, magazine publishers, retailers, participatory databases, and non-profit organizations) that want to market products or services to you. If TSG shares personally identifiable information, it will provide you with an opportunity to opt out or block such uses either at the point of submission of your personally identifiable information or prior to any such disclosure.

If you have signed up to receive our e-mails and prefer not to receive marketing information from this site, follow the "unsubscribe" instructions provided on any marketing e-mail you receive from this site.

To provide visitors with additional or more relevant product and service opportunities, we may share non-personally identifiable information with third parties.

Cookies & Web Beacons

To enhance your online experience, we use "cookies" or similar technologies. Cookies are text files placed in your computer's browser to store your preferences. Cookies do not contain personally identifiable information; however, once you choose to furnish a site with personally identifiable information, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie.

We use cookies to understand site and Internet usage and to improve or customize the content, offerings or advertisements on our sites. For example, we may use cookies to personalize your experience at our sites (e.g., to recognize you by name when you return to a site), save your password in password-protected areas, and enable you to use shopping carts on our sites. We also may use cookies to help us offer you products, programs, or services that may be of interest to you and to deliver relevant advertising.

We, our third party service providers, advertisers or our partners also may use cookies to manage and measure the performance of advertisements displayed on or delivered by TSG and/or other networks or sites. This also helps us, our service providers and partners provide more relevant advertising. For more information regarding third-party ad servers, see "Collection of Information by Third-Party Sites, Ad Servers, and Sponsors" below.

The Adobe Flash Player is a powerful application and web tool that allows rapid development of highly dynamic content. TSG may employ locally stored objects (sometimes referred to as “Flash cookies”) in certain situations where we use Flash to provide special content such as video on demand, video clips or animation. Flash (and similar applications) use this technology to remember settings, preferences and usage similar to browser cookies but Flash cookies are not managed through your web browser. You can access your Flash management tools from Adobe’s website directly.

We, our third party service providers, advertiser or our partners may also use "web beacons" or clear .gifs, or similar technologies, which are small pieces of code placed on a web page, to monitor the behavior and collect data about the visitors viewing a web page. For example, web beacons may be used to count the users who visit a web page or to deliver a cookie to the browser of a visitor viewing that page.

You can change your privacy preferences regarding the use of cookies and similar technologies through your browser. You may set your browser to accept all cookies, block certain cookies, require your consent before a cookie is placed in your browser, or block all cookies. Blocking all cookies will affect your online experience and may prevent you from enjoying the full features offered at TSG. Please consult the "Help" section of your browser for more information.

Collection of Information by Third-Party Sites, Ad Servers, and Sponsors

Some of our sites contain links to or integrations with other sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., whose information practices may be different than ours. Visitors should consult the other sites' privacy notices as we have no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.

The Smoking Gun may offer content (e.g., contests, sweepstakes, promotions, games, applications, or social network integrations) that is sponsored by or co-branded with identified third parties. By virtue of these relationships, the third parties may obtain personally identifiable information that visitors voluntarily submit to participate in the site activity. We have no control over these third parties' use of this information. The site will notify you at the time of requesting personally identifiable information if these third parties will obtain such information.

We also use the services of reputable third parties to provide us with data collection, reporting, ad response measurement, and site analytics, as well as to assist with delivery of relevant marketing messages and advertisements. These third parties may view, edit or set their own cookies. We, our third party service providers, advertisers and/or partners may also place web beacons for these third parties. The use of these technologies by these third parties is subject to their own privacy policies and is not covered by this privacy statement.

Our Commitment to Security

We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, to maintain data security, and to use correctly the information we collect online.

How You Can Access or Correct Information

Access to personally identifiable information that is collected from our sites and that we maintain may be available to you. For example, if you created a password-protected account within our site, you can access that account to review the information you provided.

You may also send an e-mail requesting access to or correction of your personally identifiable information. For verification purposes please include your first name, last name, e-mail address and the password you use for such service.

How to Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about the online privacy statement for this site or its implementation you may contact us at [email protected].

Updates & Effective Date

From time to time, we may update this privacy statement. We will notify you about material changes in the way we treat personally identifiable information by sending an email message to the email address you most recently provided to us or by prominently posting a notice on our site. We encourage you to periodically check back and review this statement so that you always will know what information we collect, how we use it, and with whom we share it.

The Privacy Statement posted on this site was updated in January, 2014.