We want you to understand how and why the Lake Chapala Reporter collects, uses, and shares information about you when you use our site, or when you communicate with us. What We Collect (and How it is Used and Shared) Information You Provide to Us We collect information you provide to us directly. Account information Website: We require you to provide your name, a password, and an email address when you subscribe to the website. Your email address is used as your username by default. We store these data, and our staff is able to view your name, email address, and username. Passwords are always encrypted and illegible to us. Non-employees are not granted access to user data, except in the case of critical technical problems, when we may authorize a third-party software company access to our site for the purpose of debugging, as a last resort. Even in this rare instance, passwords are always encrypted and illegible.We also use a secondary level of data security for our website provided through the use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This encrypts all user data from non-authorized users, and is what differentiates HTTPS-secure sites (which we are) from non-secure HTTP sites. Newsletter: When you sign up to receive our newsletters, we require you to provide an email address. We store this data. It is protected in the same way our website data is protected. Content you submit Our readers occasionally send us Letters to the Editor. If we choose to publish them, we may edit the contents for length and clarity. We only publish names and/or email addresses with approval of the submitter. Whether published or not, the letters are never provided to any third party, nor are the contents of any email communication without the expressed permission of the sender. All emails (and all other forms of communication) are kept private, and all news tips are kept anonymous. Actions you take We occasionally conduct reader surveys, for which we use third-party software services, usually Survey Monkey. All questions and answers are stored on their servers, and are subject to their security and privacy policies. They collect respondents’ IP data, as well, in order to differentiate respondents, and to provide meaningful reports to us, whereupon we store the collected information, including IP addresses. We have the ability to request respondents’ names from the services, but we never do. Financial information We use Stripe payment services to handle all subscription payments. Upon requesting a subscription to our website, you are immediately transferred to the Stripe system, where credit or debit account information and payment information is stored. Stripe, in turn, submits that payment amount to us (minus their own fees), and lets us know who has paid for what. They also keep track of recurring payments, submitting charges to your card when the next payment is due. We never see or store any financial data. We do not store or have access to any financial information that could generate an unauthorized charge to your account, for instance. Information We Collect Automatically When you access our website, and/or receive our newsletters, we automatically collect information about you. This includes: Access and usage data We log information when you access and use our website. This includes your login date and time, IP address and location, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, device information (e.g., device IDs), device types and settings, pages visited, links clicked, the requested URL, and search terms.We also log information when you access and use our newsletters. This includes whether and when you opened a newsletter, and which articles you request to see on the website. Information collected from cookies We receive information from cookies, which are pieces of data your browser stores and sends on our behalf to data analysis services, like Google Analytics. We use cookies to understand how you are using our services, so we can improve them. We do not use the type of cookies that follow you around on the internet for ad placements, or for any other promotional activities. Linked services We use a third-party email delivery service called SendGrid, owned by Twilio, which uses our newsletter email mailing lists to send our newsletters out in bulk batches. Their privacy policy can be viewed here. They provide us with statistics about how each newsletter performs. Contact Us If you have any questions about this Data Security and Privacy Policy, please contact us at info@LakeChapalaReporter.com.