Privacy Policy

Effective Date November 29, 2010

At KPBS, we recognize the importance of privacy to visitors of our Web sites and services (the "KPBS Web Sites" or "Service"). This Privacy Policy explains what type of information is collected from you when you visit the KPBS Web sites and how that information may be used. Please note that this Privacy Policy is separate and distinct from the privacy policies of the web sites that may link to or from KPBS.

Gathering of Information

KPBS collects personally-identifying information (such as your name, e-mail address, address, telephone number, credit card information) from the KPBS Web Sites for a variety of purposes.

KPBS asks visitors to provide certain personal information when they register for certain features or services of the KPBS Web Sites, when they create a profile in the KPBS Community, when they e-mail or share a page of the KPBS Web Sites, when they post, upload, transmit and/or otherwise submit ("Submit") a comment, message, story idea, essay, photo, image, or other text, content or material ("User Materials"), and when they register for any online contests. KPBS also may ask visitors to provide personal information in other limited circumstances specified at the time the information is gathered. Any information that you Submit on or through the KPBS Community or other social networking features, as part of story or blog comments, or otherwise Submit to the KPBS Web Sites, may become public, including the full name and nickname that you provide when registering for the KPBS Community.

Like all other Web servers, KPBS automatically creates log files for each visitor who accesses the KPBS Web Site. These "access logs" allow us to make our site more useful to our visitors. The access logs do NOT record a visitor's name, address, e-mail address, phone number, credit card numbers, or any other personally-identifying information. Rather, they contain some or all of the following information:

• The Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) of the machine which accessed our Web site.
• The date of the visit.
• The time of the visit.
• The path taken through our Web site.
• The browser being used.
• A list of files downloaded or viewed.
• The amount of time spent listening to/viewing media files.
• Any errors encountered.

Cookies and Other Technologies

KPBS also uses "cookies" to collect information. A cookie is a string of characters that can be written to a file on the user's hard drive when the user visits a Web site. Only the Web site that set the cookie can read it, and it can only be used as a record keeping device to store user IDs and information that the site already has. It cannot be used to read other information from the user's hard drive.

KPBS uses cookies to track users' activity through the site in order to improve the site's architecture, to offer the user interactive features that would not be possible without them, and to recall specific information to save the user time during subsequent visits to the site. For example, cookies allow KPBS to remember your registration information while you are logged in. Our sponsorship service vendors, which serve sponsorship messages onto our site, and third party vendors such as Google Analytics that measure and analyze the use of the KPBS Web Sites for KPBS, may also use their own cookies.

KPBS and the third party vendors that measure and analyze use of the KPBS Web sites for KPBS also may use web beacons, alone or in conjunction with cookies, to help compile information about usage of the KPBS Web Sites. A web beacon is an electronic image, also known as a single-pixel (1x1) or clear .gif., which can be used to recognize certain information on your computer, such as cookies, the time and date of a page viewed, and a description of where API Content is placed. We may use web beacons on this site from time to time for this and other purposes.

If you wish to prevent certain or all cookies or web beacons from being set to your hard drive you may disable them in your browser's preferences, although your browser might then be unable to accommodate certain functionalities on the KPBS Web sites.

Use of Information

The use of personally-identifying information is limited to the following: managing and administering the KPBS Web sites; responding to user messages; listing name and location (city, state and/or country) information provided by users when broadcasting or publishing User Materials; contest management; editorial purposes such as contacting users for an online survey; sending KPBS e-mail newsletters and other communications, including marketing and promotional communications, from KPBS to users who have "opted in" to the receipt of such communications; other internal KPBS purposes; and other purposes specified at the time the information is gathered. KPBS may contact users regarding their submissions in certain circumstances.

Any information that you disclose when participating in the KPBS Community (including creating a profile or submitting a comment to a story or blog or in a discussion thread), such as your full name and any nickname, is likely to become public. This information may be posted on the KPBS Web Sites. In addition, KPBS 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 KPBS Web Sites, other third party web sites, over the air (on radio or television), and on mobile platforms. Further, other users of the KPBS Web Sites may embed a widget or feed that allows your User Materials to appear on their personal, noncommercial web site, blog or other application, subject to conditions set forth in the Terms of Use.

In addition, if you send User Materials to KPBS through our Web site, we may print the User Materials, or an excerpt from the User Materials, on the KPBS Web site, read them on air, or otherwise publish them in any other medium, together with your name and location (city, state and/or country) if you provide that information to us.

Excluding information provided by the user when participating in the KPBS Community or sending User Materials to KPBS, which may become public as discussed above, personally-identifying information collected by KPBS is not provided to outside parties except KPBS service vendors, and other third parties when the user specifically consents to such distribution (such as the disclosure of your name to a friend when you email a story to that friend). In these circumstances, the information is provided for the sole purpose of -- and only to the extent necessary for -- delivering the goods to the user, delivering communications from KPBS to users who have "opted in" to the receipt of these communications, providing services for and on behalf of KPBS, or serving other internal KPBS purposes.

Periodically, KPBS exchanges member mail contact information with other like-minded nonprofit organizations (i.e. The Old Globe, Birch Aquarium, San Diego Historical Society, etc.) for the purposes of our direct mail campaigns. Exchanges are done solely to help offset the costs of list rentals for our direct marketing activities and this benefits both nonprofits. There is no financial compensation involved in exchanges and we do not sell our list. Our members/donors have the right and opportunities to request that their information not be included in such exchanges, if that is their preference. We do not exchange e-mail addresses.

KPBS also may disclose personal information if required to do so by law or if it believes that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law or with legal process, (b) protect against misuse or unauthorized use of the KPBS Web Sites, or (c) protect the personal safety or property of users of the KPBS Web Sites, the public or KPBS and its employees.

If you do not want your personally-identifying information to be collected or used for any of these purposes, please do not provide it (although if you do not provide it, you may not be able to use or participate in certain features of the KPBS Web Sites). You can also 'opt out' according to the process described below.

KPBS, with the assistance from time to time of its third party service vendors, uses non-identifying aggregate information to analyze use of and better design the KPBS Web Sites and to share with third parties in aggregate form only as appropriate. For example, we may tell a third party that a certain number of users accessed a particular audio stream on our Web site. However, we will not disclose any information that could be used to identify those users.

KPBS may analyze Google Analytics Demographic and Interest Reporting data that is provided via Google's interest-based advertising, to better understand our audience and what our users are seeking on our site, in order to provide a better service; individually-identifiable data is never disclosed to our staff from this service. You may opt out of Google's ad network by signing in to your Google account and going to google.com/settings/ads.

Security

KPBS 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 to KPBS via the Membership donation form, events registration form and other Web interfaces is protected against unauthorized use by our service provider. However, no Internet or e-mail transmission is ever fully secure or error free. Because most e-mail is not encrypted, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via e-mail.

Corrections to Personal Data; Opting Out

Please Contact Us via e-mail to a) correct or update any personal information in the KPBS database that you state is erroneous, b) opt-out of future communications from KPBS, or c) request KPBS to make reasonable efforts to remove your personal information from the KPBS Online database, thereby canceling your KPBS Community profile, KPBS newsletter registration and other KPBS registrations. This will not necessarily remove previous public comments and other User Materials Submitted for public display on the KPBS Web Sites. The user understands that it may be impossible to delete personal information entirely because of backups and records of deletions.

Acceptance of Privacy Policy Terms

KPBS reserves the right to change this policy. Any changes to this policy will be posted to this page as soon as reasonably possible, so please check this page periodically. Use of the KPBS Web Sites constitutes consent to any policy then in effect. Please make sure that you read KPBS' Terms of Use to understand additional terms and conditions which apply to the use of the KPBS Web Sites.

If you have any questions or comments concerning our Privacy Policy, please Contact Us via e-mail or send a letter to:

KPBS Audience and Member Services

KPBS

5200 Campanile Dr.

San Diego, CA 92182-5400

Links to other Sites

It is important to note that the KPBS Web Sites contains links to other sites that may not follow the same privacy policies as the KPBS Web Sites. For instance, clicking on a sponsorship notice on KPBS.org will take you to an entirely different site. These sites may use cookies, collect data, and use the data in ways that the KPBS Web Sites would not. KPBS is not responsible for the privacy practices or any information or materials on these other sites. Please visit these sites if you wish to review their privacy policies.