This Privacy Policy sets out the ways in which we collect, use, disclose and process information from you. By signing up for a free account or a COCO+ membership with Coconuts, you agree to the terms and conditions set out in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into, and is to be read with, the Terms of Service located here, and the same definitions apply between the two agreements.
I. The Information We Collect
We receive both information that is directly provided to us, such as personal information you provide when you visit the Services, and information that is passively or automatically collected from you, such as anonymous information collected from your browser or device. In this Privacy Policy, we refer to all of this as “Information”.
We collect information to provide better services to you.
Information You Provide to Us
When you create a Coconuts Account, you provide us with mandatory personal information that includes your username, e-mail address and password. You can also choose to add your name, bio, city/location, website and profile picture to your account.
For some Services, you can register, order membership/subscription products, comment on stories, 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 offerings, we sometimes seek the collection of: name, address, e-mail address and telephone number.
We also occasionally collect additional Information about you through third-party service providers. For example, we may from time to time collect Information about you in surveys using SurveyMonkey. Such Information may include: your name, email, location, income level, and other demographic data. By participating in such collection, you consent to this additional Information being collected. This Information is stored by the respective service providers in their respective databases, in accordance with their privacy policy. We generally extract the relevant collected data for our purposes.
Information that is Passively or Automatically Collected
We and our partners (including third-party service providers, advertisers, advertising networks and platforms, agencies, and other partners) (our “Partners”) may use automated means to collect various types of Information about you, your computer or other device used to access our Services.
A representative, non-exhaustive list of the types of automatically collected information may include:
• network or Internet protocol address and type of browser you are using (e.g., Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer),
• the type of operating system you are using, (e.g., Microsoft Windows or Mac OS),
• the name of your Internet service provider and domains used by such providers,
• mobile network,
• device identifiers (such as an Apple IDFA or an Android Advertising ID),
• device settings,
• browser settings,
• the web pages of the Services you have visited,
• Services visited before and after you visit a Service,
• the type of handheld or mobile device used to view the Service (e.g., iOS, Android),
• location information, and
• the content and advertisements you have accessed, seen, forwarded and/or clicked on.
Please see our Section IV titled Cookies, and Other User and Ad-Targeting Technologies for more information about how the foregoing Information may be collected and used.
Geo-location Information
If you are accessing a Service from a mobile device or through a mobile application, you may be asked to share your precise (GPS level) geo-location information with us so we can customize your experience on our Services or on other Services when we work with a Partner such as a third-party mobile ad platform.
If you agree to such collection, in most cases, you will be able to turn off such data collection at any time by accessing the privacy settings of your mobile device and/or through the setting in the applicable mobile application.
Information Collected By and From Social Media Services and Other Third-Party Platforms
You also can engage with our content, such as articles, videos, applications, and other offerings, on or through social media services or other third-party platforms, such as Facebook, or other third-party social media plug-ins, integrations and applications. When you engage with our content on or through social media services or other third-party platforms, plug-ins, integrations or applications, you may allow us to have access to certain Information in your profile. This may include your name, e-mail address, photo, gender, birthday, location, an ID associated with the applicable third-party platform or social media account user files, like photos and videos, your list of friends or connections, people you follow and/or who follow you, or your posts or “likes.” For a description on how social media services and other third-party platforms, plug-ins, integrations or applications handle your information, please refer to their respective privacy policies and terms of use, which may permit you to modify your privacy settings.
When we interact with you through our content on third-party websites, applications, integrations or platforms, we may obtain any information regarding your interaction with that content, such as content you have viewed, and information about advertisements within the content you have been shown or may have clicked on.
II. How We Use the Information
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 Services,
3. contact you through the social media service or directly by sending you the latest news, special offerings, and rewards, and
4. enable you to share your experience and content via social media services.
When you provide information about yourself to us through an application, through our Services, or on social media services or other third-party platforms, it may be publicly viewed by other members of these services and we cannot prevent further use of the information by third parties.
We, along with our Partners, may use the Information to:
1. provide and communicate with you about the Services or your account with us,
2. fulfill your requests regarding the Services,
3. where expressly requested by you, sending you newsletters and notifications, some of which may include marketing messages from our Partners,
4. respond to your inquiries, and notify you if you have won a contest,
5. communicate with you about other products, programs or services that we believe may be of interest to you,
6. enforce the legal terms (including without limitation our policies and terms of service) that govern your use of our Services, and/or for the purposes for which you provided the Information,
7. provide technical support for the Services,
8. prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities (including, without limitation, copyright infringement) on or through the Services,
9. protect the safety of our Users,
10. customize or personalize ads, offers and content made available to you based on your visits to and/or usage of the Services or other online or mobile websites, applications, platforms or services, and analyze the
11. performance of those ads, offers and content, as well as your interaction with them,
12. perform analysis regarding how you use the Services or any part thereof,
send gifts, cards, invitations or emails if you use these services, to your designated recipients.
We or a Partner may use “cookies” or similar technologies to associate certain parts of the Information with a unique identifier that then associates the Information with your device or browser. For information about how these technologies work and how we may use them, please go to Section IV, titled Cookies, And Other User And Ad-Targeting Technologies. Sometimes, we may associate cookies with the Information, including de-identified, “hashed,” or anonymous versions of Information you have provided (such as during registration), in order to send or help our Partners send ads and offers based on your presumed interests or demographic information.
We may combine any of the Information we collect, for any of the above purposes, and may
sometimes enhance the Information with other information that we obtain from third-party sources.
Please also be aware that if you choose to submit Information or content for publication (e.g., a letter to our editors, comment on our website, a posting to a blog or a discussion board, an article, or a video), you are deemed to have given consent to us publishing that Information and content, along with other Information about you (such as your name, screen name or location).
Likewise, if you register and create a profile with our Service, the screen name you select as well as other content you submit to your profile (e.g., photos, comments, video, reviews, posts, articles) will be displayed publicly on the Service, is searchable, can be found by third parties and may be reused and redistributed by us in our sole discretion. See our Terms of Use for details on our use of content you submit.
III. Information Sharing and Disclosure
We may disclose the Information to third parties. We will ask for explicit consent to share any sensitive personal information, including but not limited to your race or religion. We may disclose the Information as follows:
Service providers
To service providers or Partners that we have engaged to perform business-related functions on our behalf. This may include service providers that: (a) conduct research and analytics; (b) create content; (c) provide customer, technical or operational support; (d) conduct or support marketing (such as email or advertising platforms); (e) fulfill orders and user requests; (f) handle payments; (g) host our Services, forums and online communities; (h) administer contests; (i) maintain databases; (j) send or support online or mobile advertising; and (k) otherwise support our Services.
Legal reasons
In response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena, a law enforcement or government agency’s request or similar request. Alternatively, with third parties in order to investigate, prevent, or take action (in our sole discretion) regarding potentially illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to any person, us, or the Services, or violations of our policies, the law or our Terms of Use, to verify or enforce compliance with the policies governing our Services.
Mergers, Acquisitions or Sale
We may transfer some or all of your Information if we, or one of our business units, undergoes a business transition, like a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or part of our assets, or if a substantial portion of our or of a business unit’s assets is sold or merged in this way.
Marketing reasons
We may share the Information with unaffiliated Partners and third parties (e.g., our third-party service providers, advertisers, advertising networks and platforms, agencies, other marketers, magazine publishers, retailers, participatory databases, and non-profit organizations) that wish to market products or services to you. We will only share non-identifiable personal data for these purposes. This means that without additional data, the Information shared cannot be used to identify you. If you wish to opt out from such sharing please visit the How to Contact Us/Opting Out of Marketing Communications section below for further instructions.
Contests, Promotions or Games
Please note that the Services covered by this Privacy Policy 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 information from their visitors. We have no control over these third parties’ use of this information, which is subject to their own privacy policies.
IV. Cookies and Other User and Ad-Targeting Technologies
We use cookies and other technologies both to provide our Services to you and to advertise to you. We also may work with Partners to help them advertise to you when you visit other websites or mobile applications, and to help them perform user analytics. These technologies may also be used to analyze how our Users interact with advertising on our Services and elsewhere, and more generally, to learn more about our Users and what services or offers you might prefer to receive. We describe some of these technologies below.
Cookies
To enhance your online experience, we and our Partners use “cookies”, “web beacons” or other tracking technologies. Cookies are text files placed in your computer’s browser to store your preferences. We use cookies or other tracking technologies to understand Service and Internet usage and to improve or customize the products, content, offerings, services or advertisements on our Services.
For example, we may use cookies to personalize your experience at our Services (e.g., to recognize you by name when you return to a Service), save your password in password-protected areas, and enable you to use shopping carts on our Services. We also may use cookies or other tracking technologies to help us offer you products, content, offerings or services that may be of interest to you and to deliver relevant advertising when you visit this Service. We or a third-party platform with whom we work may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser to enable you to receive customized content, offers, services or advertisements on our Services or other sites.
These cookies contain no information intended to identify you personally. The cookies may be associated with de-identified demographic or other data linked to or derived from data you voluntarily have submitted to us (e.g., your email address) that we may share with a service provider solely in hashed, non-human readable form.
We, our third-party service providers, advertisers, advertising networks and platforms, agencies, or our Partners also may use cookies or other tracking technologies to manage and measure the performance of advertisements displayed on or delivered by or through Coconuts and/or other networks or Services. This also helps us, our service providers and Partners provide more relevant advertising.
Syncing Cookies and Identifiers
We may work with our Partners (for instance, third-party ad platforms) to synchronize unique, anonymous identifiers (such as those associated with cookies) in order to match our Partners’ uniquely coded user identifiers to our own.
We may do this, for instance, to enhance data points about a particular unique browser or device, and thus enable us or others to send ads that are more relevant, match Users to their likely product interests, or better synchronize, cap, or optimize advertising.
Locally Stored Objects
Our services may employ locally stored objects (“LSOs”) and other client side storage tracking technologies in certain situations where they help to provide a better user experience, such as to remember settings, preferences and usage similar to browser cookies, or in order to target or help our Partners target ads, analyze ad performance, or perform user, website or market analytics. For LSOs utilized by Adobe Flash you can access Flash management tools from Adobe’s website. In addition, some, but not all browsers, provide the ability to remove LSOs, sometimes within cookie and privacy settings.
Disabling Cookies
Most web browsers are set up to accept cookies. You may be able to set your browser to warn you before accepting certain cookies or to refuse certain cookies. However, if you disable the use of cookies in your web browser, some features of the Services may be difficult to use or inoperable.
We may work with certain third-party companies that use techniques other than HTTP cookies to recognize your computer or device and/or to collect and record information about your web surfing activity, including those integrated with our Services. Please keep in mind that your web browser may not permit you to block the use of these techniques, and those browser settings that block conventional cookies may have no effect on such techniques. To learn more about Interest-Based Advertising or to opt-out of this type of advertising by those third parties that are members of DAA’s opt-out program, please go to http://www.aboutads.info.
Web Beacons
We and our Partners may also use “web beacons” or clear GIFs, or similar technologies, which are small pieces of code placed on a Service or in an email, to monitor the behavior and collect data about the visitors viewing a Service or email. 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 Service. Web beacons may also be used to provide information on the effectiveness of our email campaigns (e.g., open rates, clicks, forwards, etc.).
Mobile Device Identifiers and SDKs
We also sometimes use, or partner with publishers or publisher-facing or app developer platforms that use, mobile Software Development Kits (“SDKs”), to collect information, such as mobile identifiers (e.g., IDFAs and Android Advertising IDs), and information connected to how mobile devices interact with our Services and those using our Services. Such SDKs provide computer code that app developers can include in their apps to enable ads to be shown, data to be collected, and related services or analytics to be performed. We may use this technology to deliver or help our partners and other third parties to deliver certain advertising through mobile applications and browsers based on information associated with your mobile device. If you’d like to opt-out from having ads tailored to you in this way on your mobile device, please follow the instructions in the “Your Ad Choices” section below.
By using the Services, whether as a registered user or otherwise, you acknowledge, and agree that you are giving us your consent to track your activities and your use of the Service through the technologies described above, as well as similar technologies developed in the future, and that we may use such tracking technologies in the emails we send to you.
Our unaffiliated Partners and third parties may themselves set and access their own tracking technologies when you visit our Services and they may have access to information about you and your online activities over time and across different websites or applications when you use the Service. Their use of such tracking technologies is not in our control and is subject to their own privacy policies.
V. Other Important Information About Your Privacy
Linked Services
Some of the Services contain links to or integrations with other services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other media services and platforms whose information practices may be different than ours. Visitors should consult these other services’ privacy notices as we have no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.
Data Security
We have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures designed to help prevent unauthorized access, to maintain data security, and to use correctly the Information we collect online. These safeguards vary based on the sensitivity of the Information that we collect and store.
Although we take appropriate measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of Information, we cannot assure you that Information will never be disclosed, altered or destroyed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.
How You Can Access or Correct Information
Access to certain personal Information that is collected from our Services and that we maintain may be available to you. For example, if you created a password-protected account within our Service, you can access that account to review account Information.
You may also send an e-mail to info@coconuts.co requesting access to or correction of your personal Information. Please include your registration information for such service such as first name, last name and e-mail address in the request. We may ask you to provide additional information for identity verification purposes, or to verify that you are in possession of an applicable email account.
How to Contact Us/Opting Out of Marketing Communications
If you have any questions or concerns about the online Privacy Policy for this Service or its implementation, or if you would like to opt out from our sharing of your personal Information with unaffiliated third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes you may contact our Privacy Policy Coordinator at the above email address and request that we opt you out of such sharing. We may ask you to provide additional information for identity verification purposes, or to verify that you are in possession of an applicable email account.
If you have signed up to receive our e-mails and prefer not to receive marketing information from this Service, follow the “unsubscribe” instructions provided on any marketing e-mail you receive from this Service.
How to Delete Your Account With Us
If you wish to delete your existing account, you may send an e-mail to info@coconuts.co requesting the deletion of your account. Please include your registration information for such service such as first name, last name and e-mail address in the request. We may ask you to provide additional information for identity verification purposes, or to verify that you are in possession of an applicable email account. If you wish to cancel your paid COCO+ Membership, please follow the instructions in our COCO+ Membership FAQs here.
Upon deletion of your account, we will delete all Information you have provided us when you signed up. Although we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the Information we have collected will be deleted, we are unable to ensure that Information with service providers and third parties will be deleted entirely as those as subject to their respective privacy policies.
International Transfer
As Coconuts Media is a company that operates globally, it may be necessary to transfer your Information internationally. When transferring data overseas, Coconuts Media will ensure that the transfer will be subject to appropriate safeguards and that you and the Information will continue to be protected to the same standards set forth in this Privacy Policy.
VI. Updates and Effective Date
From time to time, we may update this Privacy Policy. We will notify you about material changes by either sending an email message to the email address you most recently provided to us or by prominently posting a notice on our Service. We encourage you to periodically check back and review this policy so that you always will know what information we collect, how we use it, and with whom we share it.
Last updated June 5, 2018
