In the interest of data transparency and compliance with various relevant laws and regulations, the following privacy policy is provided to help users understand what data might be collected when they visit the Decensored News website (“the site” or “this site”), and how it might be used by the site’s owner, Decensored Media (“the site owner”), and/or other parties.
VPNs
Please note that using a VPN to access the web can help shield information such as your real IP address and geographic location from the websites you visit, including this one, and their owners, host providers, and other third parties. Many different companies offer VPN services for as little as a few US dollars per month. Proton VPN even offers a free version.
SERVER LOGS
Like most sites on the web, this site’s hosting provider maintains access logs on their servers. These logs may contain information such as a user’s internet protocol (IP) address, ISP, location (country, region, city), browser information, URI user agent, cache data, operating system, time of visit, location, referrer, TLS version, and pages visited. These logs are accessible to the web host and the site owner, and are handled in accordance with the hosting provider’s terms and policies.
The hosting provider uses data from these logs to provide a basic analytics dashboard for the site owner, which shows aggregated information such as total number of site visits per day/month, number of visits to each page on the site, and a breakdown of the number of visits by country, browser, operating system, file type accessed, and traffic source. See here for more information about this dashboard, what data it provides, and screenshots of what it looks like.
ANALYTICS
This site uses the web analytics platform Matomo, a popular, open source, and more privacy-oriented alternative to Google Analytics. Matomo tracks traffic to the site, including users’ location (country, region, city), browser information (e.g. resolution, primary language), user agent, visit timestamps, user ID, pages visited, and referring page. It may also track custom variables and on-page events such as the clicking of links or buttons. It may use cookies to do so. This data is aggregated and used to help the site owner better understand how users are interacting with the site and its contents.
Matomo is not (to the site owner’s knowledge) configured to store users’ full IP addresses, nor does it have access to information such as their names or email addresses. The goal is to help the site owner identify broad trends in user behavior on the site – such as popular or “trending” articles – using “anonymized” (or “pseudonymized”) data, not to personally identify specific users. This data, and the reports Matomo generates based upon it, can be used to improve the site’s content, user experience, and promotional strategy.
Data collected by Matomo is stored on the same server(s) and database(s) as the site itself. It may be accessible to the site owner and hosting provider. It is not sold to other third parties.
You may opt-out from Matomo’s data collection on this site at any time from this page.
USER-SUPPLIED DATA
There are various ways that a user can voluntarily supply information to the site owner. For instance, a user can send a message via the Contact page if they so choose. Such messages, along with the provided name, email address, subject line, and any other data entered into the form, may be retained, shared, or published at site owner’s discretion.
Similarly, the site may offer users the option to sign up to email lists or create a user account. Names, email addresses, and other data voluntarily provided by the user through such forms may be retained and used for the purposes described on any such sign-up forms.
AFFILIATE LINKS
To help support the site financially, advertising banners may be placed in designated spots throughout this site. These banners are self-hosted image files, and they are marked with the word “ADVERTISEMENT” above them. If a user clicks one, they will be taken to the website of the promoted company. The banners’ links are formulated in such a way as to inform the company that the user came from this website (aka “affiliate links”). This allows the company to offer discounts to such users if they so choose, and to credit this site as the referrer. This site will typically earn a commission for any purchases made by users who visit such companies’ sites via these links. Clicks on these advertising banners may be tracked by the site owner and/or the promoted company to help quantify the amount of interest and engagement. Once the user leaves this site and visits a promoted company’s site, they are subject to that site’s privacy and cookie policies (like any external hyperlink on the web). At a minimum, these companies’ sites will likely set a cookie to remember that the user was referred via this site’s affiliate program.
GOOGLE FONTS
This site uses the Google Fonts API to load certain fonts. The Google Fonts API, per Google, is “designed to limit the collection, storage, and use of end-user data to only what is needed to serve fonts efficiently. The use of the Google Fonts Web API is unauthenticated and the Google Fonts API does not set or log cookies.”
Furthermore: “When end users visit a website that embeds Google Fonts via the Google Fonts Web API, Google‘s servers receive the IP addresses of the users as a part of the network connection between Google and the user. Google does not log or store the IP addresses and immediately deletes them after transmitting the font to the requesting user.”
Read the full Privacy and Data Collection page for Google Fonts for more details.
