Privacy Policy

Our commitment to you

The Frederick News-Post recognizes the importance of protecting your privacy. This policy is intended to outline our legitimate business interests in collecting and using information, and your reasonable expectations of privacy. It applies to all News-Post websites, mobile platforms, apps, social media activities, contests, merchandise sales and related online components and technologies, such as advertising, marketing or registration platforms and the like, which are collectively referred to below as “Online Services.”

Security

When you enter payment and personal information on our web pages, you will see that we use SSL certificates to encrypt your data as you submit it. Our internal systems and procedures are periodically reviewed for compliance with industry standards on data security.

The Frederick News-Post’s websites and other Online Services may contain links to other sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of those sites.

Information we collect

We may collect personal information about you in various ways: Information you provide directly to us, information that we collect through the use of Online Services, and information we collect from publicly available sources or third parties.

Information you provide to us

Membership and registration. When you register, join, subscribe, complete a survey, enter a contest or interact with The Frederick News-Post by mail, phone, email, through Online Services or otherwise, you may be asked to give us personal information. The information required to use our Online Services varies, but it may include your name, age, email address, mailing address and phone number. For purchases, credit card and billing information may be required.

User-generated content and activities. We also collect information that you provide when you comment on articles or submit photos, videos, Letter to the Editor, feedback forms or other content to our Online Services.

Contests, events and special offers. We may request personal information when you enter a contest, place an classified ad, purchase an event ticket, order additional products or otherwise engage with our Online Services.

Information from your use of Online Services

In addition to the information you provide to us directly, we automatically collect technical information related to your use of our Online Services. We may combine this automatically collected information with other information you provide us or with third-party information to improve our Online Services, provide content recommendations, improve our marketing, offer advertising and track access across devices to Online Services. We use a variety of technologies to manage and track usage of Online Services, including but not limited to:

• Log data. Log files are generated when you visit our Online Services and may contain information about your browser, operating system, device model and IP address. Log files may also contain information such as the time and duration of your use of Online Services and other information about how you interact with content and any information we use for online tracking and advertising.
• Cookies. The Frederick News-Post employs 'cookies' in circumstances that require session data or require user verification. Cookies are small txt files sent by your computer each time you visit our Online Services and are unique to you. We use both session cookies (these last until you close your browser) and persistent cookies (these last until you or your browser deletes them). We use cookies to recognize you and to provide personalization as well as help us understand how people use our Online Services. For example, when you use the Remember Me function to stay logged in, our Online Services are setting a cookie with an identifier so that the site will remember you the next time you visit. If you do not accept cookies from us, it may interfere with your access to the Services.

Information from Third Parties

We may receive information about you from publicly and commercially available sources, as permitted by law, which we may use in conjunction with other information that we receive directly from you.

How we use information

We use the information that you provide to us, that we collect from your use of our Online Services and that we acquire from third parties in a variety of ways to improve your experience:

• To provide and manage the services you request. We may use your information to identify you and process transactions. For example, processing your membership, sending you newsletters, personalizing content or enabling you to participate in an Online Service we provide.
• To communicate with you. The News-Post may use your information to communicate with you about offers, changes in policies or in service of our operations. The News-Post may use information it has collected from users to promote News-Post products and services; we will make every effort to allow users to opt out of promotional messages from The News-Post. The News-Post may use information it has collected from users to promote products and services on behalf of advertisers; we will make every effort to allow users to opt out of promotional messages from advertisers.
• To deliver targeted advertising. We may use the information to deliver targeted ads, promotions and offers. For example, we use Google to serve advertisements on our Online Services, which use the Google DoubleClick cookie to show you ads based on your visits to our Online Services as well as other sites.
• To customize your experience. We may use the information to customize features of our Online Services or advertising.
• To improve our products and services. The News-Post performs analyses of user demographics, interests and behavior as well as membership and purchase patterns. We do this to better understand how you are using our Online Services to improve your experience and shape our product development as well as to inform partners and advertisers about the characteristics of our membership.
• To protect the rights of the others. We may use your information to protect the legal rights, privacy, or safety of the Services, our employees or other users.

Sharing information

It is not the policy of The News-Post to sell or make available personally identifiable user information to unrelated third parties. We may share your personal information with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in this policy:

• Within Ogden Newspapers, to facilitate our business operations;
• Our professional advisors such as auditors, accountants and lawyers, etc.;
• Companies that provide services to help us with our business activities, such as data storage, maintenance services, database management, web analytics and payment processing;
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your Personal information in the same way as set out in this Policy.

We may also disclose your personal information as required by law, such as to comply with a subpoena, or a similar legal process, when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request, and to any other third party with your prior consent to do so, unless notification is prohibited by the applicable law.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes and we only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Social Media sharing

The News-Post may allow registered users, members and subscribers to establish online identities and use social networking tools, which can include befriending other users, updating profile information, posting comments on other users' profiles and identifying pieces of content as something of interest. When you take advantage of these site features, you are agreeing to share personal information with other users. Users should keep in mind when posting a user name or email address on other user-posted content areas that their information, along with any information in their postings, can be read by any third parties and may result in unsolicited messages from other posters or third parties.

User-posted content

The News-Post may make use of or refer to user-posted content for the purposes of promoting Ogden Newspapers of Maryland, LLC publications, in print or online. The News-Post makes no claim of ownership to such user-posted content.

Third-party sites and services

Please be aware that any information submitted on a co-branded page with a third party may result in that third party using your information according to its privacy policy. We do not and cannot control such third-party uses. Examples of third parties that The News-Post currently utilizes are the Associated Press, Google, Second Street Media and Legacy.com.

How to access and update your information

Content Posted on our Online Services. Most of our Online Services include information on how to remove your information or cancel the Online Service. You may alternatively send us an email at webmaster@newspost.com identifying the services and information you would like removed. Please provide explicit reasons why we should remove the content. We reserve the right to decline requests for removal of information based on maintaining the historical and archival nature of our website(s).

Managing your Fredericknewspost.com account. If you are a member, you may access or modify your account through our Member Center – manage account page. If you are a registered user, you may access or modify your account through the User Dashboard.

Email. You may opt out of receiving messaging from us through the unsubscribe links and instructions contained in those email messages.

Targeted advertising. We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit websites operated by The News-Post. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, visit http://www.networkadvertising.org.

Children’s Privacy Statement

This children’s privacy statement explains our practices with respect to the online collection and use of personal information from children under the age of 13 and provides important information on your rights under federal law with respect to such information.

We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13. If we become aware that we have inadvertently received personally identifiable information from a user under the age of 13, we will delete such information from our records. Because we do not collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13, we also do not knowingly distribute such information to third parties. We do not knowingly allow children under the age of 13 to publicly post or otherwise distribute personally identifiable contact information. We do not condition a child’s participation in online activities on providing more personally identifiable information than is needed to participate in the activity.

Privacy Policy Changes

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post these changes here so that you will always know what information we gather, how we might use that information and whether we will disclose it to anyone. If, at any time, you have questions or concerns about The News-Post's privacy policy, please feel free to e-mail us at webmaster@newspost.com or call 301-662-1177.

Terms of use

By accessing or using a website operated by The Frederick News-Post, you agree to be bound by the site's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy ("Agreement"), as The Frederick News-Post may amend them at any time. All amendments automatically go into effect on the day after they are posted on the website. Use of the website subsequent to such posting shall constitute your agreement to all such amendments. (See Terms of Use.)

Revised May 25, 2018.