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5200 Hampton Boulevard, Norfolk VA 23508
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Privacy Policy

Last Updated: November 20, 2024

I. INTRODUCTION

Hampton Roads Educational Telecommunications Association, Inc. is a non-profit public media organization doing business as WHRO Public Media (“WHRO”, “us”, or “we”). We believe that when you visit our websites or use our mobile applications (each, a “Service”, and collectively, the “Services”), you should know what personal information we collect from or about you and how we use it. To further that purpose, we provide this Privacy Policy (sometimes referred to herein as the “Policy”) to explain what information we collect from or about visits to our Services, how we use it, and who we share it with, along with the rights and choices you may have with respect to your information.

This Privacy Policy applies to visitors and users of our website, www.whro.org, and any other website or application owned or operated by WHRO that links to this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy, together with our Terms of Use and any other agreement you may have with us, form an integral and binding part of our relationship with you.

PLEASE READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY BEFORE USING ANY WHRO SERVICES.  By using our Services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use. If you object to our data collection practices or any of the provisions in this Privacy Policy, your choice is to stop using our Services.

II. UPDATES AND EFFECTIVE DATE

We reserve the right to change or modify this Privacy Policy and/or the Services we offer at any time to reflect changes in our business, practices, or to keep current with relevant laws or industry standards. We may attempt to notify registered users of material changes by sending an email to the email address you most recently provided us in your account, profile, or registration (unless we do not have such an email address), and/or by posting notice of the changes on our Services. By continuing to use our Services following the effective date of any changes, you agree to our Privacy Policy as modified. For the avoidance of doubt, your access to and/or use of our Services will be subject to the most current version of this Privacy Policy posted on the Services at the time of your access or use. We recommend that you check the Services from time to time to inform yourself of any changes in this Privacy Policy.

III. COLLECTION OF INFORMATION

When you visit our Services, we collect a variety of information from and about you and your device, including personal information. For purposes of this Policy, “personal information” or “PI” means information that identifies you directly, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, credit card or other financial information associated with a donation, and personal and subscription preferences you may designate when creating an account profile. Personal information does not include publicly available information, aggregated information, or deidentified information, and this Policy does not restrict or limit our collection, use and/or sharing of publicly available, aggregate, or deidentified information.

If you post any of your information to a public area of the Services, please be aware that it is no longer personal information for purposes of this Policy, and we or anyone else may use such information without restriction. Additionally, if you provide access to personal or other information, including your email address or name, to other users through the application of any of our privacy controls or other Service settings, you hereby acknowledge and agree that we have no control over nor liability for how others may collect, use, or disclose such information.

A. Personal Information We Collect

1.  Information You Provide

You can generally browse our Services without creating an account or providing your personal information. However, in order to access or utilize some features of our Services, you will be required to provide certain personal information. For example, if you create an account or profile or sign up for a WHRO newsletter, you may be asked to provide your first and last name and email address. You may also voluntarily submit additional information through use of our Services, such as when you send us an email or engage with our social media pages.

2.   Automatic Collection

In addition to the personal information you give us directly, we may automatically collect certain information automatically when you visit or use our Services.

Activity Information
We collect information about how you use our Services, such as your search history, what pages you’ve clicked on and other uses of our features, and the amount of time you spend looking at different parts of our website or app.

Device Information
We also collect information about the browsers and device you use to access our Services, including your Internet Protocol or “IP” address, your operating system, the browser type, the address of a referring site and your activity on or in use of the Service. We may also collect information from mobile phone users in a similar manner to optimize the mobile experience, including mobile screen resolution, device make and manufacturer, and the device’s unique identifier.

Location Information
For app users, if you enable location services on your mobile device, we may collect the location of your device. We use your location information to track app usage, send any mobile alerts that you ask to receive, and provide services like localized search results. If you don’t want to use these features, you can turn off location services on your device.

For website visitors, we also collect location information for similar purposes from your browser. You can disable browser location services through your browser settings.

Cookies and Other Tracking Tech
We may use standard Internet technology, such as web beacons, pixel tags, cookies and other similar technologies, to track your use of the Services. We also may include web beacons in promotional email messages or newsletters to determine whether messages have been opened and acted upon. The information we obtain in this manner enables us to customize the services we offer visitors and users of the Services to deliver targeted advertisements and to measure the overall effectiveness of our online advertising, content, programming, or other activities.

We use a standard feature of browser software called a cookie to help us respond to the needs and preferences of visitors. A cookie assigns each visitor a unique code that resides on the visitor’s computer. We may use cookies or a personalization service for identifying the interests, preferences and behaviors of web site and app visitors to measure user traffic or obtain other analytics, to provide personalized services or to improve the Services’ functionality. The personalization service uses cookies to identify returning visitors. IP addresses may be stored and processed, and may be shortened and stored in an anonymized form. User interests, preferences, and behavior in the personalization service may be combined and shared with other customer databases such as email marketing.

Do-Not-Track Signals/Global Privacy Control
Certain websites and other technology can track their users over time to, for instance, provide targeted advertising. Do Not Track mechanisms and Global Opt Out/Global Privacy Control options allow Internet users to control, and where desired, prevent, the tracking of their online activities across such websites and technology. Our Services currently do not support the Do Not Track browser or any Global Opt Out/Global Privacy Control option. Please see the “Privacy Choices” section of this Privacy Policy for more information on how you can manage how your data can be used by us and/or third-party service providers.

3. Information From Third Parties

We may also receive your personal information from third parties, and may combine this information with personal information we maintain about you. If we do so, this Privacy Policy will govern our use of the combined information.

IV. PURPOSE FOR COLLECTION AND USE OF INFORMATION

We primarily use your personal information to respond to your request or otherwise fulfill or meet the reason for which the information is provided to us. For example, if you subscribe to a WHRO newsletter, we will use your email address to send the newsletter to you. We also may use information collected from or about any website visitor or app user to provide and improve our website or app, including to analyze website traffic, app usage, and troubleshoot technical issues. Finally, to the extent permitted by applicable law, we may also use the personal information we collect from or about you for the following purposes:

  • Delivering the products and services that you have requested;
  • Managing your account and provide you with customer support;
  • Communicating with you by email, postal mail, telephone, and/or mobile devices about products or services that may be of interest to you
  • Tailoring your user experience, information about your interactions with video content, such as the type of content viewed and making content recommendations;
  • Subscription registration for services which require subscription (such as our e-newsletters, event RSVPs, etc.);
  • Requests for donor information;
  • Donations of any kind;
  • Enforcing our Terms of Use;
  • Managing our business;
  • Performing functions as otherwise described to you at the time of data collection;
  • Distributing receipts and send you a “thank you” for donations;
  • Informing you about upcoming fundraising campaigns and other activities;
  • Internal analysis, such as research and analytics;
  • Record-keeping;
  • Reporting to applicable government agencies as required by law;
  • Surveys, metrics, and other analytical purposes; and
  • Other purposes related to fundraising operations.

Please note that anonymized donor information or donor comments may be used for promotional and fundraising activities. We may also ask you during the donation process for your consent to use your name publicly in connection with your donation. You can always refuse consent or let us know that you do not wish to allow us to use your personal information as we describe in this section either by documenting via: 1) email to info@whro.org 2) by writing to us at WHRO Public Media Member Services, 5200 Hampton Blvd, Norfolk, VA 23508; 3) by phone: 757- 889-9499 and/or 4) as part of the donation process if you call to donate.

V. DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We disclose your information to third parties when you request or instruct us to do so. We also may disclose information that we collect about you or that you provide us, including any personal information, as follows:

  • To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our operations and our Services and who are bound by contractual obligations to use personal information only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them;
  • In connection with a reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business for the purpose of evaluating and/or performing the proposed transaction (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings). These purposes may include, as examples, permitting such parties to determine whether to proceed or continue with the transaction, fulfilling any reporting or audit requirements to such parties, and/or disclosing personal information as part of concluding a sale or transfer of assets. Our successors and assigns may collect, use and disclose your personal information for substantially the same purposes as those set out in this Privacy Policy. In the event the transaction does not go through, we will require, by contract, the other party or parties to the transaction not to use or disclose your personal information in any manner whatsoever for any purpose, and to return or destroy such personal information;
  • To unaffiliated third parties when we believe its release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements, or protect the rights, property or safety of our company, our users or others. This includes exchanging information with other unaffiliated third parties in connection with fraud protection;
  • To comply with a legal process, such as a court order, subpoena, search warrant, or law enforcement request.

As previously noted, we may also disclose or share without restriction any publicly-available information or aggregated and/or de-identified information.

VI. USE OF FINANCIAL INFORMATION

Certain of our Services allow you to make a donation to WHRO. You may use a credit card, EFT/ACH information, or check when making a donation to WHRO. Please note that this transaction may be handled by our service vendor or the application platform responsible for processing your payment. The terms of the vendor’s privacy policy will apply to your provision of personal information in connection with such donation. Please be sure to review such third party policies at the links provided when submitting information for payment processing. If you do not agree with a vendor’s policy, do not proceed.

VII. DATA SECURITY

We take reasonable measures to protect your personal information in an effort to prevent loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. Our Service hosting providers apply security updates routinely and monitors to address known security issues, consistent with industry standards.

Please be aware, however, that despite our efforts, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable and no method of data transmission can be guaranteed against any interception or other type of misuse. To mitigate this risk, you should: (a) use secure usernames and passwords and carefully protect them from disclosure; and (b) implement updated Internet security and virus protection on your computer. If you suspect that your computer’s security or your information has been compromised or your password accessed or used by an unauthorized third party, please immediately change your password.

VIII. THIRD PARTY SITES; ADVERTISING

A. Third Party Sites

Our Services may contain links to other sites not owned or operated by WHRO. WHRO has no control over other sites that are linked to ours and such sites are not governed by this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review the applicable privacy policy provided by each third party website before you submit your personal information.

B. Social Media

The Services may include social media platforms or features, including but not limited to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube widgets, or interactive mini-programs that run on the Services. These features may collect your IP address, what content you are visiting on the Service, and may set a cookie or web beacon to enable the feature to function properly. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the social media company providing such feature.

C. Advertising

We may use third-party service providers to place advertisements to market WHRO Services on websites and/or apps across the Internet. The third-party service providers may collect anonymous information about your visits or use of our Services, and may use that information to target ads. They may collect web log data or place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser to enable you to receive customized ads. If you wish to opt out of interest-based advertising, please follow the instructions provided in the “Privacy Choices” section of this Privacy Policy.

IX. CHILDREN’S ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION

Some of our Services may present educational content for children. Consistent with the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 ("COPPA"), we will not knowingly request or collect personal information from any child under age 13. If we learn that a user under 13 years of age has submitted personal information through or using one of our Services, we will take reasonable measures to delete such information from our databases and not use such information for any purpose (except where necessary to protect the safety of the child or others as required by law).

If a child submits stories, artwork, comments, or anything else to us which is to be posted at one of our Services, we will first contact the child's parent or guardian for permission to use the submission. If permission is granted, the child will be identified only by first name, age or grade level, city and state. Please remind your child never to provide personal information on any app or website without first getting your consent.

Please visit http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/privacyinitiatives/childrens.html for information from the Federal Trade Commission about protecting children’s privacy online.

X. INTERNATIONAL NOTICE

Our Services are intended for United States use only.  If you have somehow accessed our Services outside of the United States, please be aware that the laws of your location do not apply. United States law may provide you with less protection than the laws of your jurisdiction in connection with the protection of your data, privacy, and otherwise. 

XI. PRIVACY CHOICES

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the information, including the personal information, you provide to us.

A. Location Information

As noted above, if you don’t want us to collect the location information of your device or browser, you can turn off location services on your device or browser settings.

B. Cookies and Other Tracking Tech

If you are using our Services, you can limit certain automatic data collection processes, including by setting your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some of the parts of this website may be inaccessible or not function properly.

C. Advertising

If you would like to opt out of interest-based advertising, you can use the DAA’s consumer choice tool. You can also visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s Opt Out page for more information about your privacy options for interest-based ads.

D. Communications

If you no longer wish to receive communications from WHRO, you have a number of options. If we contact you by email, you can use the unsubscribe mechanism provided in the email. If we call you, you can let us know that you do not want us to contact you in the future. If we send you a text message, you can text us back and indicate that you do not want to receive additional text messages. You can also contact us at the information provided in the “Contact Us” section below to indicate that you do not want to receive any further communications from us.

XII. CONTACT US

Your comments and questions help us serve you better and make your visit a pleasant one. If you have questions or complaints regarding this Policy or our handing of your personal information, please contact us at info@whro.org, or by phone at 757-889-9499.