At Unpress we need to walk a fine line between Privacy, Security, Accuracy and Trust. Unlike many other platforms the content on Unpress is limited to non-fiction. This means that for Unpress users, trust, verifiability, transparency and accountability is paramount; particularly between viewers and creators.
The result is, that the pure anonymity offered by other platforms is not only less available, it’s also very counter productive, especially if you are a creator or want to engage in discussion, perspectives and communities. To top it off, we’re a startup, and that means that some of the privacy controls we want to implement are not yet available.
This privacy policy has a lot of parts, but the TLDR version is as follows:
Unpress is a public platform | We collect data about you, but only the minimum amount necessary to provide our service | We use the data we collect to continually improve |
Third Parties that we integrate with might have their own policies | Unpress is still under construction Learn about what to expect in the future in the blue information sections below | If you have any questions, just ask |
User data we collect
The information we collect is based on your account. This means that in order for the Unpress platform to work, you need to provide us with some information about yourself. How much information depends on what features of the platform you want to use.
Account Data
At this time we only offer social login via Google, with Apple, Facebook and others to follow. When you login from a third party we create an account for you linked to the email address you used to login, which is used to identify your Unpress account. You fill in your first and last name, a username, your date of birth and an optional Bio. This is important primarily if you want to be a creator and establish yourself as a legitimate journalist. All of the previous information is required so that we can provide the Unpress services to you.
All of that information is publicly visible on your profile, with the exception of your date of birth, which we do not share with anyone.
When you set your preferences, we collect that information so that we can respect your preferences.
What to expect in the Future, real soon nowTM
Organization & Internationalization
In the future, there may be additional categories in your profile, such as an organization you represent, with their address and your organization email address. All of these will be public.
We also plan to internationalize, so we will need to know your display language.
Social networking features
When we finish implementing social networking features, we will ask for access to your address book or contacts if you want to invite your friends and connect with people you know. This is optional. None of this data will be public, other than the connections you make, (i.e. who you are following and who is following you.) Your connections will always be public.
Community awareness
This feature will help you get stories relevant to you, and have a greater voice in discussions, perspectives and stories about the communities you are a member of. This is being constructed in such a way as to give greater voice to those inside of a community so that those voices can be heard over those from outside a community. If you feel that you are from an under-represented or not well understood community, this feature is for you!
If you are interested in community aware features, we will ask specify the community you live in, or are from, communities you identify with, and optionally your location data. We will implement privacy settings so that you can optionally show this data on your profile. We will not, however, show your location data unless you specifically allow it when posting a story or performing a live broadcast.
Account Validation
If you want to create and share stories, one way to improve trust with your audience will be to validate your account. When you validate your account you will need to use your real identity for your First and Last name.
Training, Tips and Monetization
In the future you will have the ability to buy journalism specific training, tip creators or receive tips from your viewers, setup subscriptions, get compensated for advertising and more. If you want to participate in this, then you’ll need to supply your payment information.
When you take and complete training, we will show this information on your public profile, along with any completion and certification badges. These help you establish greater credibility with your viewers and within the Journalism community.
When you use Unpress, we collect additional information
In order to continually improve and evolve our products and services, we will collect information on how you use them. We use that to help keep Unpress safe and secure, and to ensure that we are providing you with the services and user experience you want.
We collect information about your activity on Unpress, including:
The date, application and version of Unpress that you are using.
Interactions with content, such as stories you’ve watched, shares, and the comments and replies you’ve made, including if other users mention you or tag you in any content.
Interactions with other people, such as people you follow, your followers, when you use direct messages, the date and time of each message, the contents of those messages as well as the recipients.
Interactions with Unpress, including communications with us via our help form or through email. We will collect information about the communication and its content, as well as any links you have interacted with on our services, including emails and links in emails that we send you.
Transaction and payment information for any purchases made through the platform, including through any of our partners. We will receive information on the transaction, including the date, amounts paid or received, and the parties involved.
Location Information
We do not yet use or collect location information, but this is planned for the future, for both the Community Awareness feature mentioned above, and eventually, advertising. When these features are implemented, we will collect some information about your approximate location to help decide relevant content and advertising to show you. If you select to share precise GPS location data, then we will see that data and use it for the aforementioned reasons. You can also choose to share your current precise location to let users know where you may be broadcasting from.
Device Information
We collect information from and about the different devices you use to access Unpress, and how you use them. This includes:
Your device, operating system, operating system version, language settings, screen orientation, amount of memory, amount of storage, apps installed and battery level.
Information about your connection, such as your carrier, IP address and browser type, strength and speed of your network connection so that we can optimize streaming to your device.
Device and advertising ID, language, memory.
What you are doing on your device and whether our app is in the foreground or background and if your mouse is moving. (This helps distinguish real users from bots.)
Information you have chosen to share with us through your device settings, such as location data, camera access, photos and related metadata, address book / contacts list.
Information about cookies and our application’s performance on your device.
Inferred Identity
The information we receive and collect from you will be used to infer your identity:
When you sign in on a browser or device, we will associate that browser or device with your account.
We may also use your information to infer other information about your identity, for example, by associating your account with hashes of email addresses that share common components with the email address you have provided to Unpress.
If you access Unpress without signing in, we may infer your identity based on the information we collect.
Log Information
Accessing our platform, whether you are signed in or not, may provide us with certain information, such as:
Your IP address, browser type, language, operating system, referring webpage, access times, pages you visited, your mobile carrier and the device information mentioned previously above.
If you have location sharing enabled in your browser, we may receive this information as well.
Search terms and IDs, ads shown to you, Unpress-generated identifiers and identifiers associated with cookies.
We also receive log information when you click on, view, or interact with links on our services.
Information we receive from third parties
Federated Login
When you login through a third party identity management solution, such as logging in with your Google, Apple or Facebook account we obtain the email address you used to login, along with your First and Last name. We do not obtain your birthdate from any third party providers.
Cookies and similar technologies
We use cookies and similar tech to collect website usage data and to operate our services. Cookies are not required for many parts of our products and services such as searching and looking at public profiles.
Access to our content from third-party sites
When you view or interact with Unpress content on other, third-party, websites or apps, we may receive log information that includes the content you viewed and how long you viewed it for.
How we use your information
Your data is a vital part of the ingredients used to make Unpress work
It is very difficult to break down all the ways in which we use the information we collect because many different parts of our services may use data in different ways and for different purposes. Each of these parts are required to make the whole thing work.
Without diving into overly technical information, we believe that the most helpful way to explain this is briefly exploring the following primary ways your data may be used.
Operate, Continually Improve, and Personalize
The information we collect is necessary to make Unpress work. Our services could not properly function without it. It informs how and what stories we show as well as allows us to understand the ways in which people use our services, so that we can improve that parts that matter the most, in ways that will be most effective and provide the best user experience possible.
Part of creating a good user experience is through personalization. We will not use your data to only show you things we think you want to see, thereby perpetuating the issues of polarization found in many other platforms. We will, however, use this data to prioritize the things that we believe are most relevant to you. Currently this consists of newsworthy Stories. In the future this will include ads, suggestions of people, topics and communities to follow, and helping you connect with relevant third parties.
If you connect your accounts from other services, we will use this information to make it easy for you to connect with others and to share content you find interesting. Additionally, the information you provide in your profile may be used to help others find your account, connect with you and follow your content.
What to expect in the Future
We do not yet support any form of advertising or monetary transaction on the Unpress platform, but in the future, based on your settings, we will use your information to only show you relevant ads and measure their effectiveness.
Advertising only functions with Ad partners, and as this functionality is implemented, some of them may enable us to collect similar information from their website or app. Information shared by ad partners and affiliates may be combined with the other information you share with Unpress or that Unpress receives, generates, or infers about you.
Continually improve security and safety
The information we have collected is used in a number of ways to provide and improve the security and safety of our services. This is one reason why we chose to start with social login only. Account credentials need to be handled with care, and the massive resources invested by Google, Apple and Facebook to manage and protect your authenticated data is hard to beat.
Your information is also used to help us evaluate the safety and quality of content on Unpress. This ranges from reports you make to us by flagging suspicious content to reviewing violations of our editorial and community standards, as well as meeting the requirements of applicable law.
Communicate with you
The information provided by you is used to communicate with you about our services including our policies and user terms and conditions. This includes updates, improvements, changes and the introduction of new and exciting features of the Unpress platform.
Research
The information provided by you, and the information we collect, particularly the interaction and usage data, helps us to conduct research, product testing and troubleshooting to operate, improve and create cool new features to make the best Unpress experience possible.
How and when we share your information
All stories you publish on the Unpress platform, including your public profile information is available to the general public. Because we are a news and information platform, you should expect that this content may end up in the news and will certainly be searchable on the internet.
Social activities
Most of the content on Unpress is viewable by the general public. This includes all Stories and Comments and your profile information; first and last name, username, bio, profile picture and background picture. This information will also show up in internet search results on search engines.
What to expect in the Future
When social media and rating functions are implemented, depending on the features you use, we will share the following with the public:
The number of people you follow and the number of people who follow you.
Your rating as a creator.
Your rating as a member of the unpress community.
If you share a story with someone else, or through a third party platform, that information will also be shared with that external service.
When direct messages are implemented
The content of these messages will be shared with all of the recipients of the message.
As our partnerships with other third parties grows, we will provide them with information necessary to help us operate our services. As partnerships are developed, additional privacy controls will be made available to you.
Third parties & third party integrations
Service providers
The information we collect is stored on the platforms of our hosting providers. While they host this data, they do not have access to the data itself.
Cross-platform sharing & integration
We work with third parties to make cross-platform sharing possible. When you view or interact with Unpress content on a third party site, or from cross-platform sharing partners, they may receive and process some information.
We also use technology likeAPIs and embeds to share public Unpress information with other websites and apps. This may include the ability to share and watch Unpress Stories on external social media platform or news websites or for viewing and analyzing discussions about our stories on our platform.
Currently we do not restrict or charge for the sharing of this information. As these capabilities mature, we will provide and enforce terms to external developers and companies that are not affiliated with Unpress.
What to expect in the Future
Platform services and operations partners
We may share your information with other partners that provide services to us to facilitate operations or perform functions on our behalf. This will include payment services providers, providers that help us measure and monitor the use of our services, content moderation services and fraud detection.
Advertisers
Advertising revenue will help us to continue to provide our services. As a function of advertising activities, the advertisers will receive information about your engagement with their ads. Due to the way the web functions, external advertisers, website operators and commercial entities may be able to determine that the traffic they are seeing originated from Unpress. They will also know any information associated with the ad you clicked and use it to derive audience characteristics. They may also collect information from cookies, your IP address and potentially device information.
When required by law, to prevent harm, or in the public interest
In accordance with our community standards, we may retain, use, share or disclose any information if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to:
protect the safety and security of any person.
protect the safety, security and operational integrity of our platform, which may include preventing fraud, spam, abuse, or malicious actors.
explain why we have removed content or accounts from our services (e.g., for a violation of our community or editorial standards.)
protect our rights or property, or the rights or property of those who use our services.
comply with law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request, with some caveats as shown below.
We will not disclose information if we believe that the request:
Will expose a person to harm.
Will expose a confidential news source, or unpublished materials, in violation of reporter’s privilege.
Is likely to result in the violation of Human Rights as defined by the United Nations, or the Geneva conventions.
Originates from a designated state sponsor of terror or a terrorist organization as defined by the US state department.
As a result of a change in ownership
We may share, sell, or transfer information about you in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets, or bankruptcy. This Privacy Policy will apply to your personal information that is shared with (before and after the close of any transaction) or transferred to the new entity.
Data retention
Not withstanding the items below, remember that public content can exist in many other places on the internet, even if you have removed it from Unpress.
We keep your profile information, stories and other content you generate during the entire life of your account.
We keep any personally identifiable data generated as a result of your usage of our services for up to 24 months.
We will retain specific information as long as required to comply with legal, safety and security requirements.
If your account is suspended, either by us or by you, we retain all of your information indefinitely until your account is deleted.
If your account is deleted, we will delete all of your information, with the exception of the primary identifier used to create your account, i.e. your email address or phone number. We retain this information to prevent repeat offenders from creating new accounts, and to prevent others from creating accounts to impersonate others who may have decided to remove their accounts.
Controlling your data
Correcting your information
You can update all of your information by editing your profile. There is one exception. You cannot edit the date of birth you entered when you created your account.
Downloading your information
If you wish to download your Story content from Unpress, you can make a request to us via our help form. Note that you will not be able to download your comments at this time.
In order to protect our users privacy, if you make a request to download your stories, we will initiate a process to verify your identity before making your information available. In some situations, we may reject requests for data downloads. i.e. if you are unable to verify your identity.
Deleting your information
You can delete any of the stories that you have published using the delete option under the story options in your profile page.
You can request that your account be deleted through your profile settings. When you initiate an account deletion request, your account will continue to function as normal for up to 72 hours after the request has been made. During this time you can cancel this request, but once 72 hours have passed, your account, including your stories and any comments you have made on the site, will be removed. As mentioned above, the primary identifier used to create your account, i.e. your email address or phone number, will be retained to prevent another account from being created with the same identifier.
Authorized Agent Requests
To submit a request to access, modify or delete someone else’s information, if you are their legally authorized agent, you may contact us via our help form as specified in the How To Contact Unpress section of our Privacy Policy below. We will require you to provide additional information for verification.
Data Handling
The user agreement you accepted when you created an account on Unpress gives us the legal ability to collect, use, share and process your information. That said, we do not sell your personal information.
Global data access and residency
To serve a global audience effectively, and provide a safe, reliable and performant user experience, we must show and move some information to different countries and regions. For example, two people who reside in different countries and are having a conversation. The data from their messages must be visible in each of those countries.
We also use cloud providers and service providers that may be located in different parts of the world. In order to provide acceptable service to different geographies we may need to move or replicate our data into different cloud provider regions. Before we engage with a service partner, we look at their contracts, data residency, privacy and security policies and assess the risks to ensure that you will be protected.
Is Unpress for kids?
Nope, full stop. Unpress is not intended for people under 13. Due to the potential nature and subject matter on our platform, Unpress is not directed to children. If you are under the age of 13, you may not use our services. If we discover that an account is being used by someone under the age of 13, we may suspend the account.
Legally, you must also be old enough to consent to the processing of your personal data in your country (in some countries we may allow your parent or guardian to do so on your behalf.)
This policy will change
Unpress is a relatively young company. As such, this policy will be updated as we grow our products and services. We have attempted to provide many examples of how this will change in response to future developments so you have an idea of what to expect in the future.
If we do update this Privacy Policy with changes that we deem to be material, we will provide notice and an opportunity to review the update Privacy Policy before you continue to use Unpress.
How can I contact Unpress?
We want to hear from you if you have thoughts or questions about this Privacy Policy. You can contact us via our Feedback Form or by writing to us at the appropriate address below.
Unpress, Inc.
Attn: Privacy Policy Inquiry
9050 N Capital of Texas Hwy, Suite 320
Austin, TX 78759
You can confidentially contact Unpress’s Security Officer through our Inquiry Form.