OUR COMMITMENT TO ACCOUNTABLE PRIVACY PRACTICES
We are a progressive media company with a long, proud history in newspapers and a passion for embracing the opportunities created by the rapidly evolving world of digital and mobile media. This is the main privacy policy for the Companies and covers all related websites, applications and services that do not have a separate policy. A reference to “we”, “us” or “our” is a reference to the Companies.
Our visitors and customers have different privacy concerns. This policy provides a snapshot of our personal information practices so that you may easily understand what information we collect and why, as well as how to access and update or correct your personal information. If you are interested, drop down menus contain more information.
We may change this policy from time to time. If you continue to use our products and services after we make changes, you are consenting to the updated policy. If the changes are significant, we will provide you with notice and archive prior versions.
In this policy, customized experience means content, recommendations, advertising, and offers (including from selected third party sponsors or advertisers) that may be personalized or tailored to your interests. Our products and services include anything you purchase, register for, use or attend such as contests, newsletters, auctions, advertising, events, commenting functions, and services provided through our websites and applications. We may refer to our websites and applications as our digital properties.
We collect personal information you provide directly to us when you purchase our products, register for, use or attend our services, donate to our charities or fill out our surveys. We collect information we get from third parties or from you when you visit us, call us or you use our services. Unless the information collected or compiled is sensitive in nature, we assume your consent for all purposes set out in this policy.
| Commonly Collected Personal Information | Purpose |
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| Contact information such as name, address, postal code, email address, telephone number |
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| Transaction information relating to products and services purchased or used and customized experience history |
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| Demographic and survey information such as postal code, gender, marital status, birth date/year, interests, household expenditures, reasons for cancellation and other customer service information, location preferences, interests and other preferences |
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| Social media identifiers (such as single sign on through Facebook, Google or other social media accounts) and other information you share with us or make public via your social networking platform. You may control what information you share through the social networking sites’ privacy settings. |
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| Subscriber id and passwords |
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| Credit card, PayPal or banking information and transaction ID |
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| Audio or video recordings if you call us or come to our offices or events |
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| Usage data, including content and advertisements viewed on our digital properties, search history, content you share, products and services you download, purchase or subscribe for, language preference, transaction history, time spent and other digital information through cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, and other technologies. We also collect information about the site you came from before visiting our digital properties and the site you go to next. |
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| Your device and location. We collect information about your device such as IP address, browser type, device type, unique device identifiers and operating system. We also collect information about your location, if enabled on your device or derived from your IP address. |
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| User-generated content and public activities such as comments on online forums, public user profiles you generate and classified listings you create. This information is considered public and is subject to the applicable terms of use. |
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We may share your personal information within the Companies, our charities and our affiliates. We combine information internally across different Companies, products and services and may further combine information with demographic information, publicly available records, anonymous insights from third parties, and other third-party information sources and may use this information to provide you with a customized experience and to develop and promote our products and services. We may use your personal information to internally generate anonymous insights into our audience, and we may share those anonymous insights (but not your personal information) with third parties for advertising purposes. You can contact us using the information below to opt out of these uses of your personal information.
We may be able to identify you by location and across different digital properties and devices using cookies, web beacons and other technologies and derive information based on our records. We may assign you a unique customer identification number. Where required by applicable law, we will not activate cookies used for profiling without your consent.
Personal information is not shared outside of the Companies unless:
- You have consented.
- We are permitted or required to do so by law.
- We have engaged an authorized service provider to carry out services on our behalf. Personal information may, in accordance with all applicable laws, be transferred outside of your province and/or outside of Canada for processing or storage, where it may be subject to the laws of that jurisdiction and shared with law enforcement or other governmental authorities if legally required.
- We are required to share the information with merchants from whom you have purchased something or registered for something to allow them to provide the products or services to the correct individuals and to allow them to keep track of what they have provided.
We have in place measures to keep personal information we collect secure, which may include:
- Limiting the number of people who view or process personal information
- Locking and restricting access to paper files
- Using appropriate methods to secure electronic files, including computer passwords, firewalls and encryption.
- Developing and complying with internal policies and procedures to protect personal information, respond to privacy questions, complaints or breaches, and destroy information that is no longer required.
Once we no longer require your personal information for purposes you have consented to or as otherwise permitted by law, we securely dispose of it.
You may otherwise access, update, delete and manage your personal information, information preferences, and use of products and services provided by the Torstar Companies by:
- Updating or deleting your account information for the relevant product or service;
- Updating your preferences if a customer preference option is provided by the relevant product or service;
- For Google Analytics, opting out of data analytics services provided by Google by visiting the Google Analytics opt-out page and installing the add-on for your browser;
- For offers and advertising, opting out of direct offers and advertisements by following the instructions at the bottom of the email or speaking with any telemarketer;
- Opting out of online behavioural advertising where applicable by clicking the
icon on ads appearing on our websites or by visiting http://youradchoices.ca/choices/ and https://networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/what-are-my-options. More information about online behavioural advertising is here. - Contacting customer service for the relevant product or service or the Chief Privacy Officer by telephone or email. We will be happy to help you update your information, facilitate access to your personal information, or address any concerns you may have.
If you have questions or concerns that have not been resolved to your satisfaction by customer service, you may contact Torstar’s Chief Privacy Officer in writing at: linjiande2@gmail.com
Online behavioural advertising: Online behavioural advertising involves tracking consumers’ online activities (including web pages you visit and content and advertisements you view), across sites and over time to deliver advertisements targeted to their inferred interests. Behavioural advertisers often use sophisticated algorithms to analyze the collected data, build detailed personal profiles of users, and assign them to various interest categories. Interest categories are used to present ads defined as relevant to users in those categories. If you opt-out of behavioural tracking, you will still receive advertising, it just won’t be tailored to your interests.
Third parties such as ad-serving companies may assign cookies and other tracking technology directly on our digital properties. The information collected is used to deliver future targeted advertisements to you when you visit our digital properties and other third party sites in their network. Some ads appearing on our digital properties are delivered to you by DoubleClick or AdTech, which are web advertising companies. If you do not want to have information about your visits to our digital properties tracked by these companies, you may opt-out at: DoubleClick Opt Out, AdTech Opt-Out. We may place advertising or other links on our digital properties that originate from outside advertisers and other third parties. If you view these ads, advertisers may assign a cookie or use other technology to track your behaviour. Various browsers offer a “do not track” option. We do not currently recognize this option as there is no industry standard for this technology.
You may visit www.priv.gc.ca if you are interested in learning more about privacy or wish to contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
This Privacy Policy was last updated November 28, 2023.