Please Note: These Privacy Policies are no longer active. Since September 14, 2018, find our current Privacy Policy here.
Privacy Policy April 9-September 13, 2018:
Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) is committed to protecting the privacy of visitors to our website. We have established this Privacy Policy to explain what information we collect through our website and how we use it. In this policy, “RDR” refers to RDR staff and consultants, all of whom are bound by law or contract to keep confidential information they receive as part of their work for RDR.
This policy applies to visitors to the Ranking Digital Rights website and to subscribers of RDR’s mailing list.
We hope that this Privacy Policy is easy to understand. If you have any questions or concerns about this policy or about how RDR handles your information, please email us at info@rankingdigitalrights.org. We will respond within 14 days.
Key Points of our Privacy Policy
- We will never sell, rent, share, or distribute your user information without your permission unless compelled by law.
- The Ranking Digital Rights website (at rankingdigitalrights.org) uses an open-source tool called Piwik (recently rebranded as Matomo) to automatically collect some user information.
- We use the information Matomo (Piwik) collects to understand where our visitors are coming from and what they are most interested in. Matomo (Piwik) masks the IP addresses it collects by two bytes, which limits the ability to track specific users. Matomo (Piwik)’s privacy policy is here.
- The Ranking Digital Rights website collects and stores the user information that you provide if you subscribe to our mailing list through the Mailchimp plugin on WordPress. Mailchimp’s privacy policy is here.
Definitions: What do we mean by “user information”?
RDR defines “user information” as any data that is connected to an identifiable person, or may be connected to such a person by combining datasets or utilizing data-mining techniques. This includes any data that documents a user’s characteristics and/or activities.
For the purposes of RDR’s website, user information includes information collected by Matomo (Piwik), and your email address, first and last name (optional), and email subscription preferences (optional) if you provide them for the purposes of our email list. See below for the types of information Matomo (Piwik) and Mailchimp collect.
Website Privacy Policy
The Ranking Digital Rights website collects user information through an open-source analytics platform called Piwik. In January 2018, Piwik rebranded as Matomo. We are still currently using Piwik 3.2.1 and none of our policies or settings have changed since the previous version of our privacy policy (published on March 21, 2017). We are considering updating to the next version of Matomo, and will update the privacy policy accordingly if and when we do so.
When you visit the RDR website, Piwik (Matomo) records the following information:
- 2 byte masked user IP address (see also: IP anonymization)
- Date and time of the request
- Title of the page being viewed (Page Title)
- URL of the page being viewed (Page URL)
- URL of the page that was viewed prior to the current page (Referrer URL)
- Screen resolution being used
- Time in local user’s timezone
- Files that were clicked and downloaded (Download)
- Links to an outside domain that were clicked (Outlink)
- Pages generation time (the time it takes for webpages to be generated by the webserver and then downloaded by the user: Page speed)
- Main Language of the browser being used (Accept-Language header)
- User Agent of the browser being used (User-Agent header)
For the Ranking Digital Rights website, Piwik (Matomo) collects your device’s IP address and masks two bytes. According to Piwik (Matomo), this means that an IP address shows up as 192.168.xxx.xxx in our website logs, which is not accurate for geolocation.
For more information, see Matomo’s website at: https://matomo.org/docs/privacy/#step-1-automatically-anonymize-visitor-ips.
We use the information that Piwik (Matomo) collects to understand more about how people visit and interact with our website and to learn about what materials visitors are most interested in.
RDR’s website also fully respects your browser’s “Do Not Track” settings, which, if set, will exclude all data described above during your visit to our site.
We purge our visitor logs every 180 days.
Mailing List Privacy Policy
We maintain an email list for subscribers to receive announcements from RDR about our work and blog posts published on our website. We use Mailchimp to manage our mailing list, and we use the Mailchimp plugin on WordPress to enable people to sign up for the mailing list through our website. When you subscribe to the mailing list, Mailchimp collects and stores the information that you provide, including your email address, first and last name (optional), and email subscription preferences (optional). It also collects your IP address.
We also use Mailchimp’s analytics to understand how people view and interact with our mailing list communications and to learn about what types of updates subscribers are most interested in. If you are subscribed to the RDR mailing list, Mailchimp records the following information and shares it with us for this purpose:
- Open rate
- Total number of opens
- Click rate
- Total number of clicks
- Bounce rate (number of recipients that registered as a hard or soft bounce)
- Number of unsubscribes
- Number of times email was forwarded using Mailchimp’s “forward to a friend” form and subsequent forward opens
- Number of recipients that reported our email as spam
- Time most recently opened
- Time a URL within an email was most recently clicked
- Number of opens and clicks in first 24 hours an email was sent
- Email performance on social media platforms
- Email client used
- Subscribers with the most opens
- Geolocation and top locations for subscriber opens (more information on Mailchimp geolocation here)
See here for further information on Mailchimp analytics. Mailchimp’s full privacy policy can be found here.
You can subscribe to the RDR mailing list by submitting your email address on our website or by emailing us at: newsletter@rankingdigitalrights.org.
You may remove your name from our mailing list at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe from this list” link at the bottom of any email that you receive through the list.
Links
The RDR website provides links to other websites including the website of RDR’s host organization, New America (newamerica.org), that we rely on for logistics and communication purposes, such as event RSVP and live video streaming, which in turn use services such as CVent, and Salesforce. The privacy policy for newamerica.org can be found at the end of this page.
We may also link to other websites that serve similar functions. Your use of such linked sites is subject to the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the providers of those sites.
We encourage people to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy policies of each site they visit.
Changes to Privacy Policy
RDR’s Privacy Policy may change. Any revised privacy policy will be consistent with RDR’s Core Principles (listed above). If we make any changes to our policies, we will post a notification about the upcoming changes on the Ranking Digital Rights blog at least two weeks before those changes come into effect. Individuals who are signed up for our mailing list will receive an email notification. We will also link to the notification at the top of this privacy policy page. We commit to keep an archive of past versions of the Privacy Policy, which will be accessible at https://rankingdigitalrights.org/privacy-policy-archive from April 9th, 2018.
Ranking Digital Rights
New America
740 15th Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, D.C. 20005
Privacy Policy 21 March, 2017-April 9, 2018:
Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) is committed to protecting the privacy of visitors to our website. RDR has established this Privacy Policy to explain what information we collect through our website and how it is used. In this policy, “RDR” refers to RDR staff, and consultants, all of whom are bound by law or contract to keep confidential information they receive as part of their work for RDR. We hope that this privacy policy is straightforward and clear, but if you have any questions about it, please email us at info@rankingdigitalrights.org. The following is a short listing of the overarching points of our privacy policy:
- We will never sell, rent, share or distribute your personal information without your permission unless compelled by law.
- We do not collect and store any personal information unless you have signed up for our mailing list, in which case your email address is stored, in order to stay in touch with you.
- We collect analytics about how people use our website using an open source tool called Piwik. We use that information to improve the website and to understand in a broad sense where our visitors are coming from and what they are most interested in. However, the information collected is anonymized and only seen at an aggregate level.
Website Privacy Policy
Piwik records the browser software you use and your operating system; the date and time you access our site; and the pages you visit while browsing the site. Your IP address is always anonymized by automatically masking 2 bytes, and our logs are purged every 180 days. Our site also fully respects your browser’s ‘Do not track’ settings, which if set will exclude all data described above during your visit to our site. We use this information at an aggregate level to monitor the effectiveness of our site and identify areas of interest and improvements.
We do not collect any personal information about you when you visit the site unless you give us that information. The personal information you provide includes information provided during any registration process, including contact information, such as your name, organization name, address and email address, and information about your interests and preferences.
Mailing List Privacy Policy
RDR maintains a mailing list. One can subscribe to the RDR mailing list by submitting a form at our website or emailing us. When you subscribe, you will receive a confirmation message welcoming you to the list to which you have subscribed.
You may remove your name from our email list at any time by sending a request to info@rankingdigitalrights.org.
Links
We provide links on RDR sites to other sites of interest. We do not endorse the content of these sites or guarantee that they will abide by this Privacy Policy. Your use of such linked sites is subject to the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the providers of those sites.
We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy policies of each site that collects personal information.
Changes to Privacy Policy
RDR’s Privacy Policy may change from time to time. However, any revised privacy policy will be consistent with RDR’s core values. If we make any changes to our policies, we commit to post on the project blog about changes and link to the notification at the top of the privacy policy. We also commit to keep an archive of past versions, and notify people who are signed up for blog updates by email.
Ranking Digital Rights
New America
740 15th Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, D.C. 20005
