The purpouse of this page is letting you understand your rights and choices and how we handle your data.
This policy describes how we handle your data when you use “ Universal World's Services,” listed below:
Be aware that certain Universal World Services work differently. Some have additional terms that supplement this policy (e.g., Reader Submissions). Others refer to a different privacy policy altogether, so this one does not apply.
1.What Information Do We Gather About You?
The information we gather about you depends on the context. By and large, it’s information about you that can personally identify you — either on its own or when combined with other information.
The following describes the information we collect and how we obtain it.
A) Information Collected Through Universal World Services.
Information That You Voluntarily Give Us
For Registration:
When you sign up for a Times Service (e.g., a subscription), we collect your contact information and account credentials. Once you’re registered, we assign you a unique ID number. This ID number helps us recognize you when you’re signed in.
If you register for an event or conference, we might ask for additional information (e.g., your company name, your job title or your dietary restrictions).
For Billing:
To process payments or donations, we collect and use your payment information.
This can include your name, your address, your telephone number, your email address, your credit or debit card information and any other relevant information.
Information Collected Automatically
With Tracking Technologies in Your Browser and Mobile Apps:
These technologies include cookies, web beacons, tags and scripts, software development kits (or SDKs) and beyond.
We track and store data about how you visit and use Universal World Services, particularly through our websites and apps. The items we log include:
If your browser doesn’t accept our cookies, you can’t access certain parts of our websites. Because the “Do Not Track” browser-based standard signal has yet to gain widespread acceptance, we don’t currently respond to those signals.
B) Information Collected From Other Sources.
Privately Owned Databases:
Marketing, data analytic and social media-owned databases give us access to a range of information — like public data, survey data and beyond. This data sometimes includes your mailing address, your gender, your age, your household income and other demographic data.
Social Media Platforms and Other Third-Party Services:
(Social media platforms include Facebook. Third-party services include Google, Kindle and Nook.)
You can link your social media or other third-party account to a Universal World Service. By linking the services, you authorize us to collect, store and use any information they may give us (e.g., your email address).
We also receive information from you when you interact with our pages, groups, accounts or posts on social media platforms. This includes aggregate data on our followers (e.g., age, gender and location), engagement data (e.g., “likes,” comments, shares, reposts and clicks), awareness data (e.g., number of impressions and reach) and individual users’ public profiles.
For more information, refer to the standard Google Analytic Privacy Policy.
Workplace and Schools:
When your employer or school buys an organizationwide subscription to universalworld.co.uk, they sometimes provide us with your name and organization email address to grant you access as a user.
A note about future updates:
We are always improving our products and services, and we create new features regularly. These updates sometimes require us to collect new information, or use what we already have differently. If there is a significant or material change in the way we handle your personal information, we will notify you as detailed below.
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2.What Do We Do With the Information We Gather?
A) We provide the Universal World Services.
We use your information to help you use and navigate Universal World Services, such as:
Making our Services available to you
Providing customer service
Responding to your inquiries, requests, suggestions or complaints
Completing your payments and transactions
Sending service-related messages (e.g., a change in our terms and conditions)
Letting you take part in paid services, polls, promotions, surveys, panels, research and comments.
B) We Personalize Your Experience.
We track your interests and reading habits (e.g., the articles you read) to personalize your reading experience using technology like algorithmic recommendations and machine learning. This is how we highlight articles you might be interested in and de-emphasize articles you’ve already read.
C) We Develop Products and Services, and Do Analysis.
We analyze data on our users’ subscription, purchase and usage behaviors. This helps us make business and marketing decisions.
For example, our analysis lets us predict preferences and price points for our products and services. It helps us determine whether our marketing is successful. It also shows us characteristics about our readers, which we sometimes share in aggregate with advertisers.
Google Analytics is one of the analytics providers we use. You can find out how Google Analytics uses data and how to opt out of Google Analytics.
D) We Carry Out Administrative Tasks.
For auditing: We verify that our internal processes work as intended and comply with legal, regulatory and contractual requirements.
For fraud and security monitoring: We detect and prevent cyberattacks or unauthorized robot activities.
For customer satisfaction: We assess users’ satisfaction with Universal World Services and our customer care team.
The above activities can involve outside companies, agents or contractors (“service providers”) with whom we share your personal information for these purposes (discussed further below).
E) We Allow for Personalized Advertising on Universal World Services and Create Audiences for Third Party Advertisers.
We gather data and work with third parties to show you personalized ads. This data comes from ad tracking technologies set by us or the third party (e.g., cookies), the information you provide (e.g., your email address), your use of Universal World Services (e.g., your reading history), information from advertisers or advertising vendors (e.g., demographic data) and anything inferred from any of this information. We only use or share this information in a manner that does not reveal your identity.
For example, we use Google to serve ads on Universal World Services. Google uses cookies or unique device identifiers, in combination with their own data, to show you ads based on you visiting universalworld.co.uk and other sites. You can opt out of the use of the Google cookie by visiting the related Google privacy policy.
We also create specific audiences that allow us to serve you personalized advertising on our sites and apps, on behalf of advertisers. To do this, we combine information we collect through surveys (from subscribers, registered users and non-registered visitors) with information we collect automatically using tracking technologies as you use the Universal World Services. This combined information is used to build models for measuring users against demographic and interest-based attributes. With the help of service providers, these measurements are then transformed into pools of users grouped by common attributes. Each group is associated with a random ID that is then passed to our ad server for us in targeting advertising campaigns on Universal World Services.
Another example is our affiliate link vendors, which we use in our guides and product recommendations. Universal World Services include links that will send you to affiliate vendor URLs and other services not operated or controlled by us. These affiliate vendors use cookies and other technologies to collect information about your navigation from the Universal World Services to the merchant you are visiting. If you buy a product after following a link to an affiliate link vendor’s URL, we may earn a commission.
We periodically send you targeted email newsletters or promotional emails.
I) We Aggregate (or De-identify) Personal Information Into Larger Findings.
Sometimes we aggregate or de-identify information so that it can no longer identify you, under applicable laws. This helps us better understand and represent our users, such as when we measure ad performance, create advertising interest-based segments or compile survey results. We can use and disclose this aggregated or de-identified information for any purpose, unless an applicable law says otherwise.
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences. We also use them to measure ad campaign effectiveness, target ads and analyze site traffic. To learn more about these methods, including how to disable them, view our Cookie Policy.
Starting on October 1, 2020 we will show you ads we think are relevant to your interests, based on the kinds of content you access in our Services.
By subscribing you consent to the use of these methods by us and third parties.
