Privacy Policy
How Directography collects, uses and protects information.
This Privacy Policy comes in two parts. The Overview is a one-table snapshot for readers who want the essentials. The Full Policy sets out each point properly and is the part that governs.
Overview
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| What is collected? | Technical data from your visit, plus anything you choose to send through our website. |
| Is submitted content public? | Yes, if you submit it for publication. It may be indexed, cached, shared, and copied. |
| Are cookies used? | They may be. The types vary by website, and you can manage them. |
| Is there advertising? | There may be. Where there is, you may have opt-out choices. |
| Who receives information? | Service providers and, in limited cases, advisers, authorities, and successors. |
| Do I have rights? | You may, depending on the law where you live. |
| How do I make a request? | Through the Contact Us page on our website. |
Full Policy
Coverage
The Full Policy applies to personal information handled through our website. It has been written broadly, so it mentions some features, such as user accounts, content submission, analytics, and advertising, that our website may not offer. Wherever a feature is absent, the corresponding statements simply do not come into play. Websites operated by anyone else are outside its coverage.
Privacy laws
We intend this Privacy Policy to address the privacy and data-protection requirements that are applicable to our website. Depending on the circumstances, those may include the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR and applicable UK data-protection legislation, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), other U.S. state privacy laws, cookie and electronic communications rules, and other national, state, or regional privacy regulations. Each is addressed where it applies. Whether it applies is a question of your location, our website's activities, the kind of personal information involved, and the technologies in use.
Information Collected
From your visit
Without any action from you beyond visiting, our website may collect:
- IP address and the general geographic information it indicates
- Browser type, device type, and operating system
- Referring URLs and pages visited
- Date and time of visits
- Data from cookies and similar technologies
- Analytics information
From you directly
If you choose to interact with our website, we may also collect what you enter in a contact form, your registration or account information if registration is available, and content you submit for publication, listings, bookmarks, press releases, directories, comments, profiles, or similar functionality where our website provides it.
Types of submission
On websites that allow it, people may submit articles, business listings, directory listings, press releases, URLs, website submissions, bookmarks, comments, profiles, business information, contact information, images, documents, and other content. If our website allows any of these, we collect the information contained in what you submit.
Public Display of Submitted Information
We draw a firm line between private communications and public submissions. A contact form message is private. A submission for publication is public by design. After approval and publication, the information in it may be seen by any visitor to our website, indexed by search engines, kept in search engine caches, viewed by third parties, shared on external websites, and copied or redistributed in ways we cannot control or reverse.
Our advice is to treat every public submission as permanent and to keep confidential, private, and sensitive personal information out of it.
Sensitive information
You should generally not use public submission forms to send government identification numbers, financial account credentials, medical information, or other highly sensitive personal details. Do so only if we specifically request the information and it is necessary.
Use of Information
We may put information to the following uses, each only where it is relevant to our website:
- Operating and maintaining our website
- Providing its functionality
- Processing user submissions
- Reviewing submitted content and publishing approved content
- Managing listings
- Responding to inquiries
- Preventing spam, fraud, and abuse
- Maintaining security
- Analytics and performance measurement
- Understanding usage and improving functionality
- Legal and regulatory compliance
- Enforcing our policies
- Advertising, where applicable
Legal bases
Certain laws, including the GDPR and UK GDPR, allow personal information to be processed only where there is a legal basis. In those cases we may rely on consent, performance of a contract, legitimate interests, or compliance with legal obligations, according to the specific processing activity.
Cookies and Related Technologies
Our website may use cookies in five categories: essential, functional, analytics, advertising, and third-party. It may also use pixels, tags, and similar tracking technologies. The categories actually present are not uniform across websites, and ours may use fewer than all five.
There are three ways to manage cookies. You can use your browser settings. You can use any cookie controls our website provides. And you can use a consent management mechanism where one applies.
Analytics
We may use third-party analytics services to understand how visitors interact with our website and to improve its performance.
Advertising
Third-party advertisements may be displayed on our website, but this is not a given. Where they are displayed, advertising partners and advertising networks may use advertising cookies, device identifiers, and other advertising technologies. Advertisements may be contextual, personalized, or interest-based. You may have advertising choices, including opt-out mechanisms required by applicable law.
Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track
Where applicable law requires it, we may recognize a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal sent by your browser. Do Not Track signals follow no common standard, and our website may not respond to them unless the law requires it to.
Disclosure of Information
Third-party services
Running our website may involve external hosting providers, analytics providers, advertising providers, security services, spam-prevention tools, content delivery networks, embedded media providers, social media services, technical service providers, and other vendors. Each of these third parties may process information under its own privacy policy and legal obligations.
Other disclosures
We may disclose information to professional advisers, to legal authorities, courts, regulators, and law enforcement, and to successors in connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, sale, or transfer of assets. We do so only where applicable and legally permitted.
Sale or sharing
We neither assert nor deny, in general terms, that personal information is sold or shared, because those words have statutory definitions and the answer can differ from one website to another. If activities conducted through our website constitute a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information under applicable law, eligible users may have the right to opt out.
External links
Our website may link to external websites, and such links are common in articles, press releases, directory entries, bookmarks, and listings. We have no control over the privacy practices of those websites. Their own privacy policies apply, and you should review them before you provide personal information.
Privacy Rights
| If this law applies to you | You may have these rights |
|---|---|
| GDPR | Access; correction or rectification; deletion or erasure; restriction of processing; objection; data portability; withdrawal of consent; complaint to an appropriate supervisory authority |
| UK GDPR and applicable UK data-protection legislation | Corresponding rights, including complaint to the UK supervisory authority |
| CCPA and CPRA | Know; access; correct; delete; opt out of sale where applicable; opt out of sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising where applicable; limit certain uses or disclosures of sensitive personal information where applicable; non-discrimination |
| Another U.S. state privacy law | Rights that depend on place of residence, applicability thresholds, our website's activities, and applicable law |
Whichever law applies, the rights it gives may be subject to exceptions, and we may need to verify your identity before acting.
Making a request
Our Contact Us page is the route for every privacy request, whether it concerns access, correction, deletion, data portability, restriction, objection, consent withdrawal, an advertising opt-out, a sale or sharing opt-out, or another legally available right. We may ask you for additional information so that we can verify the request. Legal exceptions may apply. Where applicable law requires us to accept requests from authorized agents, we will.
Retention
How long we hold personal information depends on why we hold it. We keep it for as long as is reasonably necessary to provide functionality, process submissions, maintain published content, administer our website, protect security, prevent fraud, keep records, meet legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements. When it is no longer needed for any of those reasons, we do not go on keeping it.
Security
We may protect personal information with reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards. We want to be candid about their limits. No way of sending or storing data online is 100% secure, so we cannot guarantee that your information will never be accessed or disclosed without authorization.
International Transfers
Your information may be processed, stored, or transferred in a country other than the one where you live, because we or our providers may operate there. Where applicable law requires safeguards for an international transfer, we may use them.
Children
We do not intend our website to knowingly collect personal information from children below the age required by applicable law. If a parent or guardian believes a child has submitted personal information, we ask them to contact us through the Contact Us page.
Changes and Effective Date
We may amend this Privacy Policy as our website's functionality, data-processing practices, technologies, cookies, third-party services, or business practices change, and as applicable laws and regulatory requirements change. Amended versions will be posted on our website. This Privacy Policy is in effect from the time it is published on our website, and the published version is always the current one.
Contact
Please use the Contact Us page on our website if you have a question about privacy, your personal information, your rights, a privacy request, or either part of this Privacy Policy.