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Privacy Policy

PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY

At TheHardTimes.net we appreciate your readership and value your personal privacy. We respect the personal nature of the information you provide us on our web site and acknowledge the importance of protecting this information. In adopting this privacy policy, our intent is to balance our legitimate business interests in collecting and using your personal information with your reasonable expectations of privacy. The policy may be revised or updated at any time and we encourage you to check back often to ensure that you are familiar with the most recent version and the terms of our policy.

When does TheHardTimes.net collect my personal information?

You may provide personal information to TheHardTimes.net in one of three ways: (1) by sharing personal information when you post comments on our posts or stories, (2) by sharing personal information when you provide ideas to our editorial departments, or (3) by sharing contact information when you choose to opt-in to participate in sweepstakes, surveys, contests or competitions. We may also ask for other information at other times, but at no time will you be required to share any personal information to gain complete access to our site.

In addition to personal information — which may include, but is not limited to, your name, street and e-mail addresses, and telephone numbers — we may also collect information that is in no way personally identifiable. This may include your internet protocol (IP) addresses, the operating system you are working on, the internet browser you are using, the domain name of your internet service provider, and the web sites you visit directly before and after your visit to TheHardTimes.net.

Why does TheHardTimes.net use my personal information?

The more we know about you, the better we are able to customize our web site to suit your personal preferences and interests. The e-mail address you provide may be used by TheHardTimes.net for any reason, such as contacting you for editorial purposes.
To maintain a site that is free of charge and does not require registration, we display advertisements on our web site. We also use the information you give us to help our advertisers target the audience they want to reach. At no time does any party other than TheHardTimes.net have access to your personally identifiable information, and you will never be contacted by any party other than TheHardTimes.net. The only exceptions to the foregoing are that we may disclose personally identifiable information (i) in response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order or subpoena, (ii) in response to a law enforcement agency’s request, or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take actions regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of another person, violations of our terms of use, or as otherwise required by law, or (iii) in the event we are acquired by or merged with another company.

Non-personally identifiable information (such as stated above) may be shared in aggregate form with our advertisers or marketing partners but your personally identifiable information will never be disclosed to them.

How does TheHardTimes.net use my personal information?

Information about your visit to TheHardTimes.net, such as number of times you have viewed an ad (but not your name, address, or other personal information), is used to serve ads to you on this site. And, in the course of serving advertisements to this site, third party advertisers may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.

We have also contracted with a number of advertising network partners to monitor certain pages of our website and RSS feeds for the purpose of reporting website and RSS traffic, statistics, advertisement “click-throughs,” and/or other activities on our website. Where authorized by us, these advertising network partners may use cookies, web beacons, and/or other monitoring technologies to compile anonymous statistics about our website visitors. No personally identifiable information is collected by or transferred to these network partners.

Third parties and web sites that have links on our site may also collect or use information about you. The information practices of other companies or people that TheHardTimes.net does not employ or manage are not covered by this privacy statement.

Is there anything else I should know about my privacy and TheHardTimes.net?

Any information you disclose voluntarily on our comments pages or in any forums we may develop in the future becomes public information. We cannot control the actions of our site users and advise you to use your discretion in sharing information about yourself on the internet. All information sharing is optional and done so at your own risk. Privacy is a very personal matter and we encourage you to be careful and responsible when disclosing personal information online.

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.1)

The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The “help” feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at All About Cookies.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.

The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:

  • IP Address
  • Operating System type
  • Operating System version
  • Device Type
  • Language of the website
  • Web browser type
  • Email (in hashed form)

Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor’s referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.

If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit National Advertising Initiative opt out page. You may also visit Digital Advertising Alliance website and Network Advertising Initiative website to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at Digital Advertising Alliance’s AppChoices app to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please visit Mediavine Partners.