Your privacy is important to The Public Record. We don’t just say that, we mean it. We avoid third-party calls wherever we can, and we measure our own readership on our own servers rather than handing your visit to Google or an advertising network. We do keep a detailed record of visits to this site — what we record, and how long we keep it, is set out in full below.
Our Privacy Policy covers the use of our website, applications, and our collection of information in journalistic endeavours.
We strive to protect your privacy when visiting our website, we minimize our use of third-party plugins and embedded content to protect your privacy.
If you have any concerns about this policy, or find a third-party call that is not triggered by embedded content or fonts (YouTube videos, social media embeds, etc.), please contact us at privacy@thepublicrecord.ca

Definitions

  • personal information refers to information about an identifiable individual person, which may be public information or private information depending on how that information was collected by The Public Record.
  • public information refers to information that is accessible to the general public from public sources.
  • private information refers to personal information provided by The Public Record users, directly to The Public Record for the purpose of using our website or products, which is not otherwise available as public information. This does not include information provided to The Public Record in response to a journalists inquiry or request.

Privacy Policy

The Public Record’s primary purpose is to make public information publicly available. We regularly collect public information, store that information, and display that information in a format that makes it easy to find. (By people, and by search engines)
We treat the information you provide to us to use or support this website as private information. We treat as public the information we receive in response to journalistic inquiry and activity, including information that we discover in our journalist activities.
Our use of journalistically obtained information is described in our Code of Ethics and Journalistic Practice.
Remember that any information you share in public areas, such as The Public Record comments area, becomes public and therefore this Privacy Policy does not apply to any information you choose to make public. We encourage visitors to be cautious about what they disclose and that they do not post any personal information that they expect to keep private.

Collection of Use Information

When you visit ThePublicRecord.ca, our web server records the IP address you connect from, the date and time, the pages you request, the site that referred you, and the browser and device you use. This is the standard record every web server keeps.

We analyse these records ourselves, using analytics software we run on our own server. We do not use Google Analytics or any other third-party analytics service, and no advertising or tracking network receives information about your visit.

What we do with your IP address. We store it in full, and note which internet service providers visitors originate from. We do this to understand who reads our journalism. We also use it to work out the approximate city a visit came from, and to identify automated traffic and abuse.

We do not attempt to identify individual readers, we do not combine this with information you have given us for any other purpose, and we do not sell, rent or share it.

How long we keep it. Detailed visit records, including IP addresses, are deleted automatically after twelve months. The summary statistics built from them — counts of readers, pages and places, with no IP addresses — are kept indefinitely.

Measurement in your browser. Some pages load a small script from our own server that reports the page you are on, your screen size and how long the page was open. It is served by us, not by a third party, and it sets no advertising cookies. If your browser sends a “Do Not Track” signal we do not record that measurement, and if you use an ad or tracker blocker the script does not load at all. Your visit is still counted in our server records regardless.

Security and HTTPS

The Public Record operates all our pages via HTTPS to protect your privacy. This means your Internet Service Provider is able to see that you are visiting The Public Record but not the page you are visiting. Some of our older content, such as photos, is served via HTTP (not HTTPS), we are working to correct this over time.
All of our pages which collect information are fully HTTPS compliant.

Stripe Payments Processing

The Public Record uses Stripe as our payment processor for monthly patron subscriptions. Stripe is a security payment processor that meets the highest standards of security.
We do not store any of your payment information or process any of your payments on our servers.
Therefore, any information regarding your payment processing and security must be verified in Stripe’s own Terms of Service Agreement and Privacy Policy.
Stripe may provide us with unique authentication tokens to make payments requests with. The payment processor ‘Stripe’ may also provide us with information such as your name, credit card type, expiration date, and the last four digits of your credit card number. This information is used only to verify your information in the event you make a request related to your payment.
In addition, we may also request and receive any payment history between the user and The Public Record.
The Public Record cannot view and does not store your credit card details.

Indiegogo Crowdfunding Payments Processing

The Public Record uses Indiegogo for our crowdfunding campaigns. Indiegogo’s privacy policy is here.  Indiegogo provides us your name, email, and the amount you contribute.
All payments on Indiegogo are processed by Stripe.

Newsletter MailChimp

Our newsletter service provider is MailChimp. We collect subscribers emails, and if they choose to provide their name. Mailchimp provides mail tracking analytics, which use to measure and improve our newsletters.
Mailchimp’s Privacy Policy can be found here.

Backups

We keep off-site backups of this website and its server logs so the newsroom can recover from a failure. Those backups are encrypted in transit and stored in Google Drive, and they include the server access logs described above. Google acts only as storage; it does not analyse this data.

Third-Party Embeds and Fonts

We previously loaded fonts from Google. We no longer do — all fonts are served from our own server, so visiting our site does not tell Google you were here.
We regularly embed videos from YouTube, YouTube’s privacy policy can be found at www.youtube.com/t/privacy_at_youtube.
While we generally avoid using third party embeds, preferring to link instead, there are times we do use third-party embeds. We are not responsible for the privacy policies on these websites. You should be aware that the privacy policies of these sites may differ from our own.

Links to Third-Party Websites

We have included links on this site for your use and reference. We are not responsible for the privacy policies on these websites. You should be aware that the privacy policies of these sites may differ from our own.

Comments on The Public Record

The Public Record uses WordPress as our content management system. When you comment, we log your IP address, and the name and email address you enter with your comment.
We use this information to whitelist some commenters, and to moderate comments. Some IPs are blacklisted.

Changes to this Privacy Statement

The contents of this statement and our Privacy Policy may be altered at any time, at our discretion.

Newsletter and Email Consent

The Public Record publishes the Email Edition, a newsletter covering Hamilton’s civic affairs. It is sent by Joey Coleman, The Public Record, Hamilton, Ontario. You can reach us at privacy@thepublicrecord.ca.

How we obtain your consent. We only email you if you ask us to. When you sign up through a form on our website, we send a confirmation email to the address you provided, and you are added to the list only after you click the link in that email. We record the date and time of your sign-up and confirmation as our record of your consent.

Press Club members. Becoming a paying member does not subscribe you to the newsletter. You are added only if you tick the box asking to receive the Email Edition when you join.

Withdrawing your consent. Every email we send includes an unsubscribe link, which takes effect immediately and without question. You may also email privacy@thepublicrecord.ca and ask to be removed. We never require a reason.

What we store, and where. We store the email address and name you gave us, and the date, time and IP address of your sign-up — the last of these is kept as evidence that you consented. Our newsletter is delivered using Mailchimp, so this information is stored on their systems. We do not sell, rent, trade or otherwise share your email address with anyone.