Do Not Sell My Personal Information/CCPA Compliance

This page applies ONLY to residents of the State of California in the United States of America.  This page is commonly known as “Do Not Sell My Information” or a “CCPA Compliance Statement” or an “AB-375 Information Page.”

This page for residents of the State of California provides specific information to them and is intended as a supplement to our general Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.  All information provided in our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy still apply to residents of the State of California.  We encourage visitors to read our full Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Plain-English Summary

In 2018, the State of California passed a piece of legislation known as AB-375, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).  The law took effect on January 1, 2020 and places restrictions on the Internet available to the residents of California.

The CCPA was passed because of sensational media headlines about activities happening in other countries, such as the famous Cambridge Analytica scandal.  As intended, the CCPA is designed to regulate the sale of personal information on the Internet.  The law specifically applies to, “transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information to another business or a third party for monetary or other valuable consideration.”

The law was intended to give California residents information about how their personal data on the Internet was being used.  The law also provides a mechanism to allow residents of California to opt-out of the sale of that information.  Furthermore, as the law was written, it also restricts other data uses on the Internet, even if there is no sale of data or information (an unintended consequence of the law).

This website, like all modern websites, was built using cookies, scripts, and webbeacons. This web site is provided “as is” and we make no warranties, expressed or implied, on the usability of this website if an individual opts to restrict his/her data.  This website may or may not function properly if such pieces of technology are disabled.  In fact, some functions will almost certainly not operate properly if this disabled. For example, if you read an article on best restaurants in a particular neighborhood, we frequently suggest other articles that may be of interest to you, like restaurants in other neighborhoods or specific restaurant reviews in the original neighborhood. Disabling core functionality of the Internet will make it impossible for us to provide the same suggestions to you. Please see our full Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy for more information.

The CCPA law is written to limit “personal information.”  While this information represents “you” in your online form, it is not personally identifiable.  What does this mean?  Basically, we don’t know who you are.

This is the kind of data we have access to and what we know about “you”:
“Someone from [IP hosted by Company A] in [City/State] came to our site from [a Pinterest pin or a Google search result] on [date]. They viewed article X, then Y, and then Z. They were on an iPad and spent 15 minutes on our site.”
And despite the sensational media headlines and the heated rhetoric from politicians, it isn’t very personal at all.

Please note, as a resident of California, you have the right to block us from “selling” your “personal information.”  As the law is broadly and poorly written, and even more poorly defined, it will essentially block us from using any information about “you” with our partners to provide a better experience on our website.  Meaning, it will prohibit us from using data or your mere presence on our website to plan articles, change/edit/update articles, make determinations about future content, determine technical problems that may result in a poor experience (such as slow speed or broken web pages), and a whole host of other legitimate uses.

As a resident of California, you can trigger the opt-out mechanism in one of several ways outlined below in the below CCPA Compliance Information.  However, please note, that by opting out, you make yourself identifiable.  To put this very clearly: by contacting us to opt out, you will be providing us with more personally identifiable information about who you are than ever would have access to in the first place.  This is just another unintended consequence of the law.

Do Not Sell My Personal Information/CCPA Compliance Information

1. Introduction
Our website (hereinafter: “the website”) uses cookies and other related technologies (for convenience all technologies are referred to as “cookies”). Cookies are also placed by third parties we have engaged. In the document below we inform you about the use of cookies on our website.  For full information, please refer to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

2. What are cookies
A cookie is a small simple file that is sent along with pages of this website and stored by your browser on the hard drive of your computer or another device. The information stored therein may be returned to our servers or to the servers of the relevant third parties during a subsequent visit.

3. What are scripts?
A script is a piece of program code that is used to make our website function properly and interactively. This code is executed on our server or on your device.

4. What is a webbeacon?
A web beacon (or a pixel tag) is a small, invisible piece of text or image on a website that is used to monitor traffic on a website. In order to do this, various data about you is stored using web beacons.

5. Consent
When you visit our website for the first time, we will show you a pop-up with an explanation about cookies. You do have the right to opt-out and to object against the further use of non-functional cookies. You can also disable the use of cookies via your browser, but please note that our website may no longer work properly.

6. Third parties
We have made agreements about the use of cookies with other companies that place cookies. However, we cannot guarantee that these third parties handle your personal information in a reliable or secure manner. Parties such as Google are to be considered as independent data controllers. We recommend that you read the privacy statements of these companies.

7. Cookies

7.1 Technical or functional cookies
Some cookies ensure that certain parts of the website work properly and that your user preferences remain known. By placing functional cookies, we make it easier for you to visit our website. This way, you do not need to repeatedly enter the same information when visiting our website and, for example, commenting on relevant blog posts.  Like nearly every website on the Internet, we may place these cookies without your consent.

7.2 Analytical cookies
This type of cookies helps us understand how our website is being used, mainly for analytical purposes, so that we can work on providing an improved user experience. Cookies used for this purpose do not collect information that identifies a user, but the data is aggregated and made anonymous.

7.3 Advertising cookies
We sometimes use tracking pixels that set cookies to assist with our marketing and delivery of online advertising. Cookies are widely used in online advertising. We and our advertising partners can’t gain personally identifiable information from these cookies. By better understanding what our audiences are interested in, we can more efficiently promote our products and services. For example if you have looked at certain pages on our website we might want to highlight or give information about a particular service or product to you. The technology to do this is made possible by cookies and as such we may place a ‘remarketing cookie’ during your visit. We are unable to proactively reach out to you personally as the process is anonymized, but you can opt out of these cookies at any time.

7.4 Social media buttons
On our website we have included buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to promote webpages (e.g. “like”, “pin”) or share (e.g. “tweet”) on social networks. These buttons work using pieces of code coming from these social networks themselves. This code places cookies. These social media buttons also can store and process certain information, so a personalized advertisement can be shown to you. Please read the privacy statement of these social networks (which can change regularly) to read what they do with your (personal) data which they process using these cookies. The data that is retrieved is anonymized as much as possible. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram are located in the United States.

8. Placed cookies
Facebook: We use Facebook for display of recent social posts and/or social share buttons.
Google Analyitcs: We use Google Analytics to understand the number of people of people visiting the website.
Datonics: We use Datonics to understand more about the number of people visiting the website.

9. Your rights with respect to your personal information

You have the following rights with respect to your personal data:

• you may submit a request for access to the data we process about you (please note disclaimer in our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy – by contacting us, you will be providing more information than we would otherwise have access to in the first place, including your name and contact information);

• you may object to the processing;

• you may request an overview, in a commonly used format, of the data we process about you;

• you may request correction or deletion of the data if it is incorrect or not or no longer relevant, or to ask to restrict the processing of the data. To exercise these rights, please refer to our  https://guidetophilly.com/privacy-policy-terms-of-service/. If you have any questions about our privacy policy, cookies or about how we process your personal information, including any requests, queries of complaints, please contact us. You can find our contact details in Section 12 below.

10. Enabling/disabling and deleting cookies
You can use your internet browser to automatically or manually delete cookies. You can also specify that certain cookies may not be placed. Another option is to change the settings of your internet browser so that you receive a message each time a cookie is placed. For more information about these options, please refer to the instructions in the Help section of your browser.

11. Selling data to third parties

11.1 Categories of data

We sell and/or share the following categories of personal information, where you have given your prior consent (please refer to our https://guidetophilly.com/privacy-policy-terms-of-service/ for more details about these categories):

A. Demographic information such as age, area code, gender, city, etc.

B. Online identifiers such as cookies and mobile device IDs including advertising identifiers.

C. Browser history, search history, search terms, and/or information on a consumer’s interaction with this website.

We disclose your personal information for a business purpose to the following categories of third parties:

• Our affiliates.

• Service providers.

• Third parties to whom you or your agents authorize us to disclose your personal information in connection with products or services we provide to you.

11.2 Object to selling of personal data to third parties
Consumers who opt-in to personal information sales may opt-out of future sales at any time. You can manage your communication preferences at any time from your account. You (or your authorized representative) may also exercise the right to opt-out by clicking the opt-out box in the “Do Not Sell My Information” tab on this site or email to [email protected].  We will then remove your data from the databases we sell and/or share to third parties.

Once you make an opt-out request, we will wait at least twelve (12) months before asking you to reauthorize personal information sales or uses. However, you may change your mind and opt back in to personal information sales at any time by managing your communication preferences in your account on our website. We will only use personal information provided in an opt-out request to review and comply with the request.

12. Contact details
If you have any questions about our privacy policy, cookies or about how we process your personal information, including any requests, queries of complaints, please contact us either by:

• Telephone at (267) 434-1038
• Email to [email protected]
• Post to our legal registered address:  LL-Squared LLC, 1150 First Avenue, Suite 511, King of Prussia, PA 19405.

Effective: February 10, 2020
Updated: February 25, 2020