Privacy Policy

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Rest of World

EFFECTIVE AS OF JULY 6, 2020

Latest updates December 17, 2020

1. INTRODUCTION

Acast, along with its subsidiaries, is committed to protecting your privacy and as a company, we always aim to achieve a high level of protection for your personal information. In order to provide you with a bespoke user experience, Acast collects certain information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked to, you and your interactions with Acast.

Through this policy we aim to explain when and how Acast collects and processes such information, what we do with your information, and crucially, the purposes for doing so.

By either using Acast as the host of your podcast and any Acast tool associated therewith, by using the Acast App, website or by listening to podcasts hosted by Acast via Acast platforms or any third-party website (defined as an “Acast User”), you do so with the knowledge that your data will be collected and processed in accordance with the terms and conditions set out in this policy. If you do not agree with our policies and practices as to how your data will be collected and processed, please do not download, register with, access or use any Acast tools or listen to any podcasts hosted by Acast.

Acast Stories, Inc., is the data controller responsible for collecting and processing your personal data pursuant to this Privacy Policy.

2. PERSONAL DATA THAT WE COLLECT AND PROCESS

Below, we outline the personal data that we are collecting and processing from you as an Acast User, or have collected and processed during the past 12 months, based on how you interact with Acast. Depending on whether you are a listener (including the medium you use to access Acast content) or a content owner/podcaster, we may collect somewhat different information about you. However, the table below contains all the types of personal information that we may process about you.

1. Identifiers.

Name, alias, Facebook ID, Google ID, profile picture, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol (IP) address, cookies, advertising ID, email address, user account name, user agent, advertising ID, session ID or other similar identifiers.

2. Personal information that otherwise identifies, relates to, describes, or is capable of being associated with, a particular individual pursuant to Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e).

Name, address, contact details such as email and telephone number, credit and debit card information, other financial information to the extent provided to us, information provided through customer or user surveys, and demographic data.

Some personal information included in this category may overlap with other categories.

3. Protected classification characteristics under California or U.S. federal law.

We may process your age and gender (to the extent provided by you). We may also process other protected classification characteristics such as marital status, pregnancy or related medical conditions and/or veteran or military status but solely to the extent such information has been voluntarily provided by you through e.g. participation in a survey. 

4. Commercial information.

Records of payment history, invoicing history, podcasts you subscribe to or have subscribed to, products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies.

5. Internet or other similar network activity.

Listening history, podcasts you subscribe to or have subscribed to; podcast categories you have marked as being of interest to you, browsing history, search history, ad viewing history, communications between you and Acast (e.g. for support or contract purposes), and other information on your interactions with our website, application, or any advertisement.

6. Geolocation data.

Physical location or movements.

7. Inferences drawn from other personal information.

Profiling information reflecting a users’ preferences, characteristics, trends, behavior or survey answers.

8. Biometric Information.

We do not collect or process biometric information.

3. HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Acast obtains the categories of personal information listed above from the following categories of sources:

• Directly from you. For example (but not limited to) when you create an Acast account, when you purchase or subscribe to podcasts, when you participate in surveys or when you enter into a contract with us.

• Indirectly from you. For example, from observing your activity on our app or our website, or when you listen to or otherwise access Acast content. 

•  Automatic data collection. Acast and/or our third-party service providers may use certain data collection technologies such as cookies, web beacons (also known as pixels or pixel tags), and/or other similar technologies which automatically collect certain information across your various devices (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about you and your listens, visits to this and other websites, mobile websites and/or mobile applications. The information collected through cookies or web beacons may be used and shared with our selected partners to provide you with content and advertisements about goods and services of interest to you (across those various devices) to analyze and track data, determine the popularity of certain content and to better understand our listeners online activity. If you would like more information about this practice and your opt-out choices with respect to Acast and our selected partners, please refer Section 7 herein.

• Cross Device Tracking. As stated in this Section 3, Acast and our third-party service providers may use tracking technologies such as cookies and web beacons that recognize and collect usage information and information about the devices you use to connect with our services and third party websites. When these tools are enabled, the data that we and our third-party service providers collect about these devices is used to enable delivery of product recommendations, advertising, or other promotional materials across your devices that are more relevant information to you, or to measure the effectiveness of our services and advertising. They automatically receive your IP address or mobile device identifier when you connect to the services or third-party websites. This data may be combined with the same information from another browser or device if you use multiple browsers or devices. Please refer to Section 7 herein to to set your preferences relating to cross device tracking.

• Collected from third parties. We may receive or collect information from third parties, and combine it with other information we may have already received or collected from you. These third parties include marketing companies and data providers that create, maintain, and distribute professional marketing lists or segments. 

4. WHY WE COLLECT AND PROCESS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may use, disclose, or sell the personal information we collect for one or more of the following purposes. Acast will not use personal information we have collected for materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.

COLLECTION AND PROCESSING PURPOSES

General

  1. To provide you with a personalized user experience and to deliver content, product and service offerings relevant to your interests through our App, website, third-party sites, via email or text message (with your consent, where required by law).
  2. To enable you to access your Acast account (if any), update your Acast profile, and change your login method or password.
  3. To compile statistics for analytical purposes for Acast and third parties, including “ad effectiveness services”.
  4. For testing, research, analysis, and product development, including to develop and improve our App, website, products, and services.
  5. To provide you with support and to respond to your inquiries, including to investigate and address your concerns and monitor and improve our responses.
  6. To help maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our App, website, products and services, databases and other technology assets, and business, including to prevent, discover or block misuse or fraudulent behavior.
  7. To perform any legal obligations that we have toward our Acast Users.
  8. To respond to law enforcement requests and as required by applicable law, court order, or governmental regulations.
  9. As otherwise specifically described to you when collecting your personal information.

For Listeners (in addition to general)

10. To obtain an overview of your listening history, in order to recommend podcasts you may like.

11. To provide you with personalized ads and offerings based on your geographic location and other personal information collected under Section 2, including but not limited to customized language and frequency of ads.

12. To manage your podcast subscriptions (if any).

13. To ascertain that you have made required payments before accessing Acast+ content, i.e. Acast’s premium tier content.

For Content Owners/Podcasters (in addition to general)

14. To provide you with hosting and distribution services, and enable the sale of advertisements and sponsorships, in connection with podcasts owned or controlled by you.

15. To make payments to you in relation to advertisements and sponsorships sold (if applicable) and provide information to you related to such payments.

16. To give you access to statistics related to your podcasts, including but not limited to the number of listens, demographic data and the sale of advertisements included in your podcasts.

Additional information about tailored advertising

As described in this Section 4, Acast may collect, process and share certain personal data/personal identifiable information for tailored advertising and ad delivery purposes by way of tracking technologies such as cookies and web beacons. Tailored advertising means the use of previously collected data about an individual, browser, or device to tailor advertising across unaffiliated web domains or applications, or on devices, based on attributes, preferences, interests, or intent linked to or inferred about that user, browser, or device. Ad delivery refers to the collection or use of data about a browser or device for the purpose of delivering ads or providing advertising-related services. Acast will use the collected data to provide you with targeted advertising based on your browsing activities and interests, to measure the effectiveness of the advertisements, to personalize the advertising content, and to serve you advertisements that are legal and relevant to your geographic location. We may also share this data with selected third parties for the aforementioned purposes. Please note opting out of targeted advertising does not opt you out of being served ads. You will continue to receive untargeted generic ads.

5. WHO DOES ACAST SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH?

5.1 Sharing Your Personal Information

Acast may disclose your personal information to a third party for a business purpose as outlined above under Section 4, or sell (as defined in the California Consumer Privacy Act) your personal information subject to your right to opt-out of those sales pursuant to Section 7 and 8 below (if applicable). When we disclose personal information for a business purpose to a third party, we enter a contract with the third party, which describes the purpose for the sharing and requires the recipient of the personal information to both keep that information confidential and not use it for any other purpose than performing the relevant contract and fulfilling the stated purpose. Please note that third parties who purchase or otherwise obtain any personal information from us may not resell the personal information unless you have received explicit notice and an opportunity to opt-out of further sales.

Acast currently shares the following categories of personal information to a third party, or has done so in the preceding 12 months:

  • Category 1: Identifiers.
  • Category 2: Customer Records personal information categories.
  • Category 4: Commercial information.
  • Category 5: Internet or other similar network activity.
  • Category 6: Geolocation data.
  • Category 7: Inferences drawn from other personal information.

Acast currently shares your personal information with the following categories of third parties, or has done so in the preceding 12 months:

  • Service providers.
  • Data aggregators.
  • Advertising companies.
  • Analytics and advertising tracking companies.
  • Other companies within the Acast group.

5.2 Sale of Personal Information in the Preceding 12 months

In the preceding twelve (12) months, Acast has sold the following categories of personal information:

  • Category 1: Identifiers.
  • Category 2: Customer Records personal information categories.
  • Category 4: Commercial information.
  • Category 5: Internet or other similar network activity.
  • Category 6: Geolocation data.
  • Category 7: Inferences drawn from other personal information.

In the preceding twelve (12) months, Acast has sold personal information to the following categories of recipient third parties:

  • Data aggregators.
  • Advertising companies.
  • Analytics and advertising tracking companies.

Please note that a “sale” under the California Consumer Privacy Act means providing a third party with personal identifiable information for consideration and does not mean that Acast has exchanged your personal identifiable information for money. 

6. RETENTION PERIODS

Acast account users

Your personal information will be retained for as long as you are an active user accessing our podcasts, and for as long as the information is considered necessary for Acast’s business and provision of services. 

Listeners without Acast accounts

Your clear text IP address will be deleted after 30 days. Thereafter, Acast will keep a hashed version of your IP address. 

Newsletter subscribers

Your personal information is retained by Acast until you choose to unsubscribe from our newsletter by using the opt-out feature provided in the newsletter.

Content owners

Your personal information is retained for the duration of the agreement between yourself and Acast. Your personal information will be deleted within six months after termination of such agreement.

Support matters

For support matters, your personal data is retained for five years following the closing of the user support matter.

7. YOUR RIGHTS AND OPT-OUT CHOICES 

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the personal information you provide to us. This Section 7 describes your rights with regard to our processing of your personal information and explains how you may exercise those rights. If you are a California resident, you may have additional rights under Section 8.

If you do not agree with our policies and practices as to how your data will be collected, we ask you to not download, register with, access or use any Acast tools or listen to any podcasts hosted by Acast.

Access and Deletion

Under certain circumstances and as required by law, you have the right to ask us whether we have processed personal data about you and how such data is or have been used. You may also have a right to ask us to update or delete such data. If you listen to an Acast’s podcast in the Acast App, you may delete your account (and your data) directly in the App.

If you would like to exercise an access or deletion right, send an email to privacy@acast.com and mark it with “ROW - Access and Deletion”. In order for us to verify your request, please provide (i) a clear description your matter in detail; (ii) your contact information; (iii) your name; (iii) the public IP address you have used access Acast’s services; (iii) where you reside and (iv) the name of one (1) podcast show you have been listening to sometime during the last month. Approved requests will be processed within forty-five (45) days of the date on which we receive the request. Please note that any deleted personal data may again be processed by Acast if you continue to use our service. 

Interest-based Advertising

We advise you that our website may collect information for purposes of Online Behavioral Advertising (“OBA”). OBA means that some of the ads you see in your applications or in your browser have been tailored to you (by us or our third-party advertising partners) based on your previous online activity or the applications in your mobile device. This is enabled by various technologies such as cookies or mobile advertising identifiers. 

  • You can read more about Interest-based advertising and how to opt-out from the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) participating companies by visiting: www.aboutads.info/choices and https://youradchoices.com.
  • You may also limit the automatic collection of your information from The Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) member companies by accessing NAI’s opt-out site: https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1.
  • Canadian listeners/users can visit: www.youradchoices.ca.

Attribution and retargeting third parties 

For opting out directly with Acast’s attribution and retargeting third parties, please visit:

Should you choose to opt-out of third-party advertising, Acast cannot be held responsible for the effectiveness or completeness of any third-party ‘opt-out’ provisions.

Choosing your preferences - Automatic data collection

You can opt out from certain automatic collection by cookies and web beacons (explained in Section 3 above) and the use of certain information by changing the settings in the device you use to access the Acast content. Various browsers have different ways to let you delete cookies or limit the kinds of cookies that can be placed on your computer. When you choose a browser, consider which suits your privacy preferences best. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of the Acast website or the Acast services may then be inaccessible or not function properly.

If you are using a mobile device, you may opt out of interest-based advertising by adjusting the settings on “Limit Ad Tracking” on iOS or “Opt Out of Ads Personalization” or “Opt Out of Interest-Based Ads” on Android which will allow you to limit the usage of information about your use. 

8. ADDITIONAL RIGHTS TO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

This Section 8 gives you as a California resident certain rights with respect to the processing of personal identifiable information beginning January 1, 2020. 

8.1 Right to Access Information in a Portable Format (California residents)

You have the right to request that Acast disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable request for such information, we will disclose to you:

  • The personal information we have collected about you;
  • Our business purpose for collecting (or selling, if applicable) that personal information; and
  • If we sold or disclosed your personal information pursuant to this policy, the personal information categories that each category of recipient may have obtained or purchased, respectively.

The information may be delivered by mail or electronically, and if provided electronically, the information will be delivered in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, in a readily useable format that allows you to transmit the information to another entity.

For RSS listens outside our app and for non-logged in app listens, we will hash your personal information after 30 days. 

8.2 Deletion Request Rights (California residents)

If you listen to Acast’s podcast in the Acast App, you can delete your account (and your data) directly in the App. You have the right to request that Acast delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable request for deletion (see Section 8.3 below), we will delete your personal information from our records, unless retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) in order to either:

  • complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you;
  • detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities;
  • debug products or services, to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality;
  • exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law;
  • comply with mandatory legislation (such as the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.) or any other legal obligation;
  • engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information's deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research's achievement, if you previously provided informed consent;
  • enable solely internal uses within the Acast Group that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us; or
  • make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

8.3 Exercising Access, Data Portability, and Deletion Rights (California residents)

To exercise the access, data portability, and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by:

Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable request on behalf of your minor child.

You may only make a verifiable request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable request must provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information (or an authorized representative for such a person). Therefore, if you are exercising your right by email or telephone, please provide us with the following information in order for us to verify your request:  

  • a clear description your matter in detail;
  • your contact information;
  • the name of the person the personal information relates to; 
  • the public IP address of the person that the personal information relates to;
  • the state in the U.S. where the person that the personal information relates to resides; and
  • name of one (1) podcast show that the person the personal information relates to has been listening to sometime during the last month.

You must also clearly state if your request relates to your own personal information or if you are acting as an authorized representative on behalf of someone else. If you are acting as an authorized representative, we ask you to kindly provide us with sufficient proof of your legal right to do so. We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm that the personal information relates to you. Please note that making a verifiable request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in such a request to verify the requestor's identity or authority to make the request.

8.4 Response Timing and Format (California residents)

We endeavor to respond to a verifiable request within 45 days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to 45 additional days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. If you have an account with us, we may deliver our written response to that account. If you do not have an account with us, we will deliver our written response by mail or email.

Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding the verifiable request's receipt. The response we provide will also explain the reasons why we cannot comply with a request, if applicable. For data portability requests, we will select a format to provide your personal information that is readily usable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without difficulty.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

8.5 Opt-Out and Opt-In of Sales of Personal Information (California residents)

If you are 16 years of age or older, you have the right to direct us to not sell your personal information at any time. User who opt-in to personal information sales may opt-out of future sales at any time. We do not sell any personal information of users that we actually know are less than 16 years of age, unless we receive affirmative authorization (the "right to opt-in") from such user, if that user is at least 13 years of age.

Please note that our services are not directed at children under the age of 13 and we therefore do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13 years, nor do we disclose such data to third parties. If you become aware that Acast has unknowingly collected personal information from a child under the age of 13, we will make reasonable efforts to delete this information from our database as soon as practically possible. 

To exercise the right to opt-out from sales of personal information, you (or your authorized representative) may submit a request to us by email: 

You do not need to create an account with us to exercise your opt-out rights. We will only use personal information provided in an opt-out request to review and comply with the request. If you are exercising your right by email or telephone, please provide us with:

  • your contact information;
  • the name of the person the personal information relates to; 
  • the public IP address of the person that the personal information relates to; and
  • the state in the U.S. where the person that the personal information relates to resides

8.6 Consequences if You Opt-Out or Request Deletion of Your Information

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights under this Section 8, such as denying you products or services or charging you different prices because you chose to exercise any of these rights. However, if you request deletion of your personal information, we may not be able to provide you with the same products or services, or the same quality of products or services as otherwise, including but not limited to personalized content, platforms, subscriptions, offers, promotions etc.

9. CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY NOTICE

We reserve the right to amend this Privacy Policy at our discretion at any time. When we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the updated policy on our website and update the policy’s effective date. Your continued use of our products or services – including but not limited to our app, website, podcasts (through Acast or a third-party provider) – following the posting of changes to this Privacy Policy constitutes your acceptance of such changes.