Quick summary
This Privacy Policy explains how SHOWBIZ handles information across our website, accounts, events, video products and other services.
1Information you give us
Depending on how you use SHOWBIZ, you may provide:
- Name, email address and account credentials.
- Subscription, billing and transaction information.
- Event registrations and subscription preferences.
- Messages to reporters, corrections, letters, survey responses and news tips.
- Photos, documents or other materials you voluntarily submit.
Please do not send passwords, full payment-card numbers by email, secret lair coordinates or the combination to a safe unless a reporter specifically needs that information and has discussed a secure method with you.
2Information collected automatically
Like most websites, SHOWBIZ may receive technical information such as IP address, browser type, device type, referring page, pages viewed, approximate location derived from network information, timestamps and interaction data.
This is sometimes called “tracking.” For clarity, it does not mean a trench-coated detective is following you down an alley while reading a newspaper with two eye holes cut into it.
4How we use information
We may use information to provide and improve SHOWBIZ, process subscriptions, manage requested subscriptions, personalize site settings, measure readership, prevent fraud and abuse, respond to messages, conduct journalism, comply with law and operate the business.
We may also use aggregate or de-identified information for audience analysis. “63% of readers clicked the anvil story” is useful. “This exact coyote clicked it 214 times from a desert bunker” is information we handle with more care.
6News tips and confidential sources
Journalism creates privacy issues that are different from ordinary customer service. If you contact a SHOWBIZ reporter with a tip, your message may be handled as newsgathering material rather than ordinary consumer correspondence.
If confidentiality matters, say so before sending sensitive information and discuss an appropriate communication method with the reporter. An email subject line reading “SUPER SECRET!!!” does not, by itself, create source protection.
Do not use a work device, studio account or company-owned carrier pigeon if doing so would expose your identity.
7Advertising, analytics and third parties
Third-party advertising and analytics providers may receive limited technical data where permitted. Their practices are governed by their own policies.
SHOWBIZ editorial staff do not receive a dashboard identifying which individual reader disliked a review, rage-clicked a headline or spent twelve minutes zooming in on a photograph of an anvil.
8Your privacy choices
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete or receive certain personal information, or to opt out of particular uses. You may also unsubscribe from marketing emails using the link provided in those messages.
- Browser settings can control many cookies.
- Account settings may allow you to update profile information.
- You may contact us with applicable privacy requests.
Requests must be reasonably verifiable. A Groucho nose, fake eyebrows and a handwritten note saying “I am definitely the account holder” may not be sufficient.
9Security
We use reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect information. No system is perfectly secure, especially in an industry where safes routinely fall from the sky and doors can be drawn onto walls.
Our security program may include access controls, logging, encryption, vendor review and incident response. It does not rely solely on a night watchman with a flashlight and a sign reading NO COYOTES.
10How long we keep information
We retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described here, legal obligations, security, dispute resolution and legitimate business or journalistic needs.
News archives may be retained for historical and editorial purposes. A published article does not automatically disappear because the subject later changes careers, changes species, changes dimensions or acquires a publicist.
11Children
SHOWBIZ is an entertainment-industry publication and is not directed to young children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children in violation of applicable law.
Child stars, junior correspondents and precocious nephews may appear in our journalism when newsworthy; that is editorial coverage, not an invitation to open an account without appropriate permission.
12Changes to this Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy when our services or legal obligations change. The effective date at the top will tell you when the current version took effect.
We will not announce material privacy changes exclusively through skywriting, semaphore, smoke rings or a message hidden in the final frame of a cartoon.
13Contact
Privacy questions and data requests can be sent through the central SHOWBIZ contact page.
For news tips, use the newsroom channel rather than the privacy inbox. For literal cookies, contact Craft Services.