Free Press staff are members too and we treat your privacy as we do our own. When you use our website or communicate with us, we collect and store personal information from you so we can better serve you and the Free Press mission.

In this policy, “Free Press” refers to our two organizations — both Free Press and Free Press Action Fund — and their staff, board members, cooperating attorneys, interns, volunteers and consultants, including outside attorneys.

We wrote this Privacy Policy to let you know how we treat that information — such as your name, contact information and issues that are important to you — and to show you all the ways we work hard to keep it safe and private. We encourage you to take the time to read it.

By accessing this website or submitting any forms on this site, you agree to this Data Usage and Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use and consent to the collection and use of any information you provide. If you don’t agree to this Privacy Policy or our Terms of Use, please do not access or use our services.

We may update these policies, and if we make any significant changes to the rules that govern this site or the way we treat your personal information, we will add a prominent notice to the site. Your continued use of the site following the posting of changes to the Terms of Use will mean that you accept and agree to the changes. We encourage you to visit this page regularly to review it.

Why do we collect your information?

Free Press fights for your rights to connect and communicate. To keep our work thriving, growing and effective, we collect information from members and website users so we can more efficiently and creatively communicate with and mobilize our members; create, promote and fund our campaigns; interface with decision-makers, campaign targets and the media; and develop more effective methods of outreach to grow Free Press and Free Press Action.

What information do we collect from you?

We collect, store and use the following personal information you directly give us when you take action online (including email, web forms and social media) or by SMS (text message), and when you donate, volunteer, RSVP for an event, or otherwise contact us.

Personal information we collect:

• Your name, email address, ZIP code, country, language preference, IP address, comments, personalized messages to targets and any other information you share — like your postal address and phone number — when you join Free Press or sign a campaign.
• Details of any donations you make to Free Press or Free Press Action Fund, including the amount, currency and method of payment. We do not store your credit-card information or banking details — that’s done through our third-party secure-payment processors.
• The history of petitions you sign or share with others.
• Your responses to optional surveys that we may ask you to complete.
• Other information you voluntarily submit in a form on the site or that you share when you contact us.

We may also collect:

• Data relating to whether you open our emails, click our email links, sign or share petitions and if the people you shared with sign our petitions.

• Technical information about your use of the website, browser type/browser version and operating system.
• Your IP address.

Our Cookie Policy describes how we collect information via cookies, pixel tags and other technologies and how to control your cookie settings.

If you are under the age of 13 (U.S.) or 16 (EU & elsewhere), please ask your parent/guardian for their consent before submitting your personal information to this site. If we have reason to believe that someone is underage and we have collected their personal information without proper consent, we will delete that information in a reasonable period of time.

What do we do with your information?

We use the personal information we collect from you to shape our campaigns, communicate with decision-makers & the media, refine your experience, improve the site, innovate our technology and optimize ways to forward our mission. 

Namely, if you sign, share or donate, we use your personal information to:

• Send you information about our work via any communications channels you’ve consented to: email, phone/SMS and/or social-media messaging.
• Give you opportunities to get involved in issue campaigns, fundraisers and special projects; to inform you about Free Press’ work; and to make it easier for you to share with your social networks.
• Notify decision-makers, elected and appointed officials, news publications and the general public when you sign a petition, send a message using our tools, or otherwise join a petition campaign.
• Create targeted-marketing campaigns to promote our work and engage the public with particular campaigns and petitions.
• Connect you with other activists when you sign up to do more in-depth organizing.
• Verify your identity and send you an email to thank you for signing or donating.
• Give you the opportunity to take action on issue campaigns directly from your inbox with one click.

We may use the personal information of all visitors of the site to:

• Answer your queries.
• Administer and improve the site and optimize our technology.
• Use tools like Google Analytics to analyze how you use the site and help us test the performance of content and site functionality, understand traffic patterns and determine if there are problems with the site.

Please note that when you sign a petition, send a message, make a donation or take any action on this site, we create a virtual user account for you where you can update your personal contact information and preferences so that we can better communicate with you to achieve our mission. You can control your preferences on your profile page.

Do we share your information?

Free Press does not rent or sell your personal information and we will share it only with the parties described below, as required by law, or with trusted third parties with your permission.

• Targets of Free Press campaigns: When you sign a Free Press petition, the target of the campaign is sent a final list including the names, cities, countries and any comments of everyone who signed. Where the target is a government body or official that requires petition signers to be constituents, we may also provide your postal code and full address.
• Free Press volunteers and event hosts: From time to time, Free Press volunteers or event hosts may have access to your contact information, including your name, email address and phone number, to reach out to you about a specific campaign or event. They may contact you directly or through Free Press or a third-party contact tool at Free Press’ direction.
• Collaborating organizations: Sometimes we work with other groups to expand our impact and amplify our messages. In these cases, we may share your name, city, country and any comments you have made when signing a petition with our partners to submit to a campaign target.
• Service providers: We work with a wide range of service providers, notably our database administrators, cloud-computing services, advertising services, data analysts, application-service providers and bulk SMS services. These providers work under strict confidentiality agreements. We do not authorize them to use or disclose your personal information except in connection with providing their services. Please note that we also sometimes use survey applications on external platforms, such as SurveyMonkey, to collect information from those who voluntarily fill out our surveys on these platforms. The personal information of survey participants will be transferred to Free Press and is subject to this Privacy Policy.
• Payment processors: We work with PayPal and Payflow Pro to help process credit-card transactions and other payment methods when you donate to Free Press. These payment processors will store certain personal information about you. Please refer to their privacy policies to learn more about how they use your personal information. If you choose to become a Free Press monthly sustainer, your payment information will be stored with your chosen payment processor and you will give Free Press explicit permission to implement regular donation transactions to the credit card you’ve designated for this purpose. Free Press does not store your credit-card account number or banking details. You can edit your donation preferences on your profile page.
• Facebook marketing: We may use your email address and Facebook ID to participate in Facebook’s Custom Audience and Lookalike Audience programs, which enable us to display campaign promotions to both existing and prospective members when they visit. To do this, we first send a digital fingerprint of your data to Facebook — not your actual personal information — and they check to see if it matches a fingerprint of their data. If you’re a match, Free Press campaign promotions may then appear when you access Facebook. Facebook deletes this information (a) if it does not match with a Facebook account or (b) after they confirm you are a registered account holder. For more detailed information, please see https://www.facebook.com/business/help/744354708981227 and Facebook’s data policy at https://en-gb.facebook.com/policy.php.
• Hotjar: We use Hotjar in order to better understand your needs and to optimize your experience on this site. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behavior and their devices. This includes a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf. For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.
• Other marketing: Based on your use of this site, we may use cookies to target you for other campaign promotions on Facebook, Google or other online services. You can read more in our Cookie Policy and control your Cookie Settings.
• Protection of Free Press and others: We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Free Press if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of your personal information is reasonably necessary to detect or protect against fraud or security issues, enforce our Terms of Use, meet any enforceable government request or court order, defend against legal claims, or protect against harm to the legal rights or safety of Free Press, Free Press staff, or members of the Free Press community. See additional details below in the “More on Protection of Free Press and Others” section.

All above categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

How do we keep your information safe?

We use standard business practices to safeguard your personally identifiable information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, misuse or destruction. All donations, including the transmission of payment details and other personal information, are handled over secure, encrypted connections.  

We hold on to your personal information for as long as is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was collected, unless otherwise required by law. If you request that we stop sending you updates and other communications or delete your information, we will honor your request and keep the minimum amount of information possible to prevent fraud and to help ensure that you are not contacted again.

How can you update and correct your personal information?

You can review and update your personal information via your profile page. You can also change your personal Cookie Settings at any time.

Users in the European Union also have the right to:

• Restrict or erase: You can ask us to limit our use of your information or ask us to delete your personal information from our records if there is no compelling reason for us to hold on to it.
• Object: You can object, on legitimate grounds, to the processing of your personal information, including direct marketing and profiling.
• Access or take your data: You can ask us to confirm whether we are processing your personal information. You can also make a reasonable request for a copy of that information or to have it transferred to another data controller (to the extent possible).
• Complain: You can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office or your country’s data-protection authority.

Please note that where we rely on your consent to use your personal information, all users worldwide have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This includes the option to unsubscribe from our email list at any time or to contact us to request to be excluded from our online campaign promotion lists or text messaging.

What is the lawful basis for processing your information?

When we process your personal information for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, we may rely on one or more of the following legal bases:

• Consent: We will ask for your consent to use your information to send you details about our campaigns, fundraisers and action opportunities, for targeted advertising and profiling and if you ever share sensitive personal information with us.
• Transactional relationships: When you donate to us, apply for employment or otherwise enter into a contract with us, we’ll need to process your personal information.
• Legal obligations: When strictly necessary, we’ll process your personal information due to a binding legal obligation on us.
• Legitimate interests: So long as our use is fair, balanced and doesn’t unduly impact your rights, we will collect and process your personal information when we have a legitimate interest that serves the Free Press mission, our services or our activities. 

Processing your sensitive personal data: We do not seek to collect or otherwise process your sensitive personal information (i.e., about race or ethnicity, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, etc.) except where:

• the processing is required or permitted by applicable law; or
• we have obtained your prior explicit consent — for example, when you volunteer to complete an opinion survey that includes your voting intentions.

Children’s Privacy

The Sites are not targeted toward, and we do not seek or desire to collect information from, children under the age of 13 in the United States (or age 16 outside the United States). Therefore, we will not knowingly request information from persons under such ages.  Please do not provide any personal data to us for any reason unless you are at least the age of 13 in the United States (or age 16 outside the United States), and please caution your children not to do so.

If a child under the age of 13 in the United States (or age 16 outside the United States) has provided personal data to us through the Sites without verifiable parental consent, a parent or guardian may inform us at webmaster@freepress.net, and we will use commercially reasonable efforts to delete such information within a reasonable period of time, subject to applicable law and this Policy.

California Privacy Rights / “Do Not Track” Signals

Free Press does not track its users over time and across third party websites to provide targeted advertising and therefore does not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals. However, some third-party sites do keep track of your browsing activities when they serve you content, which enables them to tailor what they present to you. If you are visiting such sites, certain web browsers allow you to set the DNT signal on your browser so that third parties (particularly advertisers) know that you do not want to be tracked. You should consult your web browser’s “help” feature for instructions on how to set the DNT signal.

Third parties that have content embedded on Free Press’ websites such as a social feature or a stock ticker may set cookies on a user’s browser and/or obtain information about the fact that a web browser visited the Sites from a certain IP address. Free Press does not control or monitor such practices. You should contact such third parties directly to opt out.

Mobile Terms and Conditions

• There is no fee from Free Press to receive text messages. Message and data rates may apply- this can be checked with your mobile service provider. Charges are billed and payable to your mobile service provider or deducted from your prepaid account. Consent is not a requirement for purchase.
• Data obtained from you in connection with this SMS service may include your mobile phone number, your carrier’s name and the date, time and content of your messages. We may use this information to contact you and provide the services you request from us. Alerts sent via SMS may not be delivered if the mobile phone is not in range of a transmission site, or if sufficient network capacity is not available at a particular time. Even within a coverage area, factors beyond the control of the wireless operator may interfere with message delivery, including the customer’s equipment, terrain, proximity to buildings, foliage, and weather. Wireless operators do not guarantee message delivery and will not be held liable for delayed or undelivered messages. 
• We will not be liable for any delays in the receipt of any SMS message as delivery is subject to effective transmission from your network operator.

By subscribing to the Free Press mobile alerts, the user consents to receive automated text messages from Free Press in our efforts to ensure that media and technology are used for good. Recurring messages. Message & data rates may apply. If you have any questions, text HELP to the number you received a text message from or contact us at or info@freepress.net. To stop receiving messages reply STOP.

More on Protection of Free Press and Others

We believe you should have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information you disclose online that is not clearly intended for public dissemination. Where possible, we may attempt to defend this principle even though most jurisdictions currently take the opposition position.

We may attempt not to disclose material in response to overzealous or inappropriate requests. When we have a good-faith belief that the law compels us to do so or when we think justice would be served, we may cooperate with law-enforcement authorities or court orders requesting or directing us to disclose personal information of any user of this site.

Should this happen, we will attempt to provide you with notice before we disclose your personal information, unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise as described above in Do We Share Your Information?

We work hard to maintain security safeguards to help protect against loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction of the information you provide to us. However, please note that no data transmission or storage is guaranteed to be 100% secure.

As a result, while we strive to protect your information and privacy, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you disclose or transmit to us online and cannot be responsible for the theft, destruction or inadvertent disclosure of your information.

Links to third-party websites

We may provide links to other websites. This Privacy Policy covers only Free Press sites. We have no control over external websites and are not responsible for their content or privacy practices. Please read the terms of use and privacy policies for any third-party sites you visit via links from this site.

How can I unsubscribe?

If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from our email list, you may do so via your profile page or by following this link, which is also included in every campaign email that you receive from us.

How can I get more information?

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, your personal information, or data protection on this site, please contact us.

For your protection, we may only share and update the personal information associated with the specific email address that you use to send us your request and we may need to verify your identity before doing so. We will comply with such requests in a reasonably timely manner. Please do not send sensitive personal information, passwords, banking details or credit/debit card details via email.

You can reach us when you contact us, or when you write to: Free Press / PO Box 60238 / Florence, MA 01062 / USA.

Terms of Use

Copyright policies

All original text, images and other materials hosted on freepress.net servers are copyright 2009–2020 Free Press, unless otherwise noted (e.g., news articles and licensed photos).

We encourage reproduction and distribution of original materials on this site for educational and personal use. All Free Press-created content on this site (unless otherwise noted) is available to you under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

In short, this license allows you to copy, distribute, display or make derivative works provided that you a) credit Free Press, b) do not use our materials for commercial purposes and c) release any derivative works under this same license.

Copyright-infringement notification

If you have a copyright complaint, please follow the procedures set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Our agent for notice is Senior Digital Director Dutch Cosmian. They may be reached by phone at 202-265-1490, or by email at webmaster(AT)freepress.net. Please direct your written correspondence to them at:

Free Press
PO Box 60238
Florence, MA 01062