Privacy Policy
Your privacy is critically important to us. At Automattic we have a few fundamental principles:
- We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it.
(We can’t stand services that ask you for things like your gender or
income level for no apparent reason.)
- We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.
- We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of one of our services.
- In our blogging products, we aim to make it as simple as possible
for you to control what’s visible to the public, seen by search engines,
kept private, and permanently deleted.
Below is our privacy policy which incorporates these goals: (Note, we’ve decided to make this privacy policy available under a
Creative Commons Sharealike
license, which means you’re more than welcome to steal it and repurpose
it for your own use, just make sure to replace references to us with
ones to you, and if you want we’d appreciate a link to
Automattic.com somewhere on your site. We spent a lot of money and time on the below, and other people shouldn’t need to do the same.)
If you have questions about deleting or correcting your personal data please contact our
support team.
Automattic Inc. (“
Automattic”) operates several websites including
automattic.com,
wordpress.com,
gravatar.com,
intensedebate.com, and
akismet.com. It is Automattic’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.
Website Visitors
Like most website operators, Automattic collects
non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and
servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language
preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor
request. Automattic’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying
information is to better understand how Automattic’s visitors use its
website. From time to time, Automattic may release
non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by
publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.
Automattic also collects potentially personally-identifying
information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users
and for users leaving comments on
WordPress.com
blogs. Automattic only discloses logged in user and commenter IP
addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses
personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog
commenter IP addresses and email addresses are visible and disclosed to
the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.
Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information
Certain visitors to Automattic’s websites choose to interact with
Automattic in ways that require Automattic to gather
personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information
that Automattic gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For
example, we ask visitors who sign up for a blog at
WordPress.com
to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in
transactions with Automattic – by purchasing access to the Akismet
comment spam prevention service, for example – are asked to provide
additional information, including as necessary the personal and
financial information required to process those transactions. In each
case, Automattic collects such information only insofar as is necessary
or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with
Automattic. Automattic does not disclose personally-identifying
information other than as described below. And visitors can always
refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat
that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related
activities.
Aggregated Statistics
Automattic may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to
its websites. For instance, Automattic may monitor the most popular
blogs on the
WordPress.com site
or use spam screened by the Akismet service to help identify spam.
Automattic may display this information publicly or provide it to
others. However, Automattic does not disclose personally-identifying
information other than as described below.
Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information
Automattic discloses potentially personally-identifying and
personally-identifying information only to those of its employees,
contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that
information in order to process it on Automattic’s behalf or to provide
services available at Automattic’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed
not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and
affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by
using Automattic’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such
information to them. Automattic will not rent or sell potentially
personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone.
Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations,
as described above, Automattic discloses potentially
personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in
response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or
when Automattic believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably
necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, third parties
or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an Automattic
website and have supplied your email address, Automattic may
occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit
your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with
Automattic and our products. We primarily use our various product blogs
to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type
of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via a
support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the
right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your
request or to help us support other users. Automattic takes all measures
reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use,
alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and
personally-identifying information.
Cookies
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a
visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the
website each time the visitor returns. Automattic uses cookies to help
Automattic identify and track visitors, their usage of Automattic
website, and their website access preferences. Automattic visitors who
do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their
browsers to refuse cookies before using Automattic’s websites, with the
drawback that certain features of Automattic’s websites may not function
properly without the aid of cookies.
Business Transfers
If Automattic, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, or
in the unlikely event that Automattic goes out of business or enters
bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is
transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such
transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Automattic may continue to
use your personal information as set forth in this policy.
Ads
Ads appearing on any of our websites may be delivered to users by
advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad
server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online
advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your
computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things,
deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most
interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by
Automattic and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
Comments
Comments and other content submitted to our Akismet anti-spam service
are not saved on our servers unless they were marked as false
positives, in which case we store them long enough to use them to
improve the service to avoid future false positives.
Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, Automattic may change
its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Automattic’s sole
discretion. Automattic encourages visitors to frequently check this page
for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If you have a
WordPress.com
account, you should also check your blog’s dashboard for alerts to
these changes. Your continued use of this site after any change in this
Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.