Effective as of October 1, 2022.
This “Privacy Policy” describes the privacy practices of Nota, Inc. and our subsidiaries and affiliates (collectively, “Nota”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) in connection with any pitch you submit to write a story for us.
We invite you to read this Privacy Policy, which explains our privacy practices and how we treat your personal information when you submit a pitch to write a story for us. It describes the types of personal information collected in connection with your submission of a pitch, how and why we use such information, who we share it with, and your legal rights. Certain portions of this Policy apply only to contributors located in certain jurisdictions.
Please consult our website privacy statement available here to obtain more information about our privacy practices related to your use of our website.
When you submit a pitch to write a story for us using our pitch form available on our website, you will provide us with:
You may also decide to provide us with sensitive information, such as information about your political beliefs, mental health, sexual orientation, ethnic or racial origin, religious or philosophical beliefs. Sensitive information will only be collected with your consent and will only be used in accordance with this privacy policy.
We use your personal information for the following purposes and as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy or at the time of collection:
We use your personal information to assess whether your pitch is compelling enough to be published, if it is not similar to a story that we have already published or that has already been published elsewhere, whether it meets our editorial line, etc.
We further process your personal information to provide you with feedback on whether we have decided to select your pitch or not.
We use your personal information to conduct background searches to verify the ownership of your story and its reliability as described in the “When we determine that your narrative is a good fit, we will conduct due diligence to verify the authenticity of your identity and story” section above.
We use your personal information, such information about your profession, age range, political beliefs if you decide to provide that information to us, etc. to ensure that our editorial curation is balanced and inclusive.
While your story will be published anonymously, we use your personal information to provide our users with some background information about you, such as your alias, your profession and your political beliefs if you decide to provide that information to us, etc.. Such background information enables our users to identify potential bias that you may have and to inform their reading of your story.
We use your personal information to financially compensate you when we decide to publish your story.
With your consent where required by applicable laws, we may send you updates about our upcoming issues, the stories that we are looking for, etc. You will have the ability to opt-out of our communications at any time as described in the opt-out section below.
We may use your personal information and disclose it to law enforcement, government authorities, and private parties as we believe necessary or appropriate to: (a) protect our, your or others’ rights, privacy, safety or property (including by making and defending legal claims); (b) enforce the Terms of Use that govern the Site; and (c) protect, investigate and deter against fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unethical or illegal activity.
We use your personal information as we believe necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws, lawful requests, and legal process, such as to respond to subpoenas or requests from government authorities.
In some cases, we may specifically ask for your consent to collect, use or share your personal information, such as when required by law.
We will always make sure that your anonymity is preserved. However, to be able to assess whether your story would be a good fit and to able to publish it, we may need to share your personal information with the following recipients which will process your personal information for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy:
We may share your personal information with our corporate parent, subsidiaries, and affiliates, for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy.
We may share your personal information with third party companies and individuals that provide services on our behalf or help us provide our services (such as hosting, email delivery, marketing, database management services, accounting services, and payment service). Our service providers include notably Docusign, Paypal, Clearstone Group, bill.com, etc. These third parties may use your personal information only as directed or authorized by us and in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy, and are prohibited from using or disclosing your information for any other purpose.
We may share your personal information with third parties to corroborate your identity and story. These third parties may use your personal information only as directed or authorized by us and in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy, and are prohibited from using or disclosing your information for any other purpose.
We may disclose your personal information to professional advisors, such as accountants, lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us.
We may share your personal information for the compliance, fraud prevention and safety purposes described above.
We may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including your personal information, in connection with a business transaction (or potential business transaction) such as a corporate divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, or in the event of bankruptcy or dissolution.
We may display your alias and other information which you select (e.g. generation, political affiliation, occupation) on articles contributors publish. Depending on what you choose as your alias and include in those self-selections, some of this information could constitute personal information in the categories described above.
In this section, we describe the rights and choices available to all users.
If you have registered for an account with us, you may review and update certain personal information in your account profile by logging into the account.
You may opt out of contributor update emails by following the opt-out or unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of the email, or by contacting us at [email protected]. You may continue to receive service-related and other non-marketing emails.
Please note that we may not be able to assess your pitch or publish your story if you choose not to share with us your personal information.
The security of your personal information is important to us. We employ a number of organizational, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect the personal information we collect.
We are headquartered in the United States and have service providers in other countries, and your personal information may be transferred to the United States or other locations outside of your state, province, or country where privacy laws may not be as protective as those in your state, province, or country.
European Union users should read the important information provided below about transfer of personal information outside of the European Union.
Please note that you must not share with us personal information or submit a pitch to write a story for us if you are under the age of 16. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with personal information without their consent, he or she should contact us. We will delete such information from our files as soon as reasonably practicable. We encourage parents with concerns to contact us at [email protected].
We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by updating the date of this Privacy Policy and posting it on the Site. We may, and if required by law, will also provide notification of changes in another way that we believe is reasonably likely to reach you, such as via e-mail (if you have an account where we have your contact information) or another manner through the Site.
Any modifications to this Privacy Policy will be effective upon our posting the new terms and/or upon implementation of the new changes on the Site (or as otherwise indicated at the time of posting).
Please direct any questions or comments about this Policy or privacy practices to [email protected]. You may also write to us via postal mail at:
Nota, Inc.
Attn: Legal – Privacy
5318 E. 2nd Street, PMB 42540, Long Beach, California 90803
This section describes how we collect, use, and share Personal Information of California residents in our capacity as a “business” under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) and their rights with respect to that Personal Information. For purposes of this section, the term “Personal Information” has the meaning given in the CCPA but does not include information exempted from the scope of the CCPA. In some cases, we may provide a different privacy notice to certain categories of California residents, such as job applicants, in which case that notice will apply instead of this section.
Your California privacy rights. California residents have the rights listed below under the CCPA. However, these rights are not absolute, and in certain cases we may decline your request as permitted by law.
Exercising your right to information, access and deletion. You may submit requests to exercise your right to information, access or deletion at our webform or via email to [email protected].
We cannot process your request if you do not provide us with sufficient detail to allow us to understand and respond to it.
We will need to verify your identity to process your information, access and deletion requests and reserve the right to confirm your California residency. To verify your identity, we may require government identification, a declaration under penalty of perjury, or other information. Your authorized agent may make a request on your behalf upon our verification of the agent’s identity and our receipt of a copy of a valid power of attorney given to your authorized agent pursuant to California Probate Code Sections 4000-4465. If you have not provided your agent with such a power of attorney, you must provide your agent with written and signed permission to exercise your CCPA rights on your behalf, provide the information we request to verify your identity, and provide us with confirmation that you have given the authorized agent permission to submit the request.
Personal Information that we collect, use and disclose. The list below summarizes the Personal Information we collect by reference to the categories of Personal Information specified in the CCPA (Cal. Civ. Code §1798.140) and describes our practices currently and during the 12 months preceding the effective date of this Privacy Policy. Information you voluntarily provide to us, such as in free-form webforms, may contain other categories of personal information not described below. In addition to the disclosures described in the list below, we disclose Personal Information as described in the How we share your Personal Informationsection above.
We do not sell personal information contributors provide to us and have not sold it during the 12 months preceding the effective date of this Privacy Policy.
Identifiers:
California Customer Records (as defined in California Civil Code §1798.80):
Financial Information:
Professional or Employment Information:
Commercial Information:
Inferences:
Protected Classification Characteristics:
Sensory Information:
Shine the Light. Under California Civil Code section 1798.83, California residents are entitled to ask us for a notice identifying the categories of personal customer information which we share with our affiliates and/or third parties for marketing purposes, and providing contact information for such affiliates and/or third parties. If you are a California resident and would like a copy of this notice, please submit a written request to us via email at [email protected] or physical mail at 5318 E. 2nd Street, PMB 42540, Long Beach, California 90803. You must put the statement “Your California Privacy Rights” in your request and include your name, street address, city, state, and ZIP code. We are not responsible for notices that are not labeled or sent properly, or do not have complete information.
The information provided in this “Notice to Users located in the EU and the UK” section applies only to individuals located in the European Union or in the United Kingdom.
References to “personal information” in this Privacy Policy are equivalent to “personal data” governed by EU and UK data protection legislations.
Nota, Inc. is the controller of your personal information covered by this Privacy Policy for purposes of EU and UK data protection legislations.
UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - UK Representative
Pursuant to Article 27 of the UK GDPR, Nota, Inc. has appointed EDPO UK Ltd as its UK GDPR representative in the UK. You can contact EDPO UK regarding matters pertaining to the UK GDPR:
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – European Representative
Pursuant to Article 27 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Nota, Inc. has appointed European Data Protection Office (EDPO) as its GDPR Representative in the EU. You can contact EDPO regarding matters pertaining to the GDPR:
-by using EDPO’s online request form: https://edpo.com/gdpr-data-request/
-by writing to EDPO at Avenue Huart Hamoir 71, 1030 Brussels, Belgium
Legal bases for processing.
We use your personal information only as permitted by law. Our legal bases for processing the personal information described in this Privacy Policy are described below.
As detailed in the Privacy Policy, where we process your information based on legitimate interests, you have the right to object to such processing. Where you exercise your right to object, we will cease processing your information for that specific purpose, unless there are compelling legitimate grounds overriding your objection or where your information is processed for legal reasons.
We may use your personal information for reasons not described in this Privacy Policy where permitted by law and the reason is compatible with the purpose for which we collected it. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and explain the applicable legal basis.
We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements, to establish or defend legal claims, or for fraud prevention purposes.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
When we no longer require the personal information we have collected about you, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible. If we anonymize your personal information (so that it can no longer be associated with you), we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
EU and UK data protection legislations give you certain rights regarding your personal information. If you are located within the European Union or the United Kingdom, you may ask us to take the following actions in relation to your personal information that we hold:
You may submit these requests by email to [email protected] or our postal address provided above. We may request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and process your request. Applicable law may require or permit us to decline your request. If we decline your request, we will tell you why, subject to legal restrictions. If you would like to submit a complaint about our use of your personal information or our response to your requests regarding your personal information, you may contact us or submit a complaint to the data protection regulator in your jurisdiction. You can find your data protection regulator :
Cross-Border Data Transfer
If we transfer your personal information outside of respectively the European Union or the United Kingdom to a country not deemed by the European Commission or the UK Government (as and where applicable) to provide an adequate level of personal information protection, we will either:
You may contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal information out of Europe.