3. Disclosure of Personal Information
We disclose personal information with your consent or as we determine necessary to complete your transactions or provide the services you have requested or authorized. In addition, we disclose each of the categories of personal information described above, to the types of third parties described below, for the following business purposes:
Public information: You may select options available through our Services to publicly display and disclose your name, username, and other information, such as your profile, demographic data, content and files, or geolocation data. For example, if you choose to submit content (e.g., a “Letter to the Editor” or an online review), we may publish your name, screen name and other information you have provided to us, which will be public.
Affiliates: We enable access to personal information across our affiliates, including subsidiaries and related companies, for example, where we share common data systems or where access helps us to provide our Services and operate our business. We may transfer information to other TIME offices for internal management and administrative purposes or where necessary for the performance or conclusion of our contractual obligations to you or for your benefit.
Corporate transactions: We may disclose personal information as part of a corporate transaction or proceeding such as a merger, financing, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, or a transfer, divestiture, or sale of all or a portion of our assets or any line of business.
Service Providers: We disclose personal information to vendors or agents working on our behalf for the purposes described in this statement. Service providers are required to treat the information we disclose to them, or that they collect on our behalf, as confidential and to use the information only for the purposes for which they have been engaged. The following is a list of categories of our service providers.
- Subscription management and fulfillment providers.
- Billing and collection providers, such as payment processors and organizations that assist us in assessing your credit and payment status.
- Auditing and accounting firms.
- Professional services consultants, such as firms that assist with providing legal services, or supplying project-based resources and assistance.
- Advertising, marketing, and analytics services, including entities that analyze the information we collect from or about you to communicate with and advertise to you.
- Security vendors, such as entities that assist with security incident verification and response, service notifications, and fraud prevention.
- IT vendors, such as entities that assist with website design, hosting, and maintenance, data and software storage, and network operation.
- AI/LLM service providers.
- Production vendors, such pre-press printing service providers.
- There are limited circumstances in which the service provider collects data directly from you when their privacy policies may also apply.
Financial services & payment processing: When you provide payment data, for example to make a purchase, our payment processing vendor will disclose payment and transactional data to banks and other entities as necessary for payment processing, fraud prevention, credit risk reduction, analytics, or other related financial services.
Third party marketing and advertising partners: We may disclose personal information to third party marketing and advertising partners. For example, we partner with companies that assist us with marketing our Services, including by “remarketing” to you on other websites, apps, or social media platforms. These companies may collect information from you automatically via cookies or other tracking technologies when you use our Services. We may also disclose personally identifiable information, including your contact information, to organizations such as marketers, other magazine publishers, retailers, and non-profit organizations that want to market products or services to you.
Legal and law enforcement: We will access, disclose, and preserve personal information when we believe doing so is necessary to comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement, national security, or other government agencies.
Security, safety, and protecting rights. We will disclose personal information if we believe it is necessary to:
- protect our customers and others, for example to prevent spam or attempts to commit fraud, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone;
- operate and maintain the security of our Services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or
- protect the rights or property of ourselves or others, including enforcing our agreements, terms, and policies.
Third party analytics and advertising companies also collect personal information through our website and apps including identifiers and device information (such as cookie IDs, device IDs, and IP address), geolocation data, usage data, and inferences based on and associated with that data. These third-party vendors may combine this data across multiple sites to improve analytics for their own purpose and others. For example, we use Google Analytics on our website to help us understand how users interact with our website; you can learn how Google collects and uses information at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners.
Some of the data disclosures to third parties may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information as defined under the laws of California and other U.S. states. Please see the “Choice and Control” and “California Privacy Rights” sections below for more details.
Please note that some of our Services also include integrations, references, or links to services provided by third parties whose privacy practices differ from ours. If you provide personal information to any of those third parties, or allow us to share personal information with them, that data is governed by their privacy statements.
Finally, we may disclose de-identified information in accordance with applicable law.
