The Positive Times

Data Use Policy

We receive a number of different types of information about you, including:

Your information

Your information is the information that’s required when you sign up for the site, as well as the information you choose to share.

• Registration information

When you sign up for The Positive Times, you are required to provide information such as your name, email address, professional affiliation. In some cases, you may be able to register using other information, like your telephone number.

• Information you choose to share

Your information also includes the information you choose to share on The Positive Times, such as when you post a status update, upload a photo, or comment on a colleague’s story.  It also includes the information you choose to share when you take an action, such as when you add a colleague as a connection, submit an article, supply information about a school based resource.

We receive information about you from your colleagues and others, such as when they upload your contact information, post a photo of you, tag you in a photo or status update, or at a location, or add you to a group.

When people use The Positive Times, they may store and share information about you and others that they have, such as when they upload and manage their invites and contacts.

Other information we receive about you

We also receive other types of information about you:

• We receive data about you whenever you interact with The Positive Times, such as when you look at another person’s articles or information, send or receive a message, search for an ‘expert’ member or a topic.
• When you post things like photos or videos on The Positive Times, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date, and place you took the photo or video.
• We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access The Positive Times, including when multiple users log in from the same device. This may include your IP address and other information about things like your internet service, location, the type (including identifiers) of browser you use, or the pages you visit. For example, we may get your GPS or other school location information so we can tell you if any schools sharing similar interests are near-by.
• Sometimes we get data from our affiliates or our advertising partners, customers and other third parties that helps us (or them) deliver ads, understand online activity, and generally make The Positive Times better. For example, an advertiser may tell us information about you (like how you responded to an ad on The Positive Times or on another site) in order to measure the effectiveness of – and improve the quality of – ads.

We also put together data from the information we already have about you and your linked colleagues. We may put together your current city with GPS and other location information we have about you to, for example, tell you and your colleagues about people or events nearby, or offer school based resources to you that you might be interested in. We may also put together data about you to serve you ads that might be more relevant to you.

When we get your GPS location, we put it together with other location information we have about you (like your current city). But we only keep it until it is no longer useful to provide you services, like keeping your last GPS coordinates to send you relevant notifications.

We only provide data to our advertising partners or customers after we have removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it, or have combined it with other people’s data in a way that it is no longer associated with you.

How we use the information we receive

We use the information we receive about you in connection with the services and features we provide to you and other users like your linked colleagues, our partners, the advertisers that purchase ads on the site, and the developers that build the games/ educational applications, applications, and websites you use. For example, in addition to helping people see and find things that you do and share, we may use the information we receive about you:

• as part of our efforts to keep The Positive Times products, services and integrations safe and secure;
• to protect The Positive Times’s or others’ rights or property;
• to provide you with location features and services, like telling you and your school when something is going on nearby;
• to measure or understand the effectiveness of ads you and others see, including to deliver relevant ads to you;
• to make suggestions to you and other users on The Positive Times, such as: suggesting that contact a particular user because they are affiliated with the same school or college
• for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.

Granting us this permission not only allows us to provide The Positive Times as it exists today, but it also allows us to provide you with innovative features and services we develop in the future that use the information we receive about you in new ways.

While you are allowing us to use the information we receive about you, you always own all of your information. Your trust is important to us, which is why we don’t share information we receive about you with others unless we have:

• received your permission;
• given you notice, such as by telling you about it in this policy; or
• removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it.

Of course, for information others share about you, they control how it is shared.

We store data for as long as it is necessary to provide products and services to you and others, including those described above. Typically, information associated with your account will be kept until your account is deleted. For certain categories of data, we may also tell you about specific data retention practices.

Deleting and deactivating your account

If you want to stop using your account, you can either deactivate or delete it.

Deactivate

Deactivating your account puts your account on hold. Other users will no longer see your personal information but they will still have access to articles you have submitted to various forums, blogs or other areas of The Positive Times site. We do not delete any of your information. Deactivating an account is the same as you telling us not to delete any information because you might want to reactivate your account at some point in the future.

Deletion

When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted from The Positive Times. It typically takes about one month to delete an account, but some information may remain in backup copies and logs for up to 90 days. You should only delete your account if you are sure you never want to reactivate it. You can delete your account by contacting us at The Positive Times. Certain information is needed to provide you with services, so we only delete this information after you delete your account. Some of the things you do on The Positive Times aren’t stored in your account, like posting to a group or forum or sending someone a message (where your linked colleague may still have a message you sent, even after you delete your account). That information remains after you delete your account.