As part of our people first approach, we are 100% committed to our readers, which is why we want to take the time to explain exactly what the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link on 42 Media Group webpages means. The purpose of this article is to explain (1) why 42 Media Groups’s webpages and apps contain the “Do Not Sell” link, (2) what it means to “sell” “personal information,” as those terms are defined under California law (3) that 42 Media Group does not sell personal information that directly identifies you, even under the California definition of “sale,” (4) what happens if you tell 42 Media Groups not to “sell” your personal information, (5) how 42 Media Groups implements your choice to block it from “selling” your personal information, and (6) how 42 Media Group maintains your “Do Not Sell” Choice.

42 Media Group provides the “Do Not Sell” link to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), California Civil Code Section 1798.100 et seq., effective January 1, 2020. The CCPA is a new data protection law that provides California residents with certain choices about their data, including the ability to tell companies not to “sell” their personal information. The link is there to inform you of this choice. Although the CCPA only gives California residents the right to make these requests, we allow non-California residents with the same choices about their personal information. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.

The CCPA broadens the definition of “sale” and “personal information” beyond how you might commonly interpret those terms.

Under the CCPA, “personal information” includes information that is not necessarily directly tied to an individual’s identity but may be associated with a device. This includes identifiers such as IP addresses, web cookies, web beacons, and mobile AdIDs. In many cases, this type of information is not associated with you, but they are unique identifiers that could be. Similarly, the term “sell” is defined to include not just selling in exchange for money, but also sharing or transferring personal information (including information that does not directly identify an individual as described above) in exchange for anything of value, which is not limited to the exchange of money. Certain things are not considered “sales,” including when (1) personal information is shared with a service provider that is contractually prohibited from using the personal information for any purpose beyond the service specifically requested (“service provider exception”), or (2) when the consumer has directed a company to disclose the personal information (“consumer directed exception”).

42 Media Groups does not sell information that directly identifies you, like your name, address, social security number, banking information, or phone records. In fact, we do not even share that type of information except with service providers who can use the information solely to provide a service on our behalf, when a consumer directs us to share the information, or in the limited additional circumstances outlined in our Privacy Policy (such as for fraud prevention purposes or where we are legally required to share the information).

However, the CCPA’s broad definitions of “sale” and “personal information” may deem the common flow of information in the digital analytics and advertising ecosystem to be a sale. Like most companies that operate commercial websites and apps, 42 Media Groups utilizes online analytics to measure the ways users engage with our websites and apps. These analytics, in turn, inform how we perform online advertising. In order to provide these analytics and facilitate online advertising, 42 Media Groups uses third-parties that collect device identifiers and place tags, cookies, beacons, and similar tracking mechanisms on our websites/apps and on third-party websites/apps. For instance, we may request that a third-party facilitate the placement of 42 Media Group ads on a particular website after a consumer has previously visited 42 Media Groups. The third-parties we use for these purposes generally do this by placing a cookie on a user’s browser so it can identify that the same browser visited other websites. Similarly, where our webpages or apps provide space for advertisements, these third-parties may use identifiers such as cookies for websites, or the device’s mobile AdID for apps, to facilitate real-time bidding by advertisers.

Where we can reasonably ensure via contract that the third-parties described above can and will use a device identifier solely to provide the specific service we have requested, and will not use or share the data for other purposes, we will not deem that sharing a “sale.” In most cases, we’ve determined that our data analytics providers that measure the ways users engage with our websites and apps meet this standard and, accordingly, we will not block the sharing of an identifier with those entities even when you choose to opt-out through the “Do Not Sell” link.

In some cases, though, 42 Media Group does not ultimately control how such identifiers are used by some third-parties (particularly in some cases in the online advertising ecosystem), and so we can’t determine that all sharing with third-parties in these cases fall within the service provider exception under the law. As a result, we are currently treating our sharing with some of these third-parties as a “sale” under the CCPA.

When a user of our websites/apps makes the “Do Not Sell” choice, we will attempt to block further sharing of the covered identifiers with the third-parties we engage on those digital properties or any other entity that does not fall within the service provider exception or the consumer directed exception.

The implementation of your choice to block the sale of your personal information is complex and will vary between 42 Media Group brands, websites.

For 42 Media Group websites, if you do not log in to your account (or do not have an account with us) and instead set a “Do Not Sell” preference that is specific to the site that you are visiting, please be aware that the setting will only work if your browser is set to accept cookies. Likewise, if you clear your browser cookies, the cookie-based “Do Not Sell” setting will be erased, and you will need to reset the setting for that web domain.