Privacy Policy
Chorus, LLC ("Chorus," "we," "us," or "our") takes the private nature of your information very seriously. This policy regarding our privacy practices (the "Privacy Policy") describes how we treat the information we collect when you visit and use chorus.fm (the "Site") and/or sub-domains and forum (collectively with the Site, the "Services"). When you use the Services, you also consent to the collection, transfer, manipulation, storage, disclosure and other uses of your information as described in this Privacy Policy; please read it carefully.
WHAT THIS PRIVACY POLICY COVERS
This Privacy Policy covers our treatment of information gathered when you are using or accessing the Services. This Privacy Policy also covers our treatment of any information about you that our partners share with us or that we share with our partners. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of third parties that we do not own, control, or manage, including but not limited to any third party websites, services, applications, or businesses ("Third Party Services"). While we try to work only with those Third Party Services that share our respect for your privacy, we don't take responsibility for the content or privacy policies of those Third Party Services. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policies of all Third Party Services you access. Also: This Privacy Policy also doesn't govern what our users do on their profile blogs or direct messages and we aren't responsible for the information collection and use practices of our individual users or bloggers.
WHAT WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT
Account Information:
When you create an account on the Services (an "Account"), we'll ask you for information such as your username, password, preferred gender identifier, age, and email address ("Account Information"). We may use Account Information, alone or together with other information, to enhance and improve the Services, such as by personalization. We use your age to verify that you can lawfully use the Services. We use your email address to verify your Account and to communicate with you, as described in more detail below. We also allow you to input other information into your profile, this includes your location, occupation, schools you've attended, real name and/or various other contact details (like links to other social networking sites). These are all optional fields and are provided for you to fill out only if you wish. You can control who has access to view this information via your Privacy Settings.
Email Communications with Us:
As part of the Services, you may occasionally receive email and other communications from us. Administrative communications relating to your Account (e.g., for purposes of Account recovery or password reset) are considered part of the Services and your Account, which you may not be able to opt-out from receiving. We also may send you other kinds of emails, which you can opt-out of either from your Account Settings page or by using the "Opt-Out" link in the emails themselves. Note that we will never email you to ask for your password or other Account Information; if you receive such an email, please forward it to us.
Information about Your Accounts on Third Party Services:
You can link your Account to certain Third Party Services. In order to do so, you may provide us with your username or other user ID for a Third Party Service, and you may then be required to log into that Service. After you complete this login process, we will receive a token that allows us to access your account on that service so that we can, for example, post your content to that service when you ask us to. We do not receive or store your passwords for your Third Party Service accounts.
User Content:
By default, all sharing through the Services is public, and when you provide us with content it is published so that anyone can view it. Although we do provide tools for you to choose who can see your profile and access some content you post there. You should assume that anything you post on the website is publicly accessible unless you have explicitly selected otherwise. Also, please keep in mind that anything you share privately with another user, particularly through our direct messaging system, may be posted publicly by that user. (Recipients may copy, store, and re-share the contents of your communications.) Content published and shared publicly is accessible to everyone, including search engines, and you may lose any privacy rights you might have regarding that content. In addition, information shared publicly may be copied and shared throughout the Internet, including through actions or features native to the Services, such as "quoting."
Native Actions:
The Services allow you to perform native actions that are integral to our products, such as "liking" a post, "quoting" a post, "replying" to a post, and following a user. Liking, following, and replying are public actions. We use information about native actions to improve the Services, develop new Services, and, particularly, to personalize your experience. Personalization using this information may include presenting you with new posts, articles, or users relevant to what you've liked or followed and providing you with better search results.
Financial Information:
We will sometimes collect financial information, such as information related to your payment method (valid credit card number, type, expiration date or other financial information). This happens when you decide to purchase a paid Service or advertisement. We do not, however, store that financial information; such information is stored by our payment processors (the "Payment Processor"), and use and storage of that information is governed by the Payment Processor's applicable terms of service and privacy policy (the Payment Processor may also have other terms, and you are responsible for locating and familiarizing yourself with those terms, as applicable). We do receive certain information from our Payment Processor such as a unique token that we connect with your Account to enable you to make further purchases using the information stored by our Payment Processor.
Information Related to Use of the Services:
We collect information about how people use the Services, including those with an Account. This type of information may be collected in our log files each time you interact with (i.e., make a request to) the Services. We use internal tools and third party applications and services (like Google Analytics), to collect and analyze this information. Some of this information may also be associated with the Internet Protocol Address ("IP Address") used to access the Services; some may be connected with your Account; and some may only be collected and used in aggregate form (as a statistical measure that wouldn't identify you or your Account). We also collect your IP Address when you register, login, and make a post. We may use this information about how you and others interact with the Services for a number of things generally related to enhancing, improving, protecting, and developing new Services, including but not limited to: providing users with personalized content; improving our search results; identifying trending or popular content; fighting spam, malware, identity theft and generally keeping our users and community safe; and for legal and safety reasons as set forth in "Information Disclosed for Our Protection and the Protection of Others."
Information Related to Your Web Browser:
We automatically receive and record information from your web browser when you interact with the Services, such as your browser type and version, what sort of device you are using, your operating system and version, your language preference, the website or service that referred you to the Services, the date and time of each request you make to the Services, your screen display information, and information from any cookies we have placed on your web browser (as described below). We use web browser-related information to enhance and improve the Services.
Location Information:
In some cases we collect and store information about where you are located, such as by converting your IP Address into a rough geolocation. We may use location information to improve and personalize the Services for you and to fight spam and malware.
Information Collected Using Cookies and Web Tags:
Cookies are text files that may be sent to and saved by your web browser when you access a website; your web browser stores these cookies in a way associated with each website you visit, and you can generally see your cookies through your browser settings, depending on what browser you're using. We use cookies to enable our servers to recognize your web browser and tell us how and when you use the Services, as described above in "Information Related to Use of the Services." Our cookies do not, by themselves, contain information that personally identifies you, and we don't combine the general information collected through cookies with other such information to tell us who you are. However, we do use cookies to identify that you have logged in and store some account preferences, and that your web browser has accessed the Services, and we may associate that information with your Account if you have one. We may also store unique or near-unique identifiers that we associate with your Account in our cookies. This information, in turn, is sometimes used as described above in "Information Related to Use of the Services." Most web browsers have an option for turning off the cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your web browser) allowing you to decide on acceptance of each new cookie in a variety of ways. If you disable cookies you may be logged out of the website frequently, and so won't be able to use other parts of our Services. Some services that we use (including Third Party Services), such as Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, AdVally, and Facebook and Twitter share buttons, use web tags and may also place their own cookies on your browser. Note that, unless otherwise disclosed, this Privacy Policy covers our use of cookies only and does not cover the use of cookies or web beacons by third parties.
Derived Information:
As described above in "Native Actions" and "Information Related to the Use of the Services," we analyze your actions on the Services in order to derive or infer characteristics that may be descriptive of your Account (for example, what kinds of users or artists you follow or what kind of posts or articles you view, "like", and quote). We use this information for all of the purposes set forth in "Information Related to Use of the Services," above.
WITH WHOM YOUR INFORMATION IS SHARED
We never share information we receive from you unless: (a) we have your permission to share that information; (b) we have given you prior notice that the information will be shared, and with whom; or (c) that information is aggregate information or other information that does not identify you.
Information Shared with the Public Through the Services:
As noted in "User Content" and "Native Actions," above, by default, content published through the Services and many actions you take on the Services are shared with the public. Because this kind of information can be seen by anyone and may be indexed by search engines, you should be careful about what you choose to disclose publicly and make sure it's information you want to share with everyone.
Information You Share with Third Party Services:
You may access Third Party Services through the Services, for example by clicking on externally-pointing links. You may also choose to share information from this website, like article posts, forum threads, or blog posts, with those Third Party Services (for example, by sharing posts to Twitter or Facebook). This Privacy Policy only governs information we collect and you are responsible for reading and understanding those Third Party Services' privacy policies.
Information Shared with Our Agents in Order to Operate and Improve the Services:
In some cases, we share small pieces of information that we store (such as IP Addresses and email addresses) with third parties, such as various service providers, and other agents ("Agents"), for the purposes of operating, enhancing, and improving the Services. For example, we may share information with service providers (e.g. FightForumSpam) in order to fight and delete spam posts and spam accounts or send emails to you via a service like MailGun.
Third Party Advertisements:
We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice please visit networkadvertising.org or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit this page.
Information Disclosed Pursuant to Business Transfers:
In some cases, we may choose to buy or sell business assets. In these transactions, user information is typically one of the transferred business assets. Moreover, if we, or substantially all of our assets, were acquired, or if we go out of business or enter 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 us or our assets may continue to use your Personal Information as set forth in this policy.
Information Disclosed for Our Protection and the Protection of Others:
We believe in freedom of expression, and, to the extent reasonable, we try to protect our community from baseless legal demands. That said, we also reserve the right to access, preserve, and disclose any information as we reasonably believe is necessary, in our sole discretion, to (i) satisfy any law, regulation, legal process, governmental request, or governmental order, (ii) enforce this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations hereof, (iii) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, trust and safety, or technical issues (including exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of improving security and preventing fraud, spam, and malware), (iv) respond to user support requests, or (v) protect the rights, property, health or safety of us, our users, any third parties or the public in general, including but not limited to situations involving possible violence, suicide, or self-harm.
Information Shared with Other Third Parties:
We may share or disclose non-private information, Aggregate Information, or other non-personally identifying information with people and entities that we do business with. For example, how many visitors we have to the website.The Security of Your Information
Your Account Information is protected by a password for your privacy and security. We may enable additional security features in the future, like multi-factor authentication. You need to prevent unauthorized access to your Account and information by creating a unique, secure, and protected password and limiting access to your computer and browser by signing off after you have finished accessing your Account on the Services.
We seek to protect your information (including your Account Information) to ensure that it is kept private; however, we can't guarantee the security of any information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise the security of user information at any time.
What Information You Can Access
If you are a registered user, you can access most information associated with your Account by logging into the Services and checking your Account Settings page. Registered and unregistered users can access and delete cookies through their web browser settings.
How to Delete Your Account and What Happens When You Delete Your Account
Due to the nature of a forum, with conversations, replies, threads, and quoted messages, deleting your account removes access to your account from our system. If you want to delete your Account, you need to email us and provide proof of authority over the Account. What constitutes "proof of authority" will vary depending on the circumstances, but generally will require sufficient identifying information so that we can be confident you are the Account owner. (Emailing us from the email address associated with the account helps identify you as the Account owner.)
Deleting your account may not fully remove the content you have published from our systems, as caching of, backups of, copies of, or references to your Account Information may still exist. Upon deletion of your account: All of your conversations with other people via the direct messaging system will be deleted. All of your likes to all posts will be removed. You will be logged out and will no longer be able to login to the account. Your profile will have optional submitted information stripped from it (contact details and any optional fields you've filled out). Your IP address and email address will still be associated with the disabled account in case it's needed for administration reasons in the future. You will no longer get emails from the service. Your member profile will no longer be viewable or accessible to the public. This is non-reversible.
In addition, given the nature of quoting and replies on the Services, the public activity on your Account prior to deletion may remain stored on our servers and accessible to the public.
If you would like to change your username but not have your account disabled, you can purchase that here.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time, using the process for modifications set forth in our Terms of Service. Use of information we collect is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected.
Where to Direct Questions or Concerns
If you have any questions or concerns regarding privacy using the Services, please send us a detailed message.