Privacy Policy

Disqus, Inc. (“Disqus,” “we,” or “us”) provides this Privacy Policy to inform you of our policies and procedures regarding the collection, use, disclosure and protection of information that apply to our Service, as well as your choices regarding the collection and use of information.
 
Overview
Disqus is a free service that enables great online communities and discussion. We fully support freedom of speech. We give you the options to identify yourself in public online communities, in whatever format you’re comfortable with.
 
Personally Identifiable Information
To use the Disqus service, an email address, username and password are required. That’s it. We use personally identifiable information to deliver the Service, to comply with reasonable requests of law enforcement and recommend additional content to you, some of which may include content from advertisers.

Advertising
Advertising is the primary way Disqus makes money. We are paid by advertisers to serve content. We share that resulting revenue with the publishers using this feature of our Service.

Censorship
Disqus does not moderate comments on the sites that use our service. If a comment you make is deleted or not posted, it is done so at the discretion of that site operator. Each community using Disqus establishes their own standards for etiquette and acceptable language.
More detailed information on our privacy policies and procedures follows.
 
Information Collection on the Site
 
Our Service allows for an interactive experience by integrating a commenting platform. By using our Service you understand and agree that we are providing a public comment sharing platform and that we or other Users may search for, see, use, re-post any of your User Content that you make publicly available through the Service. Capitalized terms that are not defined in this Privacy Policy have the meaning given them in our Terms of Use.
 
Personally Identifiable Information: We collect information that can be used to identify you as an individual (“Personally Identifiable Information”) only when you provide such information directly to us in connection with the Service. We ask for Personally Identifiable Information such as your name and e-mail address when you register for a Disqus account with the Service, or if you correspond with us (in which case we will also retain our responses). We may also retain any messages you send through the Service, and may collect information you provide in User Content you post to the Service. We may receive Personally Identifiable Information about you from third parties, including, for example, information about your transactions, purchase history, or relationships with various product and service providers, and your use of certain applications. For example, if you access our website or Service through a third-party connection or log-in, for example, through Facebook Connect, by “following,” “liking,” linking your account to the Disqus service, etc., that third party may pass certain information about your use of its service to Disqus. This information could include, but is not limited to, the user ID associated with your account, any information you have permitted the third party to share with us, and any information you have made public in connection with that service. You should always review, and if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third-party websites and services before linking or connecting them to Disqus’ website or Service.
 
Non-Personally Identifiable Information: We also collect and use information about your interactions with the Service in a manner and format that does not identify you as an individual (“Non-Personally Identifiable Information”). We may collect, use, and disclose Non-Personally Identifiable Information as set forth below.

Cookies Information: Like many websites, when you visit the Service, we may send one or more cookies — a small text file containing a string of alphanumeric characters — to your computer that uniquely identifies your browser and lets Disqus help you log in faster and enhance your navigation through the site. A cookie may also convey information to us about how you use the Service (e.g., the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take on the Service), and allow us to track your usage of the Service over time. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive after you close your browser. Persistent cookies may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to the site. Persistent cookies can be removed by following your web browser’s directions. A session cookie is temporary and disappears after you close your browser. You can reset your web browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some features of the Service may not function properly if the ability to accept cookies is disabled.

Analytics Information: We use third-party analytics tools to help us measure traffic and usage trends for the Service. These tools collect information sent by your browser as part of a web page request, including the web pages you visit, your browser add-ons, your browser’s width and height, and other information that assists us in improving the Service. We collect and use this analytics information in aggregate form such that it cannot reasonably be manipulated to identify any particular individual user.

Log File Information: Log file information is automatically reported by your browser each time you access a web page. When you use our Service, our servers automatically record certain log file information. These server logs may include anonymous information such as your web request, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, referring / exit pages and URLs, number of clicks and how you interact with links on the Service, domain names, landing pages, pages viewed, and other such information.

Clear Gifs/Web Beacons Information: When you use the Service, we may employ clear gifs (also known as web beacons) which are used to anonymously track the online usage patterns of our users anonymously. In addition, we may also use clear gifs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened and which links are clicked by recipients. The information is allows for more accurate reporting and improvement of the Service.

Information Collection on Partner Sites

We may receive and collect information from users of third party sites which use the Disqus service ("Partner Sites") about you and your usage of the Disqus Service on their sites. Unless you have allowed the Partner Site to share Personally Identifiable Information, such information will not include Personally Identifiable Information, but may include Non-Personally Identifiable Information and/or report anonymous information about your usage of the Partner Site and the Disqus Service on that site.

How We Use and Share Personally Identifiable Information
 
Use: We use Personally Identifiable Information for the following purposes: (i) internally for purposes such as analyzing how the Service is used, diagnosing service or technical problems or maintaining security, (ii) to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the Service, (iii) to fulfill requests you may make to us, (iv) to personalize your experience and (v) to provide you with information and offers that we believe you may find useful or interesting, including newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information on services and products offered by us or third parties. Following termination or deactivation of your Disqus account, Disqus may retain your profile information and User Content for a commercially reasonable time for backup, archival, or audit purposes. Furthermore, Disqus may retain and continue to use indefinitely all information (including User Content) contained in your communications to other Users or posted to public or semi-public areas of the Service after termination or deactivation of your Disqus account. Disqus reserves the right, but has no obligation, to monitor the User Content you post on the Service. We reserve the right to remove any such information or material for any reason or no reason, including without limitation if in our sole opinion such information or material violates, or may violate, any applicable law or our Terms of Service, or to protect or defend our rights or property or those of any third party. Disqus also reserves the right to remove information upon the request of any third party.

Sharing: We will not rent or sell your Personally Identifiable Information to third parties outside Disqus and its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates without your consent, except as noted below:

  • Who we may share your Personally Identifiable Information with: We may share your Personally Identifiable Information with third-party business partners for the purpose of providing the Service to you. Those business partners will be given limited access to the Personally Identifiable Information that is reasonably necessary to deliver the Service, and we will require that such third parties comply with this Privacy Policy.

  • Who you may choose to share your User Content with: Any Personally Identifiable Information or content that you voluntarily disclose for posting to the Service, such as User Content, becomes available to the public, as controlled by any applicable privacy settings. To change your privacy settings on the Service, please change your profile setting. If you remove information that you posted to the Service, copies may remain viewable in cached and archived pages of the Service, or if other Users have copied or saved that information.

  • What happens in the event of a change of control: We may buy or sell/divest the company, or any combination of its products, services, assets and/or businesses. Personally Identifiable Information such as customer names and email addresses, User Content and other user information related to the Service will likely be among the items transferred in these types of transactions. We may also transfer or assign such information in the course of corporate divestitures, mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, dissolutions or similar transactions or proceedings.

Instances where we are required to share your Personally Identifiable Information: Disqus will disclose Personally Identifiable Information where required to do so by law or subpoena or if we reasonably believe that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement; (b) to enforce our Terms of Service or to protect the security or integrity of our Service; and/or (c) to exercise or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Disqus, our Users or others.

Disqus recognizes the following guiding principles for any required sharing of information to third parties: a) freedom of expression and identity choice are core to the Disqus platform and should be respected as such, b) law enforcement requests must comply with all laws, particularly those protecting user information, and must clearly establish the legal need for disclosure, c) law enforcement requests must be related to specific investigations and specific accounts implicated in those investigations, d) whenever legally permitted, and barring exceptional circumstances where safety or other factors are deemed a reasonable counteracting concern, Users should receive notice that their specific information is being requested with opportunity to inquire further or contest such requests.

  • Submitting law enforcement requests: Disqus, Inc. is located in San Francisco, California and will only respond to valid legal process in compliance with U.S. law. All subpoenas must be validly issued through a California or federal court. When requesting user information, official law enforcement authorities should submit the following information by mail to Disqus, Inc., Law Enforcement Requests, 301 Howard St., Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94105:

    • The display name of the user profile in question.
    • At least one permalink of a comment left by the user profile in question (these permalinks will appear in your browser address bar after clicking on the comment timestamp of any comment on Disqus).
    • Details about what specific information is requested and its relationship to your investigation. We cannot process overly broad or vague requests.
    • A valid email address so we may get back in touch with you upon receipt of your legal process.
Non-U.S. law enforcement requests: U.S. law authorizes Disqus to respond to requests for user information from foreign law enforcement agencies that are issued via U.S. court either by way of a mutual legal assistance treaty or a letter rogatory. Disqus will respond to such U.S. court ordered requests when properly served.
 
How We Use and Share Non-Personally Identifiable Information

Use: We may use and disclose non-personally identifiable information for any number of reasons and with any number of third parties, including in order to monitor and analyze use of the Site and our services and for the Site’s technical administration, to diagnose or fix technology problems reported by our Users or engineers that are associated with certain IP addresses, to increase our Site’s functionality and user-friendliness, to better tailor it to your needs, to generate and derive useful data and information concerning the interests, characteristics and website use behavior of our users, to verify that visitors to the Site meet the criteria required to process their requests, and to automatically update the Disqus application on your system and related devices.

Sharing: We may share Non-Personally Identifiable Information, including information obtained through tools such as cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data and clear gifs (such as anonymous usage data, referring/exit pages and URLs, platform types, number of clicks, etc.): (i) in any manner permitted for Personally Identifiable Information; (ii) with our third-party business partners for use in anonymous advertising targeting; (iii) for the purposes described in the section above. We may also aggregate or otherwise strip data of all personally identifying characteristics and may share that aggregated, anonymized data with third parties.

Ads on Disqus

We may also share certain information such as your location, browser and cookie data and other data relating to your use of our Service with our business partners to deliver advertisements (“ads”) that may be of interest to you. Disqus may allow third-party ad servers or ad networks to serve advertisements on the Service. These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to send, directly to your browser or mobile device, the ads and ad links that appear on the Service, and will automatically receive your IP address when they do so. They may also use other technologies (such as cookies, JavaScript, device identifiers, location data, and clear gifs, see above) to compile information about your browser’s or device’s visits and usage patterns on the Service, and to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize the advertising content.

Please note that an advertiser may ask Disqus to show an ad to a certain audience of Users (e.g., based on demographics or other interests). In that situation, Disqus determines the target audience and Disqus serves the advertising to that audience and only provides anonymous aggregated data to the advertiser. If you respond to such an ad, the advertiser or ad server may conclude that you fit the description of the audience they are trying to reach.

The Disqus Privacy Policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, third-party advertisers. Please consult the respective privacy policies of such advertisers or contact such advertisers for more information.

Information posted in Public Forums

The Service provides a commenting platform and you should be aware that any information which you voluntarily include and transmit online in a publicly accessible blog or otherwise online may be viewed and used by others. We are unable to control such uses of your information, and by using such services you assume the risk that the information provided by you may be viewed and used by third parties.

Changing or Deleting Your Information & Targeting Opt-Out
 

All registered users may review, update or correct the Personally Identifiable Information provided in their registration or account profile by changing their “user preferences” in their account. If you choose to opt out entirely, then your account may become deactivated and you will need to re-register should you decide to opt-in again. To delete your account entirely, please follow these steps. However, you understand and agree that we are not able to remove your Personally Identifiable Information from the records of any third party who has been provided with your information in compliance with the use and sharing policy outlined above.

For all users, we believe more relevant advertising generally improves user experience, however we recognize and support the preference to opt out of collecting Non-Personally Identifiable Information about your website visits for the purpose of delivering targeted advertising. Users can do so at our opt out page. When you opt out, we will place an opt-out cookie on your computer. Please note that if you block cookies, our opt-out process may not function properly. Please also note that if you delete, block, or otherwise restrict cookies, or if you use a different computer or Internet browser, you will need to renew your opt-out choice. Website owners using Disqus may also opt out of Disqus using Non-Personally Identifiable Information from pages using Disqus for the purpose of targeted advertising at https://disqus.com/admin/settings/advanced/.


Security

Disqus is very concerned with safeguarding your information. Disqus uses commercially reasonable safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of all information collected through the Service. To protect your privacy and security, we take reasonable steps (such as requesting a unique password) to verify your identity before granting you access to your account. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your unique password and account information, and for controlling access to your email communications from Disqus, at all times. Notwithstanding the foregoing measures, Disqus cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to Disqus or guarantee that information on the Service may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed. Your privacy settings may also be affected by changes to the functionality of Disqus’ distributors, such as social networks. Disqus is not responsible for the functionality or security measures of any third party.

Policy Toward Children

This Site is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from children under 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register for an account. If you are under 13, please do not send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 is allowed to provide any personal information to or on Disqus. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at privacy@Disqus.com.

Links to Other Web Sites

We are not responsible for the practices employed by websites linked to or from the Service, nor the information or content contained therein. Please remember that when you use a link to go from the Service to another website, our Privacy Policy is no longer in effect. Your browsing and interaction on any other website, including those that have a link on our website, is subject to that website's own rules and policies. Please read over those rules and policies before proceeding.

Safe Harbor

Disqus complies with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information from European Union member countries and Switzerland. Disqus has certified that it adheres to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of notice, choice, onward transfer, security, data integrity, access, and enforcement. To learn more about the Safe Harbor program, and to view Disqus’ certification, please visit //www.export.gov/safeharbor/

As part of our participation in safe harbor, we have agreed to the TRUSTe Dispute Resolution Requirements for disputes relating to our compliance with the Safe Harbor Privacy Framework. If you have complaints regarding our compliance with Safe Harbor email us at privacy@disqus.com. If contacting us does not resolve your complaint you may raise your complaint using TRUSTe's Feedback and Resolution System, by fax at 415-520-3420, or by mailing:

Watchdog Complaints, TRUSTe



55 2nd Street, 2nd Floor



San Francisco, CA, USA 94105

For information about TRUSTe or the operation of TRUSTe’s dispute resolution process, please visit the TRUSTe website or request this information from TRUSTe at any of the addresses listed above. The TRUSTe dispute resolution process shall be conducted in English.

Contact

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please email us at privacy@disqus.com.

Changes to Privacy Policy

Disqus may, in its sole discretion, modify or update this Privacy Policy from time to time, and so you should review this page periodically. When we change the policy, we will update the ‘last modified’ date at the bottom of this page. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of any changes to this policy means you accept such changes.

This Privacy Policy was first published and made effective on June 5, 2012.