SIXTH TONE (hereinafter referred to as "we") focuses on protecting users' personal information and privacy. When you use our services, we may collect and use your personal information. Through this Privacy Policy, we hope to show you when using relevant services of SIXTH TONE (including but not limited to network information, social networking, hereinafter referred to as " Sixth Tone Service" or "service"), how we will collect, use, store and share that information, as well as how we may access, update, control and protect it. We will strictly protect your personal information in accordance with laws and regulations. In order to provide better services to you and other users, we only collect the necessary information.Terms and conditions concerning your personal information rights and interests, and other important content, have been highlighted in bold and underlined form. Please pay special attention to them.
If you do not agree with any content of this Privacy Policy, you may choose to stop using SIXTH TONE service. When you use or continue to use our service, it means that you agree to our collection, usage, storage and sharing of your relevant information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
I. Information we may collect and ways it may be collected
When we provide services, we may collect, store and use the following information about you that is necessary to enable you to implement product features. If you do not provide relevant information, certain features in the service may not work properly, but it does not affect your use of other features in the service. By providing your personally sensitive information, you consent to the processing of your personally sensitive information in accordance with the purposes and methods described in this policy..
1. The information you have provided us
(1) When you sign up for an account or use our services, fill in, submit and/or provide information in any way, including your name, gender, date of birth, passport name, telephone number, email, industry information, your area;
(2) Your shared information provided to a third party when using our services, as well as the information stored when using our services.
2. Information we obtain
When you use our services, we may collect the following information:
(1) Log information refers to the technical information that the system may collect automatically through cookies or other similar technologies when you use our services, including:
(a) Device or software information, such as configuration information provided by your mobile device, web browser or other programs used to access our service, your Internet Protocol ("IP") address, version and device identification code used by mobile devices, and your device's MAC address, which is collected exclusively for unique device identification to support interface requests and enhance the security of our services;
(b) The information you search or browse when using our service, such as the search terms you use, the URL addresses of the social media pages you visit, and other information and content details you browse or request when using our service;
(c) Information about the mobile applications (APP) and other software that you have used, as well as information that you have used them;
(d) The information you communicate through our services, such as the account you have communicated with, as well as the time, data and time of communication;
(e) The information (metadata) contained in the content you share through our service, including the date, time or location of the shared photos or videos taken or uploaded.
(2) Location information, meaning that when you turn on the device location function and use our location-based services, we will receive the address of your source site and target site. We will also receive information about your IP address, proxy server, operating system, network browser and add-ons, device identification number and features, and/or Internet service provider or mobile operator. If you use our service through mobile devices, based on your mobile device settings the device will send us your location data. Before using GPS or other tools to confirm your exact location, we will seek your permission to collect information about your location, including:
(a) When you use our services through mobile devices with the positioning function, we collect your geographic location information by means of GPS or WIFI;
(b) Real-time information provided by you or other users containing your geographical location, such as the information of your area contained in the account information you provided, the shared information uploaded by you or others showing your current or previous geographical location, and the geographic tag information contained in the photos shared by you or others;
(c) You can stop collection of location information by turning off the location function.
3. Information obtained from third parties
When you use the services provided by our customers and partners, they may provide us with your shared information.
(1) When you log on to SIXTH TONE with a third party account, with your express consent, we will collect the nicknames, avatars and log-in time of the third party account which is convenient for your authorization management. Please read carefully the user agreement or privacy policy of the third party.
(2) Information collected by users for using our products or services, including information published by other users may contain some of your information (information related to you in comments, messages, pictures and videos).
In particular, we would like to remind you that the information collected in the course of our services can identify users individually or in combination with other information, which will be processed and protected as your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy during the use of the information. If the information can not identify your personal identity alone or in combination with other information, it does not belong to your personal information in the legal sense.
II. How may we use your information
We may use the information collected in the process of providing services to you for the following purposes:
1. Provide you with the services you use, and maintain and improve those services;
2. When we provide services, it is used for authentication, customer service, security, fraud monitoring, archiving and backup purposes to ensure the security of the products and services we provide to you;
3. To make us more aware of how you access and use our services to respond to your personalized needs, such news pushes, language settings, location settings, personalized help services and instructions, or to respond to you and other users in other ways;
4. Provide you with more relevant advertisements to replace the general advertisements;
5. Evaluate and improve the effectiveness of advertising and other promotional activities in our services;
6. Software authentication or management software upgrade;
7. To let you participate in the survey of our products and services.
In order to let you have a better experience and improve our services or other uses that you agree with, we may use the information collected by one service to collect information or personalize it for other services in accordance with relevant laws and regulations. For example, the information gathered when you use one of our services may be used in another service to provide you with specific content or to show you information related to you that is not commonly pushed. If we provide the appropriate options in the relevant services, you can also authorize us to use the information provided and stored by the service for our other services.
III. Information we may share
1. Except in the following cases, without your consent, we will not share or transfer your personal information to a third party, or the personal information shared or transferred is information after de-labeling, and the third party will not be able to identify the natural person relating to such information:
(1) To fulfil our obligations under The Paper User Use Agreement or this Privacy Policy and safeguard our legitimate rights and interests, which are reasonably necessary to comply with applicable laws and regulations, safeguard the public interests of society, or protect personal and property safety or the legitimate rights and interests of us or our group companies, our customers, other users or employees;
(2) In order to provide you with analysing service like appcrash, our App has integrated third party SDK, which will collect your device identifiable information (such as AndroidID/OAID/IDFA/OpenUDID/GUID/IMEI/IMSI/ICCID/MAC/Serial/IDFV/SN, etc) and installed app list. We will not share your personal identifiable information unless authorized by you. For more information, please log in 《Third-Party SDK Directory》 to learn privacy policy of sdk manifest;
(3) In accordance with the provisions of laws and regulations or the requirements of administrative or government agencies and judicial branches;
(4) When you violate the relevant laws and regulations of China, or the relevant agreements signed with SIXTH TONE (including electronic agreements signed online) or the relevant SIXTH TONE Platform Rules, you need to disclose to third parties.
2. Transfer of personal information during acquisition, merger and reorganization
With the continuous development of our business, it is possible for us and our affiliates to conduct mergers, acquisitions, asset transfers or similar transactions, and when we share your personal information with third parties, we will notify you the relevant circumstances by news pushes or announcements, and the data receiver should undertake the responsibilities and obligations of your data security. If there is no data receiver, we will delete the data. Where laws or administrative regulations provide otherwise, such provisions shall prevail.
IV. How do we protect your information security?
1.We comply with the laws and regulations and store the collected personal information of users in China. In general, we retain your personal information for the shortest period necessary to achieve its purpose. However, in the following cases, we may change the storage time of personal information due to legal requirements:
(1). To comply with applicable laws and regulations and other relevant stipulations;
(2). To comply with court judgments, rulings or other legal procedures;
(3). To comply with the requirements of relevant government agencies or statutory authorized organizations;
(4). We have reason to believe that we need to comply with relevant laws and regulations;
(5). For the purpose of implementing the relevant service agreement or this policy, safeguarding the public interest, and the purpose necessary to protect the personal and property safety or other legal rights of our customers, us or our affiliates as well as other users or employees.
When our products or services cease to operate, we will notify you by pushes of notifications or announcements, etc., and delete or anonymize your personal information within a reasonable period of time.
2. We use various security technologies and procedures to prevent information loss, improper use, unauthorized reading or disclosure. For example, in some services, we will use encryption technology (such as SSL) to protect the personal information you provide.
3. Although reasonable and effective measures have been taken and the standards required by relevant laws have been complied with, please understand that in the Internet industry, due to technical constraints and possible malicious means, it is impossible to always guarantee 100% security of information even if we do our best to strengthen security measures. You should understand that your systems and communication networks used to access our services may be subject to problems due to factors beyond our control.
V. Information you share
1. Your personal information is an important part of our services. We will keep your information confidential in accordance with the law, but we can share your relevant information publicly with all users of the service. Including when you upload or publish articles or status (such as pictures, videos or articles) in our service, everyone can see them publicly. Seeing what you share, members, visitors and others will be able to find and browse what you publicly share, including your registered account (if there is an avatar, they will be also able to see it), and can forward it anywhere (depending on your settings), and your responses, shares or comments on information uploaded or published by others, as well as location data and log information related to such information. Other users using our services may also share information about you (including location data and log information), and others will see these "interactive operations". As long as you do not delete the shared information, the relevant information will remain in the public domain. Even if you delete the shared information, the relevant information may be independently cached, copied or stored by other users or non-associated third parties beyond our control, or saved by other users or such third parties in the public domain.
Therefore, please consider carefully before uploading, publishing and exchanging information through our service. In some cases, you can control the range of users who have the right to browse your shared information through the privacy settings of some of our services. If you want to delete your relevant information from our service, please do so through the means provided by the special terms of service.
2. Some personal information may be considered sensitive because of its particularity, such asyour race, religion, personal health or medical information.Compared with other personal information, sensitive personal information is more strictly protected.
Please note that the content and information you provide, upload or publish when using our service (such as photos , videos or articles of your social activities) may reveal your sensitive personal information. You need to consider carefully whether to disclose sensitive personal information when using our services.
3. You agree to process your sensitive personal information according to the purposes and methods stated in this Privacy Policy.
VI. How we may collect information
We may collect and use your information through cookies and similar technologies and store it as log information for the following purposes:
1. To remember your identity. For example, cookies can help us identify you as our registered user, or save information about your preferences or other information you provide us;
2. To analyze your use of our services. For example, we can use cookies to find out what activities you do through our services, or which pages or services are most popular with you.
3. To optimize your choice of advertisements, improve product services and user experience.
VII. Scope of Application and Exceptions to this Privacy Policy
1. This Privacy Policy applies to all our services except for certain specific services. These specific services will be subject to specific privacy policies. Specific privacy policies for certain services will more specifically explain how we use your information in those services. The privacy policy for this particular service forms part of this Privacy Policy. If the privacy policy of a specific service is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy, the privacy policy of that particular service shall apply.
2. Our service may include links to social media or other services operated by third parties (including websites), and such social media or other services of third parties may be operated by the relevant third parties or us. Your use of such third party's social media services or other services (including any personal information you provide to such third party) is subject to the third party's terms of service and privacy policies, and so should be read carefully.
This Privacy Policy applies only to the information we collect and does not apply to any third-party services or rules for using information by those third parties. We are not responsible for any third party using the information provided by you, regardless of whether you log in, browse or use the above software or website based on SIXTH TONE links or guidance.
VIII. Accessing and updating your personal information
We attach great importance to your personal information management, and we will do our utmost to protect your right to inquire, access, modify, delete, withdraw consent authorization, cancel accounts, complain or set up privacy functions for your personal information, so as to enable you to have sufficient capacity to protect your privacy and security.
If you find that we collect and use your personal information in violation of laws, administrative regulations or the agreement of both parties, you may ask us to delete it. If you find any errors in your personal information collected and stored by us, you may ask us to correct them. Please contact us through the contact information listed in this policy.
However, for the sake of security and identity recognition (such as Account Appeal Services), we may require you to authenticate when accessing, updating, correcting and deleting the aforementioned information in order to ensure account security.
IX. Minors Clause
We attach great importance to the protection of minors’ personal information. If you are a minor (under the age of 18), you should obtain your guardian's consent before using SIXTH TONE-related services.
We protect the personal information of minors in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations of the state. We collect, use, store, share, transfer or disclose the personal information of minors only when the law permits, when parents or other guardians explicitly agree, or when it is necessary for protection of minors.
X. Revision and Notification of this Privacy Policy
In order to provide you with better service, SIXTH TONE will issue an updated version through the SIXTH TONE website and mobile APP, with reminders of the update of relevant content. We may revise the terms of the Privacy Policy over time, which forms part of this Privacy Policy.
If such amendments result in a substantial reduction of your rights under this Privacy Policy, we will notify you in a prominent place on the home page or otherwise before the amendment takes effect. In this case, you may choose to stop using our services. If you continue to use our services, you agree to be bound by the revised Privacy Policy.
XI. Contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or related matters, please contact us through the following methods.
Email:support@sixthtone.com
We will review the issue as soon as possible and respond within 15 working days of verifying your user identity.
XII. The copyright of this Privacy Policy is owned by SIXTH TONE. We have the right to interpret and modify it to the extent permitted by law.
Updated: May 15, 2024
