Who we are
Our website address is: https://upgrademedia.com. We are a UpgradeMedia, INC which is a US based corporation based in Nashville Tennessee. We serve clients with marketing, web development, and social media consulting services.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact Forms
On contact forms, you may willingly provide information to us for newsletters or for us to use to answer your questions or contact you for special events or offers. We store that information in Customer Relationship Management Software, including companies like Nimble and Salesforce.
If at any time you wish us to remove you completely from all our contact databases, simply submit a form and verify that you do in fact want to be completely removed and we will do so, usually within 5 business days.
Contact form data stored on this website’s databases are purged regularly to maintain maximum security and a minimum impact should we ever experience an intrusion. Your security is our security.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We use both Google Analytics and localized (and anonymous if you do not have a site membership) cookies to manage your user experience. We also use Facebook pixels to track user data so that we may know when a Facebook user visits our website. That data is anonymized by Facebook for our purposes. It does allow us to target you with ads because we believe people who visit our website may be potential customers.
Spotify
We run campaigns that may integrate with Spotify. In that event, the website you land on has its own ownership and data retention policies. As an example, SmartURL may retain access to your Spotify account to Presave a song or album to your playlists.
In those cases, you may disconnect from that service at any time and we do not retain access to your account or its information, other than contact information we may collect in contests or sweepstakes.
Who we share your data with
- WordPress.com (optional, you must sign into their system to share your data)
- Google (Analytics tracks you anonymously unless you are logged into Google’s services)
- Facebook (provides a pixel that only tracks you personally if you have logged into Facebook)
- MailChimp (if you sign up for our newsletter, your email address and name is stored in MailChimp databases)
We use both Google Analytics and Facebook pixels to track users to enhance both our knowledge of how to improve our site experience and to market to you. For our purposes, that data is anonymized.
Once you land on our website, we don’t [yet] have a way to remove you from Google or Facebook’s data pools.
If you block cookies or refuse to log in and identify yourself on any Google or Facebook service, you remain anonymous to both our systems and theirs unless you sign up for a service at this website or willingly supply your contact to us.
In the event that
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
For users who buy things on this website, we retain customer purchase data indefinitely out of a fiduciary responsibility. In the event of an audit and to adhere to Homeland Security requirements, we do not accept money from people anonymously and we store those records indefinitely.
For users who visit the site and do not block Google Analytics, we retain IP traffic and visit data indefinitely.
At this time, we are not removing visitor data from Facebook or Google. It is our understanding that option will become available in the future, and when that is available we will extend that option to you the visitor (see Facebook Pixels and Google Analytics above).
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
We use both Facebook Pixels and Google Analytics, but we send no collected data like your name, address, email, or phone number to either company unless you explicitly request to be added to a list on one of their services.
Contact UpgradeMedia
Phone: +1 615 – 669 – 3010
Use our contact form to contact us via email.
Additional information
How we protect your data
We do not allow public access to our servers. No FTP accounts, this site is not on a shared hosting platform. Database and code access are permitted to employees or contractors of UpgradeMedia, Inc. only.
When reasonable, your data is encrypted. However, some features on this website make encryption problematic.
What data breach procedures we have in place
In the event of a breach, anyone for whom we have an email address will be notified immediately.
We also notify known authorities of any breach that puts your personal data in jeopardy.
What third parties we receive data from
At this time, only WordPress.com integrates for inbound data on this website.
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
At this time, we only use user data to provide services on this website and target users for advertisements to remind them of the services we provide.
Industry regulatory disclosure requirements
Other than breach notifications, we are not aware of any regulatory disclosures we must provide. Please feel free to notify us if you are aware of any.
Your Contact Information
We do not store any personal contact information without your express permission. At any time, you may request we remove your contact information from our newsletters, website, or records by contacting us directly and providing information we can use to remove your information or by opting out of our marketing materials.
Cookies, Pixels, and Tracking
If you visit UpgradeMedia.com you are being tracked by cookies. At this time, we don’t turn cookies off for people who wish to enjoy the website but opt out of tracking by Facebook, Google, or other behavior and traffic tracking tools.
Please do not visit UpgradeMedia.com if you don’t want to be tracked by these systems, or use a simple cookie and pixel blocker to avoid our behavior detection.
We hope to create an option to turn off these tracking systems.
GDPR
We don’t fully understand every possible GDPR implication at this time, but are trying to comply even though we do not target EU citizens.
We respect your right to privacy and information protections and try to make you aware of tracking systems we lawfully use for American citizens that may not be fully compatible with European standards due to slow technology advancement.
If you are an EU citizen or any person who wishes to completely remain anonymous, it is best to block or turn off cookie and Facebook pixel tracking or avoid this website.
All newsletters or any form of communications are 100% opt-in and you are responsible for removing yourself if you want to remain anonymous or remove your information from our systems.
Notice of Intrusion
If we have reason to believe our systems have been compromised and your contact information in some way potentially exposed to unauthorized parties, we will use whatever contact information we have to inform you. Our goal is to notify you within 72 hours, as well as authorities at the highest level.
At this time we do not have the ability to track and inform every nationality’s local authority, though that is our goal. This page will be updated when we have that capacity.