Raw News Media’s Privacy Policy
Raw News, as well as its advertisers, are deeply committed to protecting the privacy of Internet users. Below is information outlining our continued support for the responsible management of consumer information. This policy governs all Raw News properties, including but not limited to RawNews.com.
Consumer Information
During the process of delivering an ad to you, Raw News and its advertisers do not collect any personally identifiable information about you such as name, address, phone number, or e-mail address. However, Raw News and its advertisers do obtain some types of non-personally identifiable information such as the Internet Service Provider you use to connect to the Internet, your browser type, your country, the type of computer operating system you use (Macintosh or Windows, for example). The information collected by The Raw News and its advertisers is used for the purpose of targeting ads and measuring ad effectiveness on behalf of our advertisers.
In some cases, you may voluntarily provide personal information in response to a specific ad (this ad may ask you to fill out a survey or provide your zip code). If this does occur, Raw News or its advertisers may collect this information on behalf of an advertiser. This information is used by an advertiser to respond to your request. In addition, Raw News or its advertisers may combine this information with other users’ information and review it in an aggregate form to understand the type of individuals who view a specific type of ad or visit a particular kind of website.
Data Collection
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
Raw News or its advertisers, as well as most sites on the Internet, may use “cookies” to enhance your experience on the web. Raw News or its advertisers cannot use these cookies to personally identify you in any way.
What are cookies and why do we use them?
A cookie is a unique number that is provided to you the first time Raw News or its advertisers serves you an ad. This unique number, which is stored in a cookie file on your computer, helps The Raw News or its advertisers target ads to you. This cookie can help The Raw News or its advertisers ensure that we don’t serve you the same ad multiple times, and help our advertisers understand what you like and don’t like about their offerings so that they can cater better to your needs the next time you are interested in their products or services. While we believe that cookies enhance your Internet experience by limiting the number of times you see the same ad and delivering more relevant content to you, they are not required for Raw News or its advertisers to deliver you an ad.
If you do not want the benefit of cookies, there is a simple procedure to manually delete your cookies. Please consult your web browser’s Help documentation for more information.
Raw News works with third party advertising agencies who serve ads to this site. Each of these agencies have their own privacy policies. If you have any additional questions about Raw News’ dedication to consumer privacy, please click here to send us a message.
Terms of Service
Comments and commenter accounts are maintained at the sole discretion of Raw News, its employees, contractors, freelancers and designated agents (hereafter referred to as “Raw News”). Comments may be deleted and/or commenter accounts suspended at the sole discretion of Raw News without notice. By commenting on the site, you are agreeing to these terms of service.
Commenting guidelines:
Raw News appreciates and values the community that comment boards build, and uses moderation to make these discussions more productive for all who participate. But in order to maintain a productive community, our moderators generally hew to the following guidelines and we encourage commenters who wish to remain a part of this vibrant community to do so as well.
1. Abusive language. Almost everyone (including the editors of Raw News) loves profanity, and the creative use thereof. But when profanity or other inappropriate language is used towards other people, it can either start non-productive arguments or silence another commenter. Any comments deemed abusive towards other commenters will be deleted and commenters who continue to engage in this behavior will find their accounts suspended.
2. Advocacy or threats of violence. Any comment that threatens violence against others (commenters or subjects of stories) or advocates that someone be subjected to violence (including that they should do violence unto themselves) will be removed. Commenters that continue to engage in this behavior will have their accounts suspended.
3. Ad hominem insults. If your sole contribution to a discussion is to insult the participants in it, your comments will be removed and your account suspended. It’s both unproductive and uninteresting.
4. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism. If your comments contain any of these things or other slurs similar to these, your comments will be removed and your account immediately suspended. This includes comments that smack of veiled slurs (dog whistles) as determined at the discretion of Raw News — but note that we work on the Internet, and we quite likely know exactly what your “subtle phrasing” means.
5. Attacks on editors, writers, staff, moderators and management. Our staff is no less subject to criticism than those we write about — but there’s a pretty large gulf between criticism and attack. Abusive language, attempts to bully (in comment threads or in any platform, including email and social media) or ad hominem insults aimed at those who work for Raw News will not be tolerated and will result in the immediate suspension of comment accounts and/or the deletion of comments. If you have a specific disagreement with a piece of information, have more information on a News that is in a piece or noticed a typo, spelling error or grammatical error that made it through our editing process, a polite note submitted through the Contact Us form will be forwarded to the appropriate staff member for review.
6. Anything else our moderators, staff or freelancers deem disruptive. We wish this could be a comprehensive list, but we’ve been on the Internet long enough to know that there will always be someone who can some up with some offensive thing we haven’t thought of before. A good rule of thumb is that if you are writing it to piss someone off, stop. If you are trying to trump something offensive someone else said, stop. If the other person “insulted you first,” stop and flag their comment for a moderator and/or contact us instead of replying with another insult.
If your comment account is suspended, we will offer a process for appeal. A suspended commenter can send a polite note through our contact us form explaining that his/her commenter account has been suspended and s/he’d like to come back to the community, and will receive a response that the suspension is under review. There is a 3-day mandatory cooling off period during which our staff and/or moderators will determine why the account was suspended and whether, in their judgment, it warrants further review. During that cooling off period, the suspended commenter will be told, if s/he doesn’t know, what sparked the suspension. If s/he wishes to return as a commenter, s/he must then acknowledge in the email that they violated our comment guidelines, understand it was inappropriate and pledge not to do so in the future.
Note, however, that abusive, bullying or inappropriate emails or interactions on social media sites will end the review process. Each commenter may receive one review; if the account is suspended again, the decision is final.