Introduction

We are committed to keeping your personal data "for the shortest possible time that is consistent with the maintenance, understanding, and improvement of our website. This document helps explain how we fulfill this commitment, by describing our guidelines for data retention, system design, and ongoing auditing and maintenance. These guidelines are meant to be a living document — they will be updated over time to reflect current retention practices.

To what data do these guidelines apply?

These guidelines apply to all non-public data we collect covered by the Privacy Policy.

How long do we retain non-public data?

Unless otherwise indicated, we retain the following types of data for no more than the periods of time mentioned below:

• Non Public Personal information collected automatically from a user such as IP addresses of site visitors, IP addresses of A/B test subjects, Identifying user-agent information of site visitors are deleted after at most 90 days.
• Account settings such as Email address, user name and other user identifiable data are stored until user deletes/changes the account setting.
• Non-personal information such as data collected about a user account's activity are stored indefinitely.
• Articles browsed by readers are collected automatically from a reader and are stored until users delete their account.

For more information, see our Privacy Policy.

Definitions

"Personal information" means information you provide us or information we collect from you that identifies or could be used to personally identify you.

Some examples of "public information" would include:

• your IP address if you visit our website when logged in
• your gender, if it is disclosed under your user profile;
• any personal information you disclose publicly on our website, such as your real name or age.

Data is "de-identified" when it has been aggregated or otherwise retained in a manner such that it can no longer be used to identify the user.

Data is "aggregated" when the data associated with a specific user has been combined with data from others to show general trends or values without identifying specific users.

Data may be retained in system backups for longer periods of time, not to exceed 5 years.

Audits and Improvements

We are committed to continuous evaluation and improvement of these guidelines, and to periodic audits in order to identify such improvements. As we make changes to existing and systems, we will update these guidelines to reflect our changing practices.