Verizon Media EMEA Privacy Policy

Verizon Media EMEA Privacy Policy

This is an old version of our Privacy Policy. View the latest version here.

Our parent company has been acquired by funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries, and is no longer affiliated with Verizon. Read more in our press release. 

Version 2.0, Last updated: August 2020 (Previous Privacy Policy here).  

This Privacy Policy is intended to help you understand who we are, how we collect and use your data, how we share it, your choices about how your data is used and shared, and your rights under the privacy laws that apply to you.

Who we are

Verizon Media EMEA Limited (“Verizon Media”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is a media and technology company that runs two different types of businesses: 

  • First, we offer a collection of Products. ‘Products’ are the collection of our owned and operated sites and apps, including our Yahoo offerings and AOL. These brands provide content, commerce and mail services to hundreds of millions of users. We are able to offer you most of our Products for free thanks to our digital advertising services.
  • Second, we offer digital advertising ‘Services’ that help advertisers reach the users that are likely to be more interested in their products, help us and our publishers generate revenue by selling advertising space on sites and apps to advertisers, and help users see ads that are relevant to their interests. Our Services do this by selecting, placing and measuring relevant ads to users as they visit different sites and apps.

Visit How Digital Advertising Works to learn more about how this process works. Visit our Affiliates page for more information about our affiliated companies and how we work with them.

We are a company established under the laws of Ireland and located in 5-7 Point Square, North Wall Quay, Dublin 1, Ireland. Verizon Media acts as data controller of the personal data we collect when you use our Products and Services.

Who is covered by this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to you:

  • when you use the Products and Services that we provide from the EMEA region
  • if you are a registered user or visitor to our Products, or when you interact with our Services
  • when you use our business-to-business products, but our Verizon Media B2B Privacy Policy also applies to more specific uses of your Enterprise Account data
  • if you are a user of HuffPost UK, Sky | Yahoo Mail or BT | Yahoo Mail. However, Verizon Media EMEA Limited only controls the data that we collect from our in these products. Other entities control all other data from these products. HuffPost UK, Sky | Yahoo Mail or BT | Yahoo Mail users can find more information by clicking here.

Cookies

We use cookies and other technologies when you visit our Products and also when you use third-party websites and apps that use our Services. You can learn more about how we use cookies and similar technologies in our Cookie Policy.

When you use our sites, apps and partner services, we collect different types of data, from your registration data, to the products you’re signed up to, the articles you’ve read, your device data and more. The types of data we collect about you depend on your use of our and and the ways that you interact with us. Check out this section to learn more about what data we collect about you.

  • your name, address, email, date of birth, phone numbers and gender identity, when you sign up for an account or when we request it for customer support; in limited cases, we ask for IDs for verification purposes
  • your feedback, comments and voice recordings from phone calls when you interact with our customer support team
  • data you provide in order to use or enhance your use of particular Products, such as stock symbols and favourite sports teams
  • payment data to complete transactions for the subscription Products
  • data you provide in surveys, polls on our Products and Verizon Media-sponsored promotions
  • your contacts, the content of your incoming and outgoing emails, and attachments such as coupons or purchase receipts that you receive
  • embedded within image files
  • associated to your communications, for example, the date and time an email was received or the size of an attachment

See Our Products for more information.

  • your browsing, searching, buying and other activities on our Products, like which ads or articles you clicked on, apps you’ve installed or used, and the frequency, duration and time of day of your visits
  • your interaction with our Services, like which ads you saw and clicked on
  • your from content you upload and share in our Products, such as attachments, photos and videos
  • the site you visited or the app you used immediately before and after using our Products

We collect some of this data by using cookies and other technologies. Learn more in our Cookie Policy.

  • device type, make, model, operating system type and device settings (like language, region and time zone)
  • network-specific data, such as , Internet Service Provider, MAC address and similar hardware identifiers, and mobile carrier
  • and ; based on your IP address, GPS, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals
  • demographic, device and interest data as well as device type, carrier, and from our partners and third-party data providers through contractual agreements 
  • login data, such as name, email, age, phone number and gender identity, from social media platforms when you use your social media login to interact with our Products
  • data we receive from our parent company, Verizon Communications as permitted by the Verizon privacy policy and subject to your choices about how this data may be used. Visit our Affiliates page for more information. 

When you use our or interact with our we use your data for different purposes, including to provide you with personalised content and ads, to deliver our Products at your request and to keep our platforms safe and secure. Check out this section to learn more about how and why we process your data, and our legal bases to do so.

We use your data for the following purposes:

  • to provide the Products to you, and Services to our partners
  • to build interest and personalise the ads and content that we show you
  • to understand how you use our Products, and to design and develop improvements to our Products and Services
  • to develop insights across our business
  • for security purposes, including to detect and defend against fraudulent, abusive or unlawful activity
  • to comply with legal obligations and for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims

We rely on different legal bases to lawfully process your data. See below some examples of processing operations that we carry out in order to achieve our purposes and the primary legal bases on which we rely:

Purpose Examples of how we use your data to achieve the purpose Legal Bases
To provide the Products and Services to you
  • Our systems process emails addressed to you to ensure that you get them in your inbox
  • We process your name, email address, physical address, credit card number, expiration date and security code when you subscribe to any of our paid Products
  • We store data about you, including emails, messages, posts, photos and attachments, to make them available at your request when you use our Products
  • When you sign up to receive newsletters of our different Products, like HuffPost or ExtraCrunch, we use your email address to deliver them to you
  • We check your IP address and related location signals to understand where you are located and identify the legal jurisdiction and terms that apply to you, and provide the services relevant to your specific region
  • We review and try to address any technical issues with your account that you identify to us
  • When you ask us to remember your login data for our products, we use data stored in when you return to those sites
  • We process your search queries to provide you with matching or relevant search results
  • To provide specific product features; for example, we analyse your incoming and outgoing emails, messages, posts, photos and attachments, to generate results when you search for a message in your mailbox or to identify travel-related emails for you, like flights and hotel bookings
  • We carry out promotions to increase engagement with our users. When you participate in a promotion you will be prompted to agree to the terms of the promotion before entry. 
To build interest profiles to personalise the ads and content we show to you

 
  • We collect certain data about you and your device across our and on our partners’ sites and apps that use our to personalise ads. 
  • We analyse your Yahoo and AOL Mail data, to better understand your interests, which enable us to personalise your ads   and to generate business insights.
    • You can adjust this setting in Your Privacy Controls  
    • See the ‘Yahoo and AOL Mail’ section in Our Products page for more information.
    • NOTE: if you have a BT | Yahoo Mail account or you IMAP-in your Gmail account, we do not analyse those communications for ad personalisation purposes.
  • We use the data we’ve collected about you and your devices across our Products and Services to make inferences like what activities you’re into and we’ll show you ads related to those activities
  • We link identifiers that likely belong to the same user or are present in the same household  
  • We obtain data from third-party providers and combine it with the data that we have about you

See How Advertising Works for more information about how we use your data to provide personalised advertising and for more information about your choices and controls.

- when we rely on consent to process your data, you can withdraw your consent at any time by accessing Your Privacy Controls.
  • We serve and deliver content and advertising in our Products and Services. We also measure how effective the ads and content are
  • We collect certain data about you and your device across our Products to personalise your content.
  • We work with our partners to technically serve and deliver their content and advertising in our Products. We also enable our partners to measure how effective their ads are.       
  • - we carry out these activities for our legitimate interests of:
  • optimising the performance of our Products and Services,
  • improving and developing innovative features
  • We collect certain data about you and your device across our Products and on our partners’ sites and apps that use our Services. Personalisation is an essential feature of the Products. As a result, we use data collected about you to understand your interests and to show you content we believe best matches those interests.

Contractual Necessity

To understand, maintain, develop and improve our Products and Services
  • We use feedback from our users to understand what is working, and fix what is not
  • We collect data about our users, including activity on ourProducts and Services, content data from their communications, and opinions collected through surveys to develop aggregate insights. Those insights help us:
    • understand how our Products and Services are working
    • create content and features for our Products and Services that are more relevant to our audience
  • We contact our users with marketing messages and offers to promote our Products

See Data Collection and Use Practices for more information about how we use your data for product improvement and development.

Legitimate Interest - we carry out these activities for our and our partners’ legitimate interests of:

  • optimising the performance of our Products and Services and
  • improving and developing innovative features

To develop insights across our business for third parties
  • We create reports and provide data analysis tools for external parties, including publishers, advertisers, and the public, regarding:
    • industry trends and competitive analyses 
    • audience insights
    • ad performance and effectiveness
    • publisher metrics including site traffic and analytics

See Data Collection and Use Practices for more information about how we use your data for analytics.

Legitimate Interest - we carry out these activities for our and our partners’ legitimate interests of optimising our advertising and Services which keeps many of our Products free.

For security purposes, including to detect and defend against fraudulent, abusive or unlawful activity

 
  • We authenticate you in certain cases, such as when you forget your password or when you request access to your data
  • We analyse communications, application traffic, and related forensic data collected from our Products and Services
  • We check your IP address and related location signals to protect your account and look for anomalous events which might undermine or threaten our Products and Services

See Data Collection and Use Practices for more information about how we use your data for security purposes and to prevent and defend against fraudulent activity.


Legitimate Interest - we carry out these activities for our and your legitimate interest of keeping our products safe and secure
  • We access, preserve, and share data with government agencies and third parties to protect you and the general public, prevent infringement of our Terms or violations of third parties’ rights and to assist in the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences, or other unlawful activity

Depending on the circumstances, we rely on the following legal bases:

  • to comply with legal obligations
  • to protect vital interests 
  • legitimate Interest - we carry out these activities for our and your legitimate interest of keeping our products safe and secure

When we rely on consent to process your data, you can withdraw your consent at any time. When we rely on legitimate interest, we offer you the choice to object unless there are overriding circumstances (for example, to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of other individuals). You can withdraw your consent or object to the processing of your data by accessing Your Privacy Controls.

We work with partners to bring you a variety of features and ads, and to make our more interactive and secure. Check out this section to learn more about our partners and why we work with them. When we share your data in these cases, your data will be transferred outside of the EEA. See ‘How do we transfer your data to third countries?’ to learn more.

We share data within Verizon Media Group for a variety of purposes, including:

  • to provide you with the Products that you requested
  • to protect and defend our systems against unauthorised access or use
  • to provide you with personalised experiences and ads
  • to understand how our Products and work
  • to improve existing and develop new products and services
  • to offer you our latest promotions

We share data with our vendors (sometimes referred to as “processors”) that work on our behalf and process your data solely at our direction. We only work with vendors that have in place appropriate confidentiality and security measures to protect your data. Vendors include businesses that assist us with data hosting, analytics, security and combatting fraud and other unlawful behaviour.

When you use our Search Products, we share data with , like Microsoft, that help us power our Search and Sponsored Search Products. Search partners receive data such as:

  • search terms
  • IP address
  • web browser or device type     

Search partners also use this data for their own purposes, for example, to improve their products and services, and to provide you with better search results.

For more information about our Search Products and how we share your data with search partners, please visit Our Products.

Some of the ads that you see on our Products are provided by Verizon Media and our Affiliates within Verizon Media Group. Others are provided by third party advertising technology companies. We share data with these companies for several purposes, including:

  • to help us deliver ads to people who are most likely to be interested in seeing them
  • to keep track of the number of users who saw or clicked on a particular ad
  • to analyse the performance and effectiveness of our ads and those of third parties
  • to reduce fraud and detect non-human traffic
  • to perform auditing, research, and reporting for advertisers     

As part of this sharing, these partners will collect data about you and use that data in accordance with their own privacy policies and our agreements. 

Verizon Media participates and complies with the rules of an advertising industry framework called . Many of our are part of this framework too. As part of this framework, we have developed a consent management platform (CMP ID 14) to enable you to manage how these partners use your data. 

Visit Your Privacy Controls to manage how our advertising technology partners use your data. 

Visit How Advertising Works for more information about how we and our partners use your data to provide personalised advertising.

Verizon Media works with various analytics partners. These partners help us and our advertising partners develop insights across our business. As part of this process, we share data such as:

  • the features, content or ads that users view and engage with
  • basic demographic data, such as age range and gender
  • device and browser data, such as make, model and version
  • how long users spend on different pages
  • how users arrive on a particular page (for example, through a search query, link from another page or a bookmark) 
  • IP address     

Analytics partners will use data they collect in accordance with their own privacy policies and our agreements. Visit Our Partners page for more information about our analytics partners. 

We work with the types of partners in the table below to provide you with relevant content, interactive features and valuable products and services. These partners obtain data from you when you visit our Products, including your IP address, and browser data.

Service Description of activities content partners carry out

Content display

Video players, video clips, image galleries, news wires and articles, and data feeds (like stock quotes or weather data)

Social buttons & widgets

Social media news feeds, alerts, and controls for following, sharing, and reacting to content

Voice & digital assistant providers 

Virtual assistant functionality

Content recommendation

Article and news feed recommendations based on previous content you have viewed, shared, or interacted with

E-commerce

Product listings, catalogues, shopping carts, price alerts, payment processing, and related-online commerce functionality

Visit Our Partners page for more information about our content partners.  

In certain situations, we share data with third parties and government agencies, including account registration details, and content data associated with users’ accounts. We share this data for the following purposes:

  • to investigate, prevent, detect or prosecute criminal offences, infringement of our Terms or violations of third parties’ rights
  • to protect our users and their data
  • to investigate and resolve technical issues
  • to comply with regulatory obligations
  • to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims

If the ownership or control of all or part of Verizon, Verizon Media or a specific Product or Service changes or is proposed to change as a result of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, we may transfer your information to the new (or prospective) owner.

You have rights over how we collect, use and share your data. We give you a range of controls and tools to manage these rights in Your Privacy Controls. Account holders can visit Account Info for additional tools. In some cases, we may refuse your request if it is excessive or repetitive. We may also deny your request when it may impact the rights of another data subject. Check out this section for more details.

Responding to your privacy rights requests

Once we receive your request relating to your privacy rights we will:

  • respond within 30 days; we will let you know of any delays
  • reply electronically to your requests unless you ask us to respond in a different way
  • deny your requests if they are excessive or repetitive
  • limit the information that we provide to you if it impacts the rights of other people

Your rights over your data

  • Access and port your data
    • View the data that we have about you.
    • Download a copy of your data in a machine-readable format.

Visit Your Privacy Controls to access and port your data.

  • Object to or restrict the way in which your data is processed 
    • Restrict the ways in which we use your data. For example, you can disable personalised ads and we will no longer use your data to show you personalised ads. 
    • Unless there are overriding circumstances, when we rely on legitimate interests to process your data (as described in the table above) you can object to the ways in which we use your data. 

Visit Your Privacy Controls to object to or restrict the way your data is processed.

  • Delete your data
    • You have the right to request that we delete your information. 
    • Unless there are overriding circumstances, you can delete your account and the data associated with it.

Visit Your Privacy Controls to delete your data.

  • Rectify your data
    • Request that we rectify inaccurate information about you. For example, you can edit your account registration data. 

Visit your Account info to rectify your data.

  • Withdraw your consent
    • Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw your consent at any time. 

Visit Your Privacy Controls to withdraw your consent.

  • Make a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission, which is Verizon Media's lead supervisory authority. You can also complain to your local supervisory authority. Click here to find your local supervisory authority.

If you are resident in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), you have the following additional rights:

  • Manage - manage the ways in which we share your data with some of our by going to the ‘Partners’ tab in Your Privacy Controls.
     
  • Right to be forgotten - request the blocking of specific URLs from appearing in search results displayed when your name is queried on Yahoo Search. We will review the request and assess if the data contained in the URLs is inaccurate, inadequate, no longer relevant or excessive in relation to the purposes for which it was collected or processed. Our criteria reflect the standards for removal established by the Court of Justice of the European Union and other applicable regulatory guidance. You can use this form to submit your request.

Verizon Media uses different processes and technologies to protect your data.  Check out this section for more information.  

Protecting our systems and our users’ data is paramount to ensure you enjoy a secure experience when using our . We implement technical and organisational measures, such as two-step verification, encryption and ongoing security training for our employees. We continue to evaluate and implement enhancements in security technology and practices. 

Visit the Data Collection and Use Practices page to learn more about how we protect our systems and your data.

We generally store your data for as long as necessary to deliver our and and for security purposes. In some cases, we store your data for longer, for example when we need to comply with legal obligations. Check out this section for more information.

Verizon Media generally stores your data for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

For example, 

  • we store your account Information and information you provide during the account registration process, including name, phone number, alternate email address, date of birth, and country for 18 months from the termination of the account
  • we store keywords and phrases entered into our Search Products to obtain search results for 18 months
  • we store billing and subscription information, like invoices from your purchases, for 7 years, to comply with legal obligations 

We keep data for longer than needed for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy in limited cases:

  • we replicate or back up certain data to “offline” storage for disaster recovery purposes
  • we may truncate, redact or summarize raw data, log files and database records into statistical aggregate data or to understand long term trends.
  • we maintain for varying periods for research, reporting and product testing or development. In these cases, unique identifiers and linkages to existing data about you are broken or removed so that this data is no longer associated with you, your browser, or device
  • we keep and use certain data to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes or enforce our agreements. For example, we might keep data associated with an account subject to litigation or a request from law enforcement.

In order to bring you the best and latest products and features, Verizon Media works with affiliates and other companies established in countries outside of the EEA, including the United States, Canada, Singapore and Taiwan.  Some of these countries may not have the same data protection safeguards as those in the EEA. Check out this section for more details.

When we transfer data to our Affiliates or other companies established in countries outside of the EEA, we do so through legal mechanisms and in accordance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation to ensure that your data is protected to the same standards.

When Verizon Media transfers your data outside the EEA including to the United States, Canada, Singapore and Taiwan, we rely on:

  • adopted by the European Commission
  • standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission
  • Privacy Shield for companies based in the United States that have certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield Programme

Verizon Media less frequently relies on other conditions:

  • where the transfer is necessary for the conclusion or performance of a contract concluded in the interest of the data subject between the controller and other natural or legal person
  • where the transfer is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims
  • where the transfer is necessary for important reasons of public interest
  • where the transfer is necessary to protect the vital interests of an individual, and the individual is physically or legally incapable of giving consent

We will make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will inform you in advance of any material changes.   

We will make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. The ‘Last updated’ date at the top of this Privacy Policy will let you know when we last made changes, and we will also provide you with the previous version of our Privacy Policy.   

Some of our changes will be minor, but if we make significant changes to how we present our Privacy Policy to you, or how we use or share your personal data from what we told you when we collected your data, we will:

  • inform you in advance (for example, by providing prominent notice on our sites or sending emails to our registered users);
  • wait for a given period of time before implementing changes; and/or
  • where required, request your consent.

We’d like to hear from you. Check out this section to find out how you can contact us.

Please complete our Privacy Form for any questions you have about your privacy, or to raise a concern about your privacy rights with the controller of your data, Verizon Media EMEA Limited. You can also write to us at 5-7 Point Square, North Wall Quay, Dublin 1, Ireland.

If you wish to contact our Data Protection Officer, you can do so by post to: Attn: Data Protection Officer, Verizon Media EMEA, 5-7 Point Square, North Wall Quay, Dublin 1, Ireland.