7. Payment processing

Subscription and API payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. Stripe collects and handles your payment card information directly, on pages that Stripe hosts. We never see or store your card number. Stripe’s use of your information is governed by Stripe’s own privacy policy.

For each subscription we keep the email address you entered at checkout, your Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, your plan, the status of your subscription and payments (for example active, past due or canceled), the end date of your current billing period, and the identifiers of the billing events that Stripe sends us. If we refund a payment, the refund is made through Stripe to the original payment method. Section 18 describes how we use these records and Section 8 how long we keep them.

8. Data retention

We retain personal data only as long as necessary for the purposes described in this policy, or as required by law. Newsletter and account data is deleted or anonymized within a reasonable period after you request deletion or close your account, except where we must retain records for legal, tax, or dispute-resolution purposes.

For paid plans, we keep your billing and subscription records (your plan, the status of your subscription and payments, Stripe identifiers, billing event identifiers and records of refunds) and the records of deactivated API keys (the one-way hash of the key, its status and dates) for as long as we need them for accounting, tax and dispute purposes and as the law requires. In our own systems these billing, subscription and key records are not deleted automatically, so they stay until we delete them. Each record in the keyed-request log (Section 18) is set to expire 90 days after the request, and each weekly usage counter is set to expire 14 days after the start of the week it counts; our database removes expired records automatically, which can take a few days. Emails you send to info@mediaalertpress.com stay in our mailbox until we delete them. Stripe keeps its own records under its own privacy policy.

For MAPIOS, we remove your monitoring profiles and the items found for them from the application when your access ends or is suspended for non-payment, and we may keep a copy of the monitoring terms and profile names you enter until you ask us to delete it (see Section 19).

9. International data transfers

If you access MAP from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to and processed in the United States. Where required, we rely on standard contractual clauses or equivalent safeguards for transfers of personal data from the EU/UK.

10. Your rights under GDPR/CCPA

Depending on your location, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or port your personal data, and to object to certain processing. California residents have rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the right to know what personal information we collect and to opt out of its sale — MAP does not sell personal information. To exercise any of these rights, contact privacy@mediaalertpress.com. If you subscribe to a paid plan, the categories of personal information we collect are identifiers (your checkout email address and publisher ID), commercial information (your subscription, payment status and refund records) and records of your API requests. We do not sell this information or share it for advertising.

11. AI transparency

MAP’s context records are produced by automated, rule-based extraction code that reads the HTML and metadata of publicly available pages; no generative AI model writes record text. Records are informational, point-in-time snapshots, not legal, financial, or medical determinations. MAP’s founder uses AI coding and writing assistants to build and maintain the website and its code. We do not use your personal data to train third-party AI models without your consent.

12. Children’s privacy

MAP services are not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn we have collected such information, we will delete it.

13. Security

We use HTTPS/TLS encryption for data in transit, access controls, and rate limiting to protect our systems. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we become aware of a data breach affecting your personal information, we will notify affected users without undue delay.

14. Data Protection Officer

Questions or complaints about this policy can be directed to our Legal Department at legal@mediaalertpress.com or privacy@mediaalertpress.com, or by mail to Media Alert Press LLC, 15050 Elderberry Lane, Fort Myers, FL 33907. EU/EEA residents may also lodge a complaint with their local data protection authority; U.S. residents may contact the FTC or their state Attorney General.

15. Follow email digests

MAP’s “Follow” feature emails you a digest of new reporting on pages or topics you choose. No account is needed. When you submit a Follow form we collect your email address and the page you chose to follow. For each follow we store your email address, the page followed, a random token used in your confirmation and unsubscribe links, a status (pending or active), and the times you signed up, confirmed and were last sent a digest. We do not store your IP address in this record.

We rely on your consent, which you give by clicking the confirmation button. We send a confirmation email each time a Follow form is submitted for your address (no more than three per address per day) and send no digests until you confirm. If someone entered your address without your knowledge, ignore the email: nothing is sent unless you confirm, and unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted automatically after 7 days.

Once you confirm, you receive at most one digest email per address every 24 hours, covering all the pages you follow, and only when new reporting appears. Digests are plain text with no tracking images or click-tracking links. Every digest includes unsubscribe links (and supports one-click unsubscribe in email apps that offer it) and our postal address. The “unsubscribe from all” link contains a token that identifies your follow, not your email address.

When you unsubscribe from a page we delete that follow; when you choose “unsubscribe from all” we delete all of your follows. Active follows are kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them. To have your data deleted at any time, contact privacy@mediaalertpress.com. Copies may remain in our rolling website backups for up to about two weeks, and your IP address and the links you visit appear in our web host’s server logs as described in Section 1.

To limit abuse we keep short-lived counters, each identified only by a one-way hash: one for the requesting IP address (kept for an hour after the most recent request) and one for the mailbox (kept for 24 hours after the most recent request). We use your follow information to send the confirmations and digests you asked for, to honor unsubscribe requests, and to prevent abuse and keep the site secure. We do not sell it or use it for advertising. If you have accepted analytics cookies, when you click Follow our analytics (Google Analytics) records a “follow click” event with the ID of the page, not your email address; the confirmation and unsubscribe pages load no analytics.

16. MAP Newsletter

If you subscribe to the MAP Newsletter we collect your email address, an optional first name, and which emails you chose (Monday context report, Wednesday filings and markets brief, and Publisher Verification alerts). We also store a random token used in your confirmation and unsubscribe links, a status (pending or active), and the times you signed up and confirmed. We do not store your IP address in this record.

We rely on your consent, which you give by pressing the Confirm button on the page that the link in our confirmation email opens. We send one confirmation email per request (no more than three per mailbox per day) and no newsletter until you confirm. Unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted automatically about 7 days after the last request. Newsletter issues are plain text with no tracking images, and each includes an unsubscribe link (and one-click unsubscribe in email apps that offer it) and our postal address. When you unsubscribe we delete your subscription. Copies may remain in our rolling website backups for up to about two weeks, and your IP address and the links you visit appear in our web host’s server logs as described in Section 1.

To limit abuse we keep short-lived counters, each identified only by a one-way hash: one for the requesting IP address (kept for an hour after the most recent request) and one for the mailbox (kept for 24 hours after the most recent request). We use newsletter information only to send the emails you chose, honor unsubscribe requests, and prevent abuse; we do not sell it or use it for advertising. Addresses entered on our earlier newsletter form, which did not confirm addresses, have been deleted from our live database; copies may remain in older backups until they are replaced (about two weeks). Separately, a post-subscription form provided by Jetpack (WordPress.com) used to appear on article pages and has been turned off, and we no longer send email through it; anyone who subscribed through it remains on a different list held by WordPress.com under its own privacy policy, which is not the MAP Newsletter described here.

17. URLs you check

When you use “Check a URL”, the URL you submit and the context record MAP generates for it are written to the MAP ledger. Ledger entries can appear publicly in the Verification Archive and through MAP’s public ledger API. Because the ledger is hash-chained, removing an entry is not routine; to ask about an entry, contact privacy@mediaalertpress.com. Do not submit a URL you want to keep private. We do not link a ledger entry to you; the checker does not ask for your name or email, though the request is rate limited using a one-way hash of your IP address (kept for about a minute).

This section describes “Check a URL” on the site. Requests made with an API key are handled separately; Section 18 describes what we record about them.

18. API keys, subscriptions and billing

This section describes API keys for the MAP Verified API and its Plus and Professional plans. MAPIOS is a separate product with its own pricing page; Section 19 describes its data.

If you subscribe to a paid plan, we collect the email address you enter at checkout. We also receive from Stripe your Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, your plan, the status of your subscription and payments (for example active, past due or canceled) and the end date of your billing period. We do not receive your card number. We use this information to charge for and manage your subscription, to email your API key and messages about your subscription, to apply the weekly limit of your plan, to answer support requests, and to prevent fraud and abuse. We rely on performing our contract with you and on our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure.

We email your API key once, to the address you entered at checkout, through our site’s mail service (Namecheap Private Email; see Section 4). As with any email, a copy of the message may remain in our mail service and in your own mailbox. In our database we store only a one-way hash of the key, with your publisher ID, the date the key was issued and its status; we do not store the key itself there and we do not display it again. Your publisher ID is an identifier that we derive from the email address you used at checkout.

When you make a request with your API key, we add it to our keyed-request log. For each request we record the URL you submit, the site and user identifiers you send, the category, a short summary of the result, your publisher ID, your plan and the time, and we count the request toward your weekly limit. Section 8 says how long we keep these records.

If you ask us to replace a lost key, we check that the request comes from the address you used at checkout. To ask about the records described in this section, write to privacy@mediaalertpress.com from that address. For billing, subscription and API key questions, write to info@mediaalertpress.com.

19. MAPIOS monitoring subscriptions

This section describes MAPIOS Intelligence and MAPIOS Professional, our paid monitoring service. It is separate from the MAP Verified API plans that Section 18 describes. The MAPIOS pricing page describes the service, and Section 16 of the Terms of Service sets its billing terms.

What we collect. Stripe hosts the checkout page and collects the email address you enter there and your payment card information. We read your email address in Stripe; the MAPIOS application does not store it, and we never see or store your card number. When you subscribe, our checkout creates an Organization ID for your subscription. The MAPIOS application stores the Organization ID with your plan and billing interval, the status of your subscription (pending, active, payment failed or canceled) and the Stripe identifiers of your checkout session, customer and subscription. Stripe also holds the Organization ID with your checkout and subscription. In the Monitoring Console you enter a profile name and the organizations, markets and topics you want to follow (your “monitoring terms”). The application stores them with your Organization ID and, for each item a scan finds, it stores the headline, the link, the source, the publication date and the monitoring term that matched.

How we use it. We use your email address to send you your Organization ID and onboarding instructions and to answer billing, cancellation, refund and support requests. We use the other information to provide MAPIOS to you, to charge for it, to keep it secure and to answer your requests. We do not sell it, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not write your monitoring terms to the MAP ledger described in Section 17. Payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. (see Section 7). Stripe sends our application events about your subscription, for example that checkout is complete, that a payment failed or that the subscription was canceled, and the application updates the status it stores.

Search services. When you run a scan, MAPIOS sends each monitoring term in it as a search query to Google News (operated by Google LLC) and to GDELT (the GDELT Project), and stores the items that come back. The query contains only the monitoring term. We do not add your Organization ID, your name or your email address to it. The queries come from our server, so those services see our server’s network address and not yours. They are public services that we use without a key, and they handle the queries under their own terms and privacy policies. Do not enter a monitoring term that you need to keep confidential from them.

Where it goes. Your monitoring terms travel from your browser to our website, which passes them to the MAPIOS application. The application runs on Amazon Web Services (see Section 4) and keeps its data in a database. The application also writes a server log of each request it handles, and that log can contain the response, including your monitoring terms and the items found.

How long we keep it. When your access ends, or is suspended for non-payment, we remove your monitoring profiles and the items found for them from the application. We may keep a copy of your monitoring terms and profile names, for example so that we can set up your profiles again if your payment succeeds or you subscribe again, and we keep that copy until you ask us to delete it. To ask, write to privacy@mediaalertpress.com from the address you used at checkout, and we delete the copy and, if your profiles still exist, the profiles and their items. We keep billing and subscription records as Section 8 describes.

Your choices. To ask about, correct or delete the information described in this section, write to privacy@mediaalertpress.com from the address you used at checkout (see Section 5). For billing, subscription and Organization ID questions, write to info@mediaalertpress.com.