Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy discloses the general privacy practices for Bangor Daily News websites, which includes sites owned by Bangor Publishing Company. We may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to be aware of any changes. This policy is effective from January 18, 2021.

The Bangor Daily News is committed to respecting your privacy rights when visiting any Bangor Daily News website, such as theCounty.Me. To protect your personal information, The Bangor Daily News has adopted the guidelines outlined below.

Information Collected

While visiting any of The Bangor Daily News’s websites, we may ask you to register and/or provide information that personally identifies you for purposes of interacting with the site. Such personal information may include, but is not limited to, your name, date of birth, phone number, street address and email address. We may also ask you for other information at other times – such as when you subscribe, enter a contest or participate in a promotion, when you post an obituary, when you post an online ad, when you participate in our comments, or when you order products from us. Whenever you provide personally identifiable information to us, we will make an effort to link to our privacy policy. On any page that collects personal information, we will specifically describe what information is required in order to provide you with the product or service or enter you in the promotion you have requested.

We may also use services provided by Google, as well as other services, to collect site usage information specific to your use of our websites to display advertising on thecounty.me and other sites owned by Bangor Publishing Co. We may also employ cookies, web beacons and other trackers for similar purposes in conjunction with displaying those ads.

Please refer to Google’s Privacy and Terms at https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads/ for further information concerning Google’s use of cookies and personalized ads.

We use Google to collect data about traffic via cookies in addition to data collected through Google Analytics and other tools. This enables remarketing and the tracking of non-personally identifiable demographic and interest information.

Why do sites use cookies?

Bangor Publishing Company and our vendors use cookies to track usage of our sites and further personalize your experience when you are visiting one of our them. By tracking usage, we can best determine what features of the sites best serve users. The Bangor Daily News,  theCounty.me and our third-party vendors, including Google, use first- and third-party cookies together to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on someone’s past visits to our website. 

Bangor Publishing Company also employs cookies to track users’ login status to our sites, and to recognize users as subscribers or non subscribers, and regulate access to content accordingly.

What benefits do I receive from cookies?

Overall, the use of cookies helps to give you a more personalized experience at the site. The information is used to keep our site fresh and relevant to you the user. Cookies also allow you to avoid retyping your email address and password each time you access the site as a registered or subscribed user.

May I decline to accept a cookie?

You may decline to accept cookies sent by the site by selecting an option on your browser to reject cookies. However, you will not be able to access certain features if your computer or device does not accept cookies from us. In such cases, we ask that you register and provide us with basic information on our registration page, or sign in if previously registered or subscribed. Cookies enable our server to know that you are a registered or subscribed user and will eliminate the need for you to login each time you access one of our sites.

What happens with the information collected in a cookie?

The information stored in a cookie is used to identify you to our server, to allow us to personalize your experience on the site, and to serve content and communications that may be of interest to you.

Visitors may opt-out of Google Analytics Advertising Features and customize Google Display Network ads using the Ads Settings, Ads Settings for mobile apps, Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or any other available means (for example, the National Advertising Initiative’s consumer opt-out).

What are personalized ads?

Beginning in 2016, Google users could choose to associate their cross-device web and app activity with their Google account to see more useful, personalized ads. As a result, you may from time to time see ads that are personalized based on your interests, demographics, and Google account information.

May I opt out of personalized ads?

You can view your activity on web pages, video services, and mobile apps that use Google advertising services on your “My Activity” page. Google collects only activity you engaged in at times when you were signed into Google. You control what’s saved there and can delete past activity from your accounts.

Will I receive personalized ads if I’m accessing the site from the EEA?

If you are accessing the site from the European Economic Area (EEA), ads served through Google’s platform may not serve with audience targeting. 

IP Addresses

Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me logs IP addresses (the location of your computer on the Internet) for systems administration and troubleshooting purposes and to determine site usage.

Interest-Based Advertising

To help ensure that you receive ads that are relevant to your interests on our services, our advertisers’ services, and elsewhere on the Internet, we and third-parties (including service providers, advertisers, and advertising companies) may collect information about your online activities over time and across different websites, apps, and devices. We and third parties may use that information to help understand audience segments. Advertisers may use the segments to determine the audience groups to which they wish to deliver particular ads. Through this process, we do not use information that directly identifies you.

You can opt out of receiving interest-based advertising on your computer or laptop from some companies, including us and our service providers, by visiting the following sites: www.aboutads.info/choices/, www.networkadvertising.org/choices/, choices.ghosteryenterprise.com/global-opt-out.html, and preferences-mgr.truste.com/. If you wish to opt out of receiving interest-based advertising on your mobile device, please see the advertising preferences information on support.apple.com for iOS devices or support.google.com for Android devices.

If you are accessing our services from Europe, please see www.youronlinechoices.com. If you are accessing our services from Canada, please see youradchoices.ca.

Opting out does not mean you will no longer receive advertising. It means that the company or companies from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your web preferences and usage patterns.

If you do not wish to allow cookies to be placed on your computer or device, you can configure your web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Bing, Safari, etc.) to control the use of cookies. Please note that the interest-based advertising opt outs provided in the links above may rely on the use of cookies. If you disable or delete cookies, you may remove your opt-out preferences. Deleting and/or controlling the use of cookies AND visiting the opt-out links above to register your preferences will help to ensure that you do not receive interest-based advertising. Again, this does not mean that you will not receive ads, it simply means that you will not receive ads that are tailored to your web preferences and usage patterns.

For more information on Do Not Track, please visit allaboutdnt.com.

Use of Personal Information

We believe in protecting your privacy, and will not share personal information (excepting your screen name or registered name) with third parties outside of theCounty.Me and Bangor Daily News except as described in this Privacy Policy.

We may use your personal information, such as your email address or mailing address, to contact you regarding products and/or services that may be of interest to you, to respond to an inquiry from you regarding the information that we have collected or respond to your comments and suggestions.

We may share your name and/or email address and/or other contact information with partner organizations.

The Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me may match specific and/or aggregated personal information with third party data to provide you with product and content offerings that interest you and improve our advertising and marketing efforts. Bangor Daily News also may disclose aggregated user statistics in order to describe our services to potential advertisers, partners, other third parties, our affiliate companies, and for other lawful purposes.

In the future, we may also have arrangements with third-party service providers, such as credit card processors, shipping companies and fulfillment services. When you sign up for a service we offer on the site, we may be required to share personal information with that service provider in order to provide the service. 

Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me may also offer other services as a part of our sites (e.g., car buying service, personalized information alerts, contests, sweepstakes, and other promotions with unaffiliated third parties). If you choose to use these optional services or opportunities, we may provide some of your personal information to third parties, such as service providers and other parties assisting us in providing the service. We will not do so without telling you how we will use that information, and you can avoid having us make such disclosures by choosing not to use these services or feature of our sites.

We reserve the right to disclose personal information when needed to comply with the law or a legal process, cooperate with investigations of purported unlawful activities, to identify persons violating the law, or in connection with the sale of part or all of the Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me.

Party Collecting the Information

This Privacy Policy addresses the use and dissemination of information that The Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me collects from you. To the extent that you disclose any information to other parties, whether through, for example, online auctions, classifieds, chat rooms, personal ads, or the like, through third party services or promotions offered on or through the site or through other websites or apps, different policies may apply and The Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me shall not be responsible for the use or dissemination of such information.

Our sites may operate as part of a larger group of sites, and may carry co-branded pages. In addition, other sites may use the site’s or Bangor Daily News’ or The County’s name. Since The Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me do not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy customs and policies of such third parties, and The Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me shall not be responsible for the use or dissemination of your private information by such parties. Therefore, we encourage you to ask questions and review those parties’ privacy policies before you disclose your personal information to others.

Links to Other Materials

Third-party sites linked to and from the site are not necessarily under the control of Bangor Daily News or theCounty.Me. Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me shall have no responsibilities or liabilities whatsoever for the content or privacy practices of any such linked site or any link or linking program at any time. Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me do not necessarily endorse companies (or related products or services) to or from which the site is linked. If you decide to access any of the third party sites linked to the Site, you do so entirely at your own risk. Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me hereby disclaims any rights to trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos, copyrights, patents, domain names or other intellectual property interests of third parties. Please visit the sites of these businesses to review their privacy policies.

Data Security

We have in place physical, electronic and managerial procedures to protect the information we collect online. However, as effective as these measures are, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our database, nor can we guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the internet. 

🚨 PLEASE DO NOT EVER SEND US ANY CREDIT CARD, PASSWORD, OR SOCIAL SECURITY INFORMATION VIA EMAIL, CHAT MESSAGE OR VOICEMAIL. 🚨

Bangordailynews.com and theCounty.me users should also be aware that, when you voluntarily disclose personal information in comment areas, community news or event submissions, forms, quizzes or other user generated content types, that information may be collected by others and may result in unsolicited messages from others.

Children’s Privacy

Bangor Daily News and theCounty.Me care about the safety of children and their use of the Internet. Therefore, in accordance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, we will never knowingly request or solicit personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without parental consent. In the event that we receive actual knowledge that we have collected such personal information without the requisite and parental consent, we will delete that information from our database as quickly as is practical.

Opting Out

We respect your privacy and ability to choose whether to share information with us and any third party. You may choose to opt out from providing personal information to us by not registering on the site and thereby not providing personal information. You may also choose at a later date to have your name removed from our database. Certain portions of the site and certain services provided on the site, however, do require registration in order to access or use these areas and services. If you choose not to register or provide certain information, these areas will not be accessible to you.