Privacy Policy

Updated: April 2025

This policy applies to all products built and maintained by Doreen Lewis LLC dba Hello Neighbor Magazine TM as to the handling of information about site visitors, prospective customers. We refer collectively to these categories of individuals as “you” throughout this policy.

What we collect and why

Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here’s what that means in practice:

Identity and access

When you sign up as a reader or advertiser, we ask for identifying information such as your name, email address, company name, etc. That’s so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you updates and other essential information. We may also send you optional surveys from time to time to help us understand what readers and advertisers would like and to make improvements. With your consent, we may send you announcements, a newsletter and other updates.

We’ll never sell your personal information to third parties, and we won’t use your name or company in marketing statements without your permission either.

Billing information

If you sign up as an advertiser or paid subscriber, you will be asked to provide your payment information and billing address. Credit card information is submitted directly to our payment processor. We store a record of the payment transaction, including the last 4 digits of the credit card number, for purposes of account history, invoicing, and billing support. We store your billing address so we can charge you for service, calculate any sales tax due, send you invoices, and detect fraudulent credit card transactions. We occasionally use aggregate billing information to guide our marketing efforts.

General Geolocation data

We may log the full IP address used to sign up and retain that for use in mitigating future spam signups or for security and fraud prevention purposes.

Website interactions

We may collect information about your browsing activity for analytics and statistical purposes. This includes, for example, your browser and operating system versions, your IP address, which web pages you visited and how long they took to load, and which website referred you to us.

Anti-bot assessments

We use CAPTCHA as a method for spam protection. When you fill in certain forms on the website, the CAPTCHA service evaluates various information (e.g., IP address, how long the visitor has been on the app, mouse movements) to try to detect if the activity is from an automated program instead of a human. The CAPTCHA service then provides the spam score results; we do not have access to the evaluated information.

Advertising and Cookies

We occasionally run ads on various third-party platforms such as Google or social networks such as Meta (aka Facebook). Users who click on one of our ads will be sent to the our website. Where permissible under law, we may load an ad-company script on their browsers that sets a third-party cookie and sends information to the ad network to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of our ads, e.g., which ad they clicked and which keyword triggered the ad, and whether they performed certain actions such as clicking a button or submitting a form.

We may use persistent first-party cookies and some third-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our applications, and perform A/B testing as well as support some analytics.

A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser. It may help remember login information and site preferences. It might also collect information such as your browser type, operating system, web pages visited, duration of visit, content viewed, and other click-stream data. You can adjust cookie retention settings and accept or block individual cookies in your browser settings.

Voluntary correspondence

When you email us with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including your email address, so that we have a history of past correspondence to reference if you reach out in the future.

We also store information you may volunteer, for example, written responses to surveys. If you agree to a customer interview, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We will only do so with your express consent.

When we access or disclose your information

To provide products or services you’ve requested. We use some third-party services to provide you service. For example, if we are designing an ad for an advertisement you are running in a Hello Neighbor Magazine TM issue, we may use outside vendors and independent contractors with whom we contract for the work (graphic designers, printers, etc.) We also use third-party processors for other business functions such as managing newsletter subscriptions, direct mail, archival services of past issues, sending customer surveys, and providing any future storefront.
Aggregated and de-identified data. We may aggregate and/or de-identify information collected through the services. We may use de-identified or aggregated data for any purpose, including marketing or analytics.
When required under applicable law. Doreen Lewis dba Hello Neighbor Magazine TM is a U.S. company with its main data infrastructure located in the U.S.
Requests for user data. Our policy is to not respond to government requests for user data unless we are compelled by legal process or in limited circumstances in the event of an emergency request. However, if U.S. law enforcement authorities have the necessary warrant, criminal subpoena, or court order requiring us to disclose data, we must comply. Likewise, we will only respond to requests from government authorities outside the U.S. if compelled by the U.S. government through procedures outlined in a mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement. It is our policy to notify affected users before we disclose data unless we are legally prohibited from doing so, and except in some emergency cases.
Preservation requests. Similarly, our policy is to comply with requests to preserve data only if compelled by the U.S. Federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 2703(f), or by a properly served U.S. subpoena for civil matters. We do not disclose preserved data unless required by law or compelled by a court order that we choose not to appeal. Furthermore, unless we receive a proper warrant, court order, or subpoena before the required preservation period expires, we will destroy any preserved copies of customer data at the end of the preservation period.
If we are audited by a tax authority, we may be required to disclose billing-related information. If that happens, we will disclose only the minimum needed, such as billing addresses and tax exemption information.
Finally, if we are acquired by or merge with another company — we don’t plan on that, but if it happens — we’ll notify you well before any of your personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Your rights with respect to your information

We strive to apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Some of these rights include:

Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy.
Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security and processing of that information.
Right to Correction. You have the right to request correction of your personal information.
Right to Erasure / “To Be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, from all of our service providers..
Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority.
Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request restriction of how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of sale of your personal information. (Again: we never have and never will sell your personal data.)
Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
Right to not Be Subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object to and prevent any decision that could have a legal or similarly significant effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited if the decision is necessary for performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
Right to Non-Discrimination. We do not and will not charge you a different amount to use our products, offer you different discounts, or give you a lower level of customer service because you have exercised your data privacy rights.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. The database backups are also encrypted. With regard to our database, every field containing personal data is encrypted with its own key.

Data retention

We keep your information for the time necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. The length of time for which we retain information depends on the purposes for which we collected and use it and your choices, after which time we may delete and/or aggregate it. We may also retain and use this information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Through this policy, we have provided specific retention periods for certain types of information.

Location of site and data

Our products and other web properties are primarily housed in the United States. If you are located in the European Union, UK, or elsewhere outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to and stored in the United States. By using our websites or Services and/or providing us with your personal information, you consent to this transfer.

Changes and questions

We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices. If we make significant changes, we will refresh the date at the top of this page and notify users.

Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at hello@helloneighbormagazine.com.