Rest of World is a nonprofit publication that challenges expectations about whose experiences with technology matter. We connect the dots across a rapidly evolving digital world, through on-the-ground reporting in places typically overlooked and underestimated. This policy explains what personal information that Rest of World collects, how we use it, and who we share it with. We don’t sell your information.
Information We Collect
We collect information directly from you or from publicly available sources.
| Information | Use |
| Name | Account, Donation, Sweepstakes, Purchase |
| Account, Donation, Sweepstakes, Purchase, Communicate, Surveys | |
| Mailing Address | Sweepstakes, Purchase |
| Credit Card | Donation, Purchase |
| Demographics | Account |
| Password | Account |
| Cookies | Website, Account, Analytics |
How We Use Information
- Maintain your account: We enable you to log-in, store preferences, and combine activities.
- Communicate with you: We may send newsletters, conduct fundraising outreach, and share relevant opportunities. You can always opt out at any time. We may also send service-related messages, such as updates to our terms.
- Purchases, donations, and sweepstakes: We use your payment or contact information to process purchases and donations, manage sweepstakes entries, and provide the services or benefits you’ve asked for.
- Plan events: We use information about our donors and subscribers to plan and host events that are relevant to our readers.
- Conduct surveys and research: We may send you optional surveys for feedback in order to better serve our audience. We’ll use your responses to improve our services.
- Gather analytics: We run analytics for reasons that include understanding which stories are of most interest to our readers, or tracking the success of our outreach and fundraising campaigns. For example, we use information about usage patterns to better understand the ways that our readers interact with our site. We de-identify this data so that it is not traceable to specific readers.
- Operate our website: We use technical information, cookies, and usage patterns to improve our website. For example, we monitor traffic to our site for network health purposes and use cookies to maintain your preferences.
Legal Bases of Processing
- Contractual necessity: we rely on contractual necessity to operate the services and maintain your account.
- Consent: We rely on reader consent to send you our newsletter if you sign up. You can always withdraw your consent by unsubscribing.
- Legitimate Interests: Legitimate interest refers to something that is desirable to us or someone else (including you), is reasonably expected given the nature of our services, and doesn’t create any undue risk to you. We rely on legitimate interest to operate our website, plan events, fundraise, share relevant opportunities, perform analytics, and run research and surveys.
- Legal Obligations: We process information to comply with legal obligations, including complying with good faith legal requests or to defend or establish legal claims.
How We Share Information
We never sell your information. We may share it in the following ways:
- Service Providers: We share your information with third-party service providers to help us provide our services. We use service providers for things like web hosting services, newsletter delivery, hosting events, processing donations, surveys, analytics, and research.
- Legal Purposes: We may also share your information if it’s required by law or legal process. For example, we may share your information in response to government requests, or to establish or defend legal claims. We also may share information in connection with institutional reorganization (for example, a merger).
- Data Transfers: Some of the recipients described in this section may be in different countries with different privacy laws. For our users located in the European Economic Area, UK or Switzerland, if we transfer your information to a country that has not been recognized as providing an adequate level of data protection, we rely on safeguards such as agreements with terms approved by the European Commission or ensuring that the recipients are certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
Your Rights
If you have an account, you can delete your account and personal information associated with it by signing into your account and then going to “Delete Account” in Settings. We will retain only de-identified information that is legally required.
Users located in the EEA, the UK, Switzerland, and certain U.S. states have the right to access, delete or correct personal information we hold. You may also have the right to object to certain processing, such as processing based on legitimate interests. In certain cases, you also may request that we provide you with a copy of your personal information in a portable format. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us as described in the “Contact Us” section below.
Please note that, because of the steps we take to minimize data collection on our site, if you do not have an account and have not provided your email address, we are not in a position to identify you based on the information we hold. For example, we do not associate IP address, device information or other information collected through automated means with named actual persons.
Changes
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.
- May 12, 2020 – First published
- June 5, 2020 – Updated
- September 9, 2025 – Updated
- April 29th 2026 – Updated
Contact Us
Rest of World is responsible for the processing of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy.
For more information about the processing of your personal information or to exercise your rights, please contact us by e-mail at privacy@restofworld.org.