Updated: October 10, 2017
Neustar is a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information and analysis to the Internet, telecommunications, entertainment and marketing industries throughout the world. We apply our advanced, secure, data-driven technologies to our customers' information to help them promote their businesses, serve their customers, and protect against fraud and cyber security threats. This policy applies to information collected from all of Neustar’s online properties as well as the products and services described below. You can learn more about Neustar’s business on our website at www.home.neustar.
We know privacy policies can be confusing and technical. To make this as easy as possible to read and understand, we have embedded links to definitions of key terms throughout the policy.
Neustar is committed to the responsible use of Personal Information to help businesses make better decisions, secure their operations, and deliver personalized content while respecting personal privacy. To accomplish this goal, we adhere to Privacy by Design principles, taking personal privacy into consideration throughout the process of designing, building, and delivering information products and services.
Neustar may collect, use, and disclose Personal Information and other information described below when you visit our websites or in the course of providing our products and services.
On our websites, we collect Personal Information only if you choose to give it to us, for example by inquiring about or registering for our services, subscribing to RSS feeds or blog posts, or electing to “follow” Neustar or our brands (e.g., “Aggregate Knowledge” or “AK,” “AdAdvisor,” “PlatformOne,” etc.) on social media sites. Please keep in mind that any comments or other information you post on our blogs may be read, collected, and used by other blog readers.
We automatically collect Log Data about your visits to our websites. This information does not identify you to us unless you have given us your name, contact information, or other identifying information. We use Personal Information and Log Data to respond to your requests, process transactions you initiate, improve our website, and deliver personalized content to you. We may disclose Log Data and Personal Information to third parties to help us in these activities, for example, to a service provider that sends email communications to you on our behalf, but we do not allow them to use it for other purposes.
Our websites may include social media features such as the Facebook “Like” button. These features, which are either hosted by a third party or directly on our site, may collect your IP Address and the URL for the page you are visiting on our site. In order to function properly, the features may set a cookie. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company that provides them.
We provide a variety of services to online and offline advertisers and their agents through our PlatformOneSM offering. Customers may combine some or all features of our products and services described below. Neustar does not build consumer profiles based on a specific person’s online behavior over time and across sites.
Customer Provided Data. We may receive and maintain on behalf of our customers certain information, referred to as customer relationship management or CRM Data. This information may include Personal Information, including demographic, behavioral, and contextual data about their customers and prospects. CRM Data may reflect your online or offline interactions with a particular advertiser, publisher, or retailer. Our customers acquire and use this data on our platforms to understand which kinds of households or individuals are likely to be interested in their products and services, to communicate with those customers and prospects, to further refine and improve their advertising campaigns. This information belongs to our customers, not Neustar. Use of this information is governed by our customer’s privacy policy.
We do not share our customer’s personally identifiable CRM Data with anyone other than that customer. At the direction of our customer, we may disclose CRM Data along with information such as Log Data in order to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and for other reporting and analytic purposes. We don’t use this kind of reporting and analytic data to target advertisements to specific individuals.
Media Intelligence. Neustar’s Media Intelligence offering connects data and media across all channels to enable marketers to gain actionable insights into their current campaigns for increased reach and sales. Advertisers use our Media Intelligence offering to pinpoint exactly where to invest to generate more sales, get cross-channel insights in a single view, and grow addressable markets, ensuring media spend efficiency across a marketer’s entire budget.
The Media Intelligence offering collects, aggregates, and analyzes Log Data and other information when you visit the websites of our publisher, retailer, and advertiser customers. This information does not identify you personally, and may include your IP address, browser type, referring URL, operating system, date/time stamps, pages viewed, clicks, ad impressions delivered, conversions, and simple keyword tags. Your IP address is immediately hashed and truncated at the time of collection. We use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, and other technologies to collect this information. We may also collect information that our customers obtain offline and then provide to us. In addition, the Media Intelligence offering collects demographic, behavioral, and contextual data from trusted third parties to improve the targeting accuracy and performance of our Media Platform.
We aggregate and analyze this information, along with website and de-identified CRM Data in order to provide reports to our publisher, retailer, and advertiser customers. These reports give our customers insights about the demographics and interests of their customers and prospects, the advertisements they see, and they interact with online content. Customers use our reports to improve the performance of their advertising campaigns, to better understand their audiences and to enhance the relevance of advertisements you see.
Customer Intelligence. Neustar’s Customer Intelligence platform uses name, address, telephone number, and other contact information collected from a wide variety of public and private sources. Our business customers use this information to identify or verify the identity of customers and prospective customers who contact them, for example through their customer service center, to provide better customer service, and to communicate more effectively and to comply with the regulations such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Customers also use these services in combination with our predictive market segmentation tools described below.
Audience/Engagement Services. Neustar’s Activation and Audience services enable advertisers to understand their CRM Data and to apply those insights to reach and communicate with large groups of similar households and individuals. To do this, we collect consumer survey data and household/neighborhood-level demographic data from third party providers, which we aggregate and use to make predictions about the preferences and interests of large groups of similar consumers.
Neustar uses a combination of basic, publicly available demographic data points to place households, individuals, or devices into pre-defined market segments, identified by a numeric Segment Code. For example, one Segment Code might correspond to urban households likely to be composed of younger, middle-income renters without children. Another Segment Code might correspond to households we think are more likely to be middle-income, middle-aged homeowners and renters with children. Our segments consist of groups of hundreds of thousands of households with similar demographic and life-stage characteristics. Using consumer survey and other data, we make predictions about the extent to which households in one Segment Code are more or less likely to have certain interests or propensities than households in another Segment Code.
In the online environment, we use registration data supplied by our online Match Partners to set AdAdvisor Cookies and/or Aggregate Knowledge Cookies. We use information supplied by our customers to associate Mobile Advertising IDs, such as Apple IDFA and Google Ad ID with market segmentation information. These cookies and IDs do not contain or convey Personal Information. Our customers and Match Partners permit us to access Personal Information to associate an online browser or mobile device with the pre-assigned Segment Code for that household or consumer. Once the association is made, which is nearly instantaneous, we discard the Personal Information and set a cookie or make an association to a database entry that contains the pre-assigned Segment Codes, including customer-provided segment codes, along with information about the user's year of birth, gender, and zip code.
We use this information (which does not identify you personally) to help advertisers deliver more relevant online content. In some cases we may share that information with our affiliates and service providers for that purpose. We use Log Data associated with these services for marketing and analytics purposes, and to understand what kind of mobile devices are being used.
We also create and store linkages between and among household or individual level identifiers such as Cookie IDs, Mobile Advertising IDs, hashed email addresses and/or other persistent IDs that have been assigned to a unique but de-identified user. This process is sometimes called ‘cross device linking’. We do not use the stored de-identified linkages to identify you personally to third parties or to create profiles based on your behavior across sites and over time.
We use these de-identified linkages to support Onboarding customer-provided segmentation information associated with 3rd party cookies or Mobile Advertising IDs. We use this information on behalf of our customers to measure and analyze the effectiveness of particular advertising campaigns and understand at an aggregate level the impact these campaigns have on off and online behavior. Our customers or their agents may also use this information to target advertising based on consumer preferences and attributes. We also use cookie data, in combination with Log Data, the stored de-identified linkages discussed above, and in some cases, customer CRM Data to help our customers re-market, at a household level, to their web site visitors. We do not provide household data to our customers or create profiles based on your visits to a web site.
IP Intelligence Services. Neustar’s IP Intelligence services do not track individual behaviors or usage patterns. We collect IP Address and other location-related information using proprietary, patented technologies to map routable IP addresses worldwide. By augmenting our data with insights derived from select global partners, we provide city-level data down to postal codes. Our IP Intelligence services also use IP Address information to venues and organizations of interest, analyze website performance, detect potentially fraudulent transactions, identify malicious website traffic, and help our customers comply with geographic sales restrictions.
Domain Name Registry Services. When you register a domain name, your registrar collects certain information, including your name, address, contact information, and the IP address of the servers on which your domain name is hosted. As the Registry Operator for .BIZ and .US, and as the registry service provider for other top-level domains, Neustar collects this information, known as WHOIS Information from registrars, and makes it publically available online in the WHOIS database.
Neustar uses WHOIS Information and other information collected in the course of providing registry services to: comply with ICANN requirements, law and regulation, and contractual obligations; investigate and respond to complaints of abusive conduct; and enforce registry policies related to, without limitation, WHOIS accuracy, the use of proxy and/or privacy registration services, limitations on registration, and prohibitions against the use of domain names to distribute malware, operate botnets, or engage in phishing, piracy, intellectual property infringement, fraud or deceptive practices, counterfeiting or other activity that is contrary to applicable law. Neustar may from time to time collect and aggregate demographic data or statistical analysis and other research, but does not disclose Personal Information in that process.
Although WHOIS Information is publicly available on the Internet, Neustar prohibits its use (1) to allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via direct mail, electronic mail, or by telephone; (2) in contravention of any applicable data and privacy protection laws; or (3) to enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that interact with domain name registry systems.
Neustar reserves the right to use and disclose this information as needed to provide the domain registry services, identify and respond to cyber security threats, protect our rights and the rights of third parties, and as required by law.
Internet Routing and Query Information. Neustar provides a variety of Domain Name System – or DNS Services, including both authoritative and recursive DNS servers and a suite of related services to facilitate the global flow of Internet traffic. In providing these services, Neustar collects and processes DNS queries, which includes both source and destination IP Address information. We use this information to provide connectivity and routing services to our customers, and to help our customers identify and respond to cyber-attacks and other malicious online traffic, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Website Performance and Fraud Detection Information. Neustar provides a variety of Web Performance Tools that enable web masters to monitor their site’s performance and load time, to identify and address technical problems quickly, and to understand their users’ online experience. These tools can also be used, along with IP Address information, for Fraud Prevention.
Telecommunications Routing and Numbering Services. Neustar provides a variety of services to communications services providers to ensure that calls are properly routed across telecommunications service provider networks. We provide services to help communications companies manage their numbering inventory, provide number portability, manage and fulfill customer orders, perform certain routing and addressing functions, and to comply with certain regulatory requirements. Our use and disclosure of this information is limited by contract and regulated by law.
Neustar does not use or disclose Personal Information other than as described above, except:
Website Cookies. We may use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, javascript, HTML5 local storage, or similar technologies, along with other information described in this policy to enhance and personalize your experience on our sites and to manage and enable preferences, transactions and related uses of Neustar services and information. These technologies do not identify you to us unless you have voluntarily identified yourself on our websites. If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive a warning message with each cookie. You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser, but some of the features on our site may not work if you do. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 local storage. To learn more about these technologies, click on the links provided.
Third parties with whom we partner may use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, javascript, HTML5 local storage, or Flash LSOs to help us understand how visitors interact with our website or to deliver content, such as videos, or to personalize ads you see online based on your visits to our website. We do not have access to or control of these third party technologies. The information gathered by these technologies is not tied to Personal Information submitted on our website. You can use your browser settings to manage cookies. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 local storage. To manage Flash LSOs, please click here.
Analytics and Segmentation Cookies. We use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags and similar technologies in order to collect the information necessary to provide our analytics and marketing segmentation services described above. AK Cookies and AdAdvisor Cookies never contain or convey Personal Information. The contents of our cookies are encrypted, and can’t be read without the encryption key. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser’s “help” file, or you may opt-out as described below.
Our cookies do not tell our business customers who you are or where you live. Businesses use the information in AdAdvisor Cookies to tailor online advertising based on the likelihood that someone will share certain interests or propensities with members of an aggregated group. We also use and disclose information about AK Cookies and AdAdvisor Cookies, in combination with Log Data and third party information, to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns.
Mobile Advertising IDs. We use Mobile Advertising IDs, also known as IDFA or IFA, in connection with PlatformOneSM and other marketing services. We obtain Mobile Advertising IDs from Match Partners who have user consent to share this information. We share Segment Codes associated with Mobile Advertising IDs with our customers who have access to these identifiers with the consent of their users. This enables our clients to provide a more tailored user experience as well as relevant content and offers in the mobile environment. You can find more information about how mobile advertising IDs are used and how to opt out of mobile advertising in our Transparency and Choice section below.
Neustar does not create Segment Codes based on Sensitive Personal Information and we do not use Cookies or Mobile Advertising IDs to enable ad targeting based on that kind of information. For added protection, our contracts with our partners do not allow the use of our data to determine credit worthiness, eligibility for insurance, or for employment.
We do not create audience segments based on the precise real-time geographic-location of an individual derived through location-based services (e.g., GPS-enabled devices) without opt-in consent.
Neustar creates certain audience segments based on our predictions about the likelihood that households in a particular Element are more or less likely to use certain kinds of over-the-counter medications (e.g., cold or flu medications) or more or less likely to consume a certain kind of alcoholic beverage. A list of these audience segments can be found in Advertising Audiences. These segments do not include or reflect individual or even house-hold level behavior; rather, they are predictions based on survey responses from volunteer participants, which is then modeled to apply to broader groups of people who we think are more or less likely to have similar preferences. Advertisers who use these segments must comply with government regulation as well as industry best practices that apply to the delivery of such advertising. More information about this topic is available here: Advertising Audiences.
Please note that opting out does not mean you will block online advertising altogether or see fewer ads. It simply means that the ads that you see will not be personalized for you. Ads may be served because they relate to the website you are visiting or to your current search, or they may just be randomly placed.
Your choice to opt out from the use of AK and AdAdvisor cookies will not affect ads placed by any other organization.
We comply with opt-out requests by placing an “opt-out cookie” on your computer or device. Consequently, if you clear your cookies on that computer or device, we will not be able to read our “opt-out cookie” and will resume collecting information from that computer or device for purposes of retargeting. Similarly, an opt-out request will not be effective on other browsers, computers, or devices you may use if you have not opted out while using that browser, computer, or device.
Neustar is a member of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) and the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) and adheres to each organization’s Codes and Principles. You can also learn more about online advertising in general on the NAI website, which provides background information on participating companies and permits you to opt-out of receiving tailored online advertising from some or all of its members. For information about the DAA Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising and to learn more about the Ad Choices icon, visit http://www.aboutads.info/ and http://youradchoices.com/.
Aggregate Knowledge adheres to the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s (“EDAA”) principles. You may learn more about our participation in the EDAA’s program and online behavioral advertising at www.youronlinechoices.eu.
Neustar, Inc. and its subsidiaries (i.e., Neustar Information Services, Inc., Aggregate Knowledge, Inc., MarketShare Holdings, Inc., Registry Services, LLC, Data Solutions Services, LLC, and Security Services, LLC, together, “Neustar”) participate in and have certified their compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. We are committed to subjecting all personal data received from European Union (EU) member countries and Switzerland, respectively, in reliance on each Privacy Shield Framework, to the Framework’s applicable Principles. To learn more about the Privacy Shield Frameworks, and to view our certification, visit the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Privacy Shield List here: https://www.privacyshield.gov.
Neustar is responsible for the processing of personal data it receives, under each Privacy Shield Framework, and subsequently transfers to a third party acting as an agent on its behalf. Neustar complies with the Privacy Shield Principles for all onward transfers of personal data from the EU and Switzerland, including the onward transfer liability provisions.
With respect to personal data received or transferred pursuant to the Privacy Shield Frameworks, Neustar is subject to the regulatory enforcement powers of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In certain situations, we may be required to disclose personal data in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.
If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact our U.S.-based third party dispute resolution provider (free of charge) at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request.
Under certain conditions, more fully described on the Privacy Shield website here, you may be entitled to invoke binding arbitration when other dispute resolution procedures have been exhausted.
European residents may also opt-out of the use of AK Cookies for online advertising at: www.youronlinechoices.eu
Neustar has implemented policies that include administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect Personal Information against unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.
Neustar does not knowingly collect information from children under 13, and we do not create marketing segments or knowingly enable advertising targeted to children under 18.
This Policy may change from time to time, in which case we will revise the “Updated” date. We will post any privacy policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant (also known as material changes), we will provide more prominent notice on this site prior to the changes becoming effective and indicate at the top of the policy when it was most recently updated. Changes we determine to be material to this policy will become effective 30 days after posting.
Pursuant to Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code, residents of California who have an established business relationship with Neustar may request certain information with respect to the Personal Information we share with third parties for those third parties’ direct marketing purposes. To exercise your rights, email us at privacy@team.neustar.
Neustar Privacy
21275 Ridgetop Circle
Sterling, VA 20166
privacy@team.neustar
Cross Device Linking is a technique used to predict or determine a likely association or relationship between two or more devices such as smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, etc.
Customer Relationship Management or “CRM” Data is the data and information associated with a company’s relationship with customers throughout the customer lifecycle.
The Domain Name System, or DNS is the system that manages database tables that associate IP addresses with domain names such as neustar.biz.
Flash Cookies or Locally Shared Objects (LSOs) are messages used in Adobe Flash that are sent from a Web server to a Web browser and is then stored as a data file in the browser. Flash cookies behave like conventional cookies by personalizing the user's experience, but they can hold much more data than conventional cookies. Flash cookies may stay installed on a drive after ordinary cookies are deleted.
IP Address. Every device connected to the Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet protocol (IP) address. IP addresses are assigned and reassigned by Internet Service Providers and companies regularly.
ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which coordinates certain technical elements of the Domain Name System.
Log Data is the Internet page request that is automatically collected when you visit a website, and typically includes the URL of the page requested, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, mobile service provider, search terms, the date and time of your request, and information about one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. AdAdvisor and AK logs also contain information about ad campaign delivery and responses, which we use for reporting and analytics, and to measure ad effectiveness.
Match Partners. Neustar utilizes online registration information (e.g., name, address, or email information) provided by our Match Partners to associate an online browser with the relevant ElementOneSM Segment Code. Once the association is made, the AdAdvisor repository discards the registration information and places a cookie on the user’s hard drive that contains the AdAdvisor segment code and one or more of the following anonymous demographic variables: (i) four digit year of birth, (ii) gender; and (iii) zip code. Our customers and Match Partners may also share Mobile Advertising IDs and registration information, which we use to associate a mobile device with a Segment Code. Once that association is made, we discard any Personal Information used to create the linkage.
We require each Match Partner to represent and warrant that it has clearly and conspicuously notified its users about the use of cookies, web beacons and other tracking technologies and disclosure of Personal Information to third parties such as Neustar. We also require that each Match Partner’s user agreement and privacy policy expressly permit sharing, licensing or selling of Personal Information to third parties for various marketing purposes, including Third-Party Online Behavioral Advertising as defined by the Network Advertising Initiative Self-Regulatory Code (the “NAI Code”), and other online marketing services and programs. Finally, we require our Match Partners to clearly and conspicuously notify individuals of the right to opt-out of the third party use of information for marketing by providing a link to the NAI opt-out.
Mobile Advertising IDs. Apple assigns an “ID for Advertising” (IDFA) to each iOS device, and Google assigns an “Advertising ID” to all Android devices. These anonymous IDs can be used to deliver ads and for advertising analytics in mobile applications.
Onboarding. This process allows advertisers to use their offline information about customer preferences (CRM data) to communicate with those customers in the online environment. In this process, an advertiser assigns different segment codes to a consumer based on their offline interactions with that consumer. We use de-identified information such as a hashed email address provided by our advertising client, to create a link between that de-identified CRM data and a Cookie ID, Mobile Advertising ID, or other persistent identifier assigned to a unique but de-identified user. That information can then be used to deliver targeted advertising, evaluate the effectiveness of ad campaigns, or for other analytics purposes.
Personal Information is information that personally identifies you, such as your name, email address or billing information, or other data that we can reasonably link to that kind of information.
Privacy by Design is an approach to protecting privacy developed by Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, Dr. Ann Cavoukian. Using this approach, privacy is embedded into the design specifications of technologies, business practices, and physical infrastructures. That means building in privacy up front – right into the design specifications and architecture of new systems and processes.
Segment Codes. Our proprietary market segmentation model, ElementOneSM, places each U.S. household into one of 232 market segments (each called an “Element”) based on commercially available household-level demographic information consisting of neighborhood type; age, income, and cost of living bands; home ownership/rental; and presence/absence of children. Each “Element” includes a minimum of several hundred thousand U.S. households, and many Elements include several million households. We roll these 232 segments up into 172 segments for use by AdAdvisor in the online environment.
Additional commercially available demographic and survey data is aggregated by Element and analyzed to determine the likelihood that a typical household in a given Element will share a particular preference or characteristic. This information is presented as the likelihood that a household in a particular Element shares a particular characteristic (e.g., households in Element 100 are 80% more likely than average households to have children, drive SUVs, use a certain brand name product, or watch a particular cable network).
Our customers may also create their own marketing segments based on their consumer interactions and/or third party data they acquire. We generally do not know what these codes mean.
Sensitive Personal Information includes: Social Security Numbers or other Government-issued identifiers; insurance plan numbers; financial account numbers; information that describes the precise real-time geographic-location of an individual derived through location-based services such as through GPS-enabled devices; and precise information about past, present, or potential future health or medical conditions or treatments, including genetic, genomic, and family medical history.
Uniform Resource Locators or “URLs” are web addresses, a specific character string that constitutes a reference to a resource. Most web browsers display the URL of a web page above the page in an address bar. A typical URL might look like: https://www.neustar.biz/privacy
Web beacons or “clear Gifs” are small pieces of code placed on web pages that can be used for such purposes as counting visitors and delivering cookies or to otherwise customize the user experience. They contain a unique identifier that is used to track on-site activities of unique but unidentified website users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on your computer hard drive, web beacons are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
