Privacy Policy

We at Podnation respect the privacy rights of our online visitors and recognize the importance of protecting the information we collect about you. Our Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we collect, hold, use, and disclose personally identifiable information about you.

This policy, along with our Terms and Conditions and any other referenced documents, outlines how we, ”Podnation,” which is a website owned by HLM Business, LLC, a registered company in Florida, US (with company number 27-1312352) and reachable at [email protected], handle and process any personal data collected from you or provided by you while using our website. This is in accordance with the laws of the State of Florida.

When you use our site, you provide us with information and other data in several ways. By using the site, you consent to us processing and collecting this data on the policy and for the reasons explained below.

Information we may collect about you:

• Your first and last name, email and/or postal address, telephone number, or other information you provide when you fill out a contact form on the site.
• Your IP addresses.
• Your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
• Any referring or exit pages taking you to or from our site.
• Your login information.
• Your web browser type and version.
• Your time zone & location.
• Date/time stamp.
• Click-stream data.
• Any browser plug-ins and versions used on your browser.
• Your Operating System.
• Your platform/device details.

How your information is being used:

• Send you our newsletters, show you targeted ads, and for behavioral monitoring and targeting from time to time.
• Ensure that content from our site is optimized and effective for you and your computer.
• To diagnose or fix technology problems.
• To control unauthorized use or abuse of the site and our products and services, or otherwise detect, investigate, or prevent activities that may violate our policies or be illegal.
• Provide you with information, products, or services that you request from us or that we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes.
• Carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
• Allow you to participate in interactive features of our service when you choose to do so.
• Notify you about changes to our service.
• To deliver customer service and respond to your inquiries.
• Administer our site, including data analysis, testing, traffic monitoring, research, statistical, and survey purposes.
• Podnation may provide general statistical information to third parties, but such information will not allow anyone to be personally identified.

We take your privacy very seriously and will take all reasonable steps to protect your personal data, but please be aware that any data that you send to our site is sent at your own risk.

We request that you refrain from sending or sharing any sensitive, personally identifiable information through our site. This includes details related to your racial or ethnic background, religious beliefs, health, criminal history, or trade union membership. If, despite this request, you choose to provide any sensitive information, please be aware that by doing so, you are giving us your consent to collect and handle that information in accordance with the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy.

We gather information about our users' podcasts, encompassing personal details such as IP addresses and User Agents. This data undergoes analysis on our part, enabling us to offer valuable insights to our users. It is important to note that our users have access to aggregated analytic data rather than raw user data. We ensure that raw user information is processed internally and is never shared with our users or any third parties, maintaining confidentiality and privacy.

When you use Podnation, we may employ clear gifs (also known as web beacons) and cookies to track your online usage patterns.

We may also use clear gifs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened and which links are clicked by recipients.

For more information, please see our Cookies policy

To enhance your user experience or help us improve and measure our effectiveness, Podnation may embed code from third parties on the site. Examples of such parties may include Google AdSense and Stripe. These third parties may collect information about you, including IP addresses and cookies, in compliance with GDPR regulations.

Podnation will never sell your data to a third party.

If you do not want us to use your information for marketing purposes, please tick any relevant box on the form on which you submit your data or unsubscribe from any marketing communication using the unsubscribe function in the footer of the email. You can also contact us directly by emailing [email protected].

• All information you provide is stored on our secure encrypted server infrastructure, which is based worldwide, including in the United States, Canada, and the European Union.
• Payments are encrypted over SSL and processed securely via our payment gateway provider, Stripe, offering Tier-1 PCI-compliant systems.
• No method of transmission over the Internet, method of electronic storage, or other security methods is one hundred percent secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means such as firewalls, password-protected databases with limited physical or electronic access, and encryption to protect your personally identifiable information against unauthorized use, disclosure, or modification, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

We hold your personally identifiable information in a combination of hard copy and electronic files for the period necessary to support the site, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, or otherwise fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy.

We use third-party information system providers who may store or have access to your personal information. Copies of some information may remain viewable in some circumstances where, for example, you have shared information with social media or other services.

We may retain backup information on our servers for some time after cancellation for fraud detection or to comply with applicable laws or our internal security policies. We do not always remove or delete all of your information for a number of reasons, including technical and systems constraints and contractual, financial, or legal requirements.

Our partners providing our server infrastructure include the following:

• Digital Ocean: https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/privacy-policy/
• Amazon AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/
• Stripe: https://stripe.com/privacy
• Google: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• Mailgun: https://www.mailgun.com/privacy-policy/
• Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/

Please follow the links to see their relevant Privacy Policies.

Our Privacy Policy will no longer apply if you click on or follow any links from our site to external websites. Please check the privacy policies of any such external site before submitting any personal data, as we cannot accept any responsibility or liability in relation to them.

In cases where advertising placements are available within podcasts, our users consent to the automatic placement of advertisements. Podnation does not carry out any activity affecting user privacy without the user’s permission.

• This site is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 13, nor does Podnation knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are under 13, you may not attempt to send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address.
• If we confirm that we have collected personally identifiable information from a child under the age of 13 without verifying parental consent, we will delete that information promptly.
• If you are a parent or legal guardian of a child under 13 and believe that we might have any information from or about such a child, please contact us at the email or mailing address provided at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Podnation cares about privacy – not just for the people who use us to publish their podcasts but also for all their listeners. We have published our full legal Privacy Policy and clearly link to it on every page. Our Privacy Policy is for everyone who uses Podnation and is our legal document.

Just as we do not hide our main Privacy Policy, we proudly publish this additional information for listeners. We believe every podcast host should have a clear Privacy Policy for listeners like this.

If you listen through a podcast app to podcasts hosted on Podnation, for example, through Apple Podcasts, here is what happens:

Most apps or devices download our audio directly from our servers. We use this data for our own analysis and to help our podcasters understand the consumption of their podcasts. Just like almost any other podcast host, when you listen to a podcast hosted with us through a podcast app, we get to know five things about you:

• Your device’s user-agent (the name of the app you use and often the type of device you connect with).
• Sometimes, we learn a referral address, which shows us the website or path you took to listen to the podcast.
• Your IP address. This is a 12-digit number from which it is possible to work out your approximate location, often down to your suburb and the name of your ISP or mobile provider. Sometimes it is possible to figure out your employer or school from an IP address.
• The date and time of the download.
• What you downloaded.

We do not receive personally identifiable information from your downloads, which means we do not have knowledge of your identity. IP addresses are often used by households, schools, or employers for multiple users, and they can change. Therefore, we cannot determine a person's name or address solely from an IP address. Importantly, we do not combine any data from our download servers with access data from our website or any other source. However, there are two exceptions to this:

• Like most podcast hosts, we utilize a geo-database to provide a rough location (typically at the city level) based on your IP address.
• We compare your IP address with a blocklist to identify automated downloads from servers, which we should disregard.

Even though this data is not personally identifiable, we do not share it with our podcasters. Instead, we give them analytics showing total downloads, geo-location, such as state or country, and device categories. They cannot see your IP address or any personal details about you.

While we use the raw data for analysis, fraud detection, and other purposes, we automatically delete it as soon as we can.

Our podcasters are free to say what they want in their podcasts. They are free to link to whatever website they want to in their episode notes, and in the same way, they may insert a so-called “prefix” or “prepend” service into their RSS feed, which may allow them access to further functionality. It is up to our podcasters if they use them; we do not control these services. We actively work with the industry to ensure best practice.

Whatever app you listen to may also collect your playback data, so you should check the podcast app's privacy policies.

We reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy at any time. These changes will take effect immediately unless you are notified otherwise.

We recommend that you refer to this Privacy Policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current practice at the time of using our service.

Unless stated otherwise in a separate agreement, this Privacy Policy applies to all information we have about you.

Podnation regularly reviews its compliance with this Privacy Policy. We will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personally identifiable information that cannot be resolved between Podnation and an individual.

If you have questions or want to contact us regarding this Privacy Policy, please feel free to email us at [email protected].