At NPR Berlin, we recognize the importance of privacy to visitors of our web site and services (the "NPR Berlin Web Site" or "Service"). This Privacy Policy explains what type of information is collected from you when you visit the NPR Berlin Web site and how that information may be used.

Please note that the NPR Berlin Web Site includes several links to NPR.org, the website of NPR Berlin’s U.S. parent company, National Public Radio, Inc., such as when you click on our contact page, when you click on an NPR program (other than an NPR Berlin-originated program), and when you click on “Become an NPR Sponsor.”  NPR.org is governed by separate policies.  Please consult NPR.org’s privacy policy and terms of use before using any features of NPR.org.

Please note also that this Privacy Policy is separate and distinct from the privacy policies governing any third party web sites that may link to or from the NPR Berlin Web Site.

Gathering of Information

NPR Berlin collects personally-identifying information (such as your name, e-mail address, address, telephone number and/or credit card information) from the NPR Berlin Web Site for a variety of purposes.

NPR Berlin asks visitors to provide certain personal information when they:

* Submit a reply to a blog
* Submit an event for publication in our events calendar
* Submit a comment to NPR Berlin
* Make a donation to NPR Berlin

NPR Berlin also may ask visitors to provide personal information in other limited circumstances specified at the time the information is gathered. Any information, comment, message, idea, essay, photo, image or other text, content or material (“User Materials”) that you post, upload, transmit and/or otherwise submit (“Submit”) as part of blog comments or a public event notice may become public, including the name that you provide when leaving a reply to a blog.

Like all other Web servers, NPR Berlin's Web server automatically creates log files for each visitor who accesses the NPR Berlin Web Site. These "access logs" allow us to make our site more useful to our visitors. The access logs do NOT record a visitor's name, address, e-mail address, phone number, credit card numbers, or any other personally-identifying information. Rather, they contain some or all of the following information:

 * The Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) of the machine which accessed our Web site.
 * The date of the visit.
 * The time of the visit.
 * The path taken through our Web site.
 * The browser being used.
 * A list of files downloaded or viewed.
 * The amount of time spent listening to/viewing media files.
 * Any errors encountered.

Cookies and Other Technologies

NPR Berlin also may use 'cookies' to collect information. A cookie is a string of characters that can be written to a file on the user's hard drive when the user visits a Web site. Only the web site that set the cookie can read it, and it can only be used as a record keeping device to store user IDs and information that the site already has. It cannot be used to read other information from the user's hard drive.

NPR Berlin may use cookies to track users' activity through the site in order to improve the site's architecture, to offer the user interactive features that would not be possible without them, and to recall specific information to save the user time during subsequent visits to the site. Our sponsorship service vendors, which serve sponsorship messages onto our site, and third party vendors that measure and analyze the use of the NPR Berlin Web Site for NPR Berlin, may also use their own cookies.

NPR Berlin and the third party vendors that measure and analyze use of the NPR Berlin Web sites for NPR also may use web beacons, alone or in conjunction with cookies, to help compile information about usage of the NPR Berlin Web Site. A web beacon is an electronic image, also known as a single-pixel (1x1) or clear .gif., which can be used to recognize certain information on your computer, such as cookies, and the time and date of a page viewed. We may use web beacons on this site from time to time for this and other purposes.

If you wish to prevent certain or all cookies or web beacons from being set to your hard drive you may disable them in your browser's preferences, although your browser might then be unable to accommodate certain functionalities on the NPR Berlin Web site.

Use of Information

The use of personally-identifying information is limited to use by NPR Berlin and its parent company, National Public Radio, Inc. (NPR) for the following: managing and administering the NPR Berlin Web site; processing donations and sending private acknowledgments of contributions; responding to user messages; listing name provided by users when publishing User Materials in a blog; listing appropriate information when listing public events; editorial purposes such as contacting users for a survey; other internal NPR Berlin or NPR purposes; and other purposes specified at the time the information is gathered. We may contact users regarding their submissions of User Materials or event notices in certain circumstances.

Any information that you disclose when submitting User Materials through the NPR Berlin Blog or when submitting a public event notice is likely to become public. This information may be posted on the NPR Berlin Web Site. In addition, NPR Berlin, NPR, NPR’s member stations and their licensees, may use, copy, sublicense, modify, transmit, publicly perform, display, create derivative works of, host, index, cache, tag, encode, and/or adapt any User Materials, and any information contained therein, in any and all media formats or channels, whether now known or hereafter devised, including, but not limited to, the NPR Berlin Web Site, NPR.org, NPR member station web sites, other third party web sites, over the air (on radio or television), and on mobile platforms.

In addition, if you send User Materials through our Web site, we may print the User Materials, or an excerpt from the User Materials, on the NPR Berlin Web site, read them on air, or otherwise publish them in any other medium, together with your name if you provide that information to us.

Excluding information provided by the user when submitting User Materials, which may become public as discussed above, personally-identifying information collected by the NPR Berlin Web Site is not provided to outside parties except NPR service vendors (such as the operator of the NPR Berlin Blog) and other third parties when the user specifically consents to such distribution. In these circumstances, the information is provided for the sole purpose of -- and only to the extent necessary for -- providing services for and on behalf of NPR Berlin or serving other internal NPR Berlin or NPR purposes.

NPR Berlin also may disclose personal information if required to do so by law or if it believes that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law or with legal process, (b) protect against misuse or unauthorized use of the NPR Berlin Web Site, or (c) protect the personal safety or property of users of the NPR Berlin Web Site, the public, NPR Berlin, NPR, or NPR’s employees.

NPR Berlin, with the assistance from time to time of its third party service vendors, uses non-identifying aggregate information to analyze use of and better design the NPR Berlin Web Site and to share with third parties in aggregate form only as appropriate. For example, we may tell a third party that a certain number of users accessed a particular audio stream on our Web site. However, we will not disclose any information that could be used to identify those users.

When you provide personally-identifying information to NPR Berlin, you submit it voluntarily.  By providing personally-identifying information, you consent to the collection and use of your information as described above.  If you do not want your personally-identifying information to be collected or used for any of these purposes, please do not provide it (although if you do not provide it, you may not be able to use or participate in certain features of the NPR Berlin Web Site). You can also 'opt out' according to the process described below.

Security

NPR Berlin has in place what we believe to be appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. Credit card information provided when making a donation is protected against unauthorized use by 128-bit encryption and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security features, which scramble your personal information so that only your web browser and our Web site's server can decipher it.  However, no Internet or e-mail transmission is ever fully secure or error free. Because most e-mail is not encrypted, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via e-mail.

Children

Under 13: If you are under 13 years of age, please do not send any information about yourself, including your name, address or e-mail address. If we discover that we have collected any personally-identifying information from a child under the age of 13, we will remove that information from our database as soon as possible.

13-18: You must be at least 18 years old in order to Submit any User Materials on or through the NPR Berlin Web Site. Visitors between the ages of 13 and 18 must obtain permission from their parents or guardians before sending any personally-identifying information to us.

Corrections to Personal Data; Opting Out

Please contact us if you would like to a) review, correct or update any personal information in our database, b) opt-out of future communications from NPR Berlin and National Public Radio, Inc. (NPR), or c) request NPR Berlin to make reasonable efforts to remove your personal information from our database. This will not necessarily remove previous public comments and other User Materials Submitted for public display on the NPR Berlin Web Site. The user understands that it may be impossible to delete personal information entirely because of backups and records of deletions.  Please use the form on the contact page (select “share a comment” on the contact page, then in the “I Want to Share a Comment With” box, select “NPR Berlin”) and enter your detailed request, or write us with your detailed request at:

NPR FM Berlin
635 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC, USA 20001-3753
nprberlin@npr.org

International User Notice

As NPR Berlin is a subsidiary of National Public Radio, Inc., a U.S. nonprofit corporation, it may be necessary to transfer your information internationally and, in particular, your information may be transferred to and processed in the United States.  For residents of the European Union:  the data protection and other laws of other countries outside of the European Union may not be as comprehensive as those of the European Union.  Please be assured that we take steps to ensure that your privacy is protected.  By using this site, you agree to have your information used and transferred to the United States as set forth in this policy.
 
Acceptance of Privacy Policy Terms

NPR Berlin reserves the right to change this policy. Any changes to this policy will be posted to this page as soon as reasonably possible, so please check this page periodically. Use of the NPR Berlin Web Site constitutes consent to any policy then in effect. Please make sure that you read the Terms of Use to understand additional terms and conditions which apply to the use of the NPR Web Sites.

Links to other Sites

It is important to note that the NPR Berlin Web Site contains links to other sites that may not follow the same privacy policies as the NPR Berlin Web Site. For instance, clicking on a sponsorship notice will take you to an entirely different site. These sites may use cookies, collect data, and use the data in ways that the NPR Berlin Web Site would not. NPR is not responsible for the privacy practices or any information or materials on these other sites. Please visit these sites if you wish to review their privacy policies.

Questions

If you have any questions or comments concerning our Privacy Policy, please use the form on the contact page (select “share a comment” on the contact page, then in the “I Want to Share a Comment With” box, select “NPR Berlin”) or write us at:

NPR FM Berlin
635 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC, USA 20001-3753
nprberlin@npr.org