An outline of guardian.co.uk's approach to managing online profiles
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Email guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 April 2013 12.30 BST
As part of our series on internet privacy, here is an explanation of our approach to managing online profiles set up by guardian.co.uk users.
What information do we collect about users of guardian.co.uk?
As our privacy policy explains, at Guardian News & Media (GNM) we collect different types of information about our users for four main reasons:
1. To provide personalised services unique to individual users.
2. To help us to monitor and improve the services we offer
3. To sell advertising space on the site. This helps us to keep the site free of charge.
4. With user consent, to market services to individual users.
We collect information on our users through:
- registration and use of the website;
- cookies (small files that allow website to remember user preferences);
- where you choose to disclose data in postings;
- when you enter sales promotions and competitions.
Certain services that we provide may involve the collection by us of additional information, such as your geographic location from time to time, to enable the service to be provided as designed. In particular, this may apply to certain apps that you download, or which we provide.
This process is detailed in our privacy policy and there is even more information about how the Guardian uses cookies here.
As a registered guardian.co.uk user, you can view and control the data that GNM holds about you for the usage of guardian.co.uk on your personal account dashboard.
Can I delete my guardian.co.uk account?
If you no longer want to have a registered guardian.co.uk account you can contact our user help team (userhelp@guardian.co.uk) to request its termination. This is explained in our terms of service. You will no longer be able to log in to guardian.co.uk once a registered profile has been deleted.
Why don't all comments get deleted when an account is terminated?
It is very rare that we will delete an entire user's commenting history when requested by that user. Applications for this should be made to userhelp@guardian.co.uk and will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The same goes for individual comments. We hope that people will think before they post – and encourage everyone to use the preview button to give you that extra window of time to rewrite something that could potentially be misunderstood before posting. In addition, we believe that deleting an entire archive of comments can damage the conversations on site and experience for other users.