Privacy Policy

Your Privacy Rights – Effective June 14, 2019

This privacy policy applies to all Imgur users worldwide. For users in the European Economic Area (EEA) and in Switzerland, Imgur complies with the principles of the U.S.-EU Privacy Shield Program and the U.S.-Swiss Privacy Shield Program, and participates in both programs. Under both programs, we are subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the Federal Trade Commission, and we are liable for the unauthorized transfer to third parties of user personal data. For more information, see https://www.privacyshield.gov. To contact us regarding privacy issues, you can email us at [email protected], or snailmail us at Imgur, Inc., 600 California St., San Francisco CA 94018-2727.

Information we collect and the purposes for which we use it

Automatically collected information

Our servers automatically collect the following information regarding devices that access our site or app: device characteristics (including device ID for mobile devices), operating system, browser type, IP address, username from stored cookies if present, dates and times of each login, page and image viewing statistics, and incoming and outgoing links. We also log the metadata associated with any uploaded images. We use this automatically collected anonymous data to analyze how our site and app are used so as to keep them optimized, to determine the popularity and usefulness of various features, to maintain the integrity of user accounts so that each user can see his or her posts and the upvotes, downvotes, and comments to them, and to enable users with usernames to access their posts, albums, and membership information. We also use such data to enable us to comply with copyright law, with 18 USC §2258A (illegal content), and to respond to lawful requests by public authorities, including national security, courts, and law enforcement.

None of this information is “personal data” – that is, data we could use to identify a specific person. Some of this information could, however, become personal data because we provide automatically collected anonymous data to third party advertisers to supplement the tracking information described below, and those third parties might be able to combine our anonymous data with other data they have to enable them to identify people.

Interactively collected information

In addition to the automatically collected anonymous data described above, we may place information on your device and then retrieve it later: we may use cookies, web beacons, or other anonymous tracking information to improve our server's interaction with your device. We also partner with third party advertisers who may (themselves or through their partners) place and/or recognize cookies on your device that collect data about which pages and ads are viewed while our app or site is being used. Advertiser cookies enable customized ads that are selected for display on your device based on the anonymous information collected. No personal data is on, connected to, or derivable from, these cookies. If you block or disable cookies and other tracking technologies, instead of getting customized ads you will see non-customized (generic) ads. Although our servers currently don't respond to "do-not-track" requests, you can block tracking in other ways. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies for interest based advertising, please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ or see the section below, “Accessing, correcting, and limiting use of your data”.

Imgur participates in the Digital Advertising Alliance's (DAA) Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. For more information please visit http://www.aboutads.info.

Information you choose to give us

When you sign in with a username, we handle it in the same way as an automatically collected username except that if you don’t allow cookies, you have to enter your username each time you log in. A username is, by nature, publicly posted information. On occasion we may run a contest or other type of promotion, and to enable us to award prizes to the winners as well as to comply with the applicable laws, we collect real names and contact information – so if you win a contest, we’ll ask for that information and we’ll use it only for those two specific purposes.

We collect whatever personal data about you that you choose to give us, such as a contact email address (which we do not make public) and profile information. We do not require you to use an account to upload images, and if you open an account you do not have to provide any personal information. If you are located in the EEA and wish to open an account, do not use your real name – choose a username and email address that reveal nothing about your identity. If you give us an email address, we’ll probably send you promotional messages once in a while; we’ll try to make them fun and interesting but of course you’ll be able to opt out at any time.

Why do I have to verify my phone number?

To keep everything fun, we’ve come up with a new way to send miscreants north of the wall! And without collecting any personal information from you.

To set up an account, you give us your cell phone number and we’ll text you a confirmation code to verify that it’s your number. But we won’t save your number, share it, sell it, or even show it to anyone. Instead, we’ll one-way encrypt it into a hash and save only the hash. Since a hash can’t be decrypted, we can’t get your phone number from it. Then, if you get banned for breaking the rules, we’ll ban your hash too – and you won’t be able to set up another account with the same phone number, since it would generate the same hash. Clever, huh?

For more information, see our community rules.

Information you post

Imgur does not “collect” the stuff you post: images, comments, messages, etc., and – with respect to persons in the EEA – does not “process” or determine any purposes for processing of any information that you manifestly make public. In particular, every image uploaded to Imgur is public – whether uploaded directly without going through a user account, or uploaded via a user account – and has its own URL. No matter what your privacy settings are, every image can always be accessed and viewed by anyone who types in that exact URL. No image uploaded to Imgur is ever completely hidden from public view. This is mainly to ensure that Imgur, which allows anonymous postings, will not be used as a platform for illegality. So too for messaging: Imgur allows users to send messages to one another both indirectly (via comments to posts) and directly (via chat). Imgur's messaging functionality is not intended to be a secure messaging platform; it's just for fun. To ensure that Imgur's messaging platform is not used as a platform for illegality, all messages are public. No messages are ever completely hidden from public view. We may monitor user messaging.

Post / Image Privacy

Uploading a New Post creates a “post” (also called “album”) that can be shared to the community. The individual images inside the post are referred to as “images.”

Although nothing you post to Imgur is completely hidden from public view or entirely private, with that understanding you can set the privacy level of posts.

• Hidden: Posts will be hidden by default. They are not searchable within Imgur, and will not appear in Imgur’s public gallery or public profile, but each one will still be accessible by going to the post’s URL. They cannot receive comments or earn points.
• Public: Posts will be publicly viewable and shared with the community. Public posts shared with the community will allow comments, sharing, and voting, and appear in a user’s profile.

“Favorite Folders” Privacy

You can add favorited posts to folders that you create. Individual public posts that you favorite are always visible from the “All Favorites” page in your user profile and cannot be hidden, even those within folders. Favorited hidden posts will not appear publicly in your favorites. These settings for favorites cannot be changed, but the visibility of folders can be toggled to public or private.

• Public: Folders are visible to the public community on your public profile.
• Private: Private folders are kept hidden from your public profile.

Accessing, correcting, and limiting use of your data

Because we don’t collect information about the identity of our users and don’t receive any information from third parties enabling us to identify our users, we have no means of knowing, or providing you with information about, whatever anonymous data about you we might have on our servers – unless you have a username. If you have a username, you may log in and access your data, correct whatever information you deem to be incorrect, opt out of information sharing with our advertisers, or delete your account. For legal reasons we may retain backup and/or archival copies of information prior to your corrections, amendments, or deletions.

Data Protection

We take every reasonable precaution to protect the data on our servers from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction, taking into account the risk level and the nature of the data. You are responsible for taking every reasonable precaution on your end to protect any unauthorized person from accessing your Imgur account.

Dispute resolution

These terms are governed by California law, excluding its conflicts of law principles, and if there is a lawsuit between a user outside the EEA and Imgur, jurisdiction and venue will lie exclusively in the State where the defendant is located, if within the United States, or in Santa Clara County, California otherwise. If you are a user located within the EEA and have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, you have additional recourse mechanisms: First, you may contact our U.S.-based third party dispute resolution provider (free of charge) at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request. Second, you may, under certain conditions, invoke binding arbitration for complaints regarding Privacy Shield compliance not resolved by any of the other Privacy Shield mechanisms. For additional information please see https://www.privacyshield.gov/article?id=ANNEX-I-introduction.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may revise our privacy policy from time to time by posting the changes here. You can determine the date of the most recent changes by looking at the “effective date” at the top.