The following Terms & Conditions govern the use of www.kyivindependent.com.

In addition to reviewing these Terms & Conditions, please read our Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy. Your use of the website constitutes agreement to its terms and conditions.

COLLECTION OF INFORMATION

The Kyiv Independent website doesn’t currently collect any personal information that can be used to identify users, such as names or contact information. 

The Kyiv Independent website uses embedded comment sections operated by Facebook, where users comment under their Facebook profiles and can therefore be identified. 

Information we obtain through cookies and similar tools

We use cookies (and similar technologies) and analytics tools across our Sites to collect information about you. This information can be used to improve the performance of the site, make advertising more relevant and enhance your user experience. We provide detailed information about cookies and similar technologies within our Cookie Policy; examples include:

• Your usage – we use cookies to understand how our customers use our Sites and interact with our communications and journalism. For example, we use technology on our Sites, which records user movements, including page scrolling and clicks. (We do not record payment details.) This helps us to identify usability issues and improve the assistance we can provide to users and is also used for aggregated and statistical reporting purposes.
• Your device – we use cookies to understand what type of device you are using to show you the best version of the site.
• Your engagement with advertisements – we use cookies to understand what advertisements you have been shown, or clicked on to present you with advertisements that are more relevant to you.
• If you wish to manage your cookies, please follow the instructions in the “How to manage cookies” section within our Cookie Policy. 

Additional information

On occasion, we will ask you to voluntarily provide additional information, for example:

• Your opinion of our products and services;
• Your preferences, including newsletters or other content offerings;

LAWFUL BASIS FOR PROCESSING

We only process personal information where we have a lawful basis for doing so, such as the following:

• User consent – This is where you have given us explicit permission to process personal information for a given purpose. For example, if you complete one of our general enquiry forms, we would ask for your consent if we wanted to use your personal information for any other purpose. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time. You can manage your preferences by contacting us at kyivindependent@gmail.com.
• Legitimate business purposes – This is where we have a legitimate interest, as a business, to process personal information. We take due care to balance our interests against your right to privacy.
• Contractual necessity – This is where we have to process personal information to meet our contractual obligations. 
• Legal obligation – This is where we have to process personal information in order to comply with the law. For example, we process and retain customer invoice information to comply with financial regulations.

HOW WE USE YOUR YOUR DATA

We collect personal information for the following reasons:

• To provide our service – We require some of your basic personal information so our services work as you would expect, for example, delivering the newspaper to your correct address, providing access to our digital content, notifying you of changes to our services and dealing with customer services queries. We keep records of communications with our customers for monitoring and training purposes.
• To improve and maintain performance – In order to provide you with the best possible user experience, we need to make sure that our products and services work as they should. Using personal information helps us understand how our readers use our Sites so we can make improvements. This includes testing proposed developments on our Sites, reaching out to our customers to communicate changes or new offerings.
• To bill our customers – We provide you with the ability to pay for subscriptions and other services through a third party payment processing service provider. We will also update your payment information in the event that a payment is unsuccessful. You can manage your payment information at any time by contacting customer services at kyivindependent@gmail.com
• To monitor compliance with our policies and terms – For example, we monitor activity on our Sites to detect and prevent invalid or fraudulent traffic.
• To personalise our products and services – We improve your experience of our products and services by personalising parts of our Sites with the information you give us and what we learn about you. This includes showing you articles you may be interested in and recommending emails you may wish to sign up to. Where our Sites have such functionality, you can manage elements of personalisation in your account settings.
• To communicate product changes and offers – We want you to get the most out of our products and services, including showcasing our latest content and newsletters. On some occasions, we will contact you with offers and promotions, exclusive event invitations and feature announcements. You are able to change your preferences at any time by contacting customer services. We also personalise our communications for strategic purposes. For example, we might offer group subscriptions to certain companies.
• For the purpose of advertising – We rely on advertising revenue in part to support our journalism. We need to process your information to understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising. You may also see advertisements that are targeted to you based on other non-personal information, for example, the article that you are reading.