AL-Monitor Privacy Statement

Effective Date: January 27, 2026 

Welcome to AL-Monitor.com, a service of AL-Monitor, LLC (“AL-Monitor”, “our”, “us”, or “we”).  AL-Monitor respects the privacy of visitors to the Site (as defined below).  Please read this Privacy Statement carefully so that you understand what information we collect through the Site and what we do with that information.  This Privacy Statement applies only to information collected online through the AL-Monitor.com and any related products and services, including any associated interactive features, widgets, plug-ins, smartphone apps, applications, content, downloads and other services we may offer to you that posts a link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Site”), and does not apply to any information you may provide to us, or that we may collect, offline or through other means (for example, via telephone, through the mail, or at live events).  If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, or would like to Contact Us, we can be reached via email at ALMPRIVACY@AL-MONITOR.COM.

AL-Monitor is located in the USA, but we are represented in the European Union by: DPR Group AL-MONITOR@DPR.EU.COM.

PROTECTING THE PRIVACY OF CHILDREN

Our Site is intended for general audiences, and we do not knowingly seek or collect personal information from children under the age of eighteen (18). In accordance with the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, in the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age thirteen (13) without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any personal information from or about a minor, please contact us at ALMPRIVACY@AL-MONITOR.COM. 

TYPES OF INFORMATION WE COLLECT

The information that we and/or our service providers collect falls into two categories: (1) information voluntarily supplied by visitors when they use the Site, such as when they register, sign up to receive our email newsletters, post comments in any of the public posting areas on the Site, make a purchase, respond to user surveys, and the like; and (2) certain technical information that is automatically collected as visitors navigate through the Site and review our email newsletters and other email messages.  

Third parties featured on or linked to by the Site, such as advertisers and others that display promotional messages on the Site or offer products and services through the Site (“Advertisers”), may be gathering information as well, through processes we don’t control.

Information You Voluntarily Supply to Us

We may collect and store information that you voluntarily supply to us while on the Site.  This may include personally identifiable information if you choose to provide it.  In accessing and using the Site, you may have the opportunity to voluntarily submit some or all of the following types of information:

• Contact information, such as your name and email address;
• Demographic information, such as gender, country, and, where applicable, your postal code;
• Login information, such as a username and password;
• Communications preferences, such as which email messages you would like to receive from us;
• Payment information (such as a credit card number) necessary to process a requested transaction;
• Information posted in public posting areas and other interactive areas of the Site; and
• Questions or correspondence you send to us through the Site. 

You are not required to provide personally identifiable information about yourself to visit the Site.  However, you must provide certain information to use some of the features of the Site.  For example, if you wish to receive our newsletters, you will be required to provide us the email address to which you want us to send the newsletters.  If you wish to post comments in any of the public posting areas on the Site, you will be required to provide registration information, such as your name and email address and a password.  We may collect other types of information for other functions.

Information That Is Collected Automatically

We also may collect and store, and permit our service providers to collect and store, certain technical information that is generated automatically as you navigate through the Site.  For example, we and our service providers may collect limited information about the configuration of your computer or other device through which you access the Site, including the type of browser software you use, the operating system you’re running, the resolution of your computer monitor, the website that referred you, the type of mobile device you’re using to access the Site (for example, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android device, tablet, etc.), and your IP address and general geographic location.  (Your IP address is a numerical address that is used by computers connected to the Internet to identify your computer so that data – such as the web pages you want to view – can be transmitted to you.)  We use this information to make the Site as useful as we can for as many users as possible. For example, we use IP address information for systems administration and troubleshooting purposes.  

Cookies and Pixel Tags

We may use “cookies,” a standard feature found in browser software, to enhance your experience on the Site.  Cookies are small files that your web browser places on your hard drive for record-keeping purposes.  We also may use pixel tags (sometimes referred to as “clear GIFs” or “web beacons”) to collect non-personally identifiable information about how our visitors use the Site.  By showing how and when visitors and registered users use the Site, cookies and pixel tags help us deliver more relevant content to users, identify how many unique users visit the Site and various pages within the Site, and anonymously track user interests, trends and patterns.  For example, we may use these technologies to collect aggregate information about the time visitors spend on each page of the Site, the number of visits made to each page or section of the Site, and the content that visitors select and copy using the standard copy and paste tool provided in standard web browsers.  Providers of web analytics services may use cookies and pixel tags to gather this sort of information on our behalf.  And Advertisers that display ads or other promotional messages (“Ads”) on the Site (and their providers of ad serving and other advertising services) may use cookies and pixel tags of their own in connection with Ads displayed on the Site, as described below under the heading “Data Collected in Connection with Ads or Your Use of the Site.”

For example, we rely on some of the following analytics and advertising providers, for more information please review their respective privacy policies:

• Hotjar (Session Replay Analytics). We use Hotjar’s session replay analytics services. This allows us to record and replay an individual’s interaction with the Site. For more information about how Hotjar uses your personal information, please visit the “Personal Data collected from a visitor of a Hotjar Enabled Site” section of Hotjar’s Privacy Policy. To learn more about how to opt-out of Hotjar’s use of your information, please click here.
• Google Analytics.For more information about how Google uses your personal information (including for its own purposes, e.g., for profiling or linking it to other data), please visit Google Analytics’ Privacy Policy. To learn more about how to opt-out of Google Analytics’ use of your information, please click here.
• X (formerly,Twitter) Advertising. For more information about use of your personal information by X (formerly, Twitter) including how to opt-out, please visit X’s privacy policy.

We also may use cookies to record certain preferences that you enter or set while using the Site.  For example, if you are a registered user and you opt to have the Site “remember you,” we’ll use cookies to automatically store your log-in information so that you won’t have to re-enter it the next time you visit.

The help function on most web browsers contains information on how to set your browser to notify you before accepting a cookie or to disable cookies entirely.  However, if you don’t accept cookies, you won’t be able to take advantage of various features on the Site that are available to other visitors.  For example, we won’t be able to store your log-in information, so that you don’t have to log in each time you visit, unless you accept cookies.

Where required by law, we will only place cookies or pixel tags and other tracking technologies on your device if you have agreed to these being placed except where such cookies, pixel tags or tracking technologies are strictly necessary to provide a service that you request.

HOW WE USE COLLECTED INFORMATION AND THE LEGAL BASIS ON WHICH WE USE IT

Generally

We use the information we collect from you while you are using the Site to process your registration and subscription; to provide you with services and communications that you have requested; to send you email updates, newsletters, and other communications; to deliver the Site content to you; to measure Site traffic; to measure user interests and traffic patterns; to improve the Site and the services and features offered via the Site; and to detect, prevent, and respond to fraud, intellectual property infringement, violations of our Terms of use , violations of law, or other misuse of the Site. In certain cases, we use your personal information in these ways as it is necessary for the performance of our obligations to you as set out in the Terms of Use, for example to register your account, provide your subscription service, or to publish your comments on our articles. Where this is not the case, we use your personal information to meet our legitimate interests in managing our business efficiently, in understanding how users use the Site, in exercising our legal rights, and in keeping our records accurate and up to date.

Your Email Address

In addition, we may use your email address to contact you for customer service purposes, to inform you of important changes or additions to the Site or the services offered over the Site, to send you administrative notices and other information about the Site, and to tell you about other products or services offered by AL-Monitor, or other companies, that we think may be of interest to you.  We will use your personal information to send these messages to meet our legitimate interests in sending information to our customers. Where required by law, we will only send you these messages and any newsletters when you have chosen to subscribe to receive them.  Although we hope you’ll find these communications informative and useful, if you don’t, you can always unsubscribe to either type of message by following the simple instructions included in each email.

Information You Provide When Making a Purchase of a Subscription or Other Product or Service

When you purchase any product or service on the Site, we collect the information necessary to process the requested transaction, such as your name, email address, billing address, and credit card or other payment method information. We process this personal information as it is necessary for us to perform our contractual obligations to you in relation to the purchase, as set out in the Terms of Use. AL-Monitor does not store your credit card or other payment record information; it is sent directly to our third-party credit card processor and is secured during transmission over the Internet using industry-standard secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption.  Our credit card processor is authorized to use your credit card information only to process your requested transaction, and for no other purpose.

Data Collected in Connection with Ads or Your Use of the Site

Advertisers that display Ads on the Site (and their providers of ad serving and other advertising services) may use cookies and pixel tags of their own to record your web browser’s interaction with a given Ad and, more broadly, to track your online activities over time and across different websites.  We allow this to meet our legitimate interests in running our business efficiently and so that relevant advertising is displayed to you on the Site and on third-party websites. This technique allows the Advertiser (and its providers of ad serving and other advertising services) to track which Ads are displayed, and which are clicked on, and to limit the number of times a given Ad is shown to you.  The use of cookies and pixel tags may also enable these Advertisers (and their providers of ad serving and other advertising services) to serve ads to our users based on their perceived interests as gleaned from their visits to this and other websites.  For example, DoubleClick, a provider of ad serving and other advertising services, may set cookies in connection with Ads displayed on the Site through our relationship with Google.  For a detailed description of Google’s interest-based advertising program, or to opt out of receiving interest-based ads from Google, click here. 

Except as stated above, the Site currently does not respond to web browser “do not track” signals or other mechanisms that provide a method to opt out of the collection of information across the networks of websites and online services in which we participate. If we do so in the future, we will describe how we do so in this Privacy Statement. For more information about do not track, visit allaboutdnt.com.

Disclosure to Third Parties

To help Advertisers (and their ad agencies) understand our audience and confirm the value of advertising on the Site, we may present them with aggregate information on our audience and how our audience uses the Site (for example, information on traffic to various pages within the Site).  This information does not identify you personally. 

We may also share the information, your personal information or otherwise, that is collected through the Site with our third-party service providers, including, but not limited to, service providers that provide services related to Site administration and operation.  In some cases, we may permit our third-party service providers to collect such information directly, on our behalf.  For example, the Site may use third-party web analytics services to help analyze how users use the Site.  These services may use cookies and pixel tags to collect information directly from the Site on our behalf, and then use that information to provide us with statistical reports on website activity.  If you use a credit or debit card to complete a transaction on the Site, your personal information and credit card number will be sent directly to our credit card processing service provider to complete your transaction.  We also may share your email address and name with third-party email service providers that send newsletters and other communications on our behalf. These service providers will act only on our instructions and on our behalf, and we remain directly responsible to you for the actions of these service providers.

We also may disclose information about our visitors and registered users if required to do so by law, such as to comply with a subpoena or other legal process, or to comply with government reporting obligations, or if, in our judgment, such disclosure is reasonably necessary (a) to protect our rights, the integrity of the Site, or your safety or the safety of others, or (b) to detect, prevent, or respond to fraud, intellectual property infringement, violations of our Terms of Use, violations of law, or other misuse of the Site. Finally, we may disclose information about visitors and registered users to third parties to the extent reasonably necessary to proceed with the negotiation or completion of a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, and/or as part of the assets transferred in the event of a merger, acquisition, or asset sale. We may share this information to meet our legitimate interests in running our business and complying with legal obligations to which we are subject.

Sale of Personal Information

In the preceding twelve (12) months, AL-Monitor has not sold the personal information of our Site visitors, nor did we authorize our service providers to sell the personal information of our Site visitors.

Interacting with the Site

You may interact with content on the Site through social media plugins provided by third party social media services.  We do not control the information that these companies collect when you use these tools, nor do we control how they use any information they collect.  We encourage you to review their privacy policies before interacting with the Site through these tools. 

Please keep in mind that whenever you make your personal information or other information available for viewing by other users online – whether in comments posted to the Site, or in other public posting areas of the Site – that information can be seen, collected, and used by anyone with access to the Internet; we are not able to control how they may use this information.  We cannot be responsible for any use of such information by third parties.

Your rights over your personal information

Under the laws of some jurisdictions, you may have certain rights regarding the personal information about you. These may include the rights to:

• Access to and Portability of Your Personal Information, including: (i) confirming whether we are processing your personal information; (ii) obtaining access to or a copy of your personal information; and (iii) receiving an electronic copy of personal information that you have provided to us, or asking us to send that information to another company in a structured, commonly used, and machine readable format (also known as the “right of data portability”); Note that in some in jurisdictions you may also have the right to request more specific information in certain circumstances, which may include the right to know which third parties your personal information was disclosed to or  specific information used and decisions made as part of certain profiling activities.
• Request Correction of your personal information where it is inaccurate or incomplete. In some cases, we may provide self-service tools that enable you to update your personal information;
• Request Deletion of your personal information;
• Request Restriction of or Object to our processing of your personal information where the processing of your personal information: (i) is based on our legitimate interest for direct marketing purposes; (ii) involves processing or sharing of your sensitive personal information for certain non-essential purposes, or in contexts that require your consent; and (iii) is based solely on automated decision making or for profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning you;
• Opt-out of Sale or Targeted Advertising involving your personal information. Although we do not “sell” your personal information as the term “sale” is typically understood, we may share your information with analytics providers and advertising networks in order to understand how visitors use the Site and serve you ads on and off the Site.  You may opt-out of this “sharing” and “targeting advertising” by adjusting your privacy choices as described above.
• Withdraw your Consent to our processing of your personal information. Please note that your withdrawal will only take effect for future processing and will not affect the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal.

We encourage you to contact us to update or correct your personal information if it changes or if the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate.

Please note that we will likely require additional information from you in order to honor your requests.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority

If you would like to discuss or exercise such rights if applicable to you, please contact us using the details below.

• Individual citizen of a Member State of the European Union or EEA please contact the DPR Group via email: AL-MONITOR@DPR.EU.COM or on our form online at www.dpr.eu.com/al-monitor
• All other users please contact: ALMPRIVACY@AL-MONITOR.COM

Global Privacy Control. We do not currently have the technical capability to respond to Global Privacy Control (GPC) requests through the Site. 

Additional Privacy Rights for Residents of Certain US States and other Jurisdictions

Subject to applicable law, if you are a resident of certain states you may have the rights described above, which may include the following rights: The right to know and access the person we have collected about you; the right to delete personal information we have collected; the right to opt-out or restrict the processing of personal information for specified purposes, such as targeted or other advertising, and, the right to correct inaccurate personal information. 

In accordance with applicable law, you may also have the following rights: 

Non-Discrimination. We will not discriminate against you, in terms of price or services that we offer, if you exercise any of the rights listed above.

Authorized Agent. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to use an authorized agent on their behalf to exercise a privacy right discussed above. If you are an authorized agent acting on behalf of a user to communicate with us or to exercise a privacy right discussed above, you must be able to demonstrate that you have the requisite authorization to act on behalf of the user, and have sufficient access to that user’s laptop, desktop, or mobile device to exercise that user’s right digitally. If you are an authorized agent trying to exercise rights on behalf of one of our users, then you can make a request on the user’s behalf by contacting us as set forth below in the “Contact Us” section: Such requests must include the following information: (1) a written authorization from the consumer that includes the consumer’s full name, address, telephone number and valid email address used by the consumer to interact with us, that is signed by the consumer and clearly bestows upon the agent the proper authority; and (2) a certificate of good standing with your state of organization.  Alternatively, an acting agent can provide a valid power of attorney signed by the consumer on the agent’s behalf and a valid email address used by the consumer to interact with us.  The email address of the consumer will be used to separately verify the agent’s authority with the consumer.   

Verification. We are required by law to take reasonable steps to verify your identity prior to responding to your request. Please note that your exercise of these rights is subject to certain exemptions to safeguard the public interest (e.g., the prevention or detection of crime) and our interests (e.g., the maintenance of legal privilege). If we are unable to process your request via you authenticating yourself on the Site, we may verify your request by asking for information sufficient to confirm your identity, based on the information we have on file. Requests to exercise these rights may be granted in whole, in part, or not at all, depending on the scope and nature of the request and as permitted by applicable law. Where required by applicable law, we will notify you if we reject your request, and notify you of the reasons we are unable to honor your request.

We will respond to your request within forty-five (45) days or within the time provided for under applicable law. However, in certain circumstances, we may require additional time to process your request, as permitted by applicable law. We will advise you within forty-five (45) days after receiving your request if such an extension is necessary and why it is needed. If we cannot fulfill your request, our response to you will also explain the reason why we cannot fulfill your request.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

Appeal.  You may have the right to appeal our decision or response to your request. To exercise your right to appeal, you can submit an appeal request using the same method used to submit your original request, including by contacting us as set forth in “Contact Us” above.

Storage of Information

The information that we collect through the Site is stored within databases that we control (or databases hosted on our behalf) on servers maintained within the United States, France, or Switzerland. If you are not located there, the United States may not provide the same level of legal protection for your personal information as your home country, and such information may be available to the United States government or its agencies under a lawful order made in the United States.  In addition, we may transfer your information to our affiliates, business partners, and service providers located in other countries.  By using the Site, you acknowledge and agree to such transfer to, and processing in, the United States and these other countries. Those transfers are necessary to carry out the terms of our Terms of Use and this Privacy Statement. Where necessary and where consent to transfers is not sufficient, we have put in place appropriate safeguards in accordance with applicable legal requirements to ensure that your data is adequately protected. For more information on the appropriate safeguards in place, please contact us using the email address above.

We will retain personal information about you for at least as long as you are a subscriber and for additional periods of time for our legitimate interests in operating our business. When determining how long to retain this information after you stop being a subscriber, or if you are not a subscriber, we will take into account our legal obligations and regulators' expectations. We may also retain records to investigate or defend potential legal claims.

Security of Information

We maintain administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to safeguard the information collected through the Site.  For example, any credit card information you provide on the Site is secured for transmission over the Internet using industry-standard secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption.  However, no physical or electronic security system is impenetrable.  We cannot guarantee the security of our servers or databases, nor can we guarantee that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us or our third-party service providers over networks that we do not control, including the Internet and wireless networks.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT

The web is an evolving medium.  If we need to change this Privacy Statement in the future, we will post the revised Privacy Statement on the Site and update the “Effective Date,” above, to reflect the date of the changes.  By continuing to use the Site after we post such changes, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Statement, as modified.