About this Privacy Notice
This Privacy Notice (“Privacy Notice”) is for individuals who would like to review, modify, restrict or take ownership of the information that Muck Rack may have about them, explains how Muck Rack collects and safeguards that information and how our Customers use that information. If at any time you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Notice or the services provided by Muck Rack, please contact us at privacy@muckrack.com. Privacy information for Muck Rack Customers can be found in the Privacy Policy.
An Overview of Muck Rack
Muck Rack’s purpose is to facilitate the important relationship between journalists and public relations professionals, and to provide a free platform to help journalists automatically compile and showcase their portfolio, track the impact of stories, keep up with news, and find new career opportunities.
We also provide a platform for communications professionals (Customers) that promotes more thoughtful research and encourages one-to-one outreach about the news your cover, all in an effort to stop PR spam. Like you, we want to see journalism thrive; that's why we’re committed to promoting and helping journalists succeed in today’s media landscape.
With technology and our team of experts, Muck Rack aggregates information from a variety of sources (like data available on the Internet that’s indexable by any search engine like Google). We strive to have the most accurate and up-to-date record for each person in our platform, which is why we encourage you to claim your Muck Rack Profile. With an accurate profile, journalists around the world are able to showcase their work and communications professionals maintain better records for their organization. Our goal is to give Customers and journalists the tools they need to build more valuable connections and promote the impact and importance of news and journalism.
Using Muck Rack as a Journalist
Once you’ve claimed your Muck Rack Profile, you’ll receive access to a free suite of tools we’ve built to help journalists build a portfolio, grow their following and quantify their impact.
Over the course of your career as a journalist, you’ll likely write thousands of articles for dozens of publications. You could manually track down those outlets, search for your links, check to make sure they’re still valid, and then create and continually update an online portfolio of your work. Or you can let Muck Rack do the heavy lifting for you.
Our technology discovers newly published articles and automatically assigns those articles to your profile. While legacy media databases never allowed journalists to see what their profiles looked like or gave them any other value, Muck Rack is transparent. We keep your portfolio up-to-date and safe while enabling you to customize your profile so that you’ll get more relevant pitches and other journalists will be able to easily find your work.
With a profile on Muck Rack, you’re also eligible for additional features (like access to our search engine, email alerts and reporting tools), daily Twitter shout-outs, profile spotlights and regular features on journalism job changes in our widely read journalism newsletter the Muck Rack Daily. We’ll also help you keep you up-to-date with the movers and shakers and let you know where to catch a friend or colleague’s next byline. A thriving journalism community is important to us, and we want to support the journalists who make that possible.
You can choose to hide your profile entirely or remove specific information included there. If you would like us to remove the profile Muck Rack maintains for your from our platform without claiming your profile, please contact us at hello@muckrack.com and provide a link to your profile.
How Communications Professionals Use Muck Rack
Communications professionals can help journalists locate a source, uncover never before seen data, and offer resources for producing news that our world needs to know.
Because of how legacy media databases and platforms have been built, in the past, communications professionals have been forced to work with outdated, broad information about what a journalist covers. This results in errant emails, event invites for cities you’re nowhere near and a host of people trying to contact you with news that you likely won’t cover.
With Muck Rack, communications professionals use our industry-leading search engine to find journalists based on the articles they’ve written and other information published publicly. For example, a communications professional may search for journalists who have written articles about a new computer launch in the past. Then, Customers can view and organize your profile onto targeted lists for sharing news and they can enhance the data we’ve compiled with their own data (which only they can access).
When Customers use Muck Rack instead of spreadsheets for storing this data, they are more mindful of past interactions and the personal preferences you’ve shared with other members of their organization (like if want to only be sent a specific types of announcement). Our goal is to facilitate the efficient communication between our Customers and journalists.
Customers also use Muck Rack to receive email Alerts when new stories or publicly available information is published that match their search criteria. They also build reports with metrics (like how many times an article has been shared) that help them quantify the impact of news for their organization.
In all cases, our goal is to give Customers and journalists the tools they need to build more valuable connections and promote the impact and importance of news and journalism.
Controlling your Muck Rack profile
Claiming your Muck Rack Profile allows you to control your free publicly updated portfolio as well as take ownership of the information made available by Muck Rack to Customers. Our goal is to have every journalist controlling their Muck Rack profile as an active participant in editing and maintaining the data made available to communications professionals.
When you provide specific information and preferences to communications professionals, you are setting the standard for how you would like to be worked with. Please reach out at any time with any ideas on how we can serve you better.
You may access, edit, or restrict the personal data in the profile Muck Rack maintains for you from any country in the world. We may ask to verify your identity using your email or social media accounts before taking action on your request. If you ask us to delete or erase your data, we may still have to retain certain data about you only to ensure that your personal data does not re-enter our system and to protect your rights. Specifically, we will mark your Personal Data to ensure your data is no longer used in a profile that Muck Rack maintains.
Personal Information on Muck Rack How Do We Collect Personal Information?
The personal information (also commonly referred to as personal data, personally identifiable information, or PII) we store is collected in an effort to facilitate the relationship between our Customers and you. Except for publicly available information or as otherwise described in this Privacy Notice, the personal information provided by Muck Rack is collected directly from you once you have created a profile.
Personal information may appear on your profile maintained by Muck Rack if you have put that information in the public domain yourself (for example, by writing an article, making a public post on social media, or from other sources that provide such information).
Customers may also add their own data (similar to managing information in a spreadsheet or address book), to be used in our platform that helps Customers manage contacts and build better, more thoughtful relationships. The information in our system helps our Customers maintain accurate records about you and your preferences. That way, your information is not scattered across multiple spreadsheets or with multiple entries in an address book.
What Personal Information Do We Collect?
We do not maintain any sensitive personal information about you (such as information about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union memberships, information about your health, genetic and, biometric data), unless you’ve made that information publicly available.
The types of personal information that we collect, use, store, and transfer about you may include the following: name, title, biography, employment information, work address, telephone numbers, email address, social media profiles and pictures, website address, blog address, RSS feed, contact form address, pitch preferences, topics covered, location information derived from social media.
Data Security
As users of the Internet ourselves, data security is extremely important at Muck Rack. We have implemented security measures to protect personal information collected on the Service against loss, misuse or alteration. We also have compiled a team of technologists who frequently improve Muck Rack’s security systems and operations.
Once you’ve claimed your Muck Rack profile, your account is protected by a password for your privacy and security. You can also choose to enable additional security features like two-factor authentication. It is important that you protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer by logging off once you have finished using a shared computer. Even with our best intentions, we cannot and do not guarantee that the individual user information you have transmitted will not be intercepted by others and/or decrypted or accidentally disclosed, and we accept no liability for any unintentional disclosure.
Legal Privacy Rights
Legal Basis For Processing Your Personal Information Under GDPR
Muck Rack publishes data and information on its website based on two concepts. First, Muck Rack believes that publication of this data is in the public interest, and, therefore, we exercise the right to freedom of expression in order to fulfill this public interest. Further, the information compiled here was obtained from the public domain, or it can be assumed that the nature of the information is such that publication does not expose any individual to unjustified harm. Second, Muck Rack publishes data and information based on its legitimate interest to provide the Service to its Customers, and by providing the Service, we carefully balance any potential harm to journalists due to the nature of the published information before publishing. Further, processing your personal information also benefits you as a journalist. You can receive more focused and relevant attention from Muck Rack’s Customers that more clearly aligns with your interests and audience. That said, if an individual has questions or concerns about the information made available through Muck Rack, we encourage you to contact us at privacy@muckrack.com.
Personal Information Sharing and Usage
We may provide personal information to Muck Rack employees, consultants, affiliates or other businesses or persons for the purpose of processing such information on our behalf. In such circumstances, we require that these parties agree to protect the confidentiality of such information and to comply in all respects with this Privacy Notice. Any personal information that you voluntarily disclose online (in news articles, on social media, through your Muck Rack public profile page, etc) becomes publicly available and can be collected and used by others. Once that personal information is made public, Muck Rack does not control subsequent use of that personal information, and you may be unable to exercise your data privacy rights as described in this Privacy Notice.
In addition, we may release personal information: (i) to the extent we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with any applicable law, enforce any provision of the Terms of Service, protect ourselves against any liability, defend ourselves against any claims, protect the rights, property and personal safety of any user or protect the public welfare; or (ii) to respond to a court order, subpoena, or search warrant.
Your personal information may also be processed in one or more of the following ways:
- Customers browsing the database of profiles, articles and content or media outlets;
- Customers sending journalists targeted news;
- Customers creating lists of journalists for their own use;
- Customers exporting journalist data from our database for their own use provided they use that data in accordance with all applicable laws;
- Customers keyword searching articles and social media posts linked on our website;
- Muck Rack maintaining the administration of our database;
- Muck Rack maintaining contact, handling enquiries, complaints and disputes;
- Muck Rack ensuring compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.
Examples of third parties with which Muck Rack may share your personal information include:
Customers:
- Communications, marketing, or PR departments within businesses or other institutions, or PR agencies. We share your personal information by allowing them access to the Muck Rack platform.
External Third Parties:
- Service providers who work Muck Rack’s behalf, for example: IT and website support. Professional advisors including lawyers, accountants and insurers where we need to do so in order to comply with our legal obligations or for other business reasons.
- Government authorities who require reporting of processing activities.
International Transfers
For individuals located outside the United States (US), in particular for individuals located in Switzerland and the European Union (EU), please note that Muck Rack is a US based company. If you use the Service, all information, including personal information, will be transferred to Muck Rack (including third parties to which data was disclosed as described above) in the United States and any information made public via our website may be viewed by individuals located anywhere in the world. Although this may include recipients of information located in countries where there may be a lower level of legal protection for your personal information than in your country, we will protect your information in accordance with requirements applicable to the law in your particular jurisdiction.
EU Data Privacy Rights
If you are located in the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation grants you certain rights under the law. In particular, the right to access, correct (rectification), delete (erasure), restrict processing, data portability, and object to the processing of the personal information Muck Rack holds about you. Muck Rack will retain your personal information for the length of time you engage with Muck Rack’s services or until you request deletion of such personal information.
Upon request, Muck Rack will grant individuals reasonable access to personal information that it holds about them. In addition, Muck Rack will take reasonable steps to permit individuals to exercise rights under the law. These rights are not without limitation, and in some cases they may not apply to you or the circumstances under which your personal information is processed. Your rights include the following:
- Access your personal information.
- Correction of any mistakes in your information which we hold.
- Deletion (erasure) of personal information concerning you in certain situations.
- Receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations.
- Objection at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing.
- Objection to decisions being taken by automated means (including profiling) which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you.
- Objection in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information.
- Restriction of processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Muck Rack also relies upon each individual to assist in providing accurate updates of his or her personal information. In order to exercise your rights, please contact privacy@muckrack.com.
If you have a comment, question, or complaint about how Muck Rack is handling your personal information, we hope that you contact us at privacy@muckrack.com in order to allow us to resolve the matter. In addition, individuals located in the EU may submit a complaint regarding the processing of their personal information to the EU data protection authorities (DPAs). The following link may assist you in finding the appropriate DPA: https://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/bodies/authorities/index_en.htm.
California Privacy Rights
If you are a California resident, California law may provide you with certain rights with regard to your personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). Throughout this Privacy Notice you will find information required by CCPA regarding the categories of personal information collected from you, the purposes for which we use personal information, and the categories of third parties your personal information may be shared with. This information is current as of the date of the Notice and is applicable in the 12 months preceding the effective date of the Notice.
As a California resident, the CCPA provides you the ability to make inquiries regarding your personal information. Specifically, the degree to which the information is not already provided in this Privacy Notice, you have the right to request disclosure about the collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months, including:
- The categories of personal information collected about you.
- The categories of sources for the personal information collected about you.
- The business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information.
- The categories of third parties with whom your personal information was shared.
- The specific pieces of personal information collected about you.
- If your personal information was disclosed for a business purpose, the personal information categories disclosed and the categories of third parties to which the information was disclosed.
- If your personal information was sold in the past 12 months, the personal information categories sold and the categories of third parties to which the information was sold.
Please note that you may only make the above requests twice in a 12-month period. You also have the right to request that any of your personal information collected and retained be deleted, subject to certain exceptions. Finally, you have the right to not receive discriminatory treatment by Muck Rack or any business for exercising any of the rights provided under CCPA.
You may submit a request regarding your rights under CCPA by submitting it privacy@muckrack.com or by mailing us at:
Muck Rack Privacy Rights
382 NE 191st Street
#74788
Miami, FL 33179-3899
If we receive a CCPA request from you, we will first make a determination regarding the applicability of the law, and we will then take steps to verify your identity prior to responding. The steps to verify your identity may vary based on our relationship with you, but, at a minimum, it will take the form of confirming and matching the information submitted in the request with information already held by Muck Rack and/or contacting you through previously used channels to confirm that you submitted the request. If you have not previously contacted Muck Rack, we may utilize publicly available channels to confirm that it is you requesting access.
Your rights as stated here can also be exercised by an authorized agent on your behalf. Muck Rack will follow the standards set by the Attorney General of California regarding designation of an authorized agent to exercise rights under CCPA. You may review information available through the Attorney General website (https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa) regarding how an individual can be designated as an authorized agent under CCPA.
