Privacy Policy

Things.mn's Privacy Policy was last updated and went into effect:

tl;dr: We're into collecting data about Minnesota, not you.

• We only collect the bare minimum information about you.
• We don't automatically collect any personal information - only what you give us.
• We try to make it clear exactly what information is public, and what is private. But keep in mind, almost everything entered here is public.
• We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
• We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.
• We don't use any third-party tracking or analytics like Google or Meta Pixel. Our tracking is minimal and in-house, only tracking page views, feature use, and city-level location.

Who we are and what this policy covers

Hi! We are the people running Things.mn. Our goal with Things.mn is to help Minnesotans share resources and cool things.

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use: Things.mn and all subdomains and domain variants. Throughout this Privacy Policy, we'll refer to our website and other products and services collectively as "Services." Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information we collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Now we'll go over what we collect.

Information you provide to us

It's probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

• Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a Things.mn account to provide an email address, username, and password. You may provide us with more information — like name, location, and more — after you create your account, but we don't require any of that information.
• Content Information: Depending on the Services you use, you may also provide us with information about you in other forms, such as making a public submission that includes said information. For example, if you create a business page, and add a line like "call my cell at 555-555-5555 to set up an appointment" somewhere on the page, then that information would be stored on our servers.
• Communications With Us: You may also provide us information when you contact support.

Information we collect automatically

We also collect some things automatically.

• Usage Information: Things.mn collects data on traffic usage to help us understand how people are using the site. We only collect 1) the fact that you visited the site to monitor traffic volume, 2) the general location of the visitor (ie, 1 user in Minneapolis), 3) the page being viewed, and 4) Certain actions users complete (for testing, or to understand how features are used).
• Logs: Our database automatically records actions performed on the database. Stuff like "User <username> with IP <xxx.xxx...> logged in at <date>", or "User <username> uploaded photo at <date>"

How And Why We Use Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

• To provide our Services — for example, to set up and maintain your account, store your preferences, or host your profile at a public URL;
• To further develop and improve our Services — for example by adding new features that we think our users will enjoy;
• To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
• To monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, protect the security of our Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of Things.mn and others;
• To communicate with you, for example through an email, about changes or updates related to Things.mn, to solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on Things.mn items you may find useful; and
• To personalize your experience using our Services, provide content recommendations, target our marketing messages to groups of our users, and serve relevant advertisements to some users.

Sharing Information

How we share information

We do not sell our users' private personal information. We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

• Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our employees and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our employees and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
• Third Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you, those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like map & location providers), and companies that make products available on our websites, who may need information about you.
• Legal Requests: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
• To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Things.mn, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
• Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Things.mn goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
• With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction.
• Published Support Requests: And if you send us a request (for example, via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is — as the word public implies — disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like your public profile and any content included on it will be available to others. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.

How long we keep information

We generally discard information about you when we no longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it – which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information – and we are not legally required to continue to keep it.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

• Limit the Information that You Provide: You are free to use Things.mn without an account. If you don't have an account, you cannot post information, so nothing about you is saved other than the automatic data collecting mentioned above.
• Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: We will never automatically subscribe you to marketing emails. If you are receiving them and would no longer like to, you may opt out in your account settings or by following the instructions at the bottom of the email. Even if you choose not to receive promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
• Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, Things.mn adheres to "do not track" signals across all of our Services. You can also usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Things.mn's websites, with the drawback that certain features of Things.mn's websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
• Close Your Account: While we hate to say goodbye, if you no longer want to use our Services, you can close your Things.mn account. You can close your account in your account settings - it just takes a few confirmations and all of your account data will be deleted. Public submissions outside of your account information may be retained unless deleted separately.

Your rights

While this is a website for Minnesotan's, If you are located in certain areas, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the "GDPR"), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren't able to do that, or you would like to contact us about one of the other rights, send an email to hello@things.mn.

EU individuals also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

How to reach us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please email hello@things.mn.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Things.mn may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Things.mn encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by updating the version number and date at the top of the page, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a temporary banner to the website, or sending you a notification through email). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.