Version: Feb. 16, 2021
About this user agreement
This user agreement sets out the terms on which you can use our websites and our apps. We will refer to these as “services” in this user agreement. It’s a legal agreement between you and us, and you have obligations as well as rights under it, so make sure you read it carefully. If you don’t understand any of these terms then you can ask us questions by email at support@huffpost.com.
Who we are and how to contact us
We are HuffPost, a member of the BuzzFeed, Inc. group. Our main address is 111 E. 18th Street, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10003, USA. We and our various group companies are the publishers of our services.
You can contact us by email at support@huffpost.com or by writing to us at the address above.
Your acceptance of this user agreement
By using or interacting with our services, you accept this user agreement. If you do not accept this user agreement, you may not use our services.
Other documents which are part of this user agreement
Additional terms apply to some parts of our services. Sometimes, parts of our services have additional terms which apply as well as this user agreement – for example, promotions or giveaways will have special rules about how to enter. We will make it clear when that is the case, and give you an opportunity to read those additional terms before you use those parts of our services. When you do use them, you accept those additional terms, and they will form part of this user agreement as if they were set out in it in full. If those additional terms contradict this user agreement or are inconsistent with it, then those additional terms will override this user agreement, but only for the elements of our services that those additional terms apply to.
Our published policies. In addition to the terms of this user agreement we also have some policies and procedures on how we operate our services and what we expect from users and contributors. These policies and procedures also form part of this user agreement as if they were set out in it in full. We will make it clear to you that a policy or procedure applies when you use the part of our services they apply to. When you use those services, you agree that you will comply with them.
Third party services. Sometimes, parts of our services are integrated with third party services such as YouTube, and those third parties require us to make their terms and their privacy notice available to you. Where that is the case, those can be found in our Consent Preferences Centre.
Nothing else is part of this user agreement. This user agreement, any additional terms that apply and our policies and procedures contain all the terms of the agreement between us, although that does not affect your statutory rights as a consumer.
We may change this user agreement
We may make minor changes to this user agreement at any time, for example to improve their clarity or to make technical corrections.
We may also make more significant changes, for example if we offer a new service and need to include terms to cover it, or if the law changes. We will tell you about these more important changes, either by posting a notice on our website or through some other suitable method. If you do not agree to any changes to this user agreement, you must stop using our services. If you keep using our services after we make a change to this user agreement, you will be deemed to have agreed that change.
Conditions for access to our services
You must be at least 16 years old. You must be at least 16 years old to use our services, and if you are under 18 years old you must have the permission of a parent or guardian.
You must obey the law. It is your responsibility to obey the laws that apply to you when you use our services. If it is against the law to use our services in the country you access them from, then you must not use them.
Personal use only. Our services are for personal, non-commercial use only. You must not use our services on someone else’s behalf.
We can refuse you access. We have the absolute right to terminate or withdraw access, temporarily or permanently, to any or all of our services at any time and for any reason. The rules in this user agreement will still apply to you, even if we do so.
If you register an account with us
An account is required to use some features. Some features of our services require you to register before you can use them. You can do that manually, or by signing in through Facebook or Google.
Rules about creating your account. You must make sure that the account information you provide is correct and up to date. You must not create an account in someone else’s name or with the intention of impersonating anyone. Your account name must not misuse or infringe anyone’s rights (for example, a trade mark), and it must not be harassing, offensive, vulgar or obscene. We reserve the right to suspend or delete your account without warning if you break these rules.
Security of your account. You must make sure that you use a strong password for your account, and that you keep that password secure. You must not tell anyone else your password, you must not let anyone else use your account, and you must not use anyone else’s account. If you think someone else may have access to your account, you must tell us immediately by email to support@huffpost.com. You are responsible for anything that is done using your account.
If you sign in through Facebook or Google. If you sign in through Facebook or Google, then you are authorising them to provide certain information about you to us. The information they provide will depend on your privacy settings in those services, but typically includes your name, email address, location and profile picture. You can learn about how we use information about you in our privacy policy.
Deleting your account. You can delete your account at any time. Our Consent Preferences Centre provides more information on how to do this and the effect of doing so.
Our content
What we mean by “content.” When we refer to “content” in this user agreement, we mean all of the content available on our services. That includes text, images, video, audio, interactive features like quizzes, and other materials. Some content comes from us or our contributors, partners and others that we work with. We call that “our content.” Some content comes from users of our services. We call that “user content” or “Community user content.”
What you can do with our content. You can view and interact with our content through our services as our services permit. You can also post publicly-accessible URLs linking to our content on your own personal social media account and your own personal website (as long as you are not running that account or website as a business or to make money). You also need to follow the other rules in this agreement, such as the rules about protected content and brands. If our services permit it, you can also keep one offline copy of content you download from our services for your own personal reference only, as long as you otherwise comply with the rules about our content in this user agreement. These permissions are personal to you, and you cannot transfer them to anyone else. We can revoke them at any time, for any reason.
What you cannot do with our content. You cannot do anything else with our content. For example (and without limiting that general rule), you must not modify, re-purpose or distribute any of our content, incorporate it into something else, re-post it anywhere else, pass it off as your own, or do anything with it for any commercial purpose or in a way that violates the rights of others. As a special exception to that general rule, search engines are allowed to index our content, so long as they respect the directives in our robots.txt file and so long as they do not otherwise use our content without a separate agreement with us governing that use.
Commercial use of our content. If you wish to make any commercial use of any of our content, please email licensing@buzzfeed.com to discuss separate terms.
There may be additional rules for protected content. Some of our content may have additional or alternative legal notices and restrictions associated with it. This will be clear when you access this content. We call this “protected content.” You must comply with those legal notices and restrictions. Nothing in our services or this user agreement gives you any right to do anything with protected content which is not expressly permitted by those legal notices and restrictions.
Nothing gives you the right to use any trade marks or brands. Nothing in our services or this user agreement gives you any right to use any of the trade marks or brands shown or discussed on our site.
The law might override these restrictions. The laws of the country where you are located may give you additional rights which override or create exceptions to the restrictions set out in this user agreement. If that is the case then those laws will take precedence, but only to the extent that they cannot be waived in an agreement like this.
We are not responsible for third party sites we link to. Sometimes we provide links to websites or services run by other people. We are not responsible for those websites or services, nor do we necessarily endorse them. You access those websites or services at your own risk. If you find a link in our services which you think is unlawful or inappropriate, please tell us as soon as possible support@huffpost.com . We will review it, and we may decide to remove it.
User content
We are not responsible for user content. All user content is the responsibility of the person who uploaded or posted it. We do not accept any responsibility for any user content. If you upload or post any content to our services, we are entitled to assume, and you are promising to us, that you have the right to do that, and that you have the right to allow us to use that content in the way we have set out in this user agreement. You must ensure that any content that you upload or post does not break any of the rules about your conduct below.
We can use user content. User content does not become our property, and we don’t get any exclusive rights over it, unless we’ve signed a separate agreement with you that says otherwise. However, by uploading or posting it, you are giving us the right to show and distribute that content both on and off our services. You also give us the right to change it or combine it with other content (including paid content), for any purpose, without needing to get your agreement. You are not entitled to any payment from us for any use of your user content. You must therefore take care not to upload or post anything which is confidential, commercially sensitive, valuable or which you or someone else would not want shared (for example, personal secrets or patentable ideas). We will always try to credit user content accurately; if we fail to do so, you can contact us and ask us to correct it. We are allowed to use any feedback, ideas or suggestions in user content, without restriction.
We can remove user content. We do not guarantee that any user content will always be available through our services. We can remove any user content from our services at any time, for any reason. You should therefore make sure you have your own copies of any of your content that is important to you.
Removing your own content. You can remove your own comments and posts from public view by logging in to our service and accessing your account dashboard. For security reasons this is the only way to remove them. We do retain internal copies for legal and compliance reasons, but those are not public.
Our apps
Some parts of our services include an app which you download and run on your device. You can use those apps with our services as long as you comply with this user agreement, including the rules about your conduct and the rule about no commercial use. We do not guarantee that our apps are free from errors or problems, and they may not always have the same features as desktop or web-based equivalents. We take reasonable precautions to try to ensure that our apps are free from malware, but you are responsible for ensuring that you properly secure your own devices, including applying updates and running anti-malware programs, as appropriate. If you download any of our apps from a third party app store, you are responsible for ensuring that you comply with that app store’s terms and conditions. We reserve the right to withdraw our apps from app stores or to discontinue support for our apps at any time.
Rules about your conduct
You are responsible for what you do on our services, and we require you to follow some rules about your conduct. These rules exist in order to protect you, us and our other users, and we require you to adhere to the spirit as well as the letter of them. If you are not willing to follow these rules, you may not use our services.
You must comply with this agreement. You must comply with this user agreement, our policies, procedures and any additional terms which apply to the part of the service you are using, as well as the reasonable directions of our staff and moderators.
You must not post harmful or illegal content. You must not do anything using our services, or post or share anything on our services which:
- violates someone else’s rights (for example, their intellectual property rights or their trade secrets)
- breaches a contract
- breaks the law
- you know is misleading or not true
- threatens or harasses someone, is libellous about them or defames them, or invades their privacy
- is pornographic or obscene, or which contains nudity or sexual activity, or is similarly inappropriate
- promotes or endorses hatred or discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sex, sexuality or any characteristic which is protected by law
- promotes or endorses violence or extremist views
- is intended to promote your or someone else’s business, or which constitutes unauthorised or unsolicited advertising, junk or bulk messaging
- contains or links to malware, cryptominers or similar unwanted or fraudulent programs or content
- impersonates someone else
- includes anyone else’s personal data (as defined in our Privacy Policy), including identification documents and contact details, without having their prior consent
You must not misuse our services. You must not attack or overload the systems and networks that provide our service, or attempt to gain any greater access to them than you are authorised to have, or use them to attack or overload other systems or networks, or attempt to do any of those things. You must not modify or inject any code into our services (except for legitimate purposes such as accessibility tools). Except where the laws which apply to you give you a right to do so which cannot be waived, you must not reverse engineer any of our services or try to get the source code, algorithms or underlying logic and ideas of any of our services. You must not use our services to develop any product or service which competes with any of our services.
If you break these rules. As well as any legal remedies we may have against you, we reserve the right to suspend or ban you from our services temporarily or permanently if we determine that you have broken these rules. We have absolute discretion as to how we interpret and apply these rules and the actions we take as a result, and our decisions are final.
We keep records to monitor and enforce these rules. We reserve the right to keep records of your use of our services, and to use those records to comply with our legal obligations and instructions from the government, to investigate breaches of this agreement and to enforce it, to prevent fraud, to provide user support, and to protect ourselves, our users and the general public.
Our responsibility for our content and our services
We do not guarantee that our content is accurate or up to date. Our content is provided in the hope that it is informative and entertaining, but while we do try to ensure that it is accurate and up to date we do not guarantee it, and you should not rely on it. We are not liable to you if you rely on it to your detriment.
Our services come with no guarantee. Our services are provided “as is” and “as available,” with any problems or errors they may have. We do not guarantee that our services will always be available, or that they will always work correctly, or that any problems or errors will be fixed, or that they will be fit for any particular purpose.
This does not affect your statutory rights. The law may give you additional rights as a consumer which can’t be waived in an agreement. This section of this user agreement does not override those rights.
Our liability to you
This section does not apply to some kinds of liability. This section does not apply to any legal responsibility that we cannot exclude in law (such as for death or personal injury caused by our negligence), or arising under applicable laws relating to the protection of your personal data.
Limits on our liability. We are not liable for losses that were not foreseeable to you and us when this agreement was formed, or which were not caused by any breach on our part.
Business losses. We are not liable for any business losses or losses to non-consumers.
Events beyond our control. We are not liable to you for any breach of this user agreement caused by events or circumstances beyond our reasonable control.
If we have a dispute
How to complain. If you wish to make a complaint to us, you can do so using the “Contact Us” section of the relevant service or write to us at the address above.
Which courts can hear disputes. If you are a consumer living in a part of the United Kingdom other than England, you can bring a claim against us in the courts of the part of the United Kingdom where you live. Otherwise, in the event of a legal dispute between us about our services or this user agreement, the courts of England will have exclusive jurisdiction over that dispute.
Other important terms
If we don’t enforce this user agreement. If we delay in enforcing this user agreement that does not mean that we cannot enforce it in the future. We have not given up or waived our right to enforce it. If we do give up or waive our right to enforce this user agreement in respect of any particular incident that does not mean that we have given up or waived our right to do so in respect of other incidents.
Nobody else has any rights under this user agreement. Our other group companies have the right to enforce this user agreement. Otherwise, only you and us have rights under this user agreement and nobody else has any right to enforce any term of it, including a right they might otherwise have under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
The governing law of this user agreement. If you are a consumer and you live in a part of the United Kingdom which is not England, then the governing law of this user agreement is the law of the part of the United Kingdom where you live. Otherwise, the governing law of this user agreement is English law.