Data Terms

The Massachusetts Times · massachusettstimes.us Effective: October 16, 2026

In plain terms. Most companies write a privacy policy describing what they take from you. This document is the opposite instrument: a binding term of our relationship stating what we refuse to take. Reading this publication is anonymous by design — no account, no advertising trackers, no profile built on you, no biometric anything, ever. We cannot sell what we never gather, and what little does pass through our hands — a letter you send, a subscription you buy, the ordinary machinery of serving a page — is named below, in full, with what happens to it. No reader's data trains a machine-learning system, and no reader's data is for sale at any price. If the government demands to know what you read here, we resist to the full limit of the law. These are not policies we maintain; they are terms we owe you, and where they can fairly be read two ways, the reading in your favor governs.

Article 1 — What these terms govern

These Data Terms are the binding data covenants between the reader and the publisher of The Massachusetts Times, part of the family of documents the Terms of Use name at their Article 1, whose definitions carry here. The privacy posture published at /privacy on this host states the operating detail; these terms state the obligations. Where the two could differ, the stricter protection governs, and nothing in any other document of the family enlarges what this one permits.

Article 2 — Reading is anonymous by design

No account, registration, or identification is required to read this publication, and none is requested. We do not build reader profiles, we do not track readers across the web, we do not fingerprint devices, and we place no advertising trackers — because we take no advertising in the ordinary sense and have nothing to feed one.

Article 3 — What we never collect

The publisher does not collect, from any reader, at any time: biometric identifiers of any kind; precise location; contacts, calendars, or the contents of a reader's device; browsing history beyond this publication; or data purchased, rented, or acquired about readers from any third party. An absence this document names is a term, not a current habit: adding such collection would be a material adverse change governed by Article 11, never a silent one.

Article 4 — What we never do with data

Four prohibitions bind the publisher absolutely:

No sale. No reader data is sold, rented, or traded, to anyone, at any price.
No training. No reader data is used to train, tune, or evaluate any machine-learning system, ours or anyone's, and no reader data is provided to any AI company for any purpose.
No profiling. No record is kept of what any identified reader reads, and no inference about a reader's beliefs, health, finances, or identity is generated or stored.
No consent theater. We do not harvest first and launder it with a banner. Where a notice appears, it is real, and where this document says we do not collect a thing, no interface asks you to agree to it anyway.

Article 5 — The operational minimum, named honestly

Serving a publication requires machinery, and the machinery sees what machinery sees. We name it rather than hide it: IP addresses and request data appear in transient server logs and in the systems of the infrastructure providers that carry our traffic, and are used for security, rate-limiting, and keeping the publication serving — then age out in the ordinary course. Aggregate, non-identifying counts — how many readers a page had, never which readers — may be kept as the publication's own record. This article is the entire operational collection, and it identifies no reader to us.

Article 6 — What you hand us yourself

When you write to us, the data is the correspondence. A letter submitted for publication is handled under the Terms of Service; a subscription or purchase moves through a dedicated payment processor under the Terms of Sale and the Subscription Terms, and the publisher never receives or stores your full card number. Correspondence is kept for the purpose you gave it and as the publication's own record requires, and is never repurposed into marketing, profiling, or anything in Article 4.

Article 7 — Sources stand apart

Material and identity entrusted to a news desk by a source is governed by the publication's source-protection commitments, which exceed everything in this document. Nothing here dilutes them, and no request, process, or demand under these Data Terms reaches source material.

Article 8 — Demands for reader data

The publisher treats a demand for information about readers — governmental or private — as a demand against the press. We disclose only what valid legal process compels after the law's protections are exhausted, we challenge overbroad process, and where the law permits notice, we notify the affected reader before complying. We publish no pretense of data we do not hold: the first answer to most demands is that there is nothing to produce.

Article 9 — Your standing

Any reader may write to the masthead desk listed at /masthead and ask what the publisher holds that identifies them. The honest answer for a reader who has never written to us is: nothing. For a correspondent, it is the correspondence itself, which — except where it has become part of the published record or the law requires its keeping — will be deleted on request. These rights belong to every reader everywhere, not only where a statute compels them.

Article 10 — Children

This publication is written for the general public and collects nothing from anyone; it therefore knowingly collects nothing from children. There is no child-directed service, and no age gate pretending otherwise.

Article 11 — Changes

These terms carry their effective date at the top. A change that is material and adverse to readers — any enlargement of collection or use — takes effect no sooner than thirty days after it is posted here with its new date; any other change takes effect when posted. No change is retroactive, no collected-before-the-change data exists to grandfather, and continued reading is never recited as consent.

Article 12 — The Open Covenant, and disputes

The covenant stated at Article 14 of the Terms of Use binds here in full: no forced arbitration, no class-action waiver, no retroactive change, the plain-terms head made in good faith, and ambiguity read in the reader's favor. These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and of the United States; disputes belong to the state and federal courts sitting in Massachusetts, with your small-claims right and any unwaivable protection of your own jurisdiction — including any data-protection right your law grants that exceeds these terms — preserved.

Article 13 — The publisher, and general terms

The Massachusetts Times is published by The Massachusetts Times Company, a private, wholly American citizen-owned business based in the United States. Notices go to the masthead desk listed at /masthead on this host. If any article or part of one is held unenforceable, it is enforced to the extent the law allows and the rest stand; a right not exercised is not waived. You may not assign these terms; the publisher may assign them only to a successor that assumes them whole, every prohibition of Article 4 included, and they bind and benefit that successor. Articles 4, 7, 8, 12, and this article survive any end of this agreement. These Data Terms, with the family of documents the Terms of Use name and the posture at /privacy, are the entire agreement about readers' data.

— End of the Data Terms —

These terms are part of the Terms that govern this publication.