Privacy Policy

Updated as of February 23, 2024

We value and respect the privacy of our users. This Privacy Policy describes the information that This Old House Intermediate Holdings, LLC and its subsidiaries (collectively, “This Old House”, “we”, or “us”) collect about consumers (“you” and “your household”) through the “TOH Services”, which include This Old House’s websites and online store (“Websites”), mobile and connected TV applications, emails, magazines, newsletters, and our accounts and content services on third-party websites and applications.

TOH Services may be available on platforms and online services operated by other companies, including websites, applications, smart TVs, set top boxes, streaming devices and channels, gaming devices, mobile devices or other internet connected devices. This Privacy Policy does not cover the actions and privacy practices of these platform and online service operators or their partners. For more information about how these companies use your data, please see their privacy policies.

1. Information You Provide

a. Registration, Purchase, and Shipping Information

When you register or subscribe to become an “Insider” member of TOH Services, or to purchase any other product through the TOH Services, you will be asked to provide certain personal information, including your name, email address, password (and password hints), mailing address, billing address, and payment information.

b. Communications

If you contact us directly, we will receive information you provide, such as your name, email address and phone number, and the contents of any messages or attachments that you send to us. You may also provide us with information, including your email address, if you subscribe to newsletters or other marketing communications from us. If we make interactive features of TOH Services available, including interactive ads, we will collect additional information you submit in connection with those interactive features or ads, such as phone number or zip code.

c. Promotions and Surveys

If you enter one of our contests, sweepstakes, or competitions, or participate in surveys through TOH Services, you may need to provide personal information such as your name and email address. If you are a winner of a contest or sweepstakes, you may need to provide additional contact information, such as phone number and mailing address, in order for us to fulfill your prize.

d. Comments, Reviews and Content

You may be able to submit comments, reviews, images, and audio and visual materials to our Websites and accounts on third-party social networking sites. Information posted in these venues may be visible to the public. Please be mindful of your own privacy needs and those of others as you choose what to disclose and make public. We cannot control the privacy or security of information you choose to make public.

e. Information You Provide About Others

We also collect the personal information of other people. For example, if you invite others to join the TOH Services, or purchase our products or services for other people (such as our Insider membership), we may collect the recipients’ names, email addresses, and their postal addresses. In addition, personal information about other people may be collected and used when you use certain parts of our Websites.  For instance, you may capture and submit videos, images or voice content containing other individuals if you upload a live feed to our Websites. We rely on you to obtain any required permissions in advance to allow us to collect their personal information.

f. Third-Party Social Features and Links

We may offer This Old House content on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok. The information you provide when you engage with our content or when you contact us on these platforms (such as through our YouTube channel or brand pages) may also be collected by these platform providers. We are not responsible for the actions and the privacy practices of these social media platforms. Please review their privacy policies to understand how these platforms use your information.

TOH Services may contain links to other websites, applications, or online services that we do not control, including affiliate links from advertising partners. When you click on a third-party link, you will be re-directed to a third-party site. Our TOH Services may contain videos, advertising, and other content hosted and served by third parties, and This Old House content may also be available through third-party media streaming services or applications that we do not operate.

When you interact with these third-party websites, applications, content or online services, the collection and use of your personal information will be governed by the third-party site’s terms of use and privacy policies. We are not responsible for the actions, content, or privacy practices of any third party you use to access TOH Services. Accordingly, we recommend that you review their privacy policies.

2. Information Collected Automatically Through TOH Services

a. Device Information

We and our service providers may collect information about the browsers and devices you use to access TOH Services. The data includes device types and models, unique identifiers (including advertising identifiers associated with that device), IP address, device ID, operating system type and version, browser type and language, and Internet service provider used.

b. Activity and Usage Information

We also collect information about your activity on and usage of TOH Services, including browsing and search history, search results, clicks, access time, the web page you came from and go to next, the web page(s) you access during your visit, content and advertisements you view, and your interactions with content or advertising on TOH Services. We may contract with third-party service providers to collect this information on our behalf, including for analytics purposes. We may infer your general location information and internet service provider from the device information we collect (for example, IP address may be used to infer your general geographic area). Our third-party advertising networks and ad servers may also provide us with information, including reporting and analytics about how many ads were delivered and clicked on via TOH Services.

3. Information from Cookies and Similar Technologies

Like many online services, we and our service providers and business partners, including analytics and advertising providers, collect information about your online activities over time and across different online services. For example, we use technologies such as cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, SDK, device identifiers or similar technologies to recognize you when you use TOH Services, and to collect information about your usage and preferences, such as the number of visits, which features, pages, or content are popular, and to measure your browsing activities. These technologies allow us to optimize the operation of our services, including by allowing us to ensure our services are functioning properly, to improve and personalize our services, and to provide, personalize, and measure advertisements.

4. Information from Third Parties

We collect information about you from other sources for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to provide you a tailored user experience and advertising that may be of interest to you. For example, we may collect information from the following sources:

• Third parties who distribute This Old House content on their devices or channels. If you access TOH Services on media streaming devices or mobile devices from other companies, or if you access This Old House content on streaming services like Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) channels operated by other companies, they may provide us IP addresses, device IDs or other unique identifiers, and information about actions that you make through these devices or channels that relate to the This Old House content you access.

• Ad networks and other advertising partners. These business partners may provide IP addresses, device IDs, other unique identifiers, and information about you, such as information about your online activities, interests, household information, demographics, and health and wellness information.

• Advertisers. Advertisers that show ads on TOH Services may provide data about individuals to us or our service providers to personalize and measure ads and for other purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

• Service providers. We outsource some of our operations to our service providers and vendors, such as payment service providers that provide us payment or balance information, and ad fraud vendors that provide IP addresses to help us identify potentially suspicious activities.

• Sweepstakes and Contests. If you enter one of our sweepstakes or contests hosted on a third-party platform, we will receive information about you and the information you provide to enter.

• From Other Users. We may also receive your personal information from other individuals if they have referred you as described in Section 1(e) above.

5. Information Collected by Third-Party Platforms and Devices You Use to Access TOH Services

If you access TOH Services, such as our This Old House mobile and connected TV applications, on platforms and devices operated by other companies, including third-party smart TVs, streaming devices or mobile phones, these companies may also collect information about you, including payment information if you make a purchase through these third-party platforms and devices. You should review these companies’ privacy policies to understand how your data is used by them and their partners.

6. How We Use Information

We may combine the information we collect about you and use it to derive other information and inferences about you. We use the information we collect and derive for the following purposes:

• Support, Maintenance and Fulfillment. We use your information to provide and maintain our operations and services and those of our affiliates, and to process and fulfill your requests or orders.

• Product and Service Improvement. We use your information for internal business purposes, including to understand and analyze our user base and how you use our and our affiliates’ services, to improve and enhance these services, including building correlations in order to better serve our advertisers, and to develop new products, services, features and functionalities;

• Personalization. We use your information to personalize your experience, including suggesting and offering you relevant content and recommendations;

• Advertising. We use your information to show you ads, including personalized ads. We may use your information to measure and understand the reach, viewership, and effectiveness of ads, and to provide advertising analytics and reporting. We also help advertisers and advertising partners reach the desired audience and understand, measure and improve their ad campaigns.

• Marketing and Promotions. We use your information for marketing purpose, including to send you alerts, notifications, direct mail, emails and text messages about products, events, promotions and offers from This Old House or its partners, and to measure and understand the effectiveness of our marketing;

• Analytics and Performance. We use your information to measure performance and analyze key metrics relevant to our business;

• Service Communication and Customer Care. We use your information to communicate with you, including sending you service information such as confirmations, invoices, notices, updates, security alerts, user surveys, and support and administrative messages; and to respond to your comments and questions and provide customer service, or to alert you to changes to our Privacy Policy or Terms of Use or other policies;

• Protect This Old House, our Users and Others. We use your information to enforce our terms and conditions or protect our business, partners or users, and to comply with our contractual, regulatory, and legal obligations; and

• Security and Fraud Prevention. We use your information to protect, investigate, and deter against fraudulent, unauthorized, infringing or illegal activity, including click fraud.

7. How We Disclose Information

a. Service Providers and Vendors

We work with other businesses (including contractors and service providers) to provide services for us and to help with our operations, which may require that they access and use your information. For instance, we may use other companies to communicate with you (including via telephone, email, or letter) about our products or services, to send information to you, to fulfill your purchases, to process and collect payment via your credit card (if applicable), to provide customer support and other services, to receive additional data about you, and to perform analytics and other work that we may need to outsource — such as using Google Analytics to collect and process certain analytics data for the TOH Services. These analytics services may also collect information regarding your use of other companies’ websites, apps, online services, and devices. You can learn about Google’s privacy practices by going to https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, and opt out of them by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

b. Advertisers, Ad networks and Advertising Partners

We work with ad networks and other advertising partners to show you ads that we think may interest you on TOH Services and on other companies’ websites, apps, and devices. We disclose information to these ad networks, advertising partners and our advertisers, and they may set and access their own cookies, pixel tags and similar technologies on TOH Services and they may otherwise collect or have access to information about you which they collect over time and across different online services and devices.

c. Advertising Measurement Providers and Services

We work with advertising measurement providers and their service providers to help us and our advertisers understand information about the content and ads viewed, and the effectiveness of ad campaigns, including the audience that saw their ads and how they responded. These measurement providers collect or receive information about your viewing of or interaction with content and ads available through TOH Services. Measurement providers use your information to create statistics about what content and ads are being watched – for example, to help them and their clients understand the audience viewing the content or ads, and to measure the effectiveness of the ads.      

d. Corporate Affiliates

We may disclose your information to our current or future affiliates (which means a parent company, and any subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control), in which case we will require our affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy.

e. Consent

We may also disclose personal information, including personally identifying information, with your consent, for example, when you agree to our provision of your personally identifying information to other third parties for their own marketing purposes, subject to their separate privacy policies.

f. Merger, Sale, or Other Asset Transfers

We may also disclose your information to others in connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, transaction or proceeding involving sale, transfer, divestiture or disclosure of all or a portion of our business or assets to another company.

g. As Required by Law and Similar Disclosures

We may also disclose your information (1) to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process, (2) to protect the rights and property of This Old House, our employees, agents, customers, and others, including to enforce our agreements, policies, and terms of use, (3) in an emergency to protect the personal safety of This Old House, its employees or customers, or any person, or (4) to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal or suspected illegal activities.

h. Aggregated or De-Identified Information

We may also disclose aggregated or de-identified information (i.e., information that does not personally identify you directly), or statistical information about you to others for a variety of purposes, including for their own uses, for example, for improving their products and services for us and others, and to make ads more relevant to your interests.

8. International Transfers

TOH Services are operated in the United States, and information you provide will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. Notwithstanding the foregoing, information collected by the TOH Services, us or on our behalf may be transferred to, accessed from, or stored and processed globally in any other country where we or our service providers maintain facilities or call centers, including jurisdictions that may not have data privacy laws that provide protections equivalent to those provided in your home country. While such information is outside of your country of residence, it is subject to the laws of the country in which it is held, and may be subject to disclosure to the governments, courts or law enforcement or regulatory agencies of such other country, pursuant to the laws of such country. We will protect all personal information we obtain in accordance with this Privacy Policy and take reasonable steps to ensure that it is treated lawfully.

9. Retention

Personal information we collect may be retained for as long as needed to fulfill legitimate business purposes, or for a time period specifically required or allowed by applicable regulations or laws.

10. Your Choices and Controls

a. Advertising Choices

• You can ask us to stop personalizing your ads on mobile apps by accessing any settings offered by your mobile device to limit ad tracking.
• To ask us to stop personalizing your ads on Smart TVs, set top boxes, media streaming devices and other OTT platforms offered by other companies, you can use the Limit Ad Tracking (or similar) setting on that platform, if one is available.
• To ask us to stop personalizing your ads on our Websites, you can modify your settings in most web browsers to accept or deny cookies or to request your permission each time a site attempts to set a cookie. In addition, some of our advertising partners may be members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) or the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. You can visit the NAI website here, which provides information regarding targeted advertising and the opt-out procedures of NAI members. For DAA members, you can opt-out of their use of your behavioral data to serve you interest-based advertising on third-party sites here.

Each of these opt-out mechanisms opts you out of our personalizing of ads only for that specific device or browser and will not affect activities or personalized advertising on other browsers or different devices.

b. Communications Choices

You can manage your communications preferences from us. Even after subscribing to one or more newsletters and/or opting in to one or more offers to receive marketing and/or promotional communications from us or our third-party partners, you may elect to modify your preferences by following the “Communications Preferences” and/or “Unsubscribe” link provided in our email or communication received. Even if you do opt-out of marketing emails, we reserve the right to send you transactional and administrative emails, including those related to TOH Services, service announcements, notices of changes to this Privacy Policy or other TOH Services policies, and to contact you regarding any goods or services you have ordered.

c. Managing Your “Insider” Account

If you are a This Old House Insider and would like to update, correct, or modify your account details, you can do so by logging in and updating your profile. You may also terminate your Insider account by adjusting your settings in the “Cancel My Account” section.

If you otherwise wish to ask for access, correction, or deletion of any of your personal information held by us, please contact us at privacy@thisoldhouse.com. However, we may decline requests that are unreasonable, prohibited by law, or are not required to be honored by applicable law.

11. Information Security

We have implemented commercially reasonable and appropriate technical and organizational security measures to help protect your information from accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, misuse, or unauthorized access or disclosure; unfortunately, however, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee its security. You use TOH Services and provide us with information at your own initiative and risk. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (for example, if you feel that the security of any account you have with us has been compromised), please immediately notify us of the problem by contacting us as described in the Contact Us section below.

12. Children

TOH Services are intended for a general audience and are not intended for and should not be used by children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 16 and we do not target TOH Services to children under the age of 16. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with personal information without their consent, please contact us using the details in the Contact Us section below so that we can delete that information.

13. Supplemental U.S. State Law Privacy Notice

This additional notice is for residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Virginia, and supplements the information contained in the Privacy Policy and applies to residents of those states whose data we process as a business or controller. It also describes how to exercise your rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Colorado Privacy Act, the Connecticut Act Concerning Personal Data Privacy and Online Monitoring, the Utah Consumer Privacy Act, and the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (collectively, the “U.S. State Privacy Laws“).

For purposes of this Section 13, “Personal Information” means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. Where applicable, Personal Information has the same meaning as those same terms or similar terms under the U.S. State Privacy Laws of the state in which you reside. Personal Information does not include information that is:

• Publicly available, as defined by the U.S. State Privacy Laws. 
• Deidentified or aggregated. 
• Otherwise excluded from the scope of the U.S. State Privacy Laws

In the event that a term used in the supplemental notice has different meanings under different U.S. State Privacy Laws, such term shall have the meaning under the laws of the state in which you reside.

i. Sources of Personal Information We Collect and Process

We collect Personal Information from you when you provide it to us or automatically through TOH Services. We may also obtain Personal Information about you from other sources, such as third-party platforms, devices and services used to access TOH Services, ad networks and advertising partners, advertisers, service providers (including payment service providers), and other users if they have referred you to TOH Services or provided your information to us. Please see Sections 1 through 5 of the Privacy Policy for additional information about our sources of Personal Information.

ii. Categories of Personal Information We Collect, Process, and Disclose to Third Parties and the Purposes of Processing

 Over the past 12 months, we have collected, processed, disclosed, shared for cross-context behavioral advertising, and sold each of the categories of Personal Information as described in the chart above.

This Old House does not have actual knowledge that it sells Personal Information or shares for cross-context behavioral advertising the Personal Information of consumers under 16 years of age. This Old House does not have actual knowledge that it collects or processes the Personal Information of consumers under 13 years of age.

We do not use or disclose Sensitive Personal Information for purposes other than those set forth in the CCPA. This Old House does not collect genetic or biometric information, information on sex life or sexual orientation, or citizenship or citizenship status.

iii. Retention 

Personal Information we collect may be retained for as long as needed to fulfill legitimate business purposes, including the purposes outlined in Section ii (Categories of Personal Information We Collect, Process, and Disclose to Third Parties and the Purposes of Processing) in this Supplemental U.S. State Law Privacy Notice, or for a time period specifically required or allowed by applicable regulations or laws.

iv. Your U.S. State Privacy Law Rights

Some states provide consumers certain rights regarding their Personal Information. Depending on where you live, and subject to certain exceptions, you may exercise the following rights:

• The right to know what Personal Information we have collected about you, including the categories of Personal Information, the categories of sources from which the Personal Information is collected, the business or commercial purpose for collecting, selling, or sharing Personal Information, and the categories of third parties to whom we disclose Personal Information.
• The right to access the specific pieces of Personal Information we have collected about you in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, readily usable format.
• The right to correct inaccurate Personal Information that we maintain about you.
• The right to request deletion of the Personal Information that we have collected about you.
• The right to opt out of the processing of your Personal Information for targeted advertising, the sale of Personal Information, or the sharing of Personal Information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
• The right to be free from discriminatory treatment for the exercise of your privacy rights.
• The right to appeal any decision with regard to your privacy request.
• The right to opt-out of profiling in furtherance of producing legal or significant decisions concerning a consumer. We do not engage in such profiling.

You can submit a right to know/access, correction, appeal, and deletion request by contacting us at privacy@thisoldhouse.com. Such requests are subject to our ability to reasonably verify your identity, where This Old House has the right or legal obligation to do so under applicable law. We will attempt to verify your identity by asking you to provide data elements that we may have collected about you, such as your name, email address, device type, device ID, and IP address.

You can exercise your right to opt out of the processing of your Personal Information for targeted advertising, the “sale” of your Personal Information, or the “sharing” of your Personal Information for cross-context behavioral advertising as described below under “FAST Channel Opt-Outs.”

FAST Channel Opt-Outs:

TOH content is available with ads on Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) channels such as Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, and Vizio WatchFree+, which you may use on platforms operated by other companies, including Smart TVs, set top boxes, streaming devices, or other connected devices. 

Depending on where you live, you may be able to exercise your right to opt out of our processing of your Personal Information for targeted advertising, our “sale” of your Personal Information, and our “sharing” of your Personal Information for cross-context behavioral advertising through these FAST channels, as described below:

• For Pluto TV: If you have a Pluto TV account, you can submit a request here. If you do not have a Pluto TV account, please visit the “Your Privacy Choices” link of the pluto.tv website to learn how you can opt out.

• For Samsung TV Plus: You can submit an opt-out request to Samsung here, or you can enable the “Limit Ad Tracking” setting in your Samsung Smart TV to opt out.

• For Vizio WatchFree+: You can submit an opt-out request to Vizio by going to the Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information link at the bottom of Vizio’s website here, or you can enable the “Limit Ad Tracking” setting in the VIZIO SmartCast TV to opt out.

Because there are no opt-out preference signals offered at this time for Smart TVs, set top boxes, streaming devices, or other such connected devices, and because This Old House users access FAST channels without logging into their TOH accounts, you cannot opt out by implementing opt-out preference signals.

Where permitted by applicable law, you may authorize another person (your “authorized agent”) to submit a request on your behalf through the methods described in this section 13(iv). Your authorized agent may need to submit proof that you gave the agent signed permission to submit the request. You may still be required to directly verify your identity and directly confirm that you have provided the authorized agent permission to submit the request.

v. California’s Shine-the-Light Law.

California’s Shine the Light law permits California residents to request and receive, once per calendar year and free of charge, information about our sharing of your Personal Information (if any) with third parties for their own direct marketing use. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please email privacy@thisoldhouse.com. In your request, please include your name and attest to the fact that you are a California resident and provide a current California address. We may ask you for additional information to confirm your identity before responding to this request.

14. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended version on our Websites or by other such means as may be appropriate.

15. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, you can contact us at: privacy@thisoldhouse.com.