document: title: privacy policy
text: #### GETTY IMAGES PRIVACY POLICY

Last updated: June 2017

Getty Images is committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy policy tells you about our online collection and use of data. The terms of this policy apply to all Getty Images websites, unless different terms are specified in a form or contract provided to you online or offline.

By using this site, you understand and agree to the terms of this policy. This site is owned by Getty Images and may be accessed in the United States and abroad. For data protection purposes, Getty Images is the controller and, unless otherwise noted, is also the processor of data. Information collected may be retained, and may be stored, processed, accessed and used in jurisdictions whose privacy laws may be different and less protective than those of your home jurisdiction.

Collection of Your Personal Information

Getty Images collects certain kinds of information, such as the website that referred you to us, your IP address, browser type and language, and access times. We also may collect navigational information, including information about the pages you view, the links you click, and other actions taken in connection with the site.

We may combine your visit and navigational information with personal information that you provide. You may always choose not to provide personal information, but if you so choose, certain products and services may not be available to you. Personal information (e.g., your username and password, your name, your mailing address, email address and phone number) is collected when you register. Additional personal information (e.g., your credit card number and billing address) is collected to process transactions or to provide you with products and services.

Limited demographic information, such as the industry you work in, is sometimes collected and may be linked to your personal information.

We use the term “devices” to refer collectively to computers and mobile devices, as well as the internet browsers and other applications on your devices that interact with the internet. Getty Images engages in cross device data collection which refers to the process of collecting data from devices that have been determined through statistical analysis to be linked or related. Our partners whom we employ to provide this service use cross device data to provide interest based advertising services to our customers and to deliver tailored ads to users across multiple devices.

Use of Your Personal Information

Getty Images collects and uses your personal information to operate and improve our sites, to process your transactions, to provide customer service, to perform research and analysis aimed at improving our products, services and technologies, and to display content that is tailored to your interests and preferences.

We also use your personal information to communicate with you. We may send transaction-related communications such as welcome letters, billing reminders and purchase confirmations. We may also send you surveys or marketing emails to inform you of new products or services or other information that may be of interest.

Privacy Shield 

Personal information collected by Getty Images may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which Getty Images or its affiliates, subsidiaries, contractors or agents maintain facilities, and by using our sites or services, you consent to any such transfer of information outside your country. Getty Images has certified under the EU-U.S.  and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield frameworks (individually and collectively, “Privacy Shield”). Getty Images complies with the Privacy Shield as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, transfer and retention of personal information from European Union member countries and Switzerland. Getty Images has certified that it adheres to the Privacy Shield based on Notice, Choice, Accountability for Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity and Purpose Limitation, Access, and Recourse, Enforcement and Liability. To learn more about the Privacy Shield programmes, and to view our certification pages, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/. If you wish to exercise any of your data protection rights (including the right to have your personal information disclosed or deleted), please contact us using the “Contact Information” below.

Sharing of Your Personal Information

Except as disclosed in this privacy policy, Getty Images does not share your personal information with any outside parties. 

We may share your personal information within our corporate group, including with our subsidiaries and divisions, all of whom may use your information for the purposes disclosed herein.

We may share your personal information with service providers who perform services on our behalf. For example, we may hire other companies to handle the processing of payments, to provide data storage, to host websites, to fulfil orders and shipments, to assist in direct marketing, to conduct audits, etc. Those companies will be permitted to obtain only the personal information they need to provide the service. They are required to maintain the confidentiality of the information and are prohibited from using it for any other purpose. Getty Images maintains contracts with these third parties requiring their treatment (access, use and disclosure) of personal data to be consistent with our Privacy Shield obligations. In cases of onward transfer to third parties of data of EU and Swiss individuals received pursuant to the Privacy Shield, Getty Images may be liable (if responsible for the event giving rise to the damage).

Information about our customers, including personal information, may be disclosed as part of any merger, acquisition, or sale of the company and/or its assets, as well as in the unlikely event of insolvency, bankruptcy or receivership, in which personal information would be transferred as one of the business assets of the company. We will notify you of such an occurrence as described in the “Changes to This Privacy Policy” section below.

We reserve the right to disclose your personal information if required to do so by law (including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements), or in the good-faith belief that such action is reasonably necessary to comply with legal process, respond to claims, or protect the rights, property or safety of our company, employees, customers or the public.

Social Media

On some pages, we allow you to share personal information with third parties, such as social networks like Facebook. In these instances, you are agreeing to the data being shared and the shared data is subject to the privacy policies of the third parties. We do not control and do not assume any responsibility for the use of personal information by such third parties. For more information about the third party’s purpose and scope of their use of personal information in connection with sharing features, please visit the privacy policies of such third parties.

Accessing Your Personal Information

If you wish to review or revise information that you previously provided to us, you may access your information in the “My Account” section of the website. Your Account Executive can also assist you in making any changes, as well as in exercising your right to have your personal information deleted. If you need additional assistance, please contact us at privacy@gettyimages.com. You can expect a response from us within 45 days. Please be advised that you cannot change your username without re-registering.

US Federal Trade Commission enforcement

Getty Images’ commitments under the Privacy Shield are subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the United States Federal Trade Commission.

Use of Cookies and Other Technologies

Getty Images uses "cookies" and other technologies like pixel tags to enable you to sign in to our services and to help personalise and improve your online experience. A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your hard drive or device. Cookies contain information, including personal information that can later be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. The information that cookies collect includes the date and time of your visit, your registration information, and your navigational and purchase history. Pixel tags, also called web beacons, are clear image (i.e., non-visible) files that may be placed on a website, in an email or newsletter, and request information from your device such as your browser type and may assist us in determining how many users have visited certain pages or opened messages or newsletters.

Cookies offer you many conveniences:

  1. They allow us to identify registered users when they return to the site so that they can retrieve previous image search results, access Boards and shopping baskets and view their previous invoices.
  2. Cookies save you time by eliminating the need to repeatedly enter the same information.
  3. Cookies allow us to deliver personalised content to you, including search results and interest-based targeted advertising.
  4. Cookies help to protect your security by checking your log-in details and may help prevent fraud.
  5. Cookies remember your preferences when using the site.
  6. Cookies also identify particular customers in the event such customer would like assistance from a live, online customer service representative.



We strive to make this site user-friendly and relevant. Our goal is to deliver more personalised products and services to you.

For this purpose, Getty Images also works with various third-party partners, who use cookies on our site to:

  1. Measure and analyse aggregate usage and volume statistical information from our users on our site. Information gathered may include, but is not limited to, the following: activity of the user browser when the user is visiting the site, the site path of users, general information regarding the visitor’s internet service provider and host, and the time users come to the site.
  2. Remember our users’ previous search of products and services, and dynamically display more relevant content to them.
  3. Record users’ behaviour on our site, such as pages visited, emails clicked, forms completed and products and services purchased to create customised advertisements and communications that better meet your needs.
  4. Evaluate user traffic and behaviour on the site to compile activity reports for our internal use only.
  5. Conduct research and diagnostics to improve our products and services.
  6. Identify users arriving at the site via a referral from an affiliate website or sponsored link.



Third Party Advertising

We also use third party service providers to display advertisements (banners or links) on our behalf across the internet. These advertising service providers may collect information about your visits to our website and your interactions with our products and services as well as your visits to other websites. For example, in the course of serving certain advertisements, an advertiser may place or recognise a unique cookie on your browser in order to collect certain information about your use of the Getty Images sites. As another example, an advertiser or ad server may also be able to collect your device’s unique identifier while serving an ad. In many cases, this information could be used to show you adverts on other websites, based on your interests.

Our partners may use demographic and preference information to allow advertising on the Getty Images site to be targeted to the users for whom they are most pertinent. This means users see advertising that is most likely to interest them, and advertisers send their messages to people who are most likely to be receptive, improving both the viewer's experience and the effectiveness of the adverts. These parties disclose information to third parties only in aggregate or de-identified form.

Choice and Personal Information Preferences

Getty Images respects your right to make choices about the use and disclosure of your personal information. If at any time you decide that you do not want to receive marketing emails from us or change the settings in relation to your personal email preferences, you can take the following actions as set out below.

  * Marketing Emails: If you do not wish to receive marketing emails, you will have the option of opting out and/or unsubscribing from our emails and mailing lists by adjusting your “Personal Information Preferences” as follows: (1) ticking or clearing the appropriate box on your online registration form or the “My Profile” page of the website; (2) contacting your Account Executive; or (3) sending an email to privacy@gettyimages.com. If you would like to change the way that choose not to receive marketing emails, please be advised that you may continue to receive transactional or account emails (e.g., purchase confirmations and account balance statements).
  * Cookies: You can accept or decline cookies. Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can modify your browser setting to decline cookies. Please be aware that the site is optimally designed to operate with cookies enabled in your internet browser. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to sign in or use other interactive features of our sites and services that depend on cookies. This may negatively impact your experience of the site. If you would like to opt-out from the use of pixel gifs in our emails, please email us at privacy@gettyimages.com.
  * Third Party Advertising: If you would like to opt out of information collection by our third-party advertising partners or otherwise find out more information about Internet advertising companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/. You can prevent the companies listed from showing you targeted adverts by submitting opt-outs. Opting out will only prevent targeted ads so you may continue to see generic (non-targeted ads) from these companies after you opt out.
  * Mobile Device: Use your mobile device settings to stop or limit interest-based advertising on that device. For instructions for using the advertising choice mechanisms provided by the most popular mobile operating systems, visit the NAI’s Mobile Choices page at: http://www.networkadvertising.org/mobile-choices.



Security of Your Personal Information

The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to help protect your personal information. For instance, when you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number) on our registration or order forms, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer (SSL) technology. No method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

If a password is used to protect your account and personal information, it is your responsibility to keep your password confidential.

Forums & Other Interactive Services

Our websites may include discussion forums or other interactive areas or services, including blogs, chat rooms, bulletin boards, message boards, online hosting or storage services, or other areas or services in which you or third parties create, post or store any content, messages, comments, materials or other items on the sites (“Interactive Areas”). If you use an Interactive Area, you should be aware that these areas are open to the public and any personal information you post or provide at registration may be viewable by others. We are not responsible for personal information you submit in connection with the Interactive Areas, nor are we responsible for how others might use that information, including to send you unsolicited messages. Interactive Area postings may be retained indefinitely. If at any time you would like to remove a posting, please email us at privacy@gettyimages.com. Keep in mind that removal of a posting from an Interactive Area does not mean that the posting will be deleted from our systems.

Email Referrals

If you choose to use our email referral services to tell a friend about our products or services (including images in your Board, promotional campaigns, new websites, job postings, etc.), we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will use that information to send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site and review the product or service you have selected. We may use a third-party provider to administer this function, but any such third-party provider may only use the information submitted to facilitate this one-time email. Neither Getty Images nor any third-party provider stores this information after the email is sent.

Children

We do not intend to solicit or collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If you are under 18, you should not use or enter information on this site, including, without limitation, any Interactive Areas of the site.

Links

We may link to websites, including those of our third-party content providers, which have different privacy policies and practices from those disclosed here. We assume no responsibility for the policies or practices of such linked sites, and encourage you to become acquainted with them prior to use.

DMA

If you have questions or concerns regarding this privacy policy or our Privacy Shield compliance, you should first contact Getty Images (using the Contact Information below). If you do not receive acknowledgement of your enquiry, or your enquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed within 45 days, you should then contact DMA by going to https://thedma.org/resources/consumer-resources/privacyshield-consumers/. DMA provides an independent third-party dispute resolution body based in the United States. DMA has committed to respond to complaints and to provide appropriate recourse at no cost to you. If neither Getty Images nor DMA resolves your complaint, you may have the possibility to engage in binding arbitration through the Privacy Shield Panel.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change the terms of this privacy policy at any time. When we make changes, we will revise the “last updated” date at the top of the policy. If there are material changes to this statement or in how Getty Images will use your personal information, we will notify you by prominently posting a notice of such changes here or on our home page, or by sending you an email. We encourage you to review this policy whenever you visit one of our sites.

Contact Information

You can contact Getty Images by emailing privacy@gettyimages.com or by phone at 0800 376 7977, or by postal mail at Getty Images, Inc., 101 Bayham Street, London, NW1 0AG.

© 1999-2017 Getty Images, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy.