Privacy Policy

What we collect across our sites, newsletters, store, and community, exactly who we share it with, and the rights you have over your information.

The short version

We collect only what we need to run our sites, newsletters, store, and community: your email when you subscribe, your details when you order something, your comments when you post them, and standard analytics about how our sites are used. We don’t sell your personal information — to anyone, ever. Most of the tools we use (email, store, comments, analytics) are run by well-known platforms, and we name every one of them below. You can ask us what we have about you, ask us to fix it, or ask us to delete it. Questions go to our privacy contact in Section 12.

(The summary above is for convenience only. The sections below are the Policy.)

1. Who is responsible for your information

This Privacy Policy describes how V13 Media Group (“VMG”, “we”, “us”) — a sole proprietorship registered in Ontario, Canada — collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information across the web properties listed in Section 13 (the “Sites”) and our related newsletters, store, and community.

Person in charge of the protection of personal information (Privacy Officer): Christopher Gonda, CEO, V13 Media Group Email: info@v13.net (subject line: “Privacy Request”)

(Under Quebec’s Law 25, the person exercising the highest authority in an enterprise is the person in charge of the protection of personal information unless that function is delegated in writing. VMG designates its CEO. This title and contact information is published here to satisfy that requirement.)

2. What we collect

Information you give us

  • Newsletter subscriptions: your email address, and any preferences you set, collected through signup forms on the Sites and on our newsletter platform’s hosted pages.
  • Store purchases: your name, email, shipping and billing address, phone number (if provided), and order details, collected through our Shopify-hosted store. We never see or store your full payment-card number — payments are processed by the payment providers operating within our commerce platforms (for example, Shopify’s supported payment processors, and PayPal where offered).
  • Comments: the name or handle, avatar, and content you post through Disqus, our third-party commenting service, plus your Disqus account details as governed by Disqus’s own privacy policy.
  • Community membership: the profile information you provide when joining the Green Room, our membership community hosted on Skool, as governed by Skool’s own privacy policy.
  • Correspondence and pitches: whatever you include when you email us — for example, press pitches, reader mail, advertising inquiries, or submissions.
  • Contests and surveys: contact and demographic information you choose to provide if you enter a contest or answer a survey. Participation is always voluntary.

Information collected automatically

  • Server and security logs: IP address, browser type, pages requested, and timestamps. IP addresses are personal information and we treat them that way.
  • Analytics: we use Google Analytics to understand aggregate site usage (pages visited, referral sources, approximate location, device type). Google Analytics uses cookies.
  • Email engagement: our newsletter platform records whether emails are delivered, opened, and which links are clicked. We use this to keep our lists healthy and stop mailing people who have gone quiet. (Apple Mail and similar tools can make “opens” unreliable, and we treat them accordingly.)
  • Embedded content: pages on the Sites embed third-party players and widgets — principally YouTube and Spotify players and the Disqus comment widget. When a page containing an embed loads, that third party may set its own cookies and collect data under its own privacy policy, as if you had visited that service directly.
  • Advertising measurement: some pages — particularly newsletter and subscription pages we promote through paid campaigns — include the Meta (Facebook) pixel. It records that your browser visited the page and certain actions (such as completing a signup) so we can measure whether our own ads on Meta platforms work and show our ads to people who have visited our pages. Meta processes this data under its own privacy policy, and you can manage how it’s used through your Meta ad preferences.

What we do not do. We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not buy data about you from data brokers. The tracking described above exists to run our sites and measure our own campaigns — not to build profiles of you for anyone else.

3. Why we use your information (purposes and legal bases)

Purpose

Examples

Basis

Deliver what you asked for

Send a newsletter you subscribed to; fulfil and ship an order; respond to your email

Consent; performance of a contract (GDPR/UK GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)/(b)); PIPEDA/Law 25 consent

Run and improve the Sites

Analytics, debugging, security logs, spam prevention

Legitimate interests (GDPR/UK GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)); implied consent under PIPEDA for reasonable operational purposes

Send commercial electronic messages

Newsletters and, occasionally, information about VMG offerings

Express consent obtained at signup, per Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL); every message identifies us and contains a working unsubscribe that we honour promptly. Where we contact media and industry professionals at published business addresses, we rely on CASL’s implied-consent and business-publication provisions and maintain a suppression list.

Comply with law

Tax and accounting records for orders; responding to lawful requests

Legal obligation

We do not use your personal information to make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you, and we do not use it for profiling.

4. Cookies and similar technologies

The Sites use:

  • Essential cookies set by our website and store platforms (WordPress, Shopify) for basic functions like sessions and shopping carts.
  • Analytics cookies set by Google Analytics.
  • Newsletter cookies and tracking set by our email platform (Beehiiv) on our newsletter subscription pages, and the email delivery, open, and click tracking described in Section 2.
  • Advertising cookies set by the Meta pixel on pages we promote through paid campaigns, as described in Section 2.
  • Third-party cookies set by embedded services (YouTube, Spotify, Disqus) when their content loads.

Your choices. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings; the Sites remain usable, though some features (like commenting) may not work. You can opt out of Google Analytics with Google’s browser add-on, and control ad personalization through your Meta ad preferences. Global Privacy Control: the Sites do not currently process GPC signals. We do not sell personal information; if you want to limit analytics or advertising cookies, use the controls above.

Cookies do not all expire when you close your browser; some persist for the periods set by the service that placed them.

5. Who we share information with

We share personal information only with:

  • Service providers (processors) who run parts of our operation under their own contractual and legal obligations: our newsletter platform (Beehiiv), commerce platform (Shopify) and its payment processors, community platform (Skool), commenting service (Disqus), analytics (Google), advertising measurement (Meta, for our own ad campaigns only), press-distribution email service (Sender), web hosting and infrastructure providers, and productivity tools (including Google Workspace and meeting tools) used internally.
  • Professional advisors and authorities where required by law or to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
  • A successor in the event of a sale, merger, or reorganization of the business, in which case this Policy continues to apply to your information.

We may share aggregated, de-identified statistics (for example, audience size and engagement rates with advertisers and partners). These do not identify you.

6. Where your information goes (cross-border transfers)

VMG operates from Canada with team members in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Our service providers listed above process data primarily in the United States, and some in other countries. That means your personal information may be stored and processed outside your province or country, where it is subject to local law and lawful access by local authorities.

Wherever your information goes, it remains under this Policy, and we use providers that commit to recognized safeguards (such as contractual data-protection terms and, for UK/EU data, adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses maintained by the providers). For personal information about Quebec residents, we assess cross-border communication as Law 25 requires.

7. How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes above, then delete or anonymize it. In practice: newsletter data until you unsubscribe (plus a suppression record so we don’t email you again); order records for the period required by Canadian tax law (generally seven years); correspondence as long as reasonably needed to deal with the matter; server logs for short rotating periods; analytics on the retention schedule configured in Google Analytics.

8. How we protect it

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards appropriate to a business of our size: access limited to the people who need it, reputable platforms with modern security (encryption in transit, authentication controls), and two-person oversight of critical accounts. No internet service can promise perfect security, and we won’t pretend otherwise — see Section 10 for what happens if something goes wrong.

9. Your rights

Everyone: you may unsubscribe from any newsletter at any time using the link in every issue, and you may contact our Privacy Officer to ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, withdraw consent, or ask us to delete it (subject to legal retention requirements).

Canada (PIPEDA): you have rights of access and correction, and may challenge our compliance with the OPC’s fair-information principles.

Quebec (Law 25): you additionally have rights to withdraw consent, to request de-indexing or cessation of dissemination in certain cases, and (since September 2024) to data portability for computerized personal information you provided.

UK / EEA (UK GDPR / GDPR): you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection (including to processing based on legitimate interests), and the right to withdraw consent at any time without affecting prior processing.

How to exercise them: email the Privacy Officer (Section 1). We will verify your identity, respond within the time the applicable law allows (30 days under PIPEDA and Law 25; one month under UK GDPR), and never charge you for a reasonable request.

Complaints: you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (CAI), or the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). We’d appreciate the chance to resolve your concern first.

United States: we are a small Canadian business and do not currently meet the thresholds of the CCPA/CPRA or similar State laws. We honour the spirit of those laws anyway: we don’t sell your data, and the rights described above are available to you on request.

10. If there's a breach

If a privacy breach creates a real risk of significant harm (PIPEDA) or a risk of serious injury (Law 25), we will notify the affected individuals and the appropriate regulators (OPC and, for Quebec residents, the CAI; ICO for UK data where required) as soon as feasible, take reasonable steps to contain the harm, and keep the records the law requires.

11. Children

The Sites and our newsletters, store, community, and comments are intended for adults. You must be at least 18 to subscribe, purchase, comment, or join the community, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has provided us personal information, contact the Privacy Officer and we will delete it. We never knowingly collect personal information from a child under 14 in Quebec without the consent of the person having parental authority.

12. Contact

Privacy Officer: Christopher Gonda, CEO, V13 Media Group Email: info@v13.net (subject line: “Privacy Request”) Mailing address: 205 Frederick St, 1208, Toronto, ON M5A 1N2

13. Covered properties

This Policy applies to: v13.net (V13 Media, our flagship publication) and every subdomain of v13.net operated by VMG, including mediagroup.v13.net (corporate), music.v13.net (V13 Music), press.v13.net (V13 Press), promo.v13.net (V13 Promo), store.v13.net, ventures.v13.net (legacy), and our newsletter subscription subdomains (v1llag3voice.v13.net, industryinsider.v13.net, verseandvision.v13.net); the separately registered store domain v13.store (Shopify-hosted); and the redirect domains v13.news, v13.press, v13.promo, v13.social, v13.media, v13.tattoo, and v13.group. Websites of operator-owned founder brands are not VMG properties and carry their own policies. It also governs the personal information VMG receives through the Green Room community on Skool and our channels on platforms such as YouTube, alongside those platforms’ own policies.

14. Changes to this Policy

When we change this Policy we will post the new version at the canonical URL, update the effective date, and record the change in the version log below. Material changes will be announced in our newsletters and flagged on the Sites.

Page last updated: July 19, 2026