1. Introduction
NewsUSA Inc. ("NewsUSA," "we," "us," or "our") operates the website located at newsusa.ai (the "Site") and provides the NewsUSA AI Authority Audit™ service (the "Service"). We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy.
This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and what rights you have in relation to it. Please read it carefully before using our Site or Service.
If you have questions or concerns, contact us at:
NewsUSA Inc.
1104 West Broad St. #1024
Falls Church, VA 22046
Email: rsmith@newsusa.com
Phone: +1 (703) 508-8700
2. Information We Collect
2.1 Information You Provide Directly
When you use the Service, you may provide:
Lead capture form data (FREE AI Authority Audit at /schedule):
- First and last name
- Phone number
- Business email address
- Company or organization name
- Website URL for your brand or organization
- Timeline, goals, and qualification responses you select on the form
- Communications consent and investment acknowledgement checkboxes
Contact form submissions:
- Name, email address, and message content
Account registration (admin users only):
- Email address and password (hashed, never stored in plain text)
2.2 Information Collected Automatically
When you visit our Site, we automatically collect:
Usage data:
- Pages visited, time spent, referring URLs
- Actions taken on the Site (button clicks, form interactions)
- Scroll depth and session duration
Device and technical data:
- IP address (used for rate limiting and fraud prevention)
- Browser type and version
- Operating system
- Screen resolution
- Time zone setting
Cookies and tracking technologies:
See our Cookie Policy for full details. In summary, we use session cookies to maintain your authenticated state, functional cookies to remember your preferences, and analytics cookies to understand Site usage.
2.3 Information Generated by the Service
When we prepare your AI Authority Audit, we may:
- Research publicly available information about your brand, company, and category to build your personalized report
- Store scoring results, dimension breakdowns, gaps, and recommendations associated with your lead record
- Log API requests made to AI model providers on your behalf (prompts and responses)
Audit deliverables and lead data are retained as described in Section 6.
3. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect to:
Deliver the Service:
- Prepare and deliver your personalized AI Authority Audit report
- Schedule and conduct your strategy call walkthrough
- Send follow-up communications you have consented to
Operate and improve the Site:
- Monitor Site performance and fix technical issues
- Understand how visitors interact with our content
- Develop new features and improve existing ones
Sales and business development:
- Your lead data (name, email, phone, company, goals) is used by our team to follow up with you regarding your audit and NewsUSA media and content campaign services
- We will only contact you if you submitted your information voluntarily through our lead form
Security and fraud prevention:
- Rate limiting API requests by IP address
- Detecting and blocking abusive or automated traffic
- Maintaining the integrity of the Service
Legal compliance:
- Complying with applicable laws and regulations
- Responding to lawful requests from public authorities
4. How We Share Your Information
We do not sell your personal information. We do not rent your personal information. We do not share your personal information with third parties for their own marketing purposes.
We share information only in the following limited circumstances:
4.1 Service Providers
We use trusted third-party service providers who process data on our behalf:
| Provider | Purpose | Data Shared |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database hosting (PostgreSQL) | All stored lead and score data |
| Upstash | Redis caching and job queue | Job IDs, rate limit counters (no PII) |
| Railway | Backend application hosting | Application logs (may contain IP addresses) |
| Vercel | Frontend hosting | Request logs (IP addresses, page paths) |
| Cloudflare | DNS, CDN, security | IP addresses, request metadata |
| Cloudflare R2 | PDF report storage | Generated PDF files linked to your score |
| Resend | Transactional email delivery | Your name, email address, report link |
| Anthropic | AI query processing | Prompts derived from your brand and category research (no direct PII) |
All service providers are contractually required to use your data only to perform services for us and to maintain appropriate security measures.
4.2 Business Transfers
If NewsUSA is acquired, merges with another company, or sells all or substantially all of its assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you via email and/or a prominent notice on our Site before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
4.3 Legal Requirements
We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (such as a court or government agency), or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of NewsUSA, our users, or the public.
5. AI Model Processing
Our Service sends prompts to AI model providers (currently Anthropic Claude, with additional providers planned for future phases). These prompts are derived from your company name, category, and publicly available brand information and are used to assess how AI models respond to queries related to your brand.
What is sent to AI providers:
- Templated prompts containing your brand or company name and general topic queries for your industry
- Your full name, email address, and company name are never sent to AI model providers
AI provider data handling:
- Anthropic processes prompts in accordance with their own privacy policy and API terms of service, available at anthropic.com
- We do not use your prompts to train AI models; our API usage is governed by commercial API terms that restrict such use
6. Data Retention
| Data Type | Retention Period |
|---|---|
| Lead records (name, email, phone, company, goals) | 3 years from submission, or until deletion requested |
| Score results and dimension breakdowns | 3 years from creation |
| AI query results (prompts and responses) | 1 year from creation |
| Raw crawled HTML | 90 days from crawl date |
| Rescore history | 3 years |
| PDF reports stored in R2 | 1 year from generation |
| Server and application logs | 90 days |
| Admin account records | Duration of employment/access + 1 year |
When retention periods expire, data is permanently and irreversibly deleted from our systems and we instruct our service providers to delete their copies.
7. Your Rights
Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:
Right to access: You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
Right to correction: You may request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information.
Right to deletion: You may request that we delete your personal information. We will honor deletion requests subject to any legal obligations that require us to retain certain data.
Right to restrict processing: You may request that we limit how we use your personal information in certain circumstances.
Right to data portability: You may request that we provide your personal information in a structured, machine-readable format.
Right to object: You may object to our processing of your personal information for direct marketing purposes at any time.
Right to withdraw consent: Where we rely on your consent to process your personal information, you may withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.
California residents (CCPA/CPRA): You have the right to know what categories of personal information we collect, the right to delete, the right to opt out of sale (we do not sell personal information), and the right to non-discrimination for exercising your rights.
European residents (GDPR): Our legal bases for processing are: (a) performance of a contract when delivering the Service; (b) legitimate interests in operating and improving our business; and (c) your consent where explicitly obtained. You have the right to lodge a complaint with your national supervisory authority.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at rsmith@newsusa.com. We will respond within 30 days (or as required by applicable law). We may need to verify your identity before processing your request.
8. Data Security
We implement appropriate technical and organizational security measures to protect your personal information, including:
- All data transmitted between your browser and our servers is encrypted using TLS 1.2 or higher
- Database access is restricted to application services only, with no public endpoints
- Admin access requires authentication with hashed passwords and JWT tokens
- API keys and secrets are stored as environment variables, never in source code
- PDF reports are stored in Cloudflare R2 with access controlled via time-limited signed URLs
- Rate limiting prevents automated abuse of our scoring API
No method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach that affects your rights and freedoms, we will notify you and relevant authorities as required by applicable law.
9. Children's Privacy
Our Service is not directed to individuals under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal information without parental consent, please contact us at rsmith@newsusa.com and we will take steps to delete that information.
10. Third-Party Links
Our Site may contain links to third-party websites, products, or services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those third parties and encourage you to read their privacy policies. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by newsusa.ai.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you by updating the "Last Updated" date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, by sending an email notification to the address associated with your account or lead record. Your continued use of the Site or Service after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.
12. Contact Us
If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal information, please contact:
Rick D. Smith, Founder
NewsUSA Inc.
1104 West Broad St. #1024
Falls Church, VA 22046
Email: rsmith@newsusa.com
Phone: +1 (703) 508-8700
Common questions about this policy
Does NewsUSA sell my personal information?
No. This policy does not permit the sale of personal information collected through the Site or Service. Data submitted through the audit lead form is used to deliver the AI Authority Audit, schedule your strategy call, and operate the Service, as described in the sections above.
How can I request access to or deletion of my data?
Email rsmith@newsusa.com or call +1 (703) 508-8700 with your request. Section 6 above lists the specific data-subject rights available to you and the process for exercising them, consistent with applicable privacy regulations.
Sources: FTC consumer privacy guidance
