Last updated: August 25, 2026

Boiler Bay Beacon LLC (“Boiler Bay Beacon,” “the Beacon,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) publishes independent local journalism at boilerbaybeacon.com (the “Website”). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, share, and protect information when you visit the Website, create an account, become a Beacon Supporter (Beacon Premium), comment, submit a letter or tip, post on the Beacon Board, place a paid obituary or memorial, vote in a poll, advertise with us, or otherwise contact us.

Questions: [email protected] · 541-992-0321

Who we are

Boiler Bay Beacon is an independent news organization serving Lincoln County and the Oregon coast. We are operated by Boiler Bay Beacon LLC, based in Oregon.

This Policy covers the Website and the services we run on it, including:

• Free news, video, and the public digital edition
• Beacon Premium / Beacon Supporter memberships and the My Beacon dashboard
• Comments, letters to the editor, and story tips
• Beacon Board community notices
• Paid obituaries and memorials (submitter contact is private; the published obituary is public)
• Beacon Polls, events, sports desk, jail roster, and similar public tools
• Advertising purchases and inquiries

It does not cover third-party websites we link to (agencies, Stripe Checkout, YouTube, social networks, and the like). Those sites have their own policies.

Information we collect

Information you give us

Depending on what you do, this may include:

• Account: name or display name, email address, username, password (stored as a one-way hash), optional profile photo
• Membership: plan (monthly or annual), supporter status, start date, and Stripe customer / subscription identifiers — not your full card number
• Billing: when you subscribe, buy advertising, or pay for an obituary, Stripe collects payment details. We receive confirmation that a payment succeeded, the last four digits or card brand when Stripe provides them, billing email, and payment or subscription status. We do not store full payment card numbers on our servers.
• Preferences: theme, layout, font size, followed topics, saved stories, ad-free setting, digest frequency
• Comments: display name, email, optional website, comment text
• Letters and tips: name, city, email (for verification), letter or tip text. Letter emails are for verification and are not published.
• Beacon Board: notice title and body, category, place, optional price, optional photo, display name, and a private email used only to relay replies
• Obituaries and memorials: deceased person’s name, dates, hometown, obituary text or biographical notes, optional photos, service details, and the submitter’s name, email, phone, and relationship. Submitter contact is used to process payment, reach you about the order, and send a notice when it is published. It is not published. Photos uploaded before publication live in our media library. A published obituary is public journalism.
• Polls: your vote; for some polls, an email address used only to confirm one vote per person
• Contact and advertising: name, email, phone, company, and the message you send
• Support: the content of emails or calls you send us

We do not require sensitive personal information (for example race, health, religion, or precise geolocation). Do not put that in a public comment or listing unless you intend it to be public. If you include it, we process it only as needed to run that feature or to moderate it.

Information collected automatically

When you visit the Website, our servers, CDN, and security tools may log:

• IP address, approximate location derived from IP, browser and device type, referring URL
• Pages viewed, timestamps, and whether you are signed in
• Cookies and similar identifiers described below

Logged-in page views may be recorded in a short internal traffic log for site operations (no email and no raw IP in that feed).

Information from service providers

• Stripe sends us subscription and payment-status events so we can grant, sync, or revoke membership
• Cloudflare (CDN, security, Turnstile) may provide abuse and bot-check signals
• Our host and security software (including Wordfence) may provide access and threat logs

Information we do not collect as a product

• We do not run a paywall. Reading the news does not require an account.
• We do not sell personal information.
• We do not use your data to train third-party AI models.
• We do not collect precise GPS location.
• We do not require a Social Security number or government ID to subscribe.

How we collect it

• Directly from you when you create an account, check out with Stripe, fill a form, comment, post a notice, vote, or email us
• Automatically through cookies, local storage, logs, and security checks
• From processors such as Stripe (billing) and Cloudflare (delivery and bot protection)
• From public records when we report the news (see News gathering)

How we use it

We use information to:

• Publish and operate the Website
• Create and maintain accounts, including password reset and security notices
• Process Beacon Premium, advertising, and paid-obituary payments through Stripe
• Deliver supporter features (My Beacon, themes, saved stories, Premium Digital Edition, comment badges)
• Send transactional mail: receipts, password resets, subscription confirmations, billing notices
• Send optional supporter email digests (daily, weekly, or per story) if you turn them on
• Enable comments, letters, polls, the Beacon Board, and paid obituaries, and to moderate abuse
• Answer tips, corrections, advertising inquiries, and other messages
• Keep the site secure, prevent fraud and spam, and debug problems
• Understand aggregate traffic so we can improve the paper
• Comply with law, enforce our terms, and protect readers, sources, and the newsroom

We do not use your information for third-party targeted advertising networks, and we do not sell or rent mailing lists.

Beacon Premium (Supporters)

Beacon Premium is a recurring membership billed by Stripe. Plans are typically monthly or annual. Annual members may be recognized as Founders in comments.

When you subscribe:

1. You start checkout on our site and complete payment on Stripe’s hosted checkout.
2. Stripe tells us the payment succeeded and gives us a customer and subscription ID.
3. We create or update your WordPress account and mark you as a supporter.
4. You manage billing later through the Stripe Customer Portal (opened from My Beacon) — update card, download invoices, or cancel.

Canceling stops future charges at the end of the current paid period. It does not automatically delete your account, comments, or saved preferences. You can keep a free account or ask us to delete the account (see Your choices).

Complimentary or staff memberships may be granted without Stripe. Those accounts still store the same preference and identity data.

Card data is handled under Stripe’s privacy policy. Stripe is PCI-DSS compliant. We never see your full card number.

Comments, letters, and community tools

Comments are public. Your display name, comment, and any supporter badges appear next to the story. Email is not published. If you comment while logged out, WordPress may store name/email cookies on your device so you do not have to retype them.

Letters to the editor are submitted for possible publication. We publish the letter with your name and city. Email is for verification only and is not published.

Story tips and contact forms go to the newsroom. We protect sources. You may use a burner email for sensitive tips. Unpublished tips are newsroom records, not marketing data.

Beacon Board listings are public (title, body, photo, display name). The poster’s email is kept private and used only to forward a reader’s reply. Submit IPs are stored hashed or truncated for rate-limiting and abuse control, not for advertising.

Obituaries and memorials are a paid newsroom product. You pay through Stripe Checkout. We review every submission and may refuse or refund. The published piece is a public WordPress post in Obituaries & Memorials. Submitter name, email, phone, relationship, hashed IP, and Stripe identifiers stay in a private order record. A privacy request cannot, by itself, unpublish an accurate published obituary (same news-gathering stance as other reporting). We will still consider correction where law or our ethics code requires it.

Beacon Polls record a vote. Uniqueness may use a device cookie (beacon_poll_device), a logged-in account, and/or a one-time email confirmation, depending on the poll. We do not sell poll identities.

Profile photos you upload are stored on our site and may appear on comments and My Beacon. If you have no local photo, WordPress may request a default avatar from Gravatar, which receives a hash of your email.

News gathering and public records

Journalism is different from a membership form.

• We collect and publish information as news under the First Amendment and Oregon’s public-records laws.
• The Lincoln County jail roster, Oregon State Police logs, court filings, and similar records are public information we republish. That is news coverage, not a consumer database we built from your account.
• Tips, notes, and unpublished source material are held as newsroom records. We do not sell them, use them for advertising, or turn them into marketing profiles.
• A privacy request cannot, by itself, unpublish accurate news reporting or public-record coverage. We will still consider retraction, correction, or anonymization where law or our Ethics Code requires it.

Sharing your information

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

We share information only as needed:

Processors are used only to provide their service to us. They are not given a license to sell your data.

Comments, published letters, Beacon Board notices, published obituaries, and news stories are public by design.

Cookies and similar technologies

Cookies are small files stored on your device. We use them to run the site, not to follow you around the rest of the internet.

Necessary (always on)

• WordPress login and account session
• Comment-form name/email memory (if you opt in)
• Security, cache, and Cloudflare protection cookies
• Stripe checkout cookies on Stripe’s domain during payment

Functional

• Beacon Poll device token (beacon_poll_device, about 400 days) so one person cannot stuff a ballot from a shared café IP
• My Beacon appearance is stored in your account, not as a tracking cookie

Analytics

• We may log aggregate page views and similar first-party usage so we know what the coast is reading. We do not use that data to sell ads against your name.

What we do not do

• No third-party advertising pixels for retargeting that we control
• No sale of cookie data
• No “for sale” list of readers

You can block cookies in your browser. Blocking all cookies will break sign-in, checkout, and some polls. For a general primer: allaboutcookies.org.

Embedded YouTube videos and social buttons are third-party content. Playing or clicking them lets those companies set their own cookies.

Your choices and rights

Everyday controls

• Read for free — no account required
• My Beacon — change name, email, password, photo, theme, digest, and saved stories
• Billing — Stripe Customer Portal from My Beacon (card, invoices, cancel)
• Digests — off / daily / weekly / per story in My Beacon; every digest also has an unsubscribe link
• Comments — don’t post what you don’t want public; email us if you need a comment removed for safety or legal reasons
• Board listings — email us to take down a notice you posted

Oregon, California, and other U.S. state rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Confirm whether we process your personal data and access it
• Correct inaccurate data
• Delete data we hold about you (with the news and public-comment limits above)
• Obtain a portable copy of account data you provided
• Opt out of the sale of personal data or sharing for targeted advertising — we do not sell or share for those purposes, so there is nothing extra to opt out of
• Appeal a refusal

How to ask: email [email protected] with the subject “Privacy request.” Tell us what you want (access, correction, deletion, or a copy). We will verify you own the email on the account. We aim to respond within 45 days, or sooner if a specific law requires it.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights. We may decline a request when the law allows — for example, to keep a record of a paid invoice, to preserve published journalism or public comments, or to complete a transaction you asked for.

Oregon residents may learn more from the Oregon Department of Justice. California residents may learn more from the California Privacy Protection Agency.

Email

Transactional mail (receipts, security, billing) is part of having an account. Marketing-style digests are optional and include unsubscribe.

Children

The Website is a general-audience newspaper. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email us and we will delete it.

We do not sell the personal data of anyone, including minors.

Data retention

We keep information only as long as we need it for the purposes above, including legal, tax, and security needs.

If you delete your account we remove or anonymize account profile data we control. Published comments may be unlinked from the account rather than erased, so the public thread still makes sense. Stripe will retain billing records as required of a payment processor.

Security

We use HTTPS, hashed passwords, role-limited WordPress accounts, Cloudflare in front of the site, and security software on the server. Stripe handles card data. Payment secrets are kept out of public code.

No website is perfectly secure. Do not reuse your Beacon password elsewhere. If you think an account was compromised, reset the password and email us.

If a breach of personal information occurs that Oregon or other law requires us to report, we will notify affected people and regulators as required.

International visitors

We operate in the United States. If you visit from another country, your information is processed in the U.S. and wherever our processors (including Stripe and Cloudflare) run their services. Those transfers are necessary to provide the Website.

If you are in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, the legal bases we rely on are typically: contract (membership and account), legitimate interests (security, analytics of our own site, journalism), consent (optional digests, non-essential cookies if we ever add them), and legal obligation (tax, lawful requests). You may have additional GDPR rights, including the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

Changes

We will post changes on this page and update the “Last updated” date. If we make a material change to how we use supporter or account data, we will also note it in a site notice or email to account holders when practical. Continued use of the Website after the new date means the updated Policy applies.

Contact us

Boiler Bay Beacon LLC
Privacy questions: [email protected]
Phone: 541-992-0321
Website: boilerbaybeacon.com

Related pages: Ethics Code · Beacon Supporter · My Beacon · Contact