The Winchendon Courier (thewinchendoncourier.com) is published by Winchendon Media Co. This page explains what we keep about you when you read the paper or give us something, why, and what you can ask us to do with it. We do not sell personal information, and we do not show ads from ad networks or let them follow you here.
Reading the paper
You can read every story without an account. To know how many people read the paper and which pages — which is how we price advertising and decide what to cover — the paper counts visits itself. For each visit it notes the page, the site you came from, whether you are on a phone or a computer, the language you read in, how long the page was on screen and how far you scrolled, and what you did there (played a story, switched language, saw or tapped an ad). It does not set a cookie for this. A visitor is identified only as a scrambled code made from your internet address and browser together with that day's secret; it cannot be turned back into your address, and it changes every day. We honor your browser's "Do Not Track" setting. Visit records are deleted after 90 days; the counts of ads seen and tapped are kept about 13 months for the advertiser's history.
Cookies and what is kept in your browser
The paper sets only these cookies:
- paper_lang — the language you chose to read in (one year).
- paper_alerts — that you switched the alerts bar off (one year).
- paper_reader — that you are signed in to a reader account (90 days; it holds no personal details).
- A preview cookie — only if the editor gave you a code to look at the paper before it opened (30 days).
Puzzles and games keep your progress in your own browser's storage on your device; it is not sent to us.
Things that load from other services
- Fonts come from Google Fonts. Like any website it serves, Google receives your device's internet address when your browser fetches them.
- Videos in some stories play from YouTube (its privacy-enhanced, no-cookie player) or Vimeo (with its "do not track" setting on). They load from those services when a story with a video is shown.
When you give us something
- The Morning Brief (our email newsletter): your email address and the language you want it in. Every Brief has a one-tap unsubscribe link; unsubscribing stops it at once.
- A reader account (to comment): your email address and the name you choose. We sign you in by emailing you a link — there is no password to store. Your name is shown with your comments.
- Comments: what you write and the name on your account are public on the story. We keep comments while the story is up, and may remove any comment (see thewinchendoncourier.com/fr/community-guidelines).
- Print edition sign-up: your name, email, phone, mailing address and any note — to deliver the paper.
- Obituaries: what a family sends us, including photos and the contact person's details, to publish the notice and to reach the family about it.
- Corrections, tips and letters: what you send us, and your email address to answer you.
- Asking us to cover your town: your email address, to tell you when we do.
- Advertising: the business's name, contact email and the ad itself. Card payments are taken by Stripe, our payment processor; we never see or store your card number.
Who else handles it
We use service providers to run the paper — our hosting provider, our email-delivery service and Stripe for payments — and they handle personal information only to do that work for us. We share personal information otherwise only if the law requires it. Recordings of public meetings are transcribed and written up on our own servers.
Children
The paper is for a general audience. Reader accounts, comments and the newsletter are not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has given us information, write to us and we will delete it.
Keeping it safe
We protect personal information with reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards, as Massachusetts law requires (201 CMR 17.00). If personal information of a Massachusetts resident were ever exposed, we would give the notice that Massachusetts law (M.G.L. c. 93H) requires.
Seeing, changing or deleting your information
Write to editor@thewinchendoncourier.com to ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it — your account, your comments, your newsletter subscription. We answer within 30 days. We may keep what the law requires us to keep (for example, records of paid advertising).
Changes
If we change this page we update the date at the bottom. Questions: editor@thewinchendoncourier.com.
Last updated October 7, 2026