Privacy Policy
Revised May 23, 2018
Thank you for using Plex! We here at Plex care deeply about your privacy, and we strive to ensure that your personal information always stays safe while we work hard to provide you a service you love and trust. Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and transfer your information, and how you can control the use of the information that we collect. This Privacy Policy applies to all our products and services, including Plex client apps, streaming content to the Plex client apps, our premium Plex Pass service, Plex Media Server software, Plex Cloud, and all other Plex software and services (collectively, our “Services”). Depending on your choice of how to use our Services, your personal content may be stored on your personal hardware (“Personal Local Content”) or stored in the cloud (“Personal Cloud Content”, collectively, “Personal Content”). For your Personal Content, except in the limited circumstances described below, we do not collect filenames or content titles of your Personal Local Content. We do, however, keep usage statistics to allow us to better serve you and improve our Services. We may use information about how you use our Services to run and improve our Services, to provide, customize, and personalize communications and other content that we deliver or offer to you. This is discussed in detail below.
Download a PDF version here.
Contacting Us
You can contact Plex via our contact page. You can also browse our FAQ and support articles.
Information We Collect
You may choose to provide us with certain information, such as when you create your user profile or when you use the Services. We may also collect automatically-generated and technical information. Therefore, the information we have (“Collected Information”) may include:
- Profile Information. You may provide us with profile information such as your e-mail address, username, a profile image, and password when you create an account, or when you edit your account information. You may also provide us with your payment information when you sign-up for a paid service.
- Information from External Services. If you choose to connect your account to an account of an external service, such as a social networking site or cloud storage services, we may collect certain information from those accounts, such as your name and email address as well as data required to connect to that service. You may provide such authorization during the connection process, or it may be implicit in the service authorization itself. For example, if you choose to connect your Plex account to a social networking account, we may collect your public profile information if you agree to the collection of this information during the connection process.
- Metadata for Personal Content. Except for certain exceptions such as for Personal Cloud Content, Third-Party Control and Playback Mechanisms, and image analysis (i.e., metadata about photos when these features are user-enabled, such as geotag information or scene recognition analysis), as described below, we do not collect or store metadata (information about the specific file, cover art, subtitles, running length, etc.) for Personal Content stored on your personal Plex Media Server. However, your Plex Media Server may anonymously send us filenames or other identifiers for your Personal Content for the sole purpose of providing metadata back to your personal Plex Media Server. You may disable this metadata matching capability.
- Metadata for Personal Cloud Content. Our Plex Cloud service is used by some of our Plex Pass users. If you choose to use Plex Cloud and upload content to third-party cloud services, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc., we may collect and use information in addition to that described above in order to interact with the third-party cloud service and to host our Services on your behalf. This includes knowing and using all the metadata related to what is in your Plex Cloud database, but only to provide you with the Services.
- Metadata for Personal Content for Integration with Third-Party Control and Playback Mechanisms. We may offer integrations with Third-Party Control and Playback Mechanisms that you may choose to use, such as Sonos, Amazon Alexa, IFTTT, Zapier, SmartThings, webhooks, etc. In order to provide the integrations with the Third-Party Control and Playback Mechanisms, we may collect Metadata for your Personal Content that is needed to integrate with the Third-Party Control and Playback Mechanisms. For example, if you use Amazon Alexa to play a particular song or movie from among your Personal Content at your home, then our Services may search your Personal Content in order to find and play the song or movie that you requested. Information provided by you to the Third-Party Control or Playback Mechanisms is not governed by this privacy policy.
- Usage Statistics for Personal Content. We may collect usage statistics for Personal Content. This includes information about your interaction with the Services, such as device information, duration, bit rate, media formats, resolution, and media type (music, photos, videos, etc.). Where possible, we will generalize this information to avoid identifying your Personal Content. Usage statistics do not include specific content titles or filenames. We may use information related to your usage to run and improve our Services, to provide, customize, and personalize communications and other content that we deliver or offer to you.
- Data Related to Third-Party Content. When you use the Services to watch, listen to, or record content from a third-party content provider or source such as any officially supported Third-Party Content that Plex streams to Plex apps, trailers and extras from IVA, the Plex Watch Later or Recommended features, or use of our Live TV and DVR service, we may collect information related to that media interaction. For example, we may collect what program or movie you are watching and when, your interaction with any static or video advertising, etc. We may also collect your device information and device location, for example, by using your IP address or by asking for your zip code. We may use this information to run and improve our Services, provide advertising and marketing to you, as well as share anonymous or aggregated versions of the data with third parties.
- Information about integrated Third-Party Services. We may collect information about your use of third-party services for reporting to these partners and calculating the fees that we owe them. For example, we collect (i) the number of trailers and extras viewed to IVA, and (ii) information about premium metadata consumed to Gracenote. We may also collect information about third party services and your use of those services in order to serve video content and advertisements via features that rely on third party providers. This information can include the metadata needed to serve advertising.
- Information on our Services. We may store information about your configuration or use of our Services when you create a Plex Media Server on a local device or in the cloud, connect to a Plex Media Server that you or another person has configured, or download or connect to a Plex app, or interact with or use other Plex software or Service. This information may include an IP address and port number(s), the name of a Plex Media Server, and information used to secure access to our Services.
- Information about Interfacing Software. “Interfacing Software” includes but is not limited to, plug-ins for the Services, channel plug-ins, metadata agents, and client applications that communicate directly or indirectly with the Services. We may store copies of Interfacing Software that you provide to Plex and that accesses or calls any software provided by Plex as part of the Services.
- Debugging and Other Information Voluntarily Provided. You may send us logs, metadata, or other information about your devices, media, and experiences for the purpose of resolving an issue you may have with the software or suggesting desired features. On client applications where it is possible, we will offer the ability to opt-out of sending crash reports. If you would like to learn more about the information being sent in crash reports, we encourage you to review the privacy policies for the third-party client applications you are using to access Plex Services. The information being sent to us will only be used to help resolve your issue and / or improve our Services, and using our Services and provision of such information, you agree to such use by us.
- Device Information. Like many online services, we may collect information about the devices that are used to access our Services, such as the IP address of the device, the operating system and version of the device, the browser that you use to access a Plex web page, and the versions of the Plex technologies being used. We may also collect location information about the devices that access our Services.
- Application Information. When a request for information or content is sent to a Plex Media Server, we may collect an application identifier that identifies which application sent the request. An application identifier uniquely identifies a particular copy of an application. For example, if you download an application from Plex, fully uninstall the copy of the application, and then re-download the application from Plex, the new copy of the application will be associated with a different application identifier than the uninstalled copy of the application. Note that simply deleting the app without fully uninstalling may not reset the application identifier.
- Plex Relay Service. We may provide, and you may choose to use, the Plex Relay Service to connect or stream your Personal Content to another device. If you choose to use the Plex Relay Service, we will transfer the data necessary to perform the service. All such traffic is encrypted from end-to-end in a manner that makes it impossible for Plex or the Plex Relay Service to decrypt or view any data. The data transferred via the Plex Relay Service is not stored by Plex except for the temporary buffering of data required to provide you with an optimal streaming experience. You can disable the Plex Relay Service by turning off Remote Access in your server settings.
- Cookies and Other Tracking Technology. Like many online services, Plex uses cookies, tracking pixels, and similar technologies to collect information that helps us provide our Services to you. We also use these technologies to help market our products and services to you and other customers. For more information about these technologies and how you may control them, please see the detailed description of Tracking Technologies.
- Obtaining Consent. If there is a change to any product or feature that we offer or have offered, and in order to use that product or feature a material change to the collection and / or use of information (including for Personal Content) not contemplated by the Privacy Policy is needed, we will obtain your consent before such collection and / or use.
- Your Collected Information. In order to view, amend, erase, or correct your Collected Information, contact Plex support. All requests will be answered within one month of receipt.
Use, Processing, and Sharing of Your Information
- Plex processes and uses Collected Information with your consent, you can withdraw your consent by updating your privacy settings or closing your account. Plex also processes Collected Information when it needs to do so to fulfill a contract with you to provide you services, in its legitimate interest to aid in developing and improving the services, or when required by law. If you do not want to provide certain information to us in order to fulfil our agreement with you to provide the services, we may not be able to provide you the fullest version of our services.
- We use the Collected Information to provide you with the Services, improve the Services, enhance your user experience, and communicate with you. For example, for Third-Party Content, we use information about your interactions with the Services to track the watch state of media items that have been linked to the Services on devices that have been linked to the Services. We use this information to allow you to resume watching in the same watch state on different Plex-linked devices.
- We use your profile information to contact you about your account or about new Plex functionality and certain Plex news and information. You may opt-out of certain types of communications by editing your account settings.
- If you choose to connect your Plex account to a third-party account or service to have us and /or that third party provide a particular feature or service, we will provide that external service with the information needed to have us and / or that third party perform the requested feature or service. For example, if you connect your account to a social networking site and give us permission to publish posts on your behalf, we will do so. Additionally, unless you request or allow us to publish other information, the content of the published posts will be limited to describing your interactions with the Services. As another example, if you choose to have us send (or “scrobble”) your listening history to Last.fm, obtain metadata from a third party service, or use a third-party recommendation service, we use Collected Information to engage with and / or send the Collected Information to that service when you request that service. The shared information may include metadata about the media (such as title, duration, author, cover art, dates associated with the media, and other relevant information) and information about the media itself (such as resolution, bit rate, format, location, etc.).
- We use Collected Information related to Personal Content when you provide consent or otherwise request us to do so, as well as when necessary to provide the services you requested.
- We use Collected Information related to Third-Party Content to allow us and our partners to personalize marketing, advertising, and other content delivered or offered to you. For example, we may use or share Collected Information related to Third-Party Content that is necessary to serve video content and advertisements, including the source of the content, full information about the content including title, device identifiers, timing and location of your consumption, your user information, your IP address, etc. We also share the metadata needed to serve video or audio advertising.
- We also use and share payment information with our payment processor partner in order to process your payment for any services you order.
- Plex may share Collected Information as expressly set forth in this Privacy Policy, including the following limited situations:
- With third parties that assist us in providing you with our Services, such as payment processors, business and analytics providers, content providers, marketers, and cloud service providers, but we require our third parties to only use your information for the purposes of providing the services requested of them and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
- If we believe that the disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy an applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request; or (b) protect or defend the safety, rights, or property of Plex, the public, or any person.
- In connection with a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or similar transaction or other proceeding involving Plex that includes or requires the transfer of the information.
- If your information is a part of a set of non-private, aggregated, anonymized, or otherwise non-personal information, such as anonymized and / or aggregated usage statistics and viewing trends.
- With third parties to improve and deliver advertising to you on our behalf.
- If you request or consent to our sharing of Collected Information with a third party.
- We may apply automated decision-making to Collected Information to recommend content to you that we think you may be interested in.
- We will not share with third parties for their use or sell Collected Information about your Personal Local Content.
Protection of Your Information
- In order to help keep your media secure, we partner with DigiCert to provide publicly trusted TLS certificates for end-to-end encrypted connections among all of our servers, Services, and client applications. For more information, please review our support article on the topic.
- We have put in place commercially reasonable physical, electronic, and organizational procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect. For example, password information is stored on our servers and is protected using hashing and encryption technologies.
- We do not store any of your payment or credit card information on our servers. The data is encrypted and securely stored by an independent company, Braintree, which provides payment-processing services for Plex. Please review the Braintree Security Policy for more information.
Your Information and Terms of Third-Party Products and Services
- Plex may offer and you may choose to use products or services from third parties in connection with our Services that may contain links to or otherwise interface with third-party websites, products, services, or other technologies. Any such third-party technology may collect information from you or use other services or technologies that collect information from you. Any information collection by these third-party technologies is governed by the privacy practices of those third-party technologies. Plex does not control and is not responsible for the collection of information by such third-party technologies.
Children
- We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If we learn that we have collected the personal information of a child under the age of 13, we will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible.
Privacy Policy Changes
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time. We will notify you of any changes to our Privacy Policy by posting the new Privacy Policy on the Plex website. You are advised to consult this Privacy Policy regularly for any changes.
International Transfer
If you use our services outside of the United States, we may transfer information from that jurisdiction to the United States, where data protection regulations may not offer the same level of protection as in other parts of the world, such as the European Union. If you use our services in the European Union we will transfer data to the United States subject to standard contractual clauses.
Controlling Your Information
You may exercise your rights to access, correct, erase, object to processing, and request data portability where applicable in the following ways:
- Changing your profile information by accessing the Settings page of the Plex website.
- Linking or unlinking your account from another account of an external site, such as a social networking website.
- Deleting your account. You may delete your account by selecting the option to delete your account in the Settings page. We will delete your information without unreasonable delay after receiving the request except that we may retain archived copies of your information as required by law.
- Contacting Plex support here.
Retention
Plex retains personal information you provide to create your account for as long as you maintain an account with us. Personal information used to provide the services to you will be kept long enough to provide you with the service, including in archives and logs used to maintain and develop the service. Specifically, we delete data used for logging and error tracking after 90 days, we reset cookies on our website after 14 days. We also delete other personal data used to provide the Plex Solution or to communicate with you within 30 days after your account is deleted. We may retain some usage statistics (including IP addresses) for as long as we have a business purpose in order to improve Plex’s services, but these statistics are no longer linked to the deleted account.
Your Choices, Including Opt-Out Options
You have the following choices regarding how we and third parties use certain information collected from or about you. We are committed to complying with the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising and the DAA Application of Self-Regulatory Principles for the Mobile Environment.
- Opt-Out from Promotional Communications..
- You may opt out of receiving the marketing newsletter from us by accessing your account, selecting Settings on the Plex website, and clicking “unsubscribe” in the Newsletter section. You may also opt out of certain promotional communications by clicking the “unsubscribe” link in a particular promotional communication. Please note that you cannot opt out from receiving all communications from us, including administrative messages, service announcements, and messages regarding the terms and conditions of your account.
- You can choose to receive push notifications from Plex on your device. If you do not wish to receive push notifications, you can use your device’s settings to turn them off.
- Opt-Out Options Page. Please visit the Opt-Out Options page to understand the options available to you regarding Third-Party Online Behavioral or Interest-Based Advertising and any specific third-party advertising companies’ opt out information.
- Options for Sharing What You Watch. We may ask for your consent to have Plex share your third-party media consumption information together with your personal information with our content programmers, service providers, and other third parties. If we have asked for your consent, we will provide you with a way to view or change your consent preference by updating your account settings.
- Opt-Out of Playback Statistics. You may choose to opt-out of sharing the playback statistics for Personal Local Content that you store on your personal Plex Media Server by updating your Privacy Preferences.
- Opt-Out for Digital Advertising. Plex may also use third-party advertising companies to serve ads, which may, directly or indirectly, collect or use information about user visits to websites and mobile app usage over time and across non-affiliated websites and mobile apps to display advertisements more tailored to users’ interests on this browser or device, and those browsers or devices associated with it. A user can visit www.aboutads.info/choices and/or download the appropriate version the AppChoices app at http://www.youradchoices.com/appchoices if a user wishes to learn more about this practice or would like to know more about his/her choices regarding that activity by companies participating in those choice tools. Please visit the Opt-Out Options for Third-Party Advertising page for any specific third party advertising companies’ opt-out information.
- Withdraw Consent. You can withdraw your consent to our processing of personal information by updating your privacy settings, or closing your account.
Plex and its Affiliates
This privacy policy governs services provided by Plex GmbH, a Swiss company, and its affiliates, including Plex, Inc., a Delaware company (together, “Plex”).
Plex GmbH, Hansmatt 32, 6370 Stans, Nidwalden, Switzerland
Plex Inc, 449 N Santa Cruz Ave, Los Gatos, CA 95030
Plex’s Data Protection Officer
Plex’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted at dataprotection@plexapp.com.
Questions
You may contact us with questions and comments regarding this policy via our contact page. You can also contact your local data protection authority with any complaints about Plex’s data collection or processing activity.
