The New York Times operates multiple products—News, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter, and The Athletic—each generating valuable behavioral data. Your reading patterns reveal political leanings, intellectual interests, health concerns, and personal struggles. This data powers personalized content but also advertising across the NYT ecosystem and through third-party ad networks.
| Data Type | Collected | Shared | Sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Article reading history | Yes | Analytics Partners | No |
| Topic interests and engagement | Yes | Advertisers | Ad Targeting |
| Games and puzzle activity | Yes | Internal | No |
| Cooking recipe saves and views | Yes | Internal | No |
| Wirecutter clicks and purchases | Yes | Affiliate Partners | Commissions |
| Device and location data | Yes | Ad Networks | Unclear |
Your activity across NYT News, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter, and The Athletic combines into comprehensive profiles. What you read, play, cook, and buy reveals extensive personal information.
Reading patterns reveal political leanings—which opinion pieces you read, which topics you follow, which candidates you research. This creates politically sensitive profiles.
NYT shares data with advertising partners for targeted advertising. Even subscribers see personalized ads based on their reading behavior.
Wirecutter operates on affiliate commissions—your clicks and purchases are tracked to attribute revenue. Shopping behavior adds to your profile.
Reading history and engagement data is retained for extended periods, creating permanent records of your intellectual interests and evolution over time.
Account settings allow opting out of some personalization and advertising tracking. California residents have additional CCPA rights.
NYT has reduced reliance on third-party cookies, building more first-party data systems. This gives them more control over data practices.