Revised: June 28, 2024
PDF of the current version
Prior Versions
What’s new in this version
- Updated the formatting to improve readability and ease of finding relevant information based on your relationship with Plex.
- Enhanced the Privacy Rights section to centralize privacy preferences including the ability to opt-out of targeted advertising, set activity sharing preferences, and turn website cookies on/off.
- Added a link to the Privacy Rights section to a new form to submit data access and deletion requests.
- Added explanation of how non-Personal Data is used to train machine learning or artificial intelligence.
- The details on data collected during activities on Services were shifted from the (now deprecated) Privacy Preferences page to this Policy.
We care about the privacy and protection of personal data. We strive to be transparent in our data collection practices while providing you with a service that you love and trust. This Privacy Policy sets forth our personal information processing policy which explains how we collect, use, and share personal data about you, and also when and how you can control what we collect and do with it. Our Privacy Policy applies to the data collected through products and services provided by Plex GmbH and its affiliates including Plex, Inc., (together, “Plex”), which include our websites, apps, and all other Plex-branded software and services (collectively, our “Services”). This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on the Plex.tv website. If we make any material changes to the Personal Data that we collect and/or how we use it, we will first obtain your consent before applying any of those changes. You are advised to consult this Privacy Policy regularly for any changes.
Your Plex Privacy Rights
You have the right to unsubscribe from Plex emails
In your Plex Account Settings, click “Manage emails” from the “Email Subscription Settings” and select “Unsubscribe from ALL” and click “Update Preferences” to unsubscribe from our emails. In the alternative, from any Plex promotional email, click the “unsubscribe” link and follow the steps in the previous sentence. Please note that you cannot opt out from receiving all Plex communications, including administrative messages, service announcements, and messages regarding the terms and conditions of your account.
You have the right to have Plex delete the Personal Data that it has collected
After verifying your identity, Plex will delete Personal Data associated with your account except that we may retain archived copies as required by law. Keep in mind that this option will result in the full deletion of your Plex account itself (including any subscriptions associated with that account such as TIDAL or Plex Pass). The account will no longer be accessible once you do so. Click here to submit this request.
You have the right to opt out of targeted advertising (*select regions only)
Plex is able to provide free-to-watch movies and shows by displaying a modest number of ads before and during playback. While it is not possible to opt out of these ads entirely, you may opt- out of Personal Data being provided to third-party advertisers.
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If you’d like to opt-out of sending us this data, log into your Plex account and return to this page.
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If this functionality is available in your region, in your Plex Account Settings, “Privacy” section, click the “Update my advertising consent settings” (or similar language) link at the bottom to be taken to a page to set your advertising preferences.
What Personal Data can Plex collect?
“Personal Data” is information that we collect that: may identify you as an individual; is reasonably associated with you; or is defined as such under applicable laws or regulations. The below lists reflect the data we require to complete the purposes listed later in the Policy (“Why Plex collects it”). Data listed as “optional” is not required and you provide that data (and any other data that we do not require) to us at your discretion.
If you are a job applicant
Name, email, educational info, job history, job title, location (derived from IP-address to the city-level)
Optional: image (e.g., avatar), address, phone, salary requirements, demographic info
Plex collects specific information about your activity on our Services and that information is linked to you.
Device information (i.e. the device that runs the application you use to access Plex)
Advertising id (opt-out available here), architecture, city, country, device, device id, display, latitude-truncated, layout, local time, longitude-truncated, memory, model, orientation, platform, platform version, power, region, screen resolution, timezone, vendor, watch connected, zip
Playback information (i.e. watching content on Plex)
- All content: Agent, audio, audio bitrate, audio channels, audio decision, audio profile, auto preview playback, blocked, buffering count, buffering duration, buffer duration from seeks, buffering count, buffering duration, client, codecs, cold start, column count, connection type, context, download category, download size, download url, drm, error, first run, ingested at, initialization time, item count, latency, launch info, local, metadata id, mmp, mode, muted, num items, num seeks, origin, owned, owner, num seeks, page ready time, pages loaded, pane, percent watched, pinned PMS sources, pinned provider sources, playback count, playback latency, playback stack, play time, preview playback, provider, rated at, rating, relayed, requested height, requested max bitrate, requested width, retries, seconds paused, seconds watched, server type, settings, source, start time, subtitle, subtitle decision, subtitle format, total active download time, total download time, value, video, video bitrate, video decision, video height, video profile, video width, viewed, viewed at, watch together.
- Plex Media Server Library Data: architecture, enable BIF Generation, enable credits marker generation, frequency Ghz, gpus, include adult content, memory Mb, music analysis, num channels, num episodes, num items, num locations, num photos, num tracks, num videos, users invited, uuid
- Optional Plex Media Server/Library Data (opt-out available here): Bit rate, completion status, duration, library agent, library language, library scanner, library type, number of Plex accounts with access to library, offset, resolutionserver published, timestamp for the last time an item was added and played for each unique combination of container, video codec, and audio codec, total number of items in library, number of items in library based on unique combination of container, video codec, audio codec. For more information on data collected from the Plex Media Server, see “What information does Plex collect from my Plex Media Server?”
If activity information is either anonymized or made part of an aggregated set of information (e.g., usage statistics and viewing trends), it cannot be linked to you. You can read more about this information in “What information does Plex either anonymize or aggregate?”.
Plex may also disassociate this activity information from your Personal Data to train machine learning or artificial learning models for purposes discussed in “Why does Plex need Personal Data?”. Your Personal Data is not introduced to any machine learning or artificial learning models.
When does Plex collect Personal Data?
If you are a user of the Services
- When you visit or engage with (e.g., watch content on) our Services
- When you create a Plex account
- When you authorize an external service (e.g., social networking site) to make your profile available to third-party companies such as Plex when you create an account using that external service
- When you contact us
If you are a job applicant
- When you apply for a job at Plex
- When you authorize a job networking platform to make your profile available to third-party companies such as Plex
Why does Plex need Personal Data?
If you are a user of the Services
- To provide, improve, and enhance our Services
- To respond to your requests
- To inform you about activity on your Plex account
- To communicate with you about Plex (as permitted by applicable law)
- To personalize marketing, advertising, recommendations, and other content and experiences delivered or offered to you through the Services (as permitted by applicable law)
- To deliver third-party advertising
- To facilitate your payment for any products and services we sell
Who does Plex share Personal Data with?
Third-party service providers
Third-party service providers assist us in providing the Services including payment processors, business and analytics providers, content providers, marketers, and cloud service providers. All of these third parties are contractually required to only use your Personal Data for the specific purposes of providing the services requested of them.
Third-party advertisers
With third parties to deliver advertising to you (as permitted by applicable law). For clarity, Plex may share the following Personal Data with these parties: email (hashed only), Device ID, and IP address. For details on how to limit what is shared with third-party advertisers, see “Your Plex Privacy Rights”.
Other third-parties
Third-parties to whom you request or consent to our disclosing, sharing, or selling of your Personal Data
In addition, Plex reserves the right to share Personal Data to the extent necessary to:
- (a) satisfy an applicable law, regulation, legal process, or valid governmental request;
- (b) protect or defend the safety, rights, or property of Plex, the public, or any person.
- (c) facilitate a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or similar transaction or other proceeding involving Plex that includes or requires the transfer of the Personal Data.
Where does Plex store Personal Data?
Plex and its authorized data processors process Personal Data primarily in the United States.
How does Plex protect Personal Data?
Data privacy best practices
Plex takes measures to ensure that Personal Data is collected and processed in accordance with data privacy best practices which include:
- Privacy impact assessments of dataflows to ensure that the data collected is limited to what is needed to accomplish the purpose of the data processing.
- Data transfer mechanisms such as Standard Contractual Clauses for data transfers of EU/UK/Switzerland Personal Data to processors located in the United States.
Technical measures
- Within the Plex Media Server software, Plex provides publicly trusted TLS certificates for end-to-end encrypted connections among our servers, Services, and client applications. For more information, please review our support article on the topic.
- We have commercially reasonable physical, electronic, and organizational procedures to help safeguard and secure your Personal Data.
Data retention policy
- Personal Data is retained in your Plex account for as long as you maintain that account. When you delete your Plex account, we delete the Personal Data in the Plex account within 30 days. We may retain some usage statistics (including IP addresses which only provide a coarse location to the city level) in order to improve Plex’s services but this data is no longer linked to the Personal Data.
- Data related to your use of the services (e.g., logging and error tracking) is deleted after 90 days.
- Website cookies are reset after 14 days.
Plex does not knowingly collect, use, or disclose Personal Data from anyone under the age of 13. If we learn or are notified that we have collected the Personal Data of an individual under 13, we will take steps to delete that Personal Data as soon as possible. Plex parents or guardians can create managed user accounts for their children to restrict access to content based on content ratings. Learn more here.
What about external links 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. These include online payment systems operated by third parties (e.g., Braintree) which enable you to make secure online payments. They also include integrations with control and playback mechanisms such as Sonos, Amazon Alexa, IFTTT, Zapier, SmartThings, webhooks, etc. 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 is not affiliated with, does not control, and is not responsible for the collection of information by such third-party technologies.
More privacy questions?
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please submit them on our contact page.
All data access or deletion requests should be submitted here.
US state-specific rights disclosures
This section contains disclosures required by the laws in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Virginia (“Certain States”). If you are a resident of such states, this section of the Privacy Policy contains disclosures required by law and explains rights that may be available to you. Our use of the terms “sell” and “share” below generally refers to these California definitions.
Personal Data That Plex Collects, Discloses, and Shares.
The below table identifies the categories of Personal Data (“PI” in the table) we have collected in the past 12 months, the source of collection, our purpose for collecting it, and the categories of third parties to whom we have disclosed and/or shared it.
| Category of PI |
Personal and online identifiers (e.g., first and last name, email address (including hashed emails), or unique online identifiers) |
| Sources of PI |
Consumers, authorized third parties services and social media accounts you connect to Plex, service providers, content providers, advertisers on our Services |
| Purposes for collecting the PI |
Auditing related to our interactions with you; Legal compliance; Provide targeted advertising on our Services; Content delivery and recommendations; Detecting and protecting against security incidents, fraud, and illegal activity; Debugging; Performing services (for us or our service provider) such as account servicing, processing orders and payments, and analytics; Internal research for technological improvement; Internal operations; Activities to maintain and improve our services; and Other one-time uses |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is disclosed |
Content providers; service providers and vendors; third parties, such as social networks you connect to Plex and advertising partners; analytics providers; payment processors; and government entities |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is shared |
Advertising technology companies and advertisers |
| Category of PI |
Payment and billing information |
| Sources of PI |
Consumers, content providers |
| Purposes for collecting the PI |
Billing to provide Plex subscription services; payments to content providers |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is disclosed |
Payment processors and service providers |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is shared |
None |
| Category of PI |
Commercial or transactions information (e.g., records of services purchased, obtained, or considered) |
| Sources of PI |
Consumers, advertisers on our Services, service providers |
| Purposes for collecting the PI |
Auditing related to our interactions with you; Legal compliance; Provide targeted advertising on our Services, Content delivery and recommendations; Detecting and protecting against security incidents, fraud, and illegal activity; Debugging; Performing services (for us or our service provider) such as account servicing, processing orders and payments, and analytics; Internal research for technological improvement; Internal operations; Activities to maintain and improve our services; and Other one-time uses. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is disclosed |
Content providers; service providers and vendors; authorized third parties services and social media accounts you connect to Plex, advertising partners; analytics providers; payment processors; and government entities. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is shared |
Advertising technology companies and advertisers |
| Category of PI |
Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as interactions with a website, email, application, or advertisement) |
| Sources of PI |
Consumers, advertisers on our Services, third parties and social media you connect to Plex and advertising partners, service providers, and content providers |
| Purposes for collecting the PI |
Auditing related to our interactions with you; Legal compliance; Provide targeted advertising on our Services, Content delivery and recommendations; Detecting and protecting against security incidents, fraud, and illegal activity; Debugging; Performing services (for us or our service provider) such as account servicing, processing orders and payments, and analytics; Internal research for technological improvement; Internal operations; Activities to maintain and improve our services; and Other one-time uses. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is disclosed |
Content providers; service providers and vendors; third parties, such as social networks you connect to Plex and advertising partners; analytics providers; payment processors; and government entities. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is shared |
Advertising technology companies and advertisers |
| Category of PI |
Geolocation information (such as ZIP code) |
| Sources of PI |
Consumers, service providers |
| Purposes for collecting the PI |
Auditing related to our interactions with you; Legal compliance; Provide targeted advertising on our Services; Content delivery and recommendations; Detecting and protecting against security incidents, fraud, and illegal activity; Debugging; Performing services (for us or our service provider) such as account servicing, processing orders and payments, and analytics; Internal research for technological improvement; Internal operations; Activities to maintain and improve our services; and Other one-time uses. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is disclosed |
Content providers; service providers and vendors; third parties, such as social networks you connect to Plex and advertising partners; analytics providers; payment processors; and government entities. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is shared |
Advertising technology companies and advertisers. |
| Category of PI |
Inferences drawn from the above information about your predicted characteristics and preferences |
| Sources of PI |
Consumers, service providers, and content providers |
| Purposes for collecting the PI |
Auditing related to our interactions with you; Legal compliance; Provide targeted advertising on our Services; Content delivery and recommendations; Detecting and protecting against security incidents, fraud, and illegal activity; Debugging; Performing services (for us or our service provider) such as account servicing, processing orders and payments, and analytics; Internal research for technological improvement; Internal operations; Activities to maintain and improve our services; and Other one-time uses. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is disclosed |
Content providers; service providers and vendors; third parties, such as social networks you connect to Plex and advertising partners; analytics providers; payment processors; and government entities. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is shared |
None |
| Category of PI |
Other information about you that is linked to the personal information above (such as metadata about content you view, timestamps to allow playback, and data related to third party content) |
| Sources of PI |
Consumers, service providers, third parties and social media you connect to Plex, content providers, and advertisers on our Services |
| Purposes for collecting the PI |
Auditing related to our interactions with you; Legal compliance; Provide targeted advertising on our Services; Content delivery and recommendations; Detecting and protecting against security incidents, fraud, and illegal activity; Debugging; Performing services (for us or our service provider) such as account servicing, processing orders and payments, and analytics; Internal research for technological improvement; Internal operations; Activities to maintain and improve our services; and Other one-time uses. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is disclosed |
Content providers; service providers and vendors; third parties, such as social networks you connect to Plex and advertising partners; analytics providers; payment processors; and government entities. |
| Categories of third parties to whom the PI is shared |
Advertising technology companies and advertisers. |
Personal Data Retention. Plex will retain each category of Personal Data in accordance with applicable laws and as reasonably necessary for our processing purposes set forth under this Privacy Policy.
Your Rights Regarding Personal Data. Residents of Certain States have rights with respect to the Personal Data collected by businesses. You may exercise the following rights regarding your Personal Data, subject to certain exceptions and limitations:
- The right to confirm whether we process Personal Data about you.
- The right to correct inaccuracies in the Personal Data we have collected about you.
- The right to know the categories and specific pieces of Personal Data we collect, use, disclose, the categories of sources from which we collected your Personal Data, our purposes for collecting or selling your Personal Data, the categories of your Personal Data that we have disclosed for a business purpose, and the categories of third parties with which we have shared Personal Data;
- The right to request that we delete the Personal Data we have collected about you.
- The right to opt out of (i) the sharing of Personal Data for targeted advertising or (ii) the sale of Personal Data. Please note that if you opt out of certain practices, we may be unable to provide you with some services. Additionally, we do not knowingly sell or share Personal Data of individuals under 16.
- Depending on your state, the right to receive a portable and readily usable copy of the Personal Data we have collected about you, to the extent feasible.
- Depending on your state, the right to limit our processing of certain “sensitive” Personal Data (or to withdraw consent for such processing if you previously gave it).
- The right not to receive discriminatory treatment for the exercise of these privacy rights.
To exercise any of the above rights, please visit “Your Plex Privacy Rights”.
We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes other than as permitted under the CCPA.
We may require additional information to verify your requests to exercise your rights or understand the scope of your request. You will not be required to create an account with us to submit a request or have it fulfilled. If you do have an account, we will require you to submit your request from the email address associated with your account. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by submitting a request from the email associated with your account and providing the Plex username or email address of your agent.
If you have submitted a request that you feel we have not reasonably fulfilled, you may contact us to appeal our decision by emailing us.
Plex understands that you have personal content that you store using the Plex Media Server software (“Personal Content”).
Plex collects the following Personal Data from your Plex Media Server: email, IP address and username.
Plex does NOT share information about your Personal Content with third parties.
Plex does NOT collect:
- Content titles of your Personal Content.
- Filenames EXCEPT those that may be collected through optional crash reports.
- Metadata for Personal Content (e.g., information about the specific file, cover art, subtitles, running length, etc.) EXCEPT to customize viewed content syncing to enhance your account or if you have enabled metadata matching capabilities in which case such data will be anonymously sent to us or you have integrated with a third-party control or playback mechanism that requires us to access your metadata to play the relevant content (e.g., if you use Amazon Alexa to play a particular song or movie from your Personal Content, then our Services may search your Personal Content metadata in order to find and play the song or movie requested.)
- Data transferred through the Plex Relay Service. If you use the Plex Relay Service to connect or stream your Personal Content to another device, 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 the “Enable Relay” preference in the “Network” section of your Plex Media Server Settings.
Plex does collect:
- Configuration data. Information about your configuration or use of our Services when you create a Plex Media Server on a local device, connect to a Plex Media Server that you or another person have 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, the number of files, and information used to secure access to our Services.
- Activity data. Information about your activity as described in “What information does Plex collect about my activity on the Services?”
Certain activity information is either anonymized or made part of an aggregated set of information. This means that it cannot be linked to you. These activities are:
- TV program guide data:
- Zip codes and local television providers.
- Server / library data:
- DVR device information:
- Manufacturer name and model
