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What is PBS Account?

PBS account provides a way for you to establish a unique PBS profile and maintain a singular identity across all PBS ecosystems. PBS account may be used to access PBS products like Bento and Media Manager.

Maintaining user and brand trust is vitally important.  Because PBS Account collects, stores, and maintains personally identifiable information about our users, PBS Digital has created a PBS Account FAQ page and special Terms of Service agreement to which producers must agree and follow.

More information

Users are required to provide their first name, last name, email address, and a nickname when signing up. In the future, additional fields may be added such as localization and demographic information. If you opt to sign in with Apple and hide your identity, PBS collects the "dummy" email address that Apple provides as well as whatever first and last name you enter when linking your Apple and PBS accounts.  


All user information is securely stored in PBS databases.


Only select PBS staffers will have full access to the personally identifiable information, and only for purposes of maintaining and supporting the service. Stations and program producers will have access only to the information of users who explicitly register or signs in from their site. For example, a user registers for a PBS account from their local member station website.  That user’s information will now be accessible by said station. If that same user then visits a program site on PBS.org and logs in, that program's producer will now also have access to the user’s information. Stations and program producers will not be able to query PBS Account for user information except upon user-initiated action, such as registering or logging in to a station or producer site, nor will PBS “push” user information to the station or producer site.


The PBS Privacy Policy says, among other things:

Except as expressly set forth in our policies, we will not willfully disclose your personally identifiable information to any third party without first receiving your permission. We will never sell, rent, or swap your personally identifiable information with non-affiliated third parties for their own purposes.

This statement remains true; users will be informed upon signing up for a PBS account that we will be sharing their information with their local member station and/or producer sites that they visit.

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