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Privacy Policy
Your privacy is of utmost importance to WiredKids.
Although the law doesn't cover not-for-profit organizations, we
believe strongly in protecting children's privacy and safety online
and strive to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act. Only children and teenagers who are WiredKids' volunteers may
use our WiredKids and Teens communities.
All those that belong to our Kids and Teens communities need the
permission of their parent or legal guardian before we let them
become members and provide information to us. Because we need your
consent before we can collect information from your children, we
have written this privacy policy to let you know what information
we collect, what we do with it, and how to give your permission.
If you want to contact us, our complete contact information is at
the end of the policy.
We do not collect more information from your children than is reasonably
necessary for them to participate in any activity at our site. Since
we are an Internet safety program, we believe that certain off-line
contact information for parents and their children is essential
for your child/teen to be a member of WiredKids/Teens. This information
includes a letter of good standing from their school (or substituted
proof from a home-schooled child) that helps us confirm that your
child is indeed a child, and registered in school.
While we usually oppose the collection of too much information
by a site, our collection of such information is key to the protection
and safety or your child while visiting our site and being a member
of WiredKids/Teens. Without it we cannot be assured that an adult
will not be posing as a child for admission. While we cannot guarantee
that adults will not infiltrate our programs, posing as a child,
we will be educating our members how to deal with adults online
and protect themselves online at all times.
Registration and Consent
In order for children to become members in either our Kids (under
13) or Teens/Teenangel online programs (13-18 year olds), we require
their parents or legal guardians to send us a completed application.
The form is available at the wiredkids.org site, wiredkidz.org site
or at the wiredteens.org site, and prints out with a copy of this
privacy policy.
The application asks the parent for the parent's contact information
(name, mailing address, telephone number, emergency telephone number,
e-mail address), and the child's full name, online nickname, e-mail
address, school, gender, grade and birthdate. Both the parent or
legal guardian and the child/teen must sign the application after
reading and agreeing to the Code of Conduct.
In order for a parent to give consent, simply print out the parental
consent/application form, fill it out, sign it and mail it (together
with a letter of good standing from your child's school) to: Wiredkids Inc.
P.O. Box 3803
Jersey City, NJ 07303
U.S.A.
If your child is being homeschooled, please contact wkdirector@wiredsafety.org
to find a substitution for the school good standing letter. We may
also in the future permit parents to fax the consent/application
to use, together with the letter from the school. We will provide
a fax number for this purpose if and when we offer this option.
Once we have received the consent and necessary documents, your
child's membership will be activated. Your child will be known at
our site by his or her special WiredKids or Teens online nickname,
which will not be permitted to contain their real name or any personally
identifiable information.
Features/Activities
Community Features
At our Kids and Teens members sites, we offer several features
where the children can communicate with each other and with adult
members of WiredKids or WiredSafety and guests we provide from time
to time to teach the members of WiredKids about different issues.
At our chat, message boards, forums, and other community features,
children can participate in discussions and online communications
with all other members and these adults. As with all chat rooms
and online discussion groups, children may disclose personal information
about themselves with their e-mail and chat correspondents and in
the discussion forums. That's why we advise all users to practice
safe computing and urge parents to advise their children not to
give out any personal information without their consent.
We provide training on online safety and privacy as part of our
WiredKids/Teens program to all members. Our service provides adult
monitoring for many of these activities, but it is no substitute
for parental guidance and supervision. WiredKids/Teens is all about
safe and responsible surfing, and we will do everything we can to
make sure that your child's online activities at WiredKids/Teens
are rewarding and safe.
Profiles
We may offer the opportunity for our members to share limited information
about themselves, such as hobbies and interests, with other members.
We reserve the right to limit the kinds of information they may
share with others, but your consenting to their membership, means
you consent to their use of an online profile, which may contain
information about where they live, their school, sports teams and
other information which, taken with information they may provide
in chat or via other interactive communications, allow people to
have access to personally identifiable information about your child.
Submissions
We sometimes solicit or accept submissions from our children members,
such as movie reviews, some of which may be posted at our sites.
Such submissions may be made online or off-line We will retain all
the information submitted to us. If personal information is contained
in the submission, it may be posted, although we will endeavor to
screen it out. All rights in or to any reviews, artwork or other
submissions they provide to us become the property of WiredKids.
Newsletters, Contests and Surveys
We may offer members the opportunity to sign-up for newsletters
or enter contests at our site, and may collect name, e-mail and
mailing address for those purposes. We may also occasionally conduct
surveys at the site that may ask for personally identifiable information
about your child, their activities and preferences. This will not
be shared with third parties, other than affiliated not -for-profits,
such as WiredSafety, or academic institutions with which we are
conducting the survey for statistical and other purposes relating
to any studies conducted. In addition, each of our newsletters will
come with instructions on how to remove your child's address from
our mailing list. One newsletter is sent to all members, and your
child may not be removed from this list while remaining a member.
It is the way we contact our members and provide ongoing education
and information to them about WiredKids and affiliated programs
on online safety.
Additional newsletters may be offered to third parties who are
not members of WiredKids/Teens or Cyberangels. Parents will be notified
that their child, under the age of thirteen, has signed up for such
a newsletter and provided with both membership information about
WiredKids/Teens and the ability to deregister their child from the
newsletter list.
PARENTAL REVIEW OF INFORMATION
Parents can review what information we have on file about their
child at any time. If a child resigns or leaves WiredKidz/Teens
for any purpose, this information is retained by WiredKids for our
security purposes and to preserve the integrity of our membership
records, but will not be shared with third parties, except in accordance
with applicable legal
process.
Other Data collection
For our internal purposes, we gather date, time, browser type and
IP address of all visitors to our site. We keep this information
simply for our internal security audit log. Many of the interactive
programs work by using cookies that identify the IP address of the
poster. This is for security purposes only, and will not be shared
with third parties, except as necessary to keep the children, teens,
members and site itself secure.
We reserve the right to use cookies, or other usage tracking technology
to see how the children/teens use the site in order to provide better
services and a better designed surfing experience for them. We also
log their attendance at certain events and classes.
USE and SHARING
We may use the information we collect from you and your children
for our internal purposes, such as making sure that children have
attended the requisite classes, reviewed information we deem important
for their WiredKids membership activities, and for conducting reviews,
studies and surveys on how children and teens use the Internet,
communicate and other related topics.
We do not share your children's personal information with other
companies (other than our not-for-profit affiliates which may be
working with us in a certain area), apart from those acting as our
agents in providing our service to you, who agree to use it only
for that purpose and to keep the information secure and confidential.
Those agents may include the supplier of chat software or monitoring
technology, e-mail service providers and the like. Any chat or e-mail
technology service provider may keep records for their security
purposes, or logs or certain activities for security purposes only,
and may not share that information with third parties.
Also, WiredSafety, cyberlawenforcement.com, entities into which
our company is merged, or to which our assets or our site has been
transferred, will be able to use your personal information under
the terms of this privacy policy. We will also disclose information
we maintain when required to do so by law, for example, in response
to a court order or a subpoena or other legal obligation. We also
may disclose such information in response to a law enforcement agency's
request. You should also be aware that courts of equity, such as
US Bankruptcy Courts, may have the authority under certain circumstances
to permit your information to be shared or transferred to third
parties.
We may share aggregate information, which is not personally identifiable,
with third parties to help them better understand our services.
We also internally use similar aggregate information to give us
demographic information about our audience in order to improve our
service.
Links To Other Sites
We may also link to other sites. While we attempt to review those
sites to make sure that they are appropriate for your child, sites
may change hands or practices and content and we are not responsible
for the privacy practices of those other sites, and we advise you
to check their privacy policies as well. We teach our members to
be very careful about what information they share with anyone online
and how to review a privacy policy.
Security
We protect the confidentiality, security and integrity of the personal
information we collect. This information is maintained on secure
servers and is only accessible to qualified WiredKids/WiredSafety
personnel who require this information.
Special Rules For Special Programs
We may have special programs at our site where we permit children
to submit e-mails to us without having to be members and without
prior parental consent. Among those programs are the E-mail
to America Program.
In those cases, we collect identifying information from children,
such as their e-mail address, country or state, age and name. We
maintain this information for security purposes and in the event
that we need to reach the child. This information is not shared
with third parties, unless we need to do so for the safety and well-being
of the child (such as to law enforcement, if the child indicates
that they are at risk).
If their communication is going to be posted or forwarded to others,
we endeavor to delete all personally identifying information from
the e-mail before posting or further transmission. Only the first
name, state or country and the child's age is shared at the site
along with their post.
As you know, we are a non-profit organization, and the provisions
of COPPA do not apply to nonprofit entities. However, as one of
the leading online privacy and safety programs in the world, we
put your child's safety and privacy first, and adhere to the spirit
of COPPA and the protection of your children from marketing schemes
and predators.
All WiredPatrol Kids and WiredKids and Teens must obtain parents'
off-line consent or other verifiable consent before joining, and
must get their schools letter of good standing as well.
If you have any questions about our children's privacy practices,
please feel free to contact us at: Wiredkids Inc.
P.O. Box 3803
Jersey City, NJ 07303
U.S.A.
Thank you,
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