Online Privacy Statement

Effective: January 28, 2010.

Welcome to k2kusa.org, we hope you and your family enjoy your experience at k2kusa.org. To do so, you will need to follow some rules when using the k2kusa.org website operated by Save the Children. Click here to read the Terms of Use (The Rules). If you are under 18, please be sure to read Privacy Statement with your parents or legal guardians and ask questions about things you do not understand. REMEMBER: you shouldn’t give out personal information about yourself, your family or friends at this or any other website without first talking to a parent or legal guardian.

k2kusa.org is a teen focused initiative of Save the Children Federation, Inc. (a tax-exempt charity based in the State of Connecticut, USA). Because Save the Children is committed to protecting your online privacy when visiting or using the k2kusa.org website, we do not intentionally collect and use personal information about you, except in the limited circumstances we discuss below. The privacy rules at the Save the Children website (www.savethechildren.org) are different, and personal information collected at that website may be shared with others. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18, YOU SHOULD NOT PROVIDE ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION AT THE www.savethechildren.org WEBSITE. PLEASE TALK TO A PARENT OR LEGAL GUARDIAN FIRST.

Use of the k2kusa.org site signifies your acceptance of the terms and conditions of this Privacy Statement (and if you don’t understand or agree with these terms, you should talk to a parent or legal guardian before using the k2kusa.org website). We may change this statement and the terms and conditions from time to time. When this happens we will let you know by posting the new terms on this website.

Save the Children operates the k2kusa.org website and the servers that make the website available from the United States. So, when you use the website, you are permitting Save the Children to transfer, collect, process and use the data and information in the United States.

A note to parents and legal guardians: We want your children to enjoy their experience at k2kusa.org. Save the Children will not intentionally collect or share children’s personal information (except as noted below). But that only gets us part of the way to a safe and happy online experience for your children. Please spend time online with your children and monitor their online activities. Also, you should be sure they understand that they should not provide personal information on this or any other website without your permission.

1. What does Save the Children mean when we talk about collecting “personal information”? Generally, we mean information that allows us to identify you as an individual, like your first and last names, postal address and/or e-mail address and phone number. We don’t ask you for personal information in order to visit and use the k2kusa.org website. Without consent from a parent or legal guardian, we are generally prohibited from asking children to provide more personal information than reasonably necessary to participate in a particular activity on the website or to respond to an inquiry.

2. Does Save the Children collect personal information about me at the k2kusa.org website? The k2kusa.org website doesn’t require personal information about you to visit and participate at the k2kusa.org website. We may sometimes ask for a first name or “screen name” (but not a real name) in order to publish a message or share a thought in an anonymous manner on the k2kusa.org website (for example, if you want to post a comment to the k2kusa.org blog we don’t want you to use your full name or an email address because someone might be able to identify you). However, there may be special, limited circumstances in which we ask for personal information at k2kusa.org without first obtaining consent of a parent or legal guardian.

3. What are the “special, limited circumstances” in which Save the Children will collect personal information from me without prior consent from a parent or legal guardian? In the following special, limited circumstance, we may collect personal information, but we will follow the steps described here:

If we receive a request or a question through our k2kusa.org website, we will keep the email address long enough to respond. Save the Children will delete the email address from its system after we answer their question. We will usually delete email addresses within 14 days of our response to you, but sometimes, if there are technical problems, it may take a little longer.

4. Who should my parent or legal guardian contact if they have questions about the information collected by Save the Children? Any questions or concerns should be addressed to:

K2KUSA.ORG Administrator
Save the Children
2000 L Street, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036
k2kusaAdmin@savechildren.org
1-800-728-3843 (Monday-Friday, 9 am–5 pm Eastern time)

5. How does Save the Children use the personal Information it collects? If Save the Children collects any personal information as described at Section 3, above, Save the Children will use the information to respond to an inquiry or request. For instance, if you have sent us an email asking a question, we will use your email address to answer the question.

6. Will Save the Children share the personal information provided through the k2kusa.org website with others? Except in specific circumstances, or where we have obtained separate permission from a parent or legal guardian, Save the Children will not share your personal information with anyone outside of Save the Children.

If Save the Children has collected your email address as discussed at Section 3, we may provide certain other companies and organizations with access to the temporarily stored personal information. These specific circumstances include:

• If Save the Children hires companies and other organizations or individuals to provide the following kinds of services and support to the k2kusa.org initiative: database or server maintenance or security, help process and fulfill inquiries or requests, or other similar services. If we do provide access, we require these other companies to protect the privacy of any personal information they handle and to adhere to industry-accepted practices to keep personal information safe. For example, we ask them to sign confidentiality agreements promising, except under very limited circumstances, to keep secret any information they see.
• If Save the Children believes that anyone's behavior on the k2kusa.org website may damage or hurt us or the k2kusa.org site, or may harm any other person, we may disclose personal information in order to prevent this harm. In which case, we might try to identify the wrongdoer, contact them, bring legal action against them or notify a law enforcement agency. We may also disclose personal information in our possession if we believe that the disclosure is required by law, or in response to a legal request, such as a subpoena.
• If Save the Children is taken over by another company (a merger) or sells its k2kusa.org website to another company (a sale of assets) or if we reorganize ourselves and become another organization; in other words, if a company takes over the operation of the k2kusa.org website, we may transfer any personal information in our possession at that time to this new entity. 

7. Does Save the Children use cookies, pixels and other data collection technology at the k2kusa.org website? Yes we do use cookies, but only as described here:

• A "cookie" is a small piece of data that is sent to your computer’s browser from the k2kusa.org web-server and is stored on your computer's hard drive. Cookies are used to collect non-personal information about you, but they don’t tell us your real name or how to contact you. Cookies help you participate in some activities or events on the site, for instance, they give you faster access to pages you have already visited and they allow us to manage our website offerings. Cookies also help us figure out how many people visit the k2kusa.org website, which of the pages they stop at and how long they stay there. This information helps us figure out which of the website features are popular and which might need some adjustment. Save the Children uses two different types of cookies—session-based and persistent cookies. Session-based cookies expire at the end of a browser session so once you close your browser the cookie simply terminates. Persistent cookies remain on your computer until you remove them. Persistent cookies are used to provide internal analysis of website functions. You may manually delete all cookies including persistent ones using the privacy functions in your browser.
• In addition, Save the Children uses "pixels," or transparent GIF files, to help manage online activities, such as knowing when an email has been opened. These pixels do not collect personal information.
• For administrative purposes, we collect IP addresses, which is the automatic number assigned to your computer when you surf the Web. Internet Service Providers may assign the same IP address to many users or they may be unique. The IP address allows us to count the total number of "hits" on our sites. However, the IP address is not supposed to be connected to any personally identifiable or online contact information like a name and address, so you and your family remain anonymous.

8. Does Save the Children ever collect information about me without me knowing? Save the Children will only collect the personal information you volunteer to give us (or a parent or legal guardian specifically provides), and we collect non-personal information through cookies, pixels and IP addresses, as described above. Save the Children doesn't use cookies for direct marketing or promotional purposes. However, some companies that link to our website may, so please keep reading (we’re almost to the end).

9. Do any other companies that have links at the k2kusa.org website use cookies to collect information about me? Except for the website www.savethechildren.org, Save the Children does not own or control the third-party websites to which you might link from k2kusa.org (like Facebook or MySpace). These other companies may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser (in addition to the cookies we talked about above). Some of these companies may use cookies that collect non-personal information about your visits to their websites. If you go to websites operated by a company other than Save the Children, we are not responsible for the content or practices at that website. You should always read the privacy policies posted at a website BEFORE you use the services or participate in activities at that website.

If you have any questions about k2kusa.org or Save the Children, please don't hesitate to contact us! Enjoy yourself at k2kusa.org, and remember, be careful about the information you share with us and others online!