What's on your mind?
Hao, 9; Sichuan, China
Hao survived the terrible earthquake in May, then risked his life....
Online Privacy Policy
Half the Sky Foundation is committed to protecting the online privacy and safety of all of our website users. Our website is located at www.halfthesky.org. Anyone can visit our website. It is free and registration is not required. In some areas of the site, including Give Me Wings (http://gmw.halfthesky.org/), however, we ask under-aged users to obtain their parent's permission.
Half the Sky follows the FTC guidelines for compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). No personal information provided to halfthesky.org is sold or rented to any third parties.
At halfthesky.org, we believe in the power of children, and we urge both children and their parents to use and enjoy our website. While we encourage the interactive nature of online media, we hope to educate children and parents on how to safeguard their privacy when using the Internet. Children should check with their parents/guardians before entering information on this or any other website. Our information collection practices are described below.
What Information Is Collected?Half the Sky’s policy is to feature website content that is interesting to children all over the world, but does not require visitors to give their addresses, phone numbers, or last names. We ask children to send in their first name, province/state, and country as well as their age so that the children who visit the site know that there are children all over the world who, like them, want to help other children. We may also request a child’s email address and the email address of a parent/guardian in order to conduct online contests or offer other online activities. However, we require only limited information that makes the child’s participation in the activity possible. We also provide children with guidelines for posting in “From You,” a journal for kids, and we only display posts that follow all the rules published on the site.
Here is a list that includes (but is not limited to) what is considered inappropriate on our site:
1. Last names
2. Mailing addresses
3. Cities
4. Zip codes
5. Phone numbers
6 Disrespectful language
7. Topics any reasonable adult would consider inappropriate for children aged 7 to 14, the target age group for the Give Me Wings website.
The following practices are prohibited and will result in a user being banned from posting on halfthesky.org:
1. Profanity or vulgarity of any kind
2. Copying other comments to publish as the participant’s own
3. Plagiarizing content created by other people (including songs, poems, stories, videos, etc.)
4. Excessive use of capitals letters when typing (shouting)
At halfthesky.org, our moderators—Half the Sky employees as well as trusted members of the community — follow our zero-tolerance policy regarding swearing and obscenities, messages and content of a sexual or violent nature, and any sort of aggressive or threatening communication. If an incident does occur, the offending participant will be permanently expelled from the site.
Use of InformationAt halfthesky.org we use or may use emails that children provide for such purposes as conducting contests and responding to questions. We do not disclose email addresses or any other personally identifiable information to third parties, except that we may disclose personally identifiable information to a third party to comply with a law or a request by a law enforcement agency in order to enforce our Web Site Terms and Conditions and protect the rights, property or safety of our website, users of our website, and others.
ContestsOccasionally we will offer contests that may be entered online. Our contests are open to children who provide us with a parent’s email addresses and their own email address if they have one. All the information we collect is securely maintained.
Cookies and Log DataA "cookie" is a small information file that a web browser places on the hard drive of a computer when users visit a website. Cookies cannot damage user files, nor can they read information from a user's hard drive. Cookies allow websites to "remember" users’ activities on a website as well as the number of users’ visits to a site.
At halfthesky.org, cookies are used to determine the number of unique visitors to our website over a given period and to recognize a browser so that we can help users access information. We do not store any personal information via cookies, nor do we link or combine information collected through cookies to any personal information that children submit online when participating in our activities. Children or their parents can disable cookies on their computer by indicating this in the preferences or options menus of their browser.
Log data collected on web servers within halfthesky.org’s control supply us with aggregate information about the number of visits to different pages on our site. We use such aggregate information to improve access to our content, factoring in our visitors' browsers and operating system types to make our content available to as many children as possible. We do not link the log data collected to the personal information that children submit online when participating in our activities.
Parental Access and Certain DisclosuresWhile we make every effort to make each child's visit to halfthesky.org safe and enjoyable, we encourage parents to monitor their child's online use and to help us protect children's privacy by instructing them never to provide personal information on this or any other website without parental permission.
We might receive an e-mail address from an under-aged child without parental consent, but only if a child sends a specific request to us. We keep these e-mail addresses long enough to respond, and then delete the information unless the child provides a parent’s email address as well.
We will have special site activities like contests that are open to children 14 and under. In these activities, we do not ask for more information from the child than what is necessary for the child to participate in the activity and we require that the child provide a parent’s e-mail address so that we can tell the parent that the child has registered for an online activity. If we need more than an e-mail address to enter the child in the activity, we will notify the parent, explain what information we need and why, and ask that the adult provide it. For instance, we might ask a parent for a mailing address so that we can send a prize, or for a telephone number so that we can tell the parent when the child has won.
After proper identification, parents may review the personal information we have collected about their child, request deletion, or refuse to allow further collection or use by sending us a written request to our contact address listed at the end of this policy. If a parent asks us to delete her/his child's first name, age and state/province/country, we will comply and the child will be no longer able to participate in our website’s activities. We reserve the right not to release information to a parent or comply with a parent’s request if law enforcement or other authorities conclude that doing so could endanger the child.
Please note that children occasionally tell us things that they wouldn't tell other adults. In certain circumstances, if we deem it appropriate, we may send a special email to the parent’s address provided by a child suggesting that the child contact a children's help line or similar agency. If the circumstances appear to us to be dangerous, extreme or unlawful, we may contact appropriate law enforcement or other authorities and provide as much information as possible to aid such authorities - including any personally identifiable information we have.
Security We have taken steps to ensure that personally identifiable information collected is secure.
We may provide links to other websites that may have their own information collection practices. These other websites are governed by their own privacy policies or information collection practices, which may be substantially different from ours. We encourage visitors to other websites to review the privacy policies and information collection practices of those websites.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding our privacy policy and/or practices, please email us at:
Or contact us at:
Half the Sky Foundation
740 Gilman Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
Phone: 510-525-3377
Fax: 510-525-3611