LAST UPDATED: January 20, 2012

ADVOCATES FOR CHILDREN OF NEW YORK PRIVACY POLICY

Advocates for Children of New York ("AFC," "we," "us", “our”) provides a variety of services, making it easier for parents, guardians and other interested individuals and organizations to find out about New York City's public schools and school system, obtain general information on their legal rights in the New York City public school system, and voice their opinions.

We share your concerns about the protection of your personal information online and want you to be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose information.  This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we collect through the website owned and controlled by us from which you are accessing this Privacy Policy (the “Site”).  By using this Site or providing Personal Information to us, you agree to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy.

UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may change this Privacy Policy in the future.  Please take a look at the “Last Updated” legend at the top of this page to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised.  Any changes to this Privacy Policy will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Site.  Your use of the Site following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Personal Information We May Collect 

“Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual, such as:

• Name
• Postal address (including billing and shipping addresses)
• Telephone number
• Email address

You do not have to provide Personal Information to visit or use the Site in general.  AFC collects your Personal Information only when you voluntarily provide it to us on our Site.  However, you may need to provide Personal Information to participate in certain AFC programs and activities or receive certain services or offers.

Donations.  We use third-party service providers to collect donations made through the Site (each such service provider, a “Donation Collector”).  If you wish to make a donation through the Site, you will be directed to a web page hosted by a Donation Collector and not by AFC.  Any Personal Information that you provide through a Donation Collector Page will be collected by the applicable Donation Collector and not by us, and will be subject to the Donation Collector’s privacy policy, rather than this Policy.  AFC has no control over, and is not responsible for, any Donation Collector’s use of information collected through a Donation Collector Page.

How We Use Personal Information

We may use Personal Information:

• To respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests, such as to send you newsletters or emails, allow you to complete surveys, or register you as a member.
• To send you important information regarding the Site, changes to our terms, conditions, and policies and/or other administrative information. 
• To enable you to make donations.
• To allow you to submit comments.
• To send you email updates about issues relevant to our organization.
• To help us improve our services, such as data analysis, audits, developing new services, enhancing our website, identifying usage trends and determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns. 
• As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

How Personal Information is Disclosed

Your Personal Information may be disclosed:

• To our third party service providers who provide services such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, order fulfillment, infrastructure provision, IT services, legal services, customer service, email delivery services, credit card processing, auditing services and other similar services to enable them to provide services. 
• When you post information on message boards, chat, profile pages and blogs and other services to which you are able to post information and materials.  Please note that any information and materials that you post or disclose through these services will become public information, and may be available to visitors to the Site and to the general public.  We urge you to be very careful when deciding to disclose your Personal Information, or any other information, on the Site.
• To a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our organization or assets (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).
• As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

OTHER INFORMATION

Other Information We May Collect

“Other Information” is any information that does not reveal your specific identity, such as:

• Browser information
• Server log files
• Information collected through cookies, pixel tags and other technologies
• Demographic information and other information provided by you
• Aggregated information

How We Collect Other Information

We and our third party service providers may collect Other Information in a variety of ways, including: 

• Through your browser:  Certain information is collected by most browsers, such as your Media Access Control (MAC) address, computer type (Windows or Macintosh), screen resolution, operating system version and Internet browser type and version.
• Through server log files:  An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a number that is automatically assigned to the computer that you are using by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), and is identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user visits the Site, along with the time of the visit and the page(s) that were visited.  We use IP addresses for purposes such as calculating Site usage levels, helping diagnose server problems, and administering the Site. 
• Using cookies:  Cookies allow a web server to transfer data to a computer for recordkeeping and other purposes.  We and our service providers use cookies and other technologies to, among other things, better serve you with more tailored information and facilitate your ongoing access to and use of the Site, as well as for online tracking purposes.  If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to decline the use of cookies.  To learn more about cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.  If you choose to decline cookies, some or all of the features, functionality and promotions available through the Site may not be available to you. 
• Using pixel tags and other similar technologies:  Pixel tags (also known as web beacons and clear GIFs) may be used in connection with some Site pages and HTML-formatted email messages to, among other things, track the actions of Site users and email recipients, measure the success of our marketing campaigns and compile statistics about Site usage and response rates. 
• From you:  We may collect demographic information such as your location, as well as other information, such as your preferred means of communication, when you voluntarily provide this information to us.  Unless combined with Personal Information, this information does not personally identify you or any other user of the Site.
• By aggregating information:  We may aggregate Personal Information so that the end-product does not personally identify you or any other user of the Site, for example, by using Personal Information to calculate the percentage of our users who have a particular telephone area code.  Aggregated Personal Information does not personally identify you or any other user of the Site.

How We Use and Disclose Other Information

Because Other Information does not personally identify you, we may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose.  In some instances, we may combine Other Information with Personal Information (such as combining your name with your zip code).  If we combine any Other Information with Personal Information, the combined information will be treated by us as Personal Information as long as it is combined.

THIRD PARTY SITES

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any site to which this Site contains a link.  The inclusion of a link on the Site does not imply endorsement of the linked site by us.

SECURITY

We use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures to protect Personal Information under our control.  Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or data storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.  If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (for example, if you feel that the security of any account you might have with us has been compromised), please immediately notify us of the problem by contacting us in accordance with the “Contacting Us” section below.

CHOICES AND ACCESS

Your choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information

We give you many choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information for marketing purposes.  If you no longer want to receive update emails from us on a going-forward basis, you may opt-out of receiving these emails by contacting us at the email or postal address listed in the “Contacting Us” section below.  We will try to comply with your request(s) as soon as reasonably practicable. 

How you can access or change your Personal Information

If you would like to review or update your Personal Information that has been previously provided to us, you may contact us at the address listed in the Contacting Us section.  In your request, please make clear what information you would like to have changed.  We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. 

USE OF SITE BY MINORS

The Site is not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and we request that these individuals not provide Personal Information through the Site. 

JURISDICTIONAL ISSUES

The Site is controlled and operated by us from the United States, and is not intended to subject us to the laws or jurisdiction of any state, country or territory other than that of the United States.

CONTACTING US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us by email at info@advocatesforchildren.org or please write to the following address:

151 West 30th Street,

5th Floor

New York, NY 10001

Please note that email communications are not always secure; so please do not include credit card information or other sensitive information in your email messages to us.