Discovery Girls

A NOTE TO GIRLS

Discovery Girls wants you to have fun while visiting our website, but we're also very concerned about your privacy and safety online. For this reason, it is very important that you share the following message with your parents. Please get your parent's permission before e-mailing us or sending us by mail any personal information. –The Discovery Girls Staff

FOR PARENTS

We are very committed to protecting your child's privacy and providing a safe, fun online experience. We adhere to the rules and regulations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (also known as COPPA). We encourage you to monitor your child's activities online and instruct them never to provide personal information on this or any other site without your permission. If you have any questions about COPPA, please visit the Federal Trade Commission site at http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm#except.

About Us

Discovery Girls is a bi-monthly, national print magazine and website for girls ages 8 to 12. Discovery Girls is unique: as a magazine created "by girls, for girls," we are in close touch with many of our readers. For each issue of Discovery Girls, we travel to a different area of the country to work with 12 "Discovery Girls"--girls we've chosen from among those who have completed our questionnaire (which is available online--Be a DG Star). Our Discovery Girls model clothes and hairstyles for us, write articles, and help us brainstorm ideas for the magazine. We also offer many opportunities for our readers to contribute to the magazine through contests and features such as The Great Debate (a forum for girls to express their opinions on a variety of topics), Matters of the Heart, Embarrassing Moments, and The Worst Day, among others. We work hard to ensure that the girls who contribute to the magazine do so with full parental knowledge and consent. We hope this Privacy Policy will answer any questions you might have about how we collect and use information your child may send us online. If you have any questions, please contact us at: Discovery Girls PO Box 110760 Campbell, e-mail: privacy@discoverygirls.com

What Information Do We Collect From Your Child Online and How Do We Use It?

It is not necessary for a girl to provide any personal information in order to use and enjoy the Discovery Girls website. However, a child may contact us via e-mail through many of the pages on our site: Contact Us Page: Anyone may contact our editorial department and advertising department via e-mail links on our Contact Us page. We do try to respond to these e-mails whenever possible (as time permits) when they contain a specific question. Once the question has been answered, the e-mail is deleted. E-mails to the various magazine departments (Embarrassing Moments, The Great Debate, Ask Ali, Matters of the Heart, The Worst Day, Mailbag) are handled as outlined below. Ask Ali and Health + Beauty (also called "You Sparkle!" or "Your Body" in various issues): Ask Ali and Health + Beauty are advice columns that run in every issue of the magazine (Health + Beauty was introduced in the April/May 2008 issue). We do not respond to questions for either column individually, but we do answer some of the girls' letters in the magazine itself. (The questions published in the magazine do not include any personally identifying information.) The e-mail address for "Ali" (ali@discoverygirls.com) and "Health + Beauty" (hb@discoverygirls.com) are also published in each issue, along with our postal mail address. Embarrassing Moments: We publish a collection of embarrassing moments in each issue of the magazine. The e-mail address for embarrassing moments (emoments@discoverygirls.com) is also published in each issue of the magazine, along with the postal address. We do not save or store e-mail addresses we have collected through these departments. Letters to Ask Ali, Health + Beauty, and Embarrassing Moments may be saved for possible publication, but the e-mail addresses are deleted before storing. Ask Ali letters and Embarrassing Moments are published anonymously. Online Contests: We occasionally run online contests or giveaways of products supplied by our sponsors. In order to enter, a child must submit her e-mail address and her parent's or guardian's e-mail address via an entry form on our web site. We use the parent's or guardian's e-mail addresses to contact the parent or guardian for the sole purpose of notifying him or her that the child has won a prize, and to obtain permission to send the prize. If the child has only provided her own e-mail address, we may use it to notify her that she has been chosen as a winner and to ask for her parent's or guardian's e-mail address in order to notify the parent or guardian and obtain permission to send the prize. Once the contest has ended, all entries are deleted. They are not stored or saved for any purpose. We also run contests in the magazine that girls can enter online as well as via postal mail. In order to enter, a child must submit her name, e-mail address and/or her parent's or guardian's e-mail address, address and phone number, and a photo of herself, and answer several questions about herself and her interests, such as "What do you dream of becoming in the future?" The prize for these contests is generally a chance to featured in the magazine. We use the child's contact information for the sole purpose of notifying her and her parents that the child has won the contest, and to obtain the necessary releases. If the child has only provided her own e-mail address, we may use it to notify her that she has been chosen as a winner and to ask for her parent's or guardian's e-mail address in order to notify the parent or guardian. Once the contest has ended, all entries are deleted. They are not stored or saved for any purpose. Girls may also e-mail us with submissions for various sections of the magazine: The Worst Day: The Worst Day, a feature that appears in every issue of the magazine, is a first-person account of a difficult or painful situation a girl has been through. Girls may submit their own The Worst Day stories through the web site, or by e-mailing us at worstday@discoverygirls.com. The Great Debate: The Great Debate, published in each issue of the magazine, is a forum for girls to express their opinions on various topics. The e-mail address for The Great Debate (greatdebate@discoverygirls.com) is published in each issue along with our postal address. Matters of the Heart: Matters of the Heart, published in each issue of the magazine, is a forum for girls to give each other advice. The e-mail address for Matters of the Heart (moh@discoverygirls.com) is published in each issue along with our postal address. Mailbag: Mailbag features letters to the editor and appears in each issue of the magazine. The e-mail address for Mailbag (mailbag@discoverygirls.com) is published in each issue along with our postal address. If we wish to use a submission to one of these departments and want to correspond with the child more than once, we send a notice to the child's parents via e-mail or postal mail informing them of their child's correspondence with Discovery Girls and requesting that they let us know immediately if they do not want us to correspond with their child. We do not use any personal information submitted by a child with her submission (such as full name, address, and e-mail) for any purpose other than corresponding with her regarding the idea or submission. If we publish a child's submission in the magazine, she is identified only by first name, age, and state. If we publish a submission on the web site, she is identified by screen name or first name. If supplied, we may also publish her age and/or state, but this information is not required. Your child's participation in any online activities is in no way conditioned upon providing any personal information beyond that which is absolutely necessary to participate in those events/activities. We do require that a parent's e-mail address be given at the time of registration so that we may notify the parent that their child has registered to the site. This e-mail address is only used for notifying the parent of the status of their child's account or if we feel that they need to be contacted regarding the safety of their child. We do ask for non-personally identifiable information such as age, state, hobbies, and interests to improve site offerings to our users. This information is shared with third parties, if at all, only in an aggregate manner (for example, 67% of girls in Georgia prefer corn flakes to raisin bran cereal).

Can You Review or Delete Personal Information Your Child Has Submitted?

You may review the information we have on file for your child, and you may request that personal information about your child be deleted from our files. To do so, you must first provide us information to verify your identity as the child's parent or legal guardian. Please send a written and signed request with your child's name and e-mail via postal mail to Discovery Girls, P.O. Box 110760, Campbell, CA, 95011.

Does Discovery Girls Use Cookies or Collect Other Information Automatically?

A cookie is a small file that is saved on a user's computer hard drive and that contains non-personal information that can help to speed the loading of pages, keep track of purchases if you are shopping online, or otherwise make web-surfing easier. Cookies help us determine how many people visit our site, which of our web pages are viewed the most often, and how much time people spend on our various web pages. This information helps us determine which of our web features are successful and which need improvement. We also record IP addresses for the sole purpose of improving the function of our polls and comments features. (An IP address is the number assigned to your computer when you surf the web.) The information that we collect through cookies and IP addresses is anonymous and not personally identifiable.

You Should Also Know...

We regularly post opinion polls or ask girls to submit their comments on a variety of subjects online. In these cases, we do not require personal information to participate. If we publish a child's comments on the web site, we may also publish her first name or screen name, her age, and/or her state. Before any comments are posted to our web site, they are reviewed by an editor and all personally identifiable information is deleted. Several pages on our site offer girls the option of e-mailing the page to a friend. E-mail addresses collected through this feature are not saved or stored for any purpose. We do provide links on our website to a few companies that we feel may be of interest to you or your child. Although we do review and pre-approve these sites, the content of any website may change from day to day, and we are not able to review every site we link to every day. Please be aware that when you visit these sites you are leaving the Discovery Girls website, and we strongly recommend that you review the Privacy Policies of these sites, including their information collection practices--and, for that matter, any sites you or your child choose to visit. Only those employees who need access to our users' information in order to do their jobs are allowed access.

What Information Does Discovery Girls Collect From Adults Who Purchase a Subscription Online and How Is It Used?

Customers must be over age 18 and must use a valid credit card or other valid payment method accepted by Discovery Girls to purchase subscriptions or other products online. When a customer places an order, we collect information needed to complete the transaction, such as the customer's name, mailing address, shipping addresses, and credit card information. Discovery Girls will only share your e-mail address with companies outside Discovery Girls Inc. for direct marketing purposes if you have given your prior consent. When you place a subscription order, you are offered the opportunity to choose to receive information on upcoming Discovery Girls' products, Discovery Girls website updates and promotions, and information about the products or services of carefully-selected third parties. If you want to stop receiving such updates and product information from Discovery Girls and/or our affiliates at any time, please notify Customer Service click here or write to us at: Discovery Girls
P.O. Box 420235
Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235
Discovery Girls may give other companies access to our information database, but only if necessary to allow them to provide database or server maintenance or security, help us process and fulfill orders or requests, or provide other similar services. If we do provide access, we require those other companies to sign confidentiality agreements promising to keep secret any information they see. All information may be transferred as part of the purchase or sale of a business. As we continue to offer new services and different types of content, we may modify our Privacy Policy from time to time. If we change our Privacy Policy, we will notify you by posting any changes on this website.