Garrett County Local Homeschool Privacy Policy

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Internet Safety

Did you know that there are strict laws regarding the collection of Personally Identifiable Information from children on the internet, particularly under the age of 13? The law is CIPA, though sometimes it is referred to as CIPPA. Violation of this law results in stiff penalties and possibly jail time. You will see CIPA in things like the "blurps" that pop up asking if someone is 13 before they can sign up for something. Or, it may be hidden in a site's privacy policy. These are all attempts for businesses and organizations to cover themselves against CIPA regulations.

Let's face it, lots of kids just click "ok" stating that they are 13, even if they are not. CIPA laws are in place to protect children from individuals that may want to harm them. If a business on the web is collecting personal information, even if that particular business seems harmless enough for your seven year old, be aware that some of those businesses sell user information to other businesses that may not be so harmless. For a fee, almost anyone can obtain personal information about users from some of the well-known sites. Therefore, it is important to read the Privacy Policy of websites. Yet, although, they must disclose that they are selling or sharing your information, they may use a vague policy that doesn't really say what they do with it other than "share it with a third party". Parents, teach your children not to give out personal information on the web...ever! If they must sign up to enter the site, teach them to come to you and have you do it.

Parents, be cautious. If you feel uncomfortable about a site, trust your instincts.

Our recommendation is to never put down accurate information for a child if you have to sign up for an account for something on the web. Use a fake name, birthdate, address, etc. But, keep a record of what you put down, because you will likely need it later. Also, you may want to consider having a special e-mail just for this purpose. Do not give out your address unless you have to for ordering purposes. This includes signing up for educational platforms that deal with a variety of independent teachers such as Udemy and Outschool. These platforms take your credit card payment when you sign up. They absolutely do NOT need the child's personal information to the access or use the course. If the automatic form makes you put in information, use fake information, but make sure you write it down where you can find it. If it is a live class, teach your child to use a "nickname" and not give out personal information, even if the teacher asks.

Finally, if you do see a business, organization, or individual out there on the web trying to obtain personallly identifiable information from a child that should not be doing so, report them to the FCC. They administer CIPA.

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Our Privacy Policy - In Case You Want to Know

By law, as is the case with all websites, we are required to post a Privacy Policy. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting personally identifiable information you may provide us through the Website. We have adopted this privacy policy ("Privacy Policy") to explain what information may be collected on our Website, how we use this information, and under what circumstances we may disclose the information to third parties. This Privacy Policy applies only to information we collect through the Website and does not apply to our collection of information from other sources.

This Privacy Policy, together with the Terms of Use posted on our Website, set forth the general rules and policies governing your use of our Website. Depending on your activities when visiting our Website, you may be required to agree to additional terms and conditions.

We generally keep this Privacy Policy posted on the Website and you should review it frequently, as it may change from time to time without notice. Any changes will be effective immediately upon the posting of the revised Privacy Policy. WHEN YOU ACCESS OUR WEBSITE, YOU AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY, OR TO ANY CHANGES WE MAY SUBSEQUENTLY MAKE, YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY STOP ACCESSING OUR WEBSITE.

Information We Collect: Our Website typically collects two kinds of information about you: (a) information that personally identifies you; and (b) information that does not personally identify you:

1. Personally Identifiable Information: Our definition of personally identifiable information includes any information that may be used to specifically identify or contact you, such as your name, address, e-mail address, phone number, etc. This website allows users to submit information to be included on the site, therefore, our “Submission” form will collect personally identifiable information. Additionally, we use analytical tools to determine what things are working, and what are not, with the site. These tools collect IP addresses, which are also Personally Identifiable Information. Look at the next paragraph for more information about this because it falls under de-identified information, since analytical tools don’t single anyone out. They just lump everyone in a big group.

2. Non-Personal Information: Our definition of non-personal information is any information that does not personally identify you. Non-personal information can include certain personally identifiable information that has been de-identified; that is, information that has been rendered anonymous. We obtain non-personal information about you from information that you provide us, either separately or together with your personally identifiable information. We also automatically collect certain non-personal information from you when you access our Websites. This information can include, among other things, IP addresses, the type of browser you are using (e.g., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.), the third party website from which your visit originated, the operating system you are using (e.g., Vista, Windows XP, Macintosh OS, etc.), the domain name of your Internet service provider (e.g., America Online, NetZero, etc.), the specific areas of the Website that you visit, and the duration of your visit. Why? So we can improve the website. That’s the only reason. It lets us know if the site is working and taking care of your needs. In other words, it tells us if certain content is accessed a lot and read (so we’ll assume that page is liked) or if people are making a fast exit from a page pretty regularly, which means we should probably rethink that page. We have no interest in selling your information.

How We Use & Share the Information Collected

1. Personally Identifiable Information: We collect Personally Identifiable Information from you when you submit information for possible inclusion on our website, when you contact us about something, when you submit things for our gallery, and when you enter contests. We only use that information to carry out the stated function. In the case of Submissions, we keep the information on file for a period so that we know who made a particular submission. We do not share any of this information collected with a third party. If your Submission is printed on the website, it may include your name, the name of your homeschool (if you have one), and your homeschool curriculum. If you are the representative of a group, organization, or business, it may also include address, phone, and/or e-mail. If information is posted on the website, it is there for the world to see.

In certain instances, we may also share your personally identifiable information with our third-party vendors performing functions on our behalf (or on behalf of our affiliated companies). We utilize Google Analytics to analyze the website’s performance. Although, there are no plans to accept credit card payments for anything at this time, since this is a Privacy Policy, we will include vendors that process credit cards. Our vendors agree to use this information, and we share information with them, only to carry out the needed service. Your personally identifiable information will not be sold or shared with any other third party without your prior approval.

Since this is a homeschooling website, we want to make it clear that we do not share any information obtained with any schooling body, such as the Board of Education or other homeschooling groups. If they visit our site, they may see things that are posted there, but we have a policy in place that does not allow us to share homeschooling information that we may have obtained with any other party. Additionally, we do not share your information with other businesses, such as curriculum distributors. We only give you their information. You will have to give them yours if you want them to contact you.

In keeping with CIPPA laws, we DO NOT collect any personally identifiable information for children age 13 and under. Therefore, all submissions and contact must be made by an adult over the age of 18. Items posted to the website will not include any personal information for children age 13 and under other than the child's first name, the name of the child's homeschool if applicable, and the child's curriculum if applicable.

2. Non-Personal Information: We use non-personal information in a variety of ways, including to help analyze site traffic, understand customer needs and trends, carry out targeted promotional activities, and to improve our services. We may use your non-personal information by itself or aggregate it with information we have obtained from others. We may share your non-personal information with our affiliated companies and third parties to achieve these objectives and others, but remember that aggregate information is anonymous information that does not personally identify you. As a reminder, we use Google Analytics, which means that non-personal information, in addition to your IP address, is processed through their servers. We do not sell any information to them, however, we have no control over what they may do with information that they may obtain from through the Analytics. We refer you to Google to answer that question.

Other Uses & Information

IP Addresses: An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Internet. Web servers (computers that "serve up" web pages) automatically identify your computer by its IP address. When visitors request pages from our Websites, our servers typically log their IP addresses. We collect IP addresses for purposes of system administration, to report non-personal aggregate information to others, and to track the use of our Website. IP addresses are considered non-personal information and may also be shared as provided above. We reserve the right to use IP addresses and any personally identifiable information to identify a visitor when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our Website rules or to: (a) fulfill a government request; (b) conform with the requirements of the law or legal process; (c) protect or defend our legal rights or property, our Website, or other users; or (d) in an emergency to protect the health and safety of our Website's users or the general public.

Cookies: "Cookies" are small text files from a website that are stored on your hard drive. These text files make using our Website more convenient by, among other things, saving your passwords and preferences for you. Cookies themselves do not typically contain any personally identifiable information. We may analyze the information derived from these cookies and match this information with data provided by you or another party. If you are concerned about the storage and use of cookies, you may be able to direct your internet browser to notify you and seek approval whenever a cookie is being sent to your hard drive. You may also delete a cookie manually from your hard drive through your internet browser or other programs. Please note, however, that some parts of our Website will not function properly or be available to you if you refuse to accept a cookie or choose to disable the acceptance of cookies. What does this really mean? Well, many of the functions on the web require cookies to run, so there are many of us who don't like them, but, it's pretty hard to get away from them in the web world if you want all the interactive stuff to work. For our purposes, we don't add cookies so we can "spy" on you or throw those ads up in your face that apply to something you thought about 10 minutes ago. We only use them to make the "bling" on our website work and to obtain analytical information about our site. Analytical Information doesn't really tell us much about you personally. It just tells us things like how many people clicked on our site and which pages they viewed. Why do we want to know that? Because we want the site to be the best possible for you all. And, because we are web developers, so that's what we do for entertainment.

Email Communications: If you send us an email with questions or comments, we may use your personally identifiable information to respond to your questions or comments, and we may save your questions or comments for future reference. For security reasons, we request that you DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT send non-public personal information, such as passwords, social security numbers, or bank account information, to us by email. Aside from a reply to your e-mail, we do not send regular e-mail communications advertising our site. So, you don’t have to worry about that awful spam mail you typically get when you contact just about any organization, it seems like, these days. However, occasionally, if we have information that we think you may want, we may contact you to let you know that information.

Transfer of Assets: We don’t have any plans to transfer any assets, and the fact that this organization doesn’t have any assets makes that pretty easy, but we have to include this section in the policy. If there should be a transfer of assets, you will be notified before any personally identifiable information is transferred, and you will have to option to opt out of that transfer.

Other: Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, we reserve the right to disclose any personally identifiable information or non-personal information about you if we are required to do so by law, with respect to copyright or other intellectual property infringement claims, or if we believe that such action is necessary to: (a) fulfill a government request; (b) conform with the requirements of the law or legal process; (c) protect or defend our legal rights or property, our Website, or other users; or (d) in an emergency to protect the health and safety of our Website's users or the general public.

Public Forums: We may offer chat rooms, blogs, message boards, bulletin boards, or similar public forums where you and other users of our Websites can communicate. The protections described in this Privacy Policy do not apply when you provide information (including personal information) in connection with your use of these public forums. We may use personally identifiable information and non-personal information about you to indentify you with a posting in a public forum. Any information you share in a public forum is public information and may be seen or collected by anyone, including third parties that do not adhere to our Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for events arising from the distribution of any information you choose to publicly post or share through our Websites.

Keeping Your Information Secure: We have implemented security measures we consider reasonable and appropriate to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Please be advised, however, that while we strive to protect your personally identifiable information and privacy, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you disclose or transmit to us online and are not responsible for the theft, destruction, or inadvertent disclosure of your personally identifiable information.

Other Sites: Our Website may link to or contain links to other third-party websites that we do not control or maintain, such as in providing information about resources from another organization, company, or other website. We are not responsible for the privacy practices employed by any third-party website. We encourage you to note when you leave our Website and to read the privacy statements of all third-party websites before submitting any personally identifiable information.

Contact Information: You may contact us at office@localhomeschool.org if you have questions or comments about our Privacy Policy; (b) wish to make corrections to any personally identifiable information you have provided; or (c) want to opt-out from receiving future promotional correspondence, including emails, from us. We will respond to your request and, if applicable and appropriate, make the requested change in our active databases as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that we may not be able to fulfill certain requests while allowing you access to certain benefits, features and services offered on or through our Website.

California Residents: We welcome you, although we have no idea why you would want to be on the Garrett County, MD local homeschool site. Per the law, you may submit a request once yearly regarding our disclosure of your personal information for third party direct marketing purposes. But, please be advised that we do not provide any of your personal information to third parties. You can make this request by e-mailing us at: office@localhomeschool.org.

Canada and Australia:We do not collect personally identifiable information from individuals who reside in Canada or Australia. If you live in either of these two places, please do not send us any personally identifiable information. You probably guessed this, but this disclosure is made...because it's a legal requirement.

CIPA Laws require strict regulations regarding children under the age of 13. We do not collect information from children age 13 and under. Any communications or submissions MUST be made by the parent or legal adult of the child. If a submission is made by the parent or legal guardian of a child, it constitutes permission by that parent or guardian for us to obtain, keep, and use that information as specified. No personal information for children age 13 or under will be shared with third parties. Anything posted on the website that is written or made by any child under the age of 18 will only include the first name, name of the homeschool, and possibly curriculum if it applies. Should a parent or legal guardian of a child submit a child's work to be posted on the website Gallery, submission of the work constitutes the parent or guardian's permission to post the work on the website.

Should this organization be dissolved, all personally identifiable information will be fully distroyed according to acceptable standards.

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