This Privacy Policy governs information collected through the Ask Kids site.
Ask Kids is a U.S. site hosted in the United States and dedicated to kids who live in the United States.
Ask Kids believes that maintaining the online privacy of children
is essential to building a safe site where kids can learn and
play. We provide the following privacy policy (the "Privacy
Policy") in conformance with the 1998 Children's Online Privacy
Protection Act ("COPPA").
AskKids may provide links to other Ask.com or other sites affiliated with Ask.com. Ask.com is governed by a different privacy policy even though it shares the "Ask" brand. Please see Ask.com's privacy policy for more information on the privacy practices of Ask.com.
When kids click on search results found on Ask Kids, they also click through to sites that are not owned or operated by Ask Kids. Ask Kids does not control what type of information these sites may collect.
The Ask Kids site contains links to other Web sites (including those of our advertisers) that may ask for personal information. Collection of personal information on other Web sites will be governed by the terms of that Web site's privacy policy - not this Privacy Policy. Although we try to review such sites carefully, Ask Kids is not responsible and will not be liable for the privacy policies, data collection practices or regulatory compliance of those Web sites.
We may disclose your personally identifiable information as well as your IP address and other information in order to comply with court orders, subpoenas, or regulatory obligations, or when otherwise required to do so by law. We also may disclose such information in compliance with a law enforcement or other governmental request, or where we believe disclosure is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, or violations of our Terms of Service.
If you want to remove the cookies that Ask Kids placed on your computer or browser, the "Help" feature of your Internet Explorer®, Firefox® or other browser can show you how. If you choose to reject cookies, you will not be able to save any "drawing" or "stickers" on the homepage as well as other pieces of functionality on the Ask Kids site.
Ask Kids may track user visits and behavior on the site by placing a "cookie" (a small file) on your computer's hard drive or browser. The information we collect with cookies helps us do two things. First we can remember what drawings or stickers you chose for your Ask Kids page and we can display those next time you visit the site, so the cookies enable us to help you personalize your Ask Kids page. Second, the information we collect through cookies helps us understand better how kids use the site and what they are interested in, and we use this information to improve the quality of the site and offer new features that we think our audience will like. . We do not use this cookie information to profile our users for advertising and we do not share this cookie information with anybody except companies that analyze the cookie data to help us understand it.If you want to remove the cookies that Ask Kids placed on your computer or browser, the "Help" feature of your Internet Explorer®, Firefox® or other browser can show you how. If you choose to reject cookies, you will not be able to save any "drawing" or "stickers" on the homepage as well as other pieces of functionality on the Ask Kids site.
Ask Kids occasionally uses advertising companies to display ads on Ask Kids when you visit the site. These companies may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser or use other technological tools to monitor your activity. For example, these companies may use information about your visit to Ask Kids in order to provide advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you. Our privacy policy does not cover any use of information that a third-party advertising company may collect from you. As explained in the paragraph above, you can configure your Internet browser to prevent many such types of information gathering. If you would like more information about advertising company practices, or would like to know your choices about not having such information used by these advertising companies, please click here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/. AskEraser does not apply to these third-party companies, and they will delete your search activity only in accordance with their own data retention policies.
3. Does Ask Kids collect aggregated information?
Ask Kids collects statistics on searches and queries made by its visitors and the search results the visitors click on. We may also collect statistics through a visitor survey. Ask Kids does not ask for personally identifiable information in these surveys and will delete any personal information received from kids. This information is gathered together (aggregated) so that individual visitors cannot be identified or distinguished from the whole. For example, we might know that 100 visitors searched for information about giraffes, but we do not know who those visitors were or who specifically queried about giraffes. This information helps us make editorial and design decisions to make Ask Kids more helpful and even easier to use. We can also use this information for marketing of the Ask Kids site. In addition, we may use this information to help us target advertising or content for the site in general.
4. Does Ask Kids have a chat room?
No, Ask Kids does not operate chat rooms. Ask Kids does not enable kids to share information with one another through their use of the site.
5. Are questions posted to Ask Kids private?
Each time you make a search query on Ask Kids, we collect certain information about your query and we share it with third party companies that help us provide you with search results and with companies that help us display Sponsored Results (which are advertisements). The information we share with such third party companies are: (a) your Internet Protocol (IP) address; (b) the address of the last URL you visited prior to clicking through to the Site; (c) your browser and platform type (e.g., a Netscape browser on a Macintosh platform); (d) your browser language; (e) the data in any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us; and (f) the search queries you submit. Since AskEraser is enabled on AskKids, all information described above is removed from AskKids servers within a number of hours (except in rare circumstances described in the AskEraser FAQ, which you can read by clicking here).
6. What rights do parents have regarding their child's personal
information?
Ask Kids will not collect, use or disclose personally identifiable information from a child without parental notification or without obtaining prior verifiable parental consent. At this time, no personally identifiable information is being collected, unless a child submits an email address through the feedback form. In such case, we delete from our records the email address within 48 hours of responding to the email received from the child. Should that change in the future, we will notify parents that we wish to collect information, post the fact that information is being collected, identify the type of information being collected, how it is collected and used by Ask Kids, and others, obtain consent from parents in compliance with COPPA, and post the procedures for parents to follow to review the information
7. Sole Authorized Statement
This Privacy Policy is the sole authorized statement of Ask Kids' practices with respect to the online collection of personally identifiable information via the Ask Kids site and the usage of such information. Any summaries of this Privacy Policy generated by third-party software or otherwise (for example, in connection with the "Platform for Privacy Preferences" or "P3P") will have no legal effect, are in no way binding upon Ask Kids, will not be relied upon in substitute for this Privacy Policy, and neither supersede nor modify this Privacy Policy.
8. How can I contact Ask Kids if I have questions about this
Privacy Policy?
If you have any questions about the Ask Kids Privacy Policy, contact us online. You can also contact us by phone at 510-985-7400 or in writing to: Ask Kids; 555 12th Street, Suite 500; Oakland, CA 94607-4046