National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Website Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy was last updated on July 17, 2008.
Maintaining the privacy of your personal information is of the utmost
important to The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® ("NCMEC"). This
online privacy policy describes how NCMEC collects and maintains all
personally identifiable information that is obtained through this
website: missingkids.com. The purpose of this
privacy policy is to explain how we will use any information we obtain
from this website, as well as the practices and procedures we have
implemented to protect your personal information. Please be
aware that missingkids.com sponsors, advertisers, or websites that
have links on our website may collect personally identifiable information
about you on their websites.
The information and privacy practices of those organizations are not
covered by this policy.
We encourage you to read this privacy policy to gain a better understanding
of how your personal information will be treated as you navigate NCMEC's
website. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about
this privacy policy or our data collection practices, or if you would
like to reguest that we delete your personal information from our records,
you can fill out NCMEC's
general inquiries form; call us toll-free at: 1-800-THE-LOST;
or send us your questions or comments via postal mail to: Webmaster,
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Charles B.
Wang International Children's Building, 699 Prince Street, Alexandria,
VA 22314.
Information We Collect
You have several opportunities to submit your personally identifiable
information on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's
(NCMEC) website, including your name, postal address, e-mail address,
telephone number, and payment information. The
purpose of collecting such information is to respond to specific questions;
to honor requests for brochures, newsletters, or other publications;
to provide users with information about missing or exploited children;
or to process payments and donations made online. We may use
your personal information to periodically communicate with you concerning
NCMEC issues, such as delivering information to you about upcoming
events or missing children alerts.
NCMEC also stores your personal information if you chose to submit information
about a missing or exploited child case through our CyberTipline® or
another portion of our website.
NCMEC collects technical data from visitors of NCMEC's website.
We automatically collect Internet Protocol ("IP") addresses
and domain names of the originating visitor's computer, in order to track
the number and frequency of hits we receive per page. We may also
identify the source of an external website link that brought you to missingkids.com.
This helps us to evaluate what websites or other content are prompting
users to visit NCMEC's website. We do not, however, associate individual
IP addresses with any personally identifiable information in our databases,
unless we detect a security intrusion or other unlawful activity on our
website.
Information We Share With Third Parties
In cases where a visitor to our website makes a report about
a missing or exploited child and, in doing so, submits personally identifiable
information, we forward such information to appropriate law enforcement
agencies for investigation.
When you submit credit card information to us, we immediately forward
that information to a service that charges your account. We do not save
or store your credit card number, although we do retain your name and address
and may use that information to communicate with you in the future.
From time to time, we supply to third-party vendors personal
information about visitors who wish to receive information from us. Such
vendors may include, for example, organizations that process mailings
for us. Those
vendors have entered non-disclosure agreements with us so that personal
information is used only to respond to the visitors' requests and is not
shared with any other entity or individual.
Occasionally we will share "aggregate information" about our visitors with
certain third parties. Aggregate information shows visitor
activity as a whole but does not identify any individual user. For
example, we may post a survey to which visitors can elect to respond. We
might share the results of that survey with interested third parties, or
we may use the information to improve our services and/or our website.
Except as described in this section, we will not sell, rent,
share, or otherwise disclose your personal information to any party for
any reason.
Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are sent to your browser from a web
server and are stored on your computer's hard drive. When you
return to that website, the cookie will tell the website that you have
been there before.
The website can then offer you products or ads that are tailored
to your interests. By using cookies, information may be collected
without your express knowledge. Then National Center for Missing
& Exploited Children (NCMEC) does not use cookies to track your use
of our website, although we employ cookies to make your search of our
missing children posters more efficient. Refusal
to accept cookies will not prevent the use of NCMEC's website, but some
portions of our website may not function properly without cookies.
Security
The voluntarily submitted data that we collect from you is stored on
a secure, password protected server located in the United States.
Only authorized personnel have access to this information. The
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) uses procedural
and technical safeguards to protect your personal information against
loss or theft, including industry-standard encryption technologies.
NCMEC uses a third-party intermediary to process your online donations
and payments. Your credit card information is encrypted when submitted
to this processor and is transmitted over a secure connection using
Secure Socket Layers (SSL) to ensure protection of your private information.
NCMEC also uses "firewalls" to restrict unauthorized access
by users inside and outside our organization.
Despite
our best efforts to protect and secure your information, please be aware
that no transmission over the Internet and no data storage method is
100% secure.
Children
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)
does not intend to collect personal information from children under the
age of 13. While
we encourage children to visit our website and learn more about our programs,
we recommend that parents approve and closely supervise the activity
of their children at this and all other websites. We urge children
to check with their parents before entering information on any website
and we urge parents to discuss with their children restrictions regarding
the online release of personal information to anyone they don't know. If
you are a child under the age of 13 and have information you would like
to report to NCMEC about yourself or another child, please contact us
at: 1-800-THE-LOST.
Links to Other Websites
Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy
policy does not apply to those websites, nor do the privacy policies
of those websites apply to us. We urge you to review the privacy
policies of any website you may access through our website.
Accurate Personal Information
If you are a donor and would like to update, review, or delete the
personal information we have on file for you, please submit
your request here. Be sure to include both your old and your new
personal information in your request so we can properly update our records.
If you are not a donor, please submit
your request here.
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Privacy Policy
