Effective June 26th, 2018
How Highlights Thinks About Privacy and our Privacy Policies
Thank you for your interest in our privacy policies. We value your privacy and your children's safety. At Highlights for Children, we care about:
- Protecting the privacy of children
- Being open and honest with our customers, and
- Treating personal information with care and respect
We welcome the chance to share Highlights' wholesome Fun with a Purpose™ content with families, and we approach each contact with our customers with care and respect. The policy below explains our practices regarding the safeguarding of personal information and the choices you can make about the way your information is used. We encourage you to read the policy, to manage your communication preferences, and to discuss with your children what information is and is not appropriate to share, both online and off.
Regarding children’s privacy and the special privacy policy for our websites for children:
- HighlightsKids.com was the first website to be accepted by the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU, operated by the Council of Better Business Bureaus) as a Safe Harbor site. As such, we fully comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (the COPPA Rule) as well as with CARU's Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising, including the Guidelines for Interactive Electronic Media. More information about CARU and the Safe Harbor program can be found here.
- Certain features on our websites for children allow a child to submit an e-mail address in order for our staff to provide an individual response. We use the e-mail address for no other purpose, and we delete the e-mail address after we respond. Other features allow children to submit comments or content along with their first name, age, and state, province, or country. Non-personally identifiable information from these features may, at the editors’ discretion, be posted on our websites or printed in our publications.
- For website features that require user accounts, we collect e-mail addresses from parents and guardians for the purpose of password retrieval for the child’s account. We do not use these parent e-mail addresses for marketing purposes, but we do invite parents to opt in to marketing communications.
- We do not collect personally identifiable information for the creation of user accounts for children, nor do we allow personally identifiable information to be disclosed by children to third parties.
- We do collect aggregate information from our websites in order to improve the experiences for our young visitors. Aggregate information is non-personally identifiable. Like many sites, we also use "cookies" and other tracking technologies during a visit to help us understand how people use our websites. Your browser allows you to disable cookies.
- Our apps do not collect personally identifiable information from children. In cases where our apps collect personally identifiable information from parents, such as email addresses, we restrict such collection to a section of the app that is clearly designated for adults.
- As a company dedicated to the needs of children, we also provide tools to help parents encourage children to safeguard their privacy online.
Regarding customer privacy, preferences and shopping on our websites and our general website privacy policy:
- For all of our other websites that are not focused on children's use, we collect information from our website in order to improve the customer experience and to serve you better. All of our sites collect aggregate information that is non-personally identifiable. We also use "cookies" and other tracking technologies during your visit to help us understand how people use our websites. Your browser allows you to disable cookies.
- For a description of your California Privacy Rights, click here.
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When you make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter, you provide us information that we use to deliver the services you request, to inform you of new products, services or offers, and to provide you with updates about Highlights for Children. We take our role in holding and using this information seriously. When we select credit card processors, fulfillment and delivery companies, web services and others to help us, we select those whom we believe take security seriously. We are committed to using this information within the bounds of the law and using our best judgment. Our Terms of Use policy is incorporated by reference.
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We encourage you to make decisions about the offers you receive from us and the way your personal information is used. Manage your communication preferences here. If you give us your child's name in connection with an order you place on one of our websites, we keep it on file, but only for the purpose of addressing, never for marketing. We ask for your child's name because many people want their children to experience the thrill of receiving mail personally addressed to them.
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We sometimes make our list of customers' names and addresses available to other carefully selected companies whose products and services we believe might be of interest to you. Be assured this program does not involve children's names (please see the information above regarding children's privacy). If you do not want to receive offers from these other companies, you can opt out of these third party offers at any time.
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Highlights uses Google Analytics features and other third party pixel tags and cookies in order to execute and track display advertising, including remarketing advertising on other websites. These features help Highlights understand which ads bring users to our site and inform and optimize the ads served. Both Highlights and third party vendors may use first party cookies or third party cookies, to inform, optimize, and serve ads on sites across the internet based on past visits to Highlights.com or other sites you have visited that are associated with various ad networks. The information that we collect and share in this fashion is de-identified, does not contain personally identifiable information, and is intended for advertising to people over the age of 13.
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Highlights also uses data provided by Google Analytics to execute interest-based advertising or analyze website activity based on 3rd-party audience data such as age, gender and interest.
- Using the Ads Settings, visitors can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize Google Display Network ads.
If you have additional questions about our approach to privacy, please feel free to contact:
Garry Brown
VP, Information Security & Privacy
Highlights for Children, Inc.
1800 Watermark Drive
Columbus, Ohio 43215