At Teen Ink, we respect your privacy. We do collect information from you, but it
is Teen Ink's policy and priority to ensure that all personal information remains
private and secure.
1. General
To protect your privacy, Teen Ink:
Provides a privacy notice and/or a link to this Privacy Statement on all pages that ask for personal information;
Will not release personal identifying information about you without first obtaining consent; and
Will not knowingly collect or use personal identifying information from children younger than 13 without parental consent.
2. Basic Information
When you visit the Teen Ink website, we may collect some basic
information about your computer, including:
IP address (your computer's unique signature)
Operating system (e.g., Windows 95)
Browser software (e.g., Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer)
Internet Service Provider (e.g., AOL)
Geographic location (e.g., Philadelphia, PA.)
The information we collect reflects the population as a whole rather than
focusing on individuals, and we use it to help us better understand the people
who visit Teen Ink. This information helps us identify the most popular
areas on Teen Ink's website and determine the effectiveness of Teen Ink's
promotional activities. In addition, we may disclose some of this general
information to advertisers to inform them of the number of people who have
seen and clicked on their advertisements.
For the same purposes, we may use cookies - small text files placed on your
computer's hard drive - to help us determine the type of content and sites
to which you link, the length of time that you spend at any particular
site and the Teen Ink services you use. We use cookies to personalize
Teen Ink's members' and visitors' experiences. Without cookies, it would be
difficult for us to provide any personalized service or to fully understand
Teen Ink readers needs. Cookies also tell us which advertising you have
seen on the Teen Ink site, thereby allowing us to offer you a more diverse
selection of advertising information.
The cookies used in connection with
certain pages may allow Teen Ink to compile demographic data (which is not
identifiable to a specific individual) about visitors to Teen Ink.
3. E-mail
We do collect the e-mail addresses of people who communicate with us
via e-mail to respond to these communications and to send future correspondence.
We may archive messages for quality assurance purposes. In cases where
Teen Ink may use a third-party vendor to provide a service (such as chat),
feedback or questions directed to Teen Ink about that service may be forwarded to
the vendor for a direct response to a reader.
For your protection, some of Teen Ink's
personnel have access to Teen Ink's bulletin boards, chat rooms and forums to help
us maintain a safe and collaborative environment online. Currently, we do
not archive chat dialogs, screen names or forum postings. We also do not
perform any analysis of chat room discussions. We encourage you not to
give personal information or passwords to anyone on the bulletin board, in the
chat rooms or forums. When you disclose your personal information, it may be
collected and used by others to send you unsolicited e-mail. If you
encounter any Teen Ink user who is improperly collecting or using
information, please contact Teen Ink.
4. Personal Information
When you join, enter contests or sign up for other
services at Teen Ink, we collect personal identifying information from you, which
may include the following:
First and last name;
Home or other physical address;
E-mail address;
Phone number;
Any other information that identifies you as a specific individual;
Any other information that, when tied to the above information, may identify you as a specific individual.
Name of your school and name of your teacher
Your age and date of birth
We collect this information on pages where you can submit your work to Teen Ink
for publishing consideration or register to join Teen Ink services and at other
locations where you can sign up for sweepstakes and contests. We give notice
at each location that asks for personal information, and such information will
be used only for the purposes stated at the location of the collection
and/or within this Privacy Statement.
We use information about Teen Ink
members and visitors for administrative and other purposes that we deem
necessary to maintain and improve Teen Ink's services. Such uses include
data transmission, customer surveys conducted by Teen Ink or third parties,
e-mail or chat services and other future services. We reserve the right to use
third parties to provide these services. These third parties may receive
certain personal identifying information about you in order for them to
perform their services.
We send member account passwords only to the
e-mail address given during the registration process. All registrants
receive e-mail confirming their Registration. NEVER GIVE YOUR PASSWORD TO
ANYONE. If someone claiming to represent Teen Ink in an e-mail or chat room
asks for your Teen Ink password, DO NOT RESPOND. The only time we ask for
your password is when you need to access to the Teen Ink system.
Teen Ink cooperates with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who use
Teen Ink services for illegal activities. We reserve the right to release
information about members who we believe are in violation of Teen Ink's
content guidelines, even without a subpoena, warrant or court order. We
also reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any
activities that we reasonably believe to be unlawful. We save your personal
information indefinitely since we may need to contact you in the event we want
your permission to publish your work in the future. If you would like us
to remove you from our data base, please contact us at administrator@TeenInk.com.
We maintain information on members who have been removed for violating
Teen Ink's content guidelines in order to identify repeat offenders. From time to
time, we may contact members to inform them of improvements or enhancements
to Teen Ink services.
5. Credit Cards
Teen Ink will use your credit card number in order to provide
you with the subscription or goods or services that you request. It may
also be used for other purposes stated at the time of collection, which
may require disclosure of your credit card number and other personal
identifying information about you to third parties. Information collected by
Teen Ink is securely stored on Teen Ink's computers, which are called
servers. Credit card transactions take place solely on servers that offer
a higher level of security.
The transactions are handled by a third-party
financial institution, which receives the credit card number and other
personal identifying information in order to verify the credit card number
and process the transaction. Only authorized Teen Ink employees have access to
this information, in a manner consistent with industry standards.
Third-party vendors may also sell products and services on Teen Ink, and
their policies may differ from those of Teen Ink.
6. Policies for Individuals Under 13
Teen Ink encourages parents and guardians
to spend time online with their children and to participate in the
interactive activities offered on the sites. Teen Ink encourages parents
and guardians to advise their children not to talk to strangers, and to
teach children not to give out their names or other personal information.
Parents and guardians should also teach their children never to fill out online
registration forms without the parent's or guardian's knowledge and
consent. No information should be submitted to or posted at the Teen Ink
web sites by children without the consent of their parent or guardian. In
addition, when a child registers, his/her parent or guardian receives an
e-mail about Registration and providing instructions on how the parent or
guardian can delete the Registration if so desired.
Although children are
allowed to participate in contests, if such a guest wins, notification and
prizes are sent to the parents or guardians identified in the initial
Registration process. Teen Ink does not knowingly collect or use any personal
information from children under age 13 without obtaining express parental
consent. Express parental consent means that Teen Ink obtains affirmative
agreement from a parent or legal guardian that the child may divulge
personal information by transmitting a signed statement by postal mail or
fax.
All general information collected from children is used only for statistical
analysis, editorial participation, feedback and those purposes described
above and in the registration process. We do not give children's personal
information to third parties, regardless of whether or not the children
choose to allow us to disseminate their personal information for
promotional opportunities.
Note: Teen Ink defines "children" as minors younger
than age 13.
7. Third Party Sponsors
When you join Teen Ink, you have the option of signing
up to receive information from Teen Ink's third party sponsors. Teen Ink may
also hosts promotions and sweepstakes that may be sponsored and
administered by outside parties. The fact that Teen Ink merchandise may be
given away as prizes does not mean that Teen Ink is the sponsor. We require that
outside parties conducting promotions and sweepstakes on Teen Ink site
clearly identify who is conducting the promotion and state their practices
concerning the use of personal identifying information. We will post privacy
information in the rules and/or login area for the promotions and sweepstakes
that we host. To the extent that the privacy information relating to the
promotion or sweepstakes conflicts with Teen Ink's Privacy Statement, the
specific privacy information regarding the promotion or sweepstakes will
govern that particular promotion or sweepstakes.
Third parties that
receive information about you from Teen Ink at your request are obligated to:
Clearly indicate the sender of the e-mail message; and
Provide you with a method of opting out from receiving future communications.
If you receive e-mail from a third party stating that is associated with Teen Ink,
yet you do not want to receive promotional materials from Teen Ink
or its sponsors, please follow the third party's removal procedures. If this
procedure is not successful, please contact us at administrator@TeenInk.com.
We do not control the actions of Teen Ink's members and visitors. If you disclose
personal information on a bulletin board, in a chat room, forum or anywhere
else on the site, it may be collected and used by others. Additionally, be
aware that when you click on ad banners, they may lead you to other sites
not operated by Teen Ink. These outside parties may have different privacy
policies from ours. Teen Ink does not assume any responsibility for actions
of third parties.
Teen Ink PO Box 30 Newton, MA 02461 (617) 964-6800 editor@teenink.com
Copyright 2008 by Teen Ink, The 21st Century and The Young Authors Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written
permission of the publisher: The Young Authors Foundation, Inc.
Teen Ink is a national teen magazine, book and website featuring
teen writing, information, art, photos, poetry, teen issues and more. All
articles are written by teen authors who are students at schools. The monthly
print magazine is appropriate for any teenager -- teenagers age 13 to 19
attending secondary school: junior high school, middle school and high school.
This publication is used by professional people including English teachers,
writing teachers, language arts instructors, journalism teachers, school
newspaper advisors, librarians, guidance counselors, K-12 principals in addition
to the PTA or PTO. Each issue of Teen Ink magazine contains a wide variety of
student work: we publish nonfiction, fiction, poems, community service, sports,
heroes, interviews, college essays, college reviews, book reviews, concert
reviews, movie reviews, music reviews, video reviews, video game reviews, the
environment, opinion, sports, pets, cars, automobiles, travel and culture, jobs
and money, health issues, artwork, photographs, cartoons, short stories, essays,
writing contests, a college directory and the website also has a bulletin board
and resources for teens and educators. Subjects include racism,
eating disorders, depression, death, suicide, family, relationships, jobs,
grandparents, violence, the college process, college information, colleges,
driving, self esteem, the arts, movies and more. Teen Ink is also a book series
published by HCI Teens. Subjects covered in the book include Friends, Fitting In,
Love, Challenges, Family, Heroes, Loss and Memories. Teen Ink was established in
1989 as The 21st Century magazine by The Young Authors Foundation, a nonprofit
organization. More than 25,000 teens have been published in the magazine and its
companion Poetry Journal. Teen Ink runs a London Summer Program for teenage writers.
