Privacy Policy
Welcome to the official Web site of Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council
(GSSJC). This Web site is owned and operated by Girl Scouts of San
Jacinto Council, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Houston,
Texas.
Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council is committed to protecting the
privacy of our visitors. This privacy policy discloses how we collect,
protect, and use information you provide us online, as well as how
we protect children's privacy. By using the pages on this site, you are
accepting the practices described in the Privacy Policy.
If our policy practices change in the future, we will let you know
by posting the policy changes on our Web site. However, we will treat
all personal information we collect in accordance with the privacy
notice in effect at the time the information is collected.
GSSJC’s online properties comprise of, but are not limited to, all
pages found under www.gssjc.org, including our online shop (www.gssjcshop.org)
and our The Golden Link site (www.thegoldenlink.org).
Data Collection
Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council uses
its best efforts to respect and protect the privacy of its online visitors.
At our site, we do not collect personally identifiable information from individuals
unless they provide it to us voluntarily and knowingly. This means we do not
require you to register or provide information to us in order to view our site.
Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council only gathers personally identifiable data,
such as names, addresses, zip/postal codes, email addresses, etc., when voluntarily
submitted by a visitor. For example, personally identifiable information is
collected in order to process online transactions or online donations. This
information is used solely by Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council or other entities
who are involved in the operation of this site for internal purposes. We do
not sell information you provide to us online to third parties. We will only
share personally identifiable information with third parties when (i) the person
submitting the information authorizes us to share it; (ii) sharing the information
is a necessary operation of the site, for instance, to process a credit card
transaction, or (iii) we are required to by law. Girl Scouts of San Jacinto
Council has no control over or responsibility for the data collection and use
practices of third parties that process online transactions.
Children's Privacy
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) protects the personal
information of children under the age of 13. This applies to individually
identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such
as full name, home address, email address, telephone number or any other information
that would allow someone to identify or contact the child. The Act
and Rule also cover other types of information—for example, hobbies, interests
and information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms—when
they are tied to individually identifiable information. It is important for
you to understand this law; we encourage you to read more about COPPA.
Note to Parents on Our Privacy Policy
Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council is committed to providing a safe,
secure, and fun online experience for children who visit our site.
We are dedicated to safeguarding any personal information collected
online and to helping parents and children have positive experiences
on the Internet. Consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act of 1998, we will never knowingly request personally identifiable
information from anyone under the age of 13 without prior verifiable
parental consent.
Parents can revoke their consent and ask that information about their
children be deleted from the site by contacting our offices by phone
at (713) 292-0300 or via email webmaster@gssjc.org. To
do this or to review personal information collected from children, we must
verify the identity of the requesting parent. When a parent revokes consent,
we will stop collecting, using, or disclosing information from that child.
To respect the privacy of parents, information collected and used for the
sole purpose of obtaining verifiable parental consent or providing notice
is not maintained in retrievable form by the site if parental consent is
not obtained after a reasonable time.
Girl Scouts believes it is good policy not to collect more personally
identifiable information from children under 13 than is necessary for
them to participate in our online activities. In addition, be aware
that all sites that are targeted to children under 13 are prohibited
by law from collecting more information than they need.
Submissions
Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council welcomes children to learn more
about our organization and, where appropriate, participate in polls
and surveys, as well as submit comments, artwork, writings, and other
submissions for posting on our Web site. For this reason, Girl Scouts
of San Jacinto Council follows the guidelines for interactive electronic
media published by the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of
the Better Business Bureau for pages targeted to children under 13.
However, we encourage this be done only with their parent's knowledge
and supervision. We also encourage children to use an alias (e.g., "Bookworm", "Skater",
etc.), first name, nickname, initials, or other alternative to full names
or screen names which correspond with an email address for any activities
which will involve public posting.
In keeping with CARU's Principle regarding
respecting and fostering the parents' role in providing guidance for
their children, we encourage parents to check and monitor their children's
use of email and other online activities regularly.
Use of Cookies
Visitors should be aware that non-personal information and data may
be automatically collected by the Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council
Web site through the use of "cookies." "Cookies" are small
text files a Web site can use to recognize repeat visitors, facilitate the
visitor's ongoing access to and use of the site, and allow a site to track
usage behavior and compile aggregate data that will allow content improvements.
Cookies are not programs that come onto a visitor's system and damage files.
Generally, cookies work by assigning a unique number to the visitor that
has no meaning outside the assigning site. If a visitor does not want information
collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most
browsers that allows the visitor to deny or accept the cookie feature. Girl
Scouts of San Jacinto Council uses "cookie" technology only to
obtain non-personal information from its online visitors in order to improve
visitors' online experience and facilitate their visit within our site.
Links to Other Web Sites and Services
This site may be linked to other sites and services that are not
maintained by Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council. These Web sites have their
own privacy policies, which you should review prior to visiting them. We
have no responsibility for linked Web sites and provide these links
solely for the convenience and information of our visitors.
Our Security Safeguard
The safety and security of your online experience is of the utmost
concern to us. We ensure the appropriate physical, electronic, and
managerial procedures are in place to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized
access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we
collect online.
Credit Card Safety
Protecting the safety of your credit card information is also important
to us. We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to protect the
security of your credit card information as it is transmitted to us.
SSL is the industry standard in Internet encryption technology, which
is a highly sophisticated method of scrambling data as it travels from
your computer to our Web site servers. We also encrypt your credit
card number when we store your order and whenever we transfer that
information to participating merchants.
To make sure you are accessing our secure server before you submit
personal financial information, look at the lower left-hand corner
of your browser. If you see an unbroken key or a closed lock (depending
upon your browser), then SSL is active. To double-check for security,
look at the URL or Address line of your browser. If you have accessed
a secure server, the first characters of the address in that line should
change from "http" to "https."
It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your
password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when finished using
a shared computer.
Children
If you are under 18, you need parent/guardian permission to use a credit
card to make purchases online.
How to Contact Us
If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, you can contact
us at:
Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council
3110
Southwest Freeway
Houston, TX
77098
Phone: 713-292-0300
Thank you for
visiting our
site.
