My Handwork Studio is committed to providing a fun, educational, and safe website for children, parents and educators. We are dedicated to safeguarding any personal information collected online and to helping parents and children learn how to exercise control over personal information while exploring the Internet. We ensure that our privacy policy and our information practices adhere to the U.S. Department of Commerce's Safe Harbor Principles. Because most of the visitors to this site are children, we take care that our content is suitable for children. In addition, we take special measures to help children protect their privacy while online. For example, we do not ask children to disclose more personal information than is necessary for them to participate in a particular activity, and we take efforts to prevent children from posting contact information.
To help ensure a rewarding online experience for our visitors - and for the parents of our visitors who are children - we provide you with this summary of our information practices.
As we continue to offer our visitors new and different types of content and services, we may modify our practices from time to time. However, we will treat all personal information we collect in accordance with the privacy notice in effect at the time the information is collected.
I. THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT
There are two separate registrations for My Handwork Studio: one for children, and one for parents, educators, and vendors. At My Handwork Studio, the only personally identifiable information we collect from users 12 years old and younger is a parent's valid email address. And, we ONLY use this information to send these users one message to activate their My Handwork Studio account.
My Handwork Studio requires all users 13 years and older to enter either their or their parent or guardian's valid email address in order to activate their account.
For some of our online activities - such as polls or surveys - we may ask users to provide additional information that is not personally identifiable, such as country of residence or a visitor's favorite color.
We do ask users to select a gender for their My Handwork Studio Character, but we do not require that this be the specific gender of the user.
We do not knowingly collect names and email addresses from children under 13. We always require children under 13 to use a parent or guardians email address instead.
Additionally, when visitors come to our site, we automatically collect some non-personally identifiable "computer" information, such as the type of computer operating system (e.g., Windows XP or Mac OS), the user's "IP Address", the web browser (e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer) being used, and information regarding the Internet service provider.
Finally, we collect personal and financial information from members as set out in Section 6 of this Privacy Policy, and also from customers of the My Handwork Studio Shop. At My Handwork Studio, we respect your personal privacy and we will never use your confidential customer information for any purpose other than processing payments to My Handwork Studio or fulfilling your merchandise order. The personal and financial information that you enter to purchase a membership or enable a purchase from My Handwork Studio Shop is not stored by My Handwork Studio, but only by our financial institution for the purpose of processing credit card payments made to My Handwork Studio. This information is safeguarded with extremely high, bank-level security and all credit card processing is done using completely secure, above industry standard encryption to secure and encrypt your credit card transaction and other personal information.
II. HOW WE USE THE INFORMATION
We have created an internal news and message system that allows us to communicate with members, and members to communicate with each other without sending them information to their personal email address. We do not keep any personal information we obtain beyond the time it is needed. Sometimes we use a visitor's email address to track usage and to ensure users are following the site's Terms and Conditions.
We encourage users to submit their original artwork or other materials via an upload mechanism to the site. We do however, retain control of how all materials are used and displayed on the My Handwork Studio website.
We sometimes use the non-personally identifiable information that we collect to improve the design and content of our site, to personalize our visitors' experience on My Handwork Studio, and to offer products, programs, and services. We also may use this information in the aggregate to analyze site usage, as well as to offer products, programs, or services.
We will disclose information we maintain when required to do so by law, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena. We also may disclose such information in response to a law enforcement agency's or other public agency's (including schools or children services) request or if we feel that such disclosure may prevent the instigation of a crime. Finally, we may disclose information to a prospective purchaser of My Handwork Studio acquiring all or most of the assets relating to My Handwork Studio, to the extent permitted by law.
We may transfer personal information and store it outside of the jurisdiction in which a member of My Handwork Studio is located and, although such personal information will be protected by the security measures described in this privacy policy, it will be also be subject to local laws.
We will not use or transfer personally identifiable information in ways that are materially different from the ones described above without also providing parental notification of such practices and obtaining consent for any materially different uses.
III. COLLECTION OF INFORMATION FOR THIRD-PARTY SITES AND SPONSORS
My Handwork Studio allows third-party companies to advertise to our members in the form of simple sponsorships (marked only by a "sponsored by" tag), product endorsements which are clearly noted and banner ads on parent and educator specific pages which follow CARU (Children's Advertising Revenue Unit) Guidelines for advertising in spaces in close proximity to children 13 years old or younger. Our intention is to keep all environments primarily focused towards children on My Handwork Studio free from any sort of direct advertising.
Non-personally identifiable "computer" information, such as the user's "IP Address" may be used to help specific advertisers in certain locations advertise to members in those locations. However, My Handwork Studio never sells or makes available member information to these entities.
IV. COOKIES AND SESSION VARIABLES
My Handwork Studio uses a software technology called "cookies." Cookies are small text files that we place in visitors' computer browsers to store their preferences. Cookies themselves do not contain any personally identifiable information. Although cookies could enable us to relate a visitor's use of this web site to personal information that a visitor has provided, such as an email address, we do not use them for this purpose. We do use "cookies" to determine how many visitors we have, how often they visit various sections of our site and what part of the country or world these users may be visiting from.
My Handwork Studio also uses a technology called "session variables". Session variables are server side data files that record and update a user's site activity while browsing our website. Session variables "time-out" following a short period of inactivity on the website. We then require users to log back into the site using their particular username and password. This security procedure assures that members who leave the website will not open themselves up to user fraud.
V. SECURITY
We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online.
VI. FINANCIAL INFORMATION
If you decide to purchase a membership for you or your child (the site is FREE now, but a nominal monthly fee will be mandatory for all members in the future), additional information will be required at the time of purchase. That information is not stored by My Handwork Studio and is only stored by our financial institution for the purpose of processing payments made to My Handwork Studio. That information is safeguarded with extremely high, bank-level security and it will never be used for any other purposes.
VII. PARENTAL REVIEW OF INFORMATION
Parents, please send an emailat the address provided below if you would like to do any of the following:
Access the personally identifiable information that My Handwork Studio has collected online from your child, correct factual errors in such information, request to have this information deleted, or request that we no longer collect or maintain such information.
Please be sure to include your email address and a telephone number where we can reach you. To protect your child's privacy and security, we will take reasonable steps to help verify your identity before granting you access to the personal information that we collect and maintain about your child.
VIII. EFFECTIVE DATE
The privacy policy set out above is effective as of October 30th, 2007, and applies to all information previously obtained by My Handwork Studio. My Handwork Studio reserves the right to change its privacy policy at its sole discretion. My Handwork Studio users will be informed of any such change by My Handwork Studio posting a new privacy policy on the My Handwork Studio website. The effective date of any change of privacy policy will be clearly marked.
IX. CONTACT US
Contact us at info@myhandworkstudio.com should you have any inquiries regarding the privacy policy and/or practices.
Still have questions about our site? Simply fill out the form below and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.