Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy
This website is owned by Girl Scouts of San Jacinto, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered Houston, TX. [Our online properties comprise of, but are not limited to, all pages found under www.gssjc.org. This privacy policy applies to these sites and other sites, mobile apps or other online services we operate that link to this policy (collectively, referred to below as the site).]

Girl Scouts of San Jacinto is committed to respecting and protecting the privacy of our visitors. This privacy policy discloses how we collect, protect, and use information you provide or we collect online, as well as how we protect children's privacy. If our policy practices change in the future, we will let you know by posting our revised privacy policy on our Web site. By using the pages on this site or other services covered by the posted Privacy Policy, you are accepting the practices described in the Privacy Policy.

INFORMATION COLLECTION

Personally Identifiable Information. 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 only gathers personally identifiable data on our site, such as names, addresses, ZIP/postal codes, email addresses, etc., when voluntarily submitted by a visitor. Once collected, we may combine this information with other information collected from external sources.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information. Girl Scouts of San Jacinto may automatically collect certain technical information from your computer such as your Internet service provider, your Internet Protocol address, your browser type, your operating system, the pages viewed, the pages viewed immediately before and after accessing the Web site, and the search terms entered to get to our site. This information allows us to improve and customize our services. We and our service providers may collect this information using “cookies,” which are small text files that many websites save on your computer, or similar technologies. See the section on “Use of Cookies and Similar Technology” below for more information.

USE AND SHARING OF PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

The personally identifiable information you provide is used by Girl Scouts of San Jacinto and other entities who are involved in the operation of this site or who provide support for the Girl Scouts of San Jacinto and Girl Scouts of the USA mission and programs, for general business purposes and for the purposes for which you provided the information. General business purposes include, for example, Girl Scouts of San Jacinto and Girl Scouts of the USA membership activities, program participation, marketing, promotions, and fundraising activities and communications. The purposes for which you provide information includes our use of your personally identifiable information to process online transactions, purchases, and donations, facilitate participation in Girl Scouts of the USA and Girl Scouts of San Jacinto programs, promotions and services, or process job applications. We do not sell information you provide to us online with third parties. We may share personally identifiable information with third parties including: (i) with other Girl Scout Councils and Girl Scout troops for administrative purposes relating to a child’s activities with another Council or their troop; (ii) when the person submitting the information authorizes us to share it; (iii) when sharing the information is with a service provider in furtherance of our operations or the operation of the site, for instance, to process a purchase or other transaction you make; (iv) to facilitate participation in Girl Scouts of the USA and Girl Scouts of San Jacinto programs, promotions, and services, or to engage in fund raising, marketing communications and promotions; (v) to comply with legal processes such as a subpoena or court order or to otherwise protect your or our legal rights; or (vi) for other purposes for which you provided the information. Girl Scouts of San Jacinto has no control over or responsibility for the data collection and use practices of third parties that process online transactions. For example, if you make a purchase on our site using a PayPal account or similar account of a third party payment provider, certain information is transmitted to the payment provider and is subject to the third party’s own privacy policy.

Please note that Girl Scouts of the USA provides operational support for the site and may collect and use personally identifiable information you provide to the site and other information collected by the site as described in this policy. Girl Scouts of the USA will use any information it collects for the purposes described in this policy and in a manner consistent with its own privacy policy, which is available here. Girl Scouts of San Jacinto and Girl Scouts of the USA are each responsible for their own information handling practices.

CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

Girl Scouts of San Jacinto is committed to providing a safe, secure and fun online experience for children who visit our site. We are dedicated to safeguarding any personally identifiable information collected online and to helping parents and children have positive experiences on the Internet.

We will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without prior verifiable parental consent. With parental consent, we may collect information from children under the age of 13 such as: name, address, email address, account information, and user generated content. This information allows us to fulfill a requested transaction and facilitate participation in online programs, keep records, undertake certain marketing activities or to otherwise customize or enhance the website experience for children.

Children under the age of 13 may be able to make certain content such as user generated content visible to others or the public. This could include, for example, a webpage or parts of webpages operated by children that have been designed for group or public viewing. However, absent parental consent, children under 13 would be allowed to display only limited information such as a first name or unique user name or other information that does not allow for online contacting by third parties.

Regardless of what information is displayed, 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 800-392-4340 or via email at customerservice@sjgs.org. To do this or to review personally identifiable 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.

Submissions

Girl Scouts of San Jacinto 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 website. For this reason, Girl Scouts of San Jacinto 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 AND SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES

Visitors should be aware that non-personal information and data may be automatically collected by the Girl Scouts of San Jacinto website through the use of "cookies" or other similar technologies such as web beacons. "Cookies" are small text files a website 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. “Web beacons” are a small snippet of code embedded in webpages typically used to monitor activity on a webpage and transfer or collect information, such as information about your Internet Protocol address, the URL of the page on which the beacon is located, the browser type that is accessing the site, and the ID number of cookies placed on your computer.

Girl Scouts of San Jacinto 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. Girl Scouts of San Jacinto may use web beacons to improve website services, conduct website analytics, first party advertising relating to us and our sponsors and to optimize the browsing experience.

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (that is, not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you on this or other websites. Read more information about this practice at http://www.networkadvertising.org and http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies.

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES AND SERVICES

This site may be linked to other sites and services that are not maintained by Girl Scouts of San Jacinto. These websites have their own privacy policies, which you should review prior to visiting them. We have no responsibility for linked websites 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 take measures to implement reasonable physical, electronic and managerial procedures 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. For card transactions we process, we use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to protect the security of your credit card information as it is transmitted to us. SSL is an Internet encryption technology and a method of scrambling data as it travels from your computer to our website 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 sensitive information, check the document for your browser for indication of an SSL connection (most browsers utilize an unbroken or closed padlock). Verify that SSL is active before submitting sensitive information to our server. To double-check, verify that the URL or Address line of your browser for our site begins with "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
3110 Southwest Freeway, Houston, TX 77098

Phone: 713-292-0300 or 800-392-4340
Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST.

[If needed, we can guide you through the Language Line Service, which provides telephone interpretation in 140 languages.]

E-mail
You can email your question to customerservice@sjgs.org, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you for visiting our site.

This Privacy Policy was last updated in August 22, 2014.

3110 Southwest Freeway - Houston, TX 77098