AAPB Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting americanarchive.org (the “Site”). We know you don’t want the information you provide us shared indiscriminately. Here we explain what information the WGBH Educational Foundation (“GBH”) (and our third-party vendors and/or service providers (collectively “we”) acting on our behalf to help deliver the services and operate and analyze use of the Site), collects, what we do with the information, and what controls you have over the information collected. We’re committed to ensuring the privacy of your personally identifiable information, and to protecting your ability to make financial transactions and transmit your personal data with full confidence.

The privacy policy set forth here refers solely to americanarchive.org. Please read it carefully, and if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us. Also, note that americanarchive.org links to other sites, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (“CPB”), Library of Congress, and other participating organizations' websites. Please consult those sites to learn more about their policies.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU?
HOW DO WE USE INFORMATION GATHERED ON THE SITE?
SECURITY OF INFORMATION
CHILDREN’S GUIDELINES
CORRECTIONS TO PERSONAL DATA; OPTING OUT
ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY FOR americanarchive.org
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
NOTICE TO PARENTS AND LEGAL GUARDIANS
DISCUSSION AND COMMENT POLICY

1. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU?

We collect two types of information from you: a) Personally identifiable information, includes personal information (such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, credit card information, and/or other identifying information) you voluntarily supply upon request when you register for our website (for example, in order to curate a collection), make a donation, complete a survey, register for an online discussion, submit inventory data, or provide your email address; and b) Non-personally identifiable information, for example IP Addresses and cookies, which includes tracking information collected as you navigate through our site. Uses of this information are discussed in Section 2 below.

A. Personally Identifiable Information

We will not collect personally identifiable information from you, other than what you supply to us on a voluntary basis upon request.

Registration for our website:

Anyone can view our site, however some portions of the Site require a free registration, which enables access to those portions. Upon registering, you will either select your own password and login name or you will receive a password and login name. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password and login name, and are solely responsible for all activities that occur with your password and login name. By using the Site, you are agreeing to the conditions of our Terms of Use.

Forums, Feedback and Content Submissions:

On certain pages within the Site you can submit content to be published, make community postings, comments, and suggestions. We may collect your name, address, and email addresses in connection with these activities. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. We may contact users regarding their submissions in certain circumstances.

Support of AAPB

On certain pages within the Site we may now or in the future offer visitors the opportunity to make a donation in support of AAPB or our activities. If you choose to make a donation, we will collect and store your telephone number, email address, billing address, and credit card information.

Your submission of others’ Personally Identifiable Information:

On certain pages within the Site you can submit information about other people. For example, you may submit a person’s name and email address to recommend a collection. This information will only be used for your intended purpose.

Email and Email Newsletters:

On occasion, we may collect personal information from users in connection with optional email and email newsletters. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. Such information will be used as indicated at the time of collection. If a user opts to receive email and/or email newsletters from us, where we use a third party distribution system, then the Privacy Policy of that third party service provider will apply.

Communications:

On occasion, we may collect personal information from users in connection with optional communications from GBH, the Library of Congress, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or a public broadcasting station. We will indicate which information is required and which is optional. Such information will be used as indicated at the time of collection.

B. Non-personally Identifiable Information

In addition to information that you provide to us, we (again, this is GBH and third party vendors and/or service providers) may also collect and store certain non-personally identifiable information automatically when you use the Site. This information helps us improve the experience you and other visitors have with the Site.

For example, we may collect your IP address, browser information and reference site domain, as well as related information such as the date on which you visit the Site. This information does not identify you personally and is only used in the aggregate.

As is common practice among web sites, we use “cookies” and similar technologies. In general, cookies — the informational files that your web browser places on your computer when you visit a website — are used on this Site to track and analyze how you and other visitors use our Site. We use these cookies in order to improve the Site, to identify the source of visitors and what pages you use while on our site, to offer visitors interactive and/or personalized features that would not be possible without the cookies, to recall specific information to save visitors time when they return to the Site, to provide our sponsors targeted sponsorship opportunities, to provide visitors customized sponsorship messages or list of customized videos of interest, and to identify usage and statistical trends. By looking at this traffic we can better understand our community, which allows us to improve our Site and to provide you with an optimal experience and better service. Our sponsorship service vendors, which serve sponsorship messages onto our site, and third party vendors that measure and analyze the use of the Site for us, may also use their own cookies. At no time does the cookie reveal your name, address, or email address (even if you have entered these in specific areas of the Site). The Site pages cannot extract any personally identifying information about you from what we receive via a cookie and your browser.

You can set your browser preferences to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. However, some parts of the Site will not function properly if you do so.

2. HOW DO WE USE INFORMATION GATHERED ON THE SITE?

Neither GBH, nor our third-party vendors and/or service providers acting on our behalf to help deliver the services and operate the Site, will willfully disclose any personally identifiable information about our online users to any non-affiliated third party without first receiving the user’s permission, unless required by law. GBH’s affiliates include the Library of Congress, CPB, NPR, PBS, and other public broadcasting stations.

In terms of our own use of information, we may use your personally identifiable information for the activities described in the previous sections, for the activities described when you submitted the information, or for internal and marketing promotional purposes as further described in this policy.

We will typically explain the extent of use at the time you are asked to provide personal information. If you do not want this information to be collected or used by us for these purposes, you can simply “opt out.” Under certain circumstances, opting out may prevent your participation in activities for which personal information is needed, as in contests.

As mentioned, in certain cases, we may contract with other companies or use available services of other companies to provide services on our behalf. These service providers may maintain customer databases with email addresses of Site visitors who have provided them to us by registering at our site or signing up for a newsletter or email. We (which includes our service providers) may use these addresses to respond to the general purposes for which we collected the information, to provide services and to operate the Site; to process email distribution; for list processing and analysis; and possibly to send information about the programs or services of GBH, the Library of Congress, CPB, PBS, or other public broadcasting stations. Our service providers may have access to your personally identifiable information as necessary to provide certain services on our behalf. They are required to maintain the privacy of all such information in their possession or control and can only use the information on our behalf for the purpose that we have contracted them, for example sending you a newsletter. They are not authorized to use your information for any other purpose. However, if a user of this Site opts to receive email and/or email newsletters from us, where we use a third party distribution system, then the Privacy Policy of that third party service provider will apply. Similarly, personally identifiable information provided in connection with a donation will be shared with third parties who perform services to process the donation.

We will not sell, exchange, or lend email addresses to any non-affiliated third party, without your permission. However, we or our service providers may release personally identifiable information if we believe in good faith that the law or legal process requires it, we have received a valid administrative request from a law enforcement agency, or such release is necessary to protect anyone’s rights, property or safety.

On certain pages, we may now or in the future, offer visitors the opportunity to provide comments, messages or other user-generated text, content or materials (collectively “User Materials”). Any information that you disclose when posting a message to these areas, such as your name, screen name or ID used, becomes public. In addition, the information that you disclose in these areas may be used by us for promotional and marketing purposes. We are not responsible for any personally identifiable information that you choose to disclose in these public areas. Further, GBH, its production units, public broadcasting station affiliates and their licensees, may use, copy, sublicense, modify, transmit, display, create derivative works of, host, index, cache, tag, encode, and/or adapt any User Materials, and any information contained therein, in any and all media formats or channels, whether now known or hereafter devised, including, but not limited to, the Site, public broadcasting station web sites, other third party web sites, over the air (on radio or television), and on mobile platforms.

We reserve the right to send you email relating to your account status. This includes Request for Proposal confirmations, notices of credit card problems, renewal/expiration notices, other transactional emails and notifications about major changes to our Site and/or to our Privacy Policy. If you have registered for online discussions or other services, you may receive email specific to your participation in those activities.

We may offer an email listserv via third party services. We will always provide a clear and convenient method of unsubscribing to our mailings. If you no longer wish to receive a specific newsletter, follow the “unsubscribe” instructions located in each newsletter or email, or by going to the Site’s Contact Us page and send us a message. We will update our records as soon as possible.

GBH, with the assistance from time to time of its third party service vendors, uses non-identifying aggregate information to analyze use of and better design the Site and to share with third parties in aggregate form only as appropriate. For example, we may tell a third party that a certain number of users accessed a particular video on our Site. However, we will not disclose any information that could be used to identify those users.

3. SECURITY OF INFORMATION

GBH has in place what we believe to be appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. Credit card information provided on the Site is protected against unauthorized use by Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security features. The SSL protocol is the industry standard method for creating an encrypted, secure connection between your web browser and a web server, such as the Site’s server. You should, however, keep in mind that no Internet or email transmission is ever fully secure or error free. Because most email is not encrypted, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via email.

4. CHILDREN’S GUIDELINES

Our Site is a general audience site and does not knowingly collect or store personally identifiable information about children under the age of 13.

5. CORRECTIONS TO PERSONAL DATA; OPTING OUT

Please Contact Us to a) correct or update any personal information in the GBH database that you state is erroneous, b) opt-out of future communications from GBH, or c) request GBH to make reasonable efforts to remove your personal information from the GBH database, thereby canceling your profile, newsletter registration and other GBH registrations. This will not necessarily remove previous public comments and other User Materials submitted for public display on the Site. You should understand that it may be impossible to delete personal information entirely because of backups and records of deletions.

6. ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY FOR americanarchive.org

By using this Site, you signify your agreement to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy for americanarchive.org. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, please do not use this Site. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this policy at any time. Please check this page periodically for any changes. Your continued use of americanarchive.org following the posting of any changes to these terms shall mean that you have accepted those changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

7. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

Whenever this Privacy Policy for our Site changes, we will post the changes to the Site, and such changes will be effective immediately upon posting. If you do not agree to the changes, please do not continue to use the Site. Under certain circumstances, we may also elect to notify you of changes or updates to our Privacy Policy by additional means, such as posting a notice on the front page of our Site or sending you an email if we have your email address.

NOTICE TO PARENTS AND LEGAL GUARDIANS

It is our goal to provide service on our site while maintaining our strong commitment to identifying children and protecting their privacy. If we learn that a user is younger than 18, we will not store his/her personal information for future communication. GBH does not willfully disclose to any third party any personally identifiable information about our online visitors who have identified themselves as younger than 18.

DISCUSSION AND COMMENT POLICY

This is the discussion policy for users of americanarchive.org’s blog/commenting/email tools. All participants offering comments on americanarchive.org are required to follow these guidelines. Those violating the following guidelines may have their comments removed or blocked.

Our guidelines are intended to facilitate a sense connection and sharing within the online community of this Site. You can contribute to and be part of our community by participating on americanarchive.org with these guidelines in mind:

Be respectful and civil. If polite language isn’t possible, please don’t post. Engage points, focus on ideas, debate, and discuss. Never resort to name-calling, slander, or obscenities. Messages that include anything GBH, in its sole discretion, determines to be hate speech, a threat, harassment, or illegal in any way will be removed and the poster will be blocked.
Post clear, concise comments (posts longer than 200 words tend to be ignored by readers anyway). Long posts may be edited by GBH. Before submitting, take a moment to re-read your post for clarity, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. And please avoid typing in all caps; it’s the online version of shouting.
Stay with the topic at hand. Keeping your posts focused contributes to the best possible discussion.
Write your own posts. A link or quote from another source can be a meaningful addition to the discussion; copying and pasting an entire article from elsewhere does not contribute in a meaningful way (also see guideline 2, above). In addition, it often violates the author’s copyright. Help keep the conversation lively and focused by posting only one link per comment.
Promote the discussion, rather than your own interests. the online community of this Site is not an appropriate venue for posters’ advertisements, promotions, campaigns, solicitations, or proselytizing. There can be a fine line between discussion and promotion of personal interests; use your best judgment and we’ll use ours.

GBH will not publish comments that don’t meet these guidelines.