Privacy Policy

WELCOME

Kaboose Inc. works hard to provide you with the best services, information and the highest quality interaction on the Internet. We respect the privacy of our users and the concerns of parents for their children visiting our sites. We urge children to check with their parents before entering information on any website.

The Internet is a vast resource and we encourage parents to become actively involved in their children’s online experience and urge them to participate in their development. We also encourage parents to discuss with their children restrictions regarding the online release of personal information to anyone they do not know. We urge parents to instruct their children never to give out their real names, addresses or phone numbers when using the Internet. In keeping with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) we have created this privacy policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to our users' privacy and to explain our information gathering and dissemination practices.

If you are interested in reading more about COPPA you can visit the FTC web site at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/kidzprivacy/

Certain areas of our Web sites, including the blogs, shopping areas and parent discussion rooms, are not intended for children under the age of 13. These Web site pages are not structured to attract children under the age of 13. If you are under 13 years of age, then please do not use or access these areas at any time or in any manner.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT

We collect two types of information: personally identifiable information (“PII”) and non-personally identifiable information (“Non-PII”), which is also referred to as aggregate and anonymous data. PII is data used to identify, contact or locate a person, including name, address, telephone number or email address. Non-PII is information that is anonymous or not linked to a particular person. Used for online preference marketing by network advertisers, this data consists mostly of click-stream (sites you have visited or links you have clicked) compiled as you move across different Web sites or a single site.

We collect this information in a variety of ways through the features provided on our sites, such as registration, when you communicate or otherwise interact with us, contests or promotions, surveys or when you purchase a product or service through our sites. We may receive information about you from other sources; for example we may obtain geographic or demographic information, or information about your interests, from third parties, or we may receive information from a marketing partner in connection with a co-branded web site or promotion and through our relationships with third-party marketers and advertising networks. Providing us with PII is your choice, and in the case of children under 13, is subject to COPPA and the procedures set forth below.

References in this privacy policy to our company, includes Kaboose, its direct and indirect subsidiaries and their affiliates.

PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

Anybody can access Kaboose. In particular, children can surf our sites, view content and play some games without any PII being collected. However, some activities may require that a person provide PII (e.g., a child’s email address and/or email address of parent or third party). We do not require children under 13 to disclose more information than is reasonably necessary to participate in any of a site’s activities as a condition of participation. And if a child participates in our online activities, we do not collect more PII than necessary to participate, nor do we sell or transfer any PII collected at our sites to third parties without his or her parent’s consent. Parents also have the option to agree to the collection and use of their children’s PII without consenting to the disclosure of that PII to third parties. Parents can request to have their children’s PII deleted, refuse to permit further collection of PII by us and/or review their children’s PII. To take any or all of these actions, simply contact us by following the instructions described below.

We do not actively solicit, request, or re-use any PII from visitors except in the following instances:

Requests For Information and Feedback

We offer a feedback feature so users can communicate with us. There is a text box for users to write whatever they want to tell us and they are invited to share certain information about themselves although it is not required. If people e-mail us with questions or comments and wish a reply, they need to provide an e-mail address or mailing address. Real names need not be used to request e-mail replies. We will hold a user’s email address long enough to respond to the user and then delete it from our system after we have provided an answer.

Newsletters

If a user requests to receive communications from Kaboose (newsletters or company updates, for example) they need to provide a valid e-mail address because communications will be sent to that e-mail address. Real names need not be used to request communications. Newsletters are not intended for children under the age of 13 and we do not knowingly collect children’s email addresses for our newsletters. Subscribers, at any time,, have the opportunity to exercise the option to request that we stop sending them the newsletter and to have their information removed from our newsletter database by following the “unsubscribe” instructions found in either their initial email confirming their request to receive the electronic newsletter or at the end of any of the newsletter emails, or by simply contacting us. All information collected for newsletters is used only to send the user the electronic newsletter and may be transferred, disclosed, or shared with third parties who may be engaged by us specifically to handle the preparation and delivery of the electronic newsletter and perform other related technical and processing functions. These third parties may not use it for other purposes and have agreed to maintain the confidentiality of such information.

Contests, Promotions and Electronic Mailing

From time to time, Kaboose may offer special online activities like sweepstakes or contests that are open to children under the age of 13. When entering, children under the age of 13 are required to provide their first name, email address, date of birth and the email address of a parent/guardian. Kaboose will then immediately send an email to the parent giving them the option of removing their child from the contest if they so choose. We ask, from all users, for, in addition to their email address, their first name and last name, and sometimes postal addresses, in order to verify the entrant’s identity. PII that is submitted for entry in a contest or sweepstakes will only be used for the purpose of determining a winner and will not be reused after the particular event is completed. If you do not want any PII, including the PII of your child under the age of 13 to be shared in this manner, you may always decline to participate, or decline to consent to children under the age of 13 participating. Should a user under the age of 13 be selected as the winner (depending on eligibility and legal requirements per the contest rules and regulations), Kaboose will notify that child’s parent/guardian that he/she has won and request the parent or guardian complete a release and waiver form so that we may award the prize. Subject to the paragraph below regarding third parties that may process or sponsor a sweepstakes, it is only at this time that the parent’s contact information is provided to any third parties. Also, if permission is granted by a parent/guardian, we may post the winner's first name, age and home state/province. Any PII that is given to us in this circumstance is used only for the purpose of conducting the activity and, once the prize is awarded, only PII related to the winner will be maintained for internal administrative purposes. The remaining PII will be deleted from our system once the activity is concluded, and after any legally required period for keeping such information has passed.

Information relating to the contest is shared with a third party when you choose to receive information from a third party sweepstakes sponsor or when a sweepstakes is hosted by Kaboose but administered by a sponsor or another third party (of which we wil advise you in the sweepstakes rules).

You should carefully review the rules of each sweepstakes, contest and giveaway which you enter as they may contain additional important information about Kaboose’s or a sponsor's use of your PII.

Cards

Children can send different types of cards; Emoz, Animated Cards and Zeeks Cards, which are electronic postcards, including a Tell-A-Friend postcards. Children may choose from a variety of pre-approved messages when sending cards, and may send them to anyone they wish. The sender is required to enter a nickname but nothing more. No PII is collected. The recipient's email address is removed once they have viewed their card.

Safety

We may seek a child's name and contact information to the extent reasonably necessary to protect the safety of a child participating on our sites. In this situation the information will only be used for the sole purpose of protecting the child's safety and, as described above, we will provide the parent/guardian with notice of this use.

Membership Information and Message Boards, Chat Rooms, and Journals

Various public forums such as chat rooms, message boards, blogs and various question and answer areas are available to adult users of Kaboose. These areas of Kaboose are reserved for adult Kaboose users who have registered with us. When registering, Kaboose will request PII, including an email address. We may use PII from this registration form to send members newsletters, information about our company and special offerings and promotional materials from our company and from some of our partners via email and/or postal mail. All emails will contain simple instructions on how to unsubscribe/opt out. In certain instances our company may sell or otherwise provide certain members' postal addresses to third parties for postal mailings. To opt out of postal mailings please send a request to Kaboose by contacting us at the addresses listed below.

Kaboose provides you with the ability to access, correct or change certain information in your member profile at any time, including contact information or other information you have provided to us. Please be advised that Kaboose currently archives information collected on its sites from members and visitors.

Please remember that any information disclosed in these public forum areas becomes public information and is immediately accessible on our sites, so it is important for you to exercise discretion and appropriate caution when deciding to reveal personal information in these areas. Kaboose may decide to utilize the content of public journals, email sent to us and chat room and message board content in order to enhance the editorial, advertising and promotional aspects of Kaboose.

Shopping at Kaboose E-Commerce Partners

Shopping on Kaboose sites by adult users is provided through our e-commerce partners. When adult users provide personal financial information and other PII to one of Kaboose’s e-commerce partners, this transaction will occur on the e-commerce partner's site, not Kaboose’s, and as such the financial and PII you provide is collected by and controlled by the privacy policy of that e-commerce partner. It is important therefore that you familiarize yourself with the privacy policy of the e-commerce site you transact with. Two of our affiliated companies, Birthday in a Box and Two Peas in a Bucket, do however directly handle commerce transactions on their sites.

Co-Branded Sites

We may provide sites to you in partnership with third parties (“Co-Branded Sites”) and may require adult users to disclose PII in order to registered for and access products and/or services on those sites. Such Co-Branded Sites will identify the third party partners. If you elect to register for such products and/or services at Co-Branded Sites, you may be providing your PII to both us and the third party partner and your information may be subject to a separate privacy policy or may be subject to both our privacy policy and the privacy policy of our third party partner. If you sign-in to a Co-Branded Site with a user name and password obtained at one of our Web sites, you are automatically registering with the Co-Branded Site and your PII may be disclosed to the identified third party partner for the Co-Branded Site.

NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTION

Polls and Surveys

From time to time we may ask our site visitors to answer survey questions. Surveys generally deal with the sites, our products or categories of products. We may ask for age or age ranges, gender, and other Non-PII. No PII is requested and the information collected from a child is not tied to any PII that may have been previously provided. We may have agencies administering our surveys, but these agencies are acting solely on our behalf. We may post sample answers to polls or surveys at the sites, no identifying information is ever included. Information gathered from polls and surveys are for internal use by Kaboose, but aggregate information may be shared with others.

Children Games/Discussion Groups

For some online activities directed to children under the age of 13, including the Zeeks and Funschool games, users may participate in discussion groups and publicly record high-scores on the games. To participate, users must complete a registration process where users create a log-in name and password in connection with the registration process. We also ask users for certain Non-PII such as birth date, gender and/or zip code.

ADDITIONAL METHODS IN WHICH INFORMATION IS COLLECTED

COOKIES AND TRACKING TECHNOLOGY

What are Cookies

Our sites use cookie and tracking technology. A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier that is sent to your browser from a Web site's computers and stored on your computer's hard drive. Cookies are an essential part of how the Internet works today, and allow server computers to recognize your computer's browser when you return. This enables Web sites that you visit to store information about your preferences on their sites. Since cookies are only text files, they cannot "run" on your computer and have no ability to search your computer for other information, or transmit it to anyone. Cookie and tracking technology is useful for gathering information such as browser type and operating system, tracking the number of visitors to the web site, and understanding how visitors use the site. Cookies themselves do not contain any PII. Cookies can also help tailor the site to visitors' needs and help customize the site for visitors.

Our Use of Cookies

We may use cookies to keep track of game high scores, to save your ID and password so you don't have to re-enter them each time you visit our site, to deliver content specific to your interests, to track the pages you've visited and to make sure you do not see the same ads or other information repeatedly. If you have asked us to send you information about upcoming products and promotions, using cookies we collect information about which Web site pages you have visited and in what order (called click stream data) that may allow us to narrow or limit the materials provided to you based on your prior online activities or preferences. We use general IP address information to better understand how the site is utilized. While we cannot collect PII via cookies and other tracking technology, if PII was previously provided, cookies may be tied to such information. We may combine your PII with your cookie and click stream data to allow us to limit the materials we provide you to items we think you will find interesting, based on your prior online activities and preferences. We may share aggregate, but not individual, cookie and tracking information, all Non-PII, with third parties, including our advertisers. You may modify your browser preference to provide you with choices relating to cookies. You have the choice to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set or to reject all cookies. If you choose to reject cookies you may be unable to use those Kaboose services that require registration.

Web Beacons and Web Bugs

Generally, a Web beacon consists of a small string of software code that represents a graphic image request on a Web page or email. There may or may not be a visible graphic image associated with the Web beacon and often the image is designed to blend into the background of a Web page or email. Web beacons can be used for many purposes - including site traffic reporting, unique visitor counts, advertising auditing and reporting, and personalization. The Web beacons on our sites collect only Non-PII or anonymous data.

Our Use of Web Beacons and Web Bugs

We may use Web beacons to do the following:

• counting users who have visited specific pages or access certain cookies;
• monitoring traffic and conversion patterns through our various product and other offerings on our sites;
• personalizing your experience when you visit our sites, including the advertising content you see; and
• determining whether or not messages were opened, links were clicked or notifications/offers were acted upon.

Third Party Cookies and Other Tracking Technology

Our third party advertisers may use cookies and other tracking technology, including without limitation, clear gifs (a.k.a. web beacons and web bugs) to recognize you and provide better managed advertising on our sites. Third party cookies and web beacons are governed by the third party’s specific privacy policy, not our privacy policy.

Third Party Advertising

May of the ads appearing on our sites were not selected and delivered by us, but by network advertising companies that manage and provide advertising for our sites. Information about your visits to this site, such as number of times you have viewed an ad (but not your name, address, or other PII), is used to serve ads to you.

Third-party ad servers may collect and use Non-PII about your visits to our sites and other sites in order to present advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice or to opt out of having this information used by third-party ad servers to provide targeted ads, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp.

The companies that provide advertising for our sites and other sites typically gather data about consumers who view their ads. Often, that data is anonymous - linked only to a numbered cookie on a user's computer. Networks collect and analyze this data to make a variety of inferences about each consumer's interests and preferences. The result is a profile that attempts to predict the individual consumer's tastes, needs, and purchasing habits. That profile enables the advertising companies' computers to make split-second decisions about how to deliver ads directly targeted to the consumer's specific interests. This is called online preference marketing.

Some of these third parties track and analyze anonymous usage and browsing patterns of our visitors and community members. All data collected by these third parties on behalf of our sites is owned and used by us, but is licensed to the third party for the purposes of creating behavioral information segments. We use this information to help provide our advertisers with more targeted advertising opportunities, which means that users see advertising that is most likely to interest them and advertisers send their messages to people who are most likely to be receptive, improving both the viewer’s experience and the effectiveness of the ads. In addition, the third parties can sell the behavioral information segments to other third parties for use in ads on other sites.

SHARING INFORMATION

Except for the following limited and necessary instances, we do not share PII collected at our sites with third parties:

• Kaboose has your consent, and in the case of a child under 13, his or her parent’s consent, to share the information, including where it is necessary to provide a product or service for a child that his or her parent has approved;
• Kaboose needs to share your information to provide a product or service you have requested;
• Kaboose needs to send the information to companies who work on behalf of Kaboose to provide you with a product or service that you have requested;
• Kaboose must respond to subpoenas, court orders or legal process; or
• Kaboose needs to share your information to protect the security and liability of this site, including where your actions while using Kaboose services violate the Kaboose Terms of Use, or any of our usage guidelines for specific products or services.
• Kaboose discloses this information in connection with the sale, assignment, or other transfer of the business or a portion of the business of our sites, including a corporate merger, consolidation, restructuring, sale of assets or other corporate change of our direct or indirect parent companies that affects us.

Kaboose may sometimes share "general" Non-PII about our site visitors with our advertisers, potential partners, or other third parties. This information will only be provided in the aggregate and will not reveal any PII.

LINKS

The content of the Kaboose Network is designed for family use. In addition to our own content, we also provide links to software publishers and sites children may be interested in. We make every effort to link only to sites with content suitable for all ages, but in the end, we cannot be responsible for what appears on other sites. Additionally, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and information gathering practices of those other sites. Sometimes the other sites might conduct contests or sweepstakes that are promoted on Kaboose. Users should consult the other sites' privacy notices, because those sites are not covered by our privacy policy and may follow procedures that are different from our procedures.

In order to participate in such partner and/or advertiser supplied services and tools you may be required to provide PII to the advertisers and partners whose tools and services you have chosen to interact with. Each advertiser and partner may request different information from you. If you have additional questions about how one of our advertisers, partners or sponsors use information about you, we urge you to contact them directly.

SECURITY, REVIEW AND DELETION OF INFORMATION

Kaboose uses industry standard security measures to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. While there is no such thing as "perfect security" on the Internet, we try our best to make sure that your transmissions to and from our sites are kept secure. Information is kept secure. Only authorized Kaboose employees and its agents (who have agreed to keep information secure) have access to information and only to help Kaboose administer the site. The limited PII collected from a child is password protected.

Parents may contact us at privacy@kaboose.com about reviewing or deleting the information collected or to restrict disclosure of the information to third parties. You may also use this email address to contact us about any questions you may have about this policy or our practices.

YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits Kaboose customers who are California residents to request certain information regarding its disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please [click here or] send request for information to the mailing address found below.

CONTACTING US

If you have any questions about this privacy statement or the practices of this site you can contact us at:

Kaboose Inc.
505 University Avenue
Suite 1400
Toronto, ON
M5G 1X3
Canada
Telephone: 416-593-3000
Fax: 416-593-4658

To contact Kaboose by e-mail please click here.

Kaboose hopes this document answers your questions and concerns about our privacy policies. Protecting the privacy of our visitors is vitally important to us. Kaboose reserves the right to change its privacy policies or practices at any time. When Kaboose makes any changes, it will be reflected on its updated Privacy Statement and will be posted on this page. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Statement.

© 2008 Kaboose Inc., All Rights Reserved

Thanks for stopping by! We hope your visit to the Kaboose Network is fun, safe and enjoyable!

Last updated: 17 March 2008