Our Privacy Policy
Kerpoof is committed to providing a website that is entertaining and safe for people of all ages. Because many of the visitors to our website are children, we take care to provide suitable content, and we are very careful and conscientious about collecting or using any personal information. We are also very careful about how we collect and store information. Our guiding principle is to create a website that we feel good about being visited by the children we care about.
As we continue to offer our visitors new content and services, we may modify our practices from time to time, and this document will be updated accordingly. Our commitment to privacy and to being good stewards of the information we do collect will never change.
Kerpoof is committed to strictly following the requirements of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), which legislates what information can be collected by websites that are "directed to children", and how such information can be used. Kerpoof's privacy policy meets and exceeds all of the requirements of COPPA.
COPPA Compliance
COPPA defines personal information as "individually identifiable information," things like a first and last name, a street address, an email address, or a telephone number. COPPA places requirements on websites that collect such information from children. At Kerpoof, we never ask for personal information in order to register or to use any of our services. To subscribe to our premium services, we collect credit card information (including the card holder's name) and and email address from an adult; this information is only used in association with the credit card transaction and to communicate with the adult about the subscription service. Visitors can send an email to a friend through our servers, which requires that they enter the destination email address on a form, but we do not collect these email addresses, send any unrequested email to these addresses, share these addresses with any third party, or otherwise use these addresses. Strictly for security reasons, we temporarily archive email messages that our visitors send through our servers and may disclose these messages to law enforcement or other public agencies if they are harassing, criminal, indicate criminal intentions or otherwise violate the Terms of Use for the site. We do not harvest, disclose, or otherwise use the email addresses or other content from this archive for any other purposes.
COPPA requires that sites do not enable children to make their personal information public on the Internet without verified parental consent. While Kerpoof allows children to make public postings of things they create with Kerpoof (movies, pictures, etc., by checking the "Share with Everyone" checkbox on the "Save" dialog), all such postings are first sent through automated filters and then manually inspected by trained monitors before they are published on the site. Any content that is submitted for sharing but that contains either inappropriate content or what appears to be personal information will not be made public and will be deleted. Other than for this reason, we will never try to identify anything that may be personal information out of any data that anyone saves to our servers (such as art or stories they may create) or otherwise harvest, collect or disclose any non-aggregate information from such data.
Since we do not actively collect any personal information about our visitors, we have no accurate way to determine whether a saved or shared item contains personal information. For example, we have no way of knowing if a name is a real or a fictional name. Consider a shared story that begins "This is the story of George Washington." Without additional context, we have no way to determine whether someone is writing a story about the first president of the U.S., or if it is a story written by someone named George Washington. For shared items, if we are at all suspicious that the material contains personal information, we err on the side of safety and delete the material. Famous names, clearly made-up names, fictitious places ("123 Fairy Tale Lane", "The School of Hard Knocks"), etc. are not deleted.
COPPA also requires that sites do not condition children's participation in any activity on the child's disclosing of more personal information than is necessary. Kerpoof requires no disclosure of any personal information of a child for participation in any activity.
The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces COPPA and other government regulations, maintains a website with useful and unbiased information called Kidz Privacy that we encourage you to visit.
The FTC also manages another useful, government site called OnGuard Online which "provides practical tips from the federal government and the technology industry to help you be on guard against Internet fraud, secure your computer, and protect your personal information." While most of the information on that site relates to general online safety, it gives some tips for parents, in particular in regards to social networking sites. Unlike social networking sites, Kerpoof does not provide a means to meet new people online. Kerpoof does provide some protected mechanisms by which its members can communicate and share with other people that they already know from outside Kerpoof.
Information We Collect and How We Use It
Like most websites and web-services, information is important and valuable to us. We collect various information that we use in the aggregate. For example, we collect data to see what things on our site are popular and what are not popular. Data of this sort helps us to continuously improve the site.
As we have described above, we do not collect or store any personally identifiable information about our visitors except in the context of processing credit card payments by adults. For users that choose to join Kerpoof, we ask for certain non-personally identifiable information, consisting of a screen name, a password (that we only store in an encoded form that we cannot decode), and two "secret questions" and answers (for security in the case of forgotten passwords).
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 or Mac OS X), the visitor's IP Address, the web browser being used (e.g., Firefox or Internet Explorer), and the default language setting. We also cause this non-personally identifiable information to be sent to a third party (Google, Inc.) so that aggregate usage information may be provided to us through the "Google Analytics" service.
We use the non-personally identifiable information that we collect to improve the content of our site and to improve each visitor's experience. We also use this information, in the aggregate, to analyze site usage. We may occasionally provide some aggregate site-usage data to persons with whom we have a business relationship. We never share any information at the level of a single individual in connection with any of these activities.
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 or other public agency request or if we feel that such disclosure may help to prevent a crime.
Third Party Sites
Our site contains links to other sites whose practices are different from ours. Sometimes the other sites might conduct contests that are promoted on Kerpoof. Visitors should consult the other sites' privacy notices, since those sites are not covered by our Privacy Policy and may follow procedures that are different from ours. For third party sites that we link to and have a business relationship with, we require that they sign a contract with us that requires that they comply with COPPA. If you believe that a site we link to does not comply with COPPA, please let us know.
Cookies
As do most websites, Kerpoof uses browser "cookies" to enable certain functionality. Cookies are small strings of information that a website can ask your browser to store and later look up when you return to the website or visit other parts of the website. Kerpoof uses cookies to allow it to "remember you" as logged in as you visit the site, to personalize the pages that you visit on the site (e.g., to welcome you by your screen-name or nickname), and to apply any preference you may have set. Cookies are also useful to us in determining aggregate usage data, such as how many unique visitors come to the site or how many unique visitors use a particular feature. We do not use cookies to do any sort of detailed tracking of individuals.
You must have cookies enabled in order to use much of the Kerpoof site. This is a requirement because of the way we use cookies to remember you as logged in and to customize the pages you visit. Read How to Enable Cookies.
Security
We are very serious about security and we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and ensure appropriate use of the information we do collect.
Contact Us
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding our Privacy Policy and/or practices, please contact us at the following address, or by email, phone, or by using the online contact form linked at the bottom of this page.
If you are a parent, you have the right to review any information we have about your child or to ask us to delete any information about your child. To do so, please contact us with the Kerpoof user name (screen name / nickname), password, secret questions, and secret answers under which your child is registered as well as your own contact information. We will contact you to further verify that you are the parent of the child before providing or deleting any information.
Kerpoof, ATTN: Privacy Manager
1215 Spruce St, Suite 301
Boulder, CO, 80302
Kerpoof: (303) 551-7220
Kerpoof reserves the right to change its privacy policy at any time and at its sole discretion. Kerpoof visitors will be informed of any such change by Kerpoof posting a new privacy policy on its website. Should any changes to Kerpoof or its privacy policy require parental notification or consent under COPPA, such notification and/or consent will be established at that time.
This Policy is effective May 1st, 2008.
Kerpoof and all related indicia are trademarks of Kerpoof, LLC.
Copyright ©2008 Kerpoof, LLC. All rights reserved.