Welcome to the official Web site of Girl Scouts of Western New York. This Web site is owned and operated by Girl Scouts of Western New York, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Buffalo, New York.
Girl Scouts of Western New York is committed to protecting the privacy of our visitors. This privacy policy discloses how we collect, protect, and use information you provide us online, as well as how we protect children's privacy. By using the pages on this site, you are accepting the practices described in the Privacy Policy.
If our policy practices change in the future, we will let you know by posting the policy changes on our Web site. However, we will treat all personal information we collect in accordance with the privacy notice in effect at the time the information is collected.
Girl Scouts' online properties comprise of, but are not limited to, all pages found under www.gswny.org, including our online shop and our destination sites for girls and teens, called Go Girls Only and STUDIO 2B respectively.
DATA COLLECTION
Your Rights Concerning Your Personal Data
State-Specific Data Privacy Information
Girl Scouts of Western New York serves customers in New York. Regardless of your state of residency, Girl Scouts of Western New York and Girl Scouts of the USA honors the following rights with respect to Personal Data collected from you when you visit our Sites:
- Confirm whether GSUSA is processing your Personal Data and, if so, access that Personal Data.
- Rectify/correct any inaccuracies in your Personal Data.
- Ask us to delete any of your Personal Data that is stored in our systems.
- Obtain a copy of the Personal Data we have for you in a format that allows you to transmit it to another data controller (also known as the "Right to Data Portability").
While we are not currently subject to the data protection laws that provide rights to residents of other U.S. states, we continue to monitor the privacy law landscape and, when necessary, will update our practices and this Notice to remain in compliance with applicable laws.
Exercising Your Rights
To exercise the rights described above, please contact us via our Girl Scouts Privacy Portal or by email to customercare@gswny.org. You have the right to be free from unlawful discrimination for exercising your rights under applicable state law.
Only you or an adult you designate to act on your behalf (where permitted by law) may make a request related to your Personal Data. A request to exercise any of these rights must identify the right you want to exercise and describe the information to which your request relates in sufficient detail to allow us to understand, evaluate, and respond to your request.
You may also have a right to appeal a decision we make relating to requests to exercise these rights. To appeal a decision, please follow the instructions we provide in our communication to you regarding the status of your request.
CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) protects the personal information of children under the age of 13. This applies to individually identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full name, home address, email address, telephone number or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact the child. The Act and Rule also cover other types of information—for example, hobbies, interests and information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms—when they are tied to individually identifiable information. It is important for you to understand this law; we encourage you to read more about COPPA.
Note to Parents on Our Privacy Policy
Girl Scouts of Western New York is committed to providing a safe, secure, and fun online experience for children who visit our site. We are dedicated to safeguarding any personal information collected online and to helping parents and children have positive experiences on the Internet. Consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without prior verifiable parental consent.
Parents can revoke their consent and ask that information about their children be deleted from the site by contacting our offices by phone at (888) 837-6410 or via email. To do this or to review personal 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.
Girl Scouts believes it is good policy not to collect more personally identifiable information from children under 13 than is necessary for them to participate in our online activities. In addition, be aware that all sites that are targeted to children under 13 are prohibited by law from collecting more information than they need.
Submissions
Girl Scouts of Western New York 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 Web site. For this reason, Girl Scouts of Western New York 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
Visitors should be aware that non-personal information and data may be automatically collected by the Girl Scouts of Western New York Web site through the use of "cookies." "Cookies" are small text files a Web site 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. Girl Scouts of Western New York 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.
LINKS TO OTHER WEB SITES AND SERVICES
This site may be linked to other sites and services that are not maintained by Girl Scouts of Western New York. These Web sites have their own privacy policies, which you should review prior to visiting them. We have no responsibility for linked Web sites 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 ensure the appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures are in place to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access
