Thank you for visiting a Site owned or operated by Rebecca Horton or an App published by Rebecca Horton (from which you have linked to this Privacy Policy). “Sites” refers to Internet web sites and “Apps” refers to apps for use on mobile communication devices such as smartphones and tablets. “Platforms” refers to Sites and Apps collectively. 

“Rebecca Horton” also is referred to as “we,” “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy.

“Teen” refers to any visitor 13-19 years of age who visit our Platforms.
 

PRIVACY PRINCIPLES

We have adopted this Privacy Policy for our Platforms. On our Platforms, we collect personal information in two forms. One form is information that we expressly request you to provide in connection with certain activities such as “blogs” or “comments” and “payment processing of a book purchase”.  The second form is anonymous information that we automatically collect from your computer, phone or other device.

Our Privacy Policy is based on the following principles:

1. You are free to choose whether or not to engage in any activity on our Platforms that involves your submission of personal information, such as your name, email address, phone number or other information that can be used to identify or contact an individual, whether online or offline. We will ask you for such information expressly. Most of the activities on our Platforms do not require you to submit any personal information.

2. When we ask you to submit personal information, we will use the information to allow you to “blog” or “comment” on our Site, or “process a book payment”. We will use the information only as we have stated, other than in Special Circumstances which are described below (such as in relation to law enforcement or a business transfer).

3. We use the anonymous information that is automatically collected from your device, such as a computer’s Internet Protocol address, a mobile device identifier, operating system, or general location such as zip code, to support internal operations so that we can understand and monitor the usage of our Platforms and improve the performance of the Platforms.

4. There is no behavioral advertising on our Platforms which means that you will not see any advertising that is targeted to you based on your combined activity on our Platforms and your activity on other sites and apps.

5. Third parties that we use to assist with the Platforms have their own Privacy Policy such as the bank which processes the payment information or Amazon where you can purchase the digital book.
 

Teen Information:

6.  We will not make personal information collected from Teens publicly available. We will not condition a Teen’s participation in any activity or service on the disclosure of more personal information than is reasonably necessary to participate in an activity.

7. Parents may contact us (at [email protected]) to review, update or delete any of their Teen’s personal information that we may have collected and to elect for us not to collect any additional personal information from their Teen.

8. We will update this Privacy Policy from time to time by posting the updated Privacy Policy online. We will not change how we handle previously collected information without providing notice and obtaining parental consent where necessary.

 
The following describes our Privacy Policy as it relates to certain specific activities.
 

INFORMATION WE REQUEST ON OUR TEEN’S PLATFORM

• Join Teen Conversation. When our Teen visitors wish to sign up to write on our blog, we ask that they have parental consent and should enter a parent’s first name and email address, unless the parent has given their Teen permission beforehand to enter their own information. 

INFORMATION WE COLLECT AUTOMATICALLY

We use the anonymous information that is automatically collected to support the internal operations of the Platforms. Some of this information is collected through third-party analytics tools. Internal operations include the following:

• to monitor metrics such as total number of visitors and traffic;

• to understand which activities and services are most popular;

• to understand the pages where visitors enter our Sites and the pages viewed;

• to understand generally the location of our users (e.g., zip code information);

• to recognize the browsers used to visit our Sites.

• to diagnose and fix technology problems.
 

When you visit a Platform, we may use cookies and similar technologies like pixels and web beacons, to collect this anonymous information for the purpose of the internal operations of our Platforms. A “cookie” is a piece of information that a web site or an app transfers to a user’s device for record-keeping purposes. As a user moves from one page or one screen to another, a cookie is used to tell us that it is the same device. We also may use a cookie to keep track of your selections. You may set your device to accept or not accept cookies and you may delete any cookies that you have received. However, should you decide to disable any cookies we place on your device, you may not be able to use certain services or features on our Platforms. A “web beacon” is a one-pixel image (which may be visible or transparent), which may be embedded on a web page or e-mail message, and which may also provide us with information about usage of that page or e-mail message.
 

SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

Law Enforcement and Safety. We may access, preserve and share your information when we have a good faith belief that it is necessary to: (i) respond to a legal request (like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) or otherwise to take action because we believe it is required or advisable under the law; (ii) detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity; (iii) respond to your requests for customer service; or (iv) limit our legal liability or to protect the rights, property, or personal safety of ourselves, any user of our Platforms, a third party or the general public including as part of investigations.
 

Business Transfer. If we sell or otherwise transfer part or the whole of our assets to another organization (e.g., in the course of a transaction like a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, liquidation), your personal information, and any other information collected through our Platforms may be among the items sold or transferred. The buyer or transferee will be required to honor the commitments we have made in this Privacy Policy, if theirs is less restrictive.
 

Security Notice. In the unlikely event that we believe that the security of your personal information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If a notification is appropriate, we would endeavor to do so as promptly as possible under the circumstances, and, to the extent you have given us your e-mail address, we may notify you by e-mail. You consent to our use of e-mail as a means of such notification.
 

SERVICE PROVIDERS

We contract with third parties to provide certain services to facilitate the operations of our Platforms (“service providers”), such as to manage the analytics information about usage of our Platforms or to process payments. Our service providers will be given access to your information only as is reasonably necessary to provide the services for which they are contracted. They will be required to abide by the terms of their Privacy Policy if they have none, otherwise that service provider will abide by their own privacy policy, especially a payment processor or Amazon in their handling of personal information.
 

WHERE WE STORE YOUR INFORMATION

Your information collected through a Platform may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which we or our service providers maintain facilities. We or our service providers may transfer information that we collect about you, including personal information across borders and from your country or jurisdiction to other countries or jurisdictions around the world. If you are located in the European Union or other regions with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, please note that we may transfer information, including personal information, to a country and jurisdiction that does not have the same data protection laws as your jurisdiction. By using a Platform you consent to the transfer of information to the U.S. or to any other country in which we or our service providers maintain facilities and the use and disclosure of information about you as described in this Privacy Policy.
 

SECURITY OF YOUR INFORMATION

We strive to maintain the security of information but cannot guarantee that information security measures are fail-safe or guarantee that information on a Platform may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed. Our Platforms maintain technical and organizational steps to keep information collected secure, including limiting the number of people who have physical access to our database servers and use of electronic security systems and password protections to guard against unauthorized access.
 

OTHER WEB SITES AND SERVICES

Our Platforms may link to other websites or apps, including content offered by third parties that we do not control and whose privacy and data collection practices may differ from ours (“Third Party Platforms”). We are not responsible for the practices employed by any websites or services linked to or from our Platforms, including the information or content contained within them.
 

When you go via our link to Third Party Platforms, you become subject to their terms of use and privacy policies rather than ours. You should review these other website privacy policies regarding any personal information that they may collect about you.

ONLINE SAFETY

Involvement in your family’s online lives is one of the most important safety tools available. In addition, we encourage you to educate yourself and your Teen on privacy concerns. We recommend, as a starting point, the following information published by the federal government, https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/topics/protecting-kids-online