We want this Web site to be a safe and private place for its users. We will do our part by not requiring you to register or provide any information at all to use most sections and features of this Web site. In turn, you can do your part by reading this policy and taking the steps outlined below.

There are certain actions and areas of the site that will require you to provide personal information, such as:

1. sending an e-mail question

2. signing up to volunteer, attend, or host an event

3. submitting personal narratives or stories

Any time you provide personal information, this privacy policy will govern our use of the information you have provided.

By submitting personal information to us, you agree that we may use the information in accordance with this privacy policy. We will update this privacy policy as we deem necessary. You should be sure to reread this policy in its entirety from time to time.

Personal Information You Choose to Provide

In order to gain access to certain areas of our site or to use certain features, you may choose to provide personal information. If you do submit information to us, we will use that information for the purposes for which it was submitted. We may also use your information in other ways, such as to contact you about other Planned Parenthood related activities or as otherwise disclosed to you at the point of collection, and we may share your information with other like-minded organizations, including other Planned Parenthood entities, for similar purposes. A list of some, but not all, of these like-minded organizations can currently be found at http://www.realliferealtalk.org/partners/index.htm.

Examples of Information Use and Information Sharing:

If you sign up to attend, host, or volunteer at an event, your information will be used by us and any other event sponsors in connection with the event. We may also use your information to contact you about similar events or opportunities for involvement.

We may also provide opportunities for you to submit additional personal information, such as Website feedback or “personal stories”. By submitting this information to us, you give us permission to receive it, review it, edit it, store it, post it on our Web site, and use it in appropriate settings designed to illustrate the importance of sexual health and relationships. To protect your privacy, please do not include any identifying information in your submissions.

You should be aware that we use third-party vendors to provide services on this site and in our offline business operations. The information that you submit on this site may be provided to those vendors on a confidential basis so that those vendors can provide services (such as maintaining our databases, editing submissions, preparing publications, sending e-mail messages) on our behalf.

Other than as described above, or as may be necessary to protect the rights, property, and safety of our organization, our clients, or others, or as may be necessary to comply with applicable law, we will not share or sell the personal information you provide online. We reserve the right to share personal information you provide with legal authorities if it is, in our sole opinion, necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding suspected fraud, situations involving threats or potential harm, or if required by law (such as by a subpoena, court order, or other legal means).

Information Automatically Collected and Stored

As is true of most Web sites, we automatically collect and store some information about your computer and your visit and store it in log files. This information includes information such as your computer's (or your ISP's) Internet Protocol (IP) address (this is not your e-mail address); the domain from which you access the Internet (e.g., “verizon.net” or “Stanford.edu”); the name, version, and specifications of your computer and your computer's operating system; the Internet address of the Web site, if any, from which you came to our site; the date and time you arrived at our site and how long you spent on the site; and which pages you visited.

We use this information to formulate statistics (possibly with the help of outside experts) that show the number of visitors to the different sections of our site and to help us make our site more useful to visitors. For example, we use the browser information to help us design our Web site so that as many people as possible will be able to view the pages correctly. These statistics do not reveal personal information.

Use of Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are either placed on your computer's hard drive (“persistent cookies”) or in your computer's Random Access Memory (“session cookies”). At this time, we do not use cookies on our Web site.

Clear Gifs (Web Beacons)

We employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons) that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user's computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We do not link the information gathered through clear gifs with other personal data that you provide to us.

Online Advertisements

From time to time, we may run online advertisements on third-party Web sites to attract visitors to our site or to alert our supporters to special opportunities. Our advertising partners may use cookies and clear GIFs on this site and on the third-party sites on which our ads appear, which allow the advertising partner to track certain information about user behavior, such as “click-stream data.” Any use of information by an advertising partner would be governed by their terms of use and privacy policy, so be sure to be familiar with these policies prior to responding to online advertisements.

Security

Information submitted via the Internet, including through a web page or e-mail is subject to interception or incorrect routing, and the Internet is not a fully secure communications channel. Please consider this prior to submitting any information to us via this web site.

Certain sections of this site have heightened security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information you have provided. While we follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Remember, breaches of security also can occur when users are not vigilant in protecting their own information. The next section of our privacy policy suggests some actions you can take to help control the security of your personal information.

Your Help Is Needed

Although we do our best to protect your privacy on our sites, we need your help.

You have control over your own privacy. Think carefully before providing any personal information online.

Although this site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information you have provided, no e-mail or Web transmission is completely secure against interception. If you are worried because your communication is very sensitive, do not send it electronically.

When you write to us or send us submissions to publish, if you desire to remain anonymous, you should not tell us your name, the names of other users, or of your friends. To fully protect your privacy, you should try to keep out any information that you think may identify you or others.

Remember that we cannot protect your privacy once you leave our site, such as by “hyperlink.” So when you visit other Web sites, check each one's privacy policy yourself, and be careful about the information you submit or share.

Your browser and operating system contain other records of your Web browsing and other actions (e.g., browser history). You can find information about how to clear these history trails in your browser's “Help” section or through other Web sites that provide detailed information for each browser and operating system.

How to Unsubscribe or Contact Us About Your Information

If you wish to review the limited contact information that we may have on file for you, correct your contact information, or inform us how you wish your contact information to be used, please contact our staff (see below).

You may contact us by mail or e-mail as follows:

Mail: Social Marketing Department, PPFA, 434 West 33rd Street, New York, NY 10001
E-mail: staff@realliferealtalk.org

Policy Last Updated: January 15, 2009

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes here so that you are continually aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify our privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently.

© 2009 Planned Parenthood® Federation of America. All rights reserved. “Planned Parenthood” and its logo of nested “Ps” are registered service marks of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. “PPFA,” “Real Life. Real Talk^®” and “realliferealtalk.org” are also registered service marks belonging to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc.