Privacy Policy

 
Welcome to the Iowa Cold Cases website. We are committed to protecting your privacy and believe in your right to know what information is collected during your visit to our web site and how that information is used and safeguarded.

Any information collected at this site will not be sold, rented, loaned, traded, leased, or otherwise used in any venues where you have not provided consent.

Cookies

The Iowa Cold Cases website does not use nor store personal cookies (i.e. none are set specifically by us). A cookie is a small piece of computer code that is deposited on your hard drive by some websites. Browsers typically recognize when a cookie has been sent to your computer and give you the option to refuse or allow it. A cookie does not actually identify you, just the computer you are using to access a website. A cookie cannot read data off your hard drive.

Any cookies set as a result of visiting our website would be those set by third-party applications (i.e. Google’s Picasa web albums, Facebook Comments, etc.) and we do not and cannot access any of that information stored by those websites. Our hosting server does compile logs about pages most frequently visited, the number of visitors per day and other statistics about traffic flow, but these reports do not contain any personal identifiable information.

Account Registration

If your use of a component of the site requires you to register, a cookie will be used to automatically identify you as a registered user when you are using our site. These cookies are known as persistent cookies and continue on your computer after the initial session in which they are created. (We do not currently require registration to use our site.)

Information Gathered by Voluntary Submission

To make use of certain features on our web sites (such as contests, story comments, tips and other interactive forums and blogs) visitors may be asked to provide certain information as part of the registration or participation process. We may ask, for example, for your name, email address, address and zip code, and we might request information about your relationship to the victim and the like.

The information you supply will help us more thoroughly research the case and compare that information to what we already have collected. The more you tell us about the victim (and possibly your relationship to him or her), the more comprehensive case summary and/or article we can make available to our readers. It may also enable us to pass along to investigators a tip or lead of which they were not yet aware. Supplying such information to us is entirely voluntary.

Additional information regarding voluntary submissions may be found on our Terms of Use page.

Children under the Age of 13

If you are under the age of 13, do not send us any information about yourself such as your name, address or email address. You may only send us personally identifiable information if your parents have verified to us their consent to the collection of the information.

Because we strive to protect the privacy of all users of our site, including children, we make every effort to dutifully comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA”). Our site:

  • Includes our contact information.
  • Explains the types of personal information we collect, and how we use it.
  • Explains our practices in terms of sharing personal information with third parties.
  • Allows parents to consent to the collection and use of their children’s personal information, without consenting to disclosure to third parties.
  • Does not condition a child’s participation in an activity on the child’s providing more personal information than is reasonably necessary for the activity.
  • Allows parents to review their child’s information, have it deleted, or refuse to permit any further collection, by contacting us.

We encourage children under the age of 13 to consult with their parents before furnishing any personal data. However, we also believe that parents should supervise their children’s online activities and consider using parental control tools available from online services and software manufacturers that help provide a child-friendly online environment. These tools can also prevent children from disclosing their name, address, and other personal information online without parental permission.

Emails from Us

If you have signed up for our email newsletter, you may stop receiving it if you follow the “unsubscribe” instructions located near the bottom of each newsletter. (We do not yet have the newsletter ready for subscriptions.)

What We Do With the Information We Gather About You

We will not share individual user information with third parties (with the exception of law enforcement agencies — see “Compliance with Legal Process” below) unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information.

In some cases, we may use third parties to provide services on our behalf — i.e. PayPal is used to process any donations made to our organization via credit card. These service providers are restricted from using this information in any way other than to provide services to us, and they may not share this information with anyone else nor may they resell this data.

Compliance with Legal Process

We may disclose personal information if we are required by law to disclose said information, or if we believe in good faith that such action is necessary to: comply with a law or legal process, to protect or defend our rights and property, to protect against misuse or unauthorized use of our web site or to protect the personal safety or property of our users or the public.

Our website does provide an Anonymous Tip Form where users are not required to provide any personal identifiable information. The tips will be forwarded to law enforcement just as they arrive to us — anonymous and containing only the specific information the sender wished to share.

Conclusion

Our website often includes links to other [third party] websites — i.e. specific law enforcement agencies, newspapers and broadcast news sites — and these links are provided strictly as a courtesy to our users for resource purposes. We cannot control how other websites might collect information about you while visiting those sites, and our Privacy Policy (obviously) does not apply to those third party websites. If you have any questions about how other websites collect or use information, you should consult those sites to obtain information regarding their respective privacy policies.

The web is an evolving medium. If we need to change our Privacy Policy at some point in the future, we will post the changes before they take effect if we believe that the change in the way we use your personal information is significant or material.

Updated: 03/24/12

 

Copyright © 2024  Iowa Cold Cases, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tagged with:
 

Comments are closed.