Museum of Science Online Privacy Policy
An educational institution that serves 1.7 million adults and children each year and receives 2 million visits to its website — the Museum of Science, Boston, is dedicated to providing the best possible experience for our visitors. To that end, we are committed to protecting the private information of those who interact with us online. The Museum of Science website adheres to the following policy for ensuring the privacy of your — and your children's — personally identifiable information (such as full name, address, email address, telephone number, and/or other identifiable information).
Gathering and Use of Information
- We will not collect personally identifiable information from you, other than what you supply to us on a voluntary basis, except as stated in this privacy policy.
- You might be asked to provide some personally identifiable information in order to participate in some online activities. This could be in connection with the following:
- contest or sweepstakes registration
- subscription registration for services such as email newsletters or events, courses or other museum programming
- transactions in our Online Ticket Store
- sales or products or other services
- content submissions, community postings (i.e., forums or bulletin boards), comments and suggestions, voting, or online surveys
- The Museum of Science may use your personally identifiable information to extend promotional offers (such as invitations to Museum events) or to send administrative or service-related announcements.
- When you disclose personal information on the Museum website, we may use your address internally to inform you of events and opportunities at the Museum. On occasion, the Museum uses trusted 3rd party providers to provide communications. The Museum only uses providers that we believe impose reasonable safeguards on the privacy of your information.
- We may use personally identifiable information in order to prevent improper use of our site, or as otherwise necessary to defend against or assist in the investigation of improper or illegal activity on the website.
- We may use or disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights; to protect the rights, safety or property of others; and/or to participate in a judicial proceeding, comply with a court order, respond to other legal process served on us or our Web site, or complete a transaction involving the transfer of the museum operations to which the information pertains, or due diligence and preparatory work relating to such a transaction.
Opt-Out Option
If you do not wish to receive the communications described above, you may choose to "opt out." Opting out may prevent your participation in activities for which personal information is needed (such as museum programming or contests). You may choose to restrict our use of your information to maintaining your registration on our website, or may ask us to refrain from disclosing your information to others. You may request that we receive information by telephone or postal mail. You may make such an opt-out request by sending an e-mail to privacy@mos.org describing your request. We may, in our sole discretion, elect to delete your electronic information entirely rather than implementing a request to opt-out of certain data uses while continuing others.
Children (persons 12 years old or younger)
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) restricts the collection of personal information of children aged 12 or younger.
If your child submits stories, artwork, comments, or anything else that is posted on our site, he or she will be identified only by first name, age, and state.
Before we collect or allow the submission of any personally identifying information or any free-response in which personal information might reasonably be included, we require the user to specify his or her age. When a user indicates an age of 12 years old or younger, a parental consent form appears on the user's screen. This form describes the personal information to be collected from or to be submitted by the child, and the proposed uses of such information. No personal information is collected from children 12 and under except in accordance with parental consent as required by law.
A consent form is not required when a child subscribes to email newsletters from the Museum of Science. If a child 12 years old or younger provides his or her email address to receive an email newsletter, the child is also required to submit the email address of a parent or guardian. The parent or guardian is sent a notice by email and given the option to unsubscribe the child from the email newsletter.
Users under 18 years of age cannot make credit card purchases on our website.
By contacting us at privacy@mos.org at any time, parents or guardians of users 12 years old or younger may review any personal information we have regarding their children, require us to change such information, or prohibit us from collecting or maintaining any such information.
User-Created Content
Our website may offer bulletin boards, chat rooms, or other public forum-type features that enable you to post information, comments, computer file uploads, recommendations, ratings, personal web logs (blogs) or other information. If you elect to post information to our site, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these features, which are open to the general public. Any identifiable information could be widely disclosed, posted elsewhere on the Internet, or used to contact you or send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums and urge users to exercise caution before publicly posting any personally identifiable information.
Cookies
The Museum of Science website uses a technology tool called a "cookie." The cookie is a small text file that our website temporarily stores on your hard drive. When you return to our site your Web browser passes the cookie from your computer back to our website, so we can recognize you as you move through our site (for instance, the cookie tells our website which shopping basket is yours). At no time will the cookie reveal to others your name, email address, street address, or telephone number (even if you have submitted this information to other areas of our website).
Aggregate Information
The Museum of Science website automatically logs information such as IP address and browser type of all visitors for measuring the usage of our website. We use this information to analyze how visitors use our website, which helps us modify the site and improve our visitors' experiences. We may also provide third parties with collective profiles of our user groups and their activities and preferences. Such collective profiles may also be disclosed in describing our site and services to prospective partners, advertisers and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes.
Museum of Science Website Security
To ensure that that your credit card transaction with the Museum of Science has implemented industry-standard commercial data security tools. The information you submit to the Online Ticket Store or for any other products or services is protected by an encryption technology called the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol. This security software encrypts your credit card information so that it cannot be read as your ticketing order travels over the Internet. To ensure that you are on a secure page, look for the closed key or lock on the bottom of your Web browser during the Museum of Science ticketing checkout process. Notwithstanding our security measures, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Accordingly, we cannot guarantee the security of information provided via Internet or through our website.
Links
The Museum of Science site may contain links to other websites. Please note that when you click on one of these links, you are clicking to the site of another organization. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. Accordingly, we encourage you to read the privacy statements of other websites, as their policies may differ from ours.
Policy Changes
As our website grows, it may be necessary for us to change our privacy policy to reflect new online activities and programs. Any changes will be posted here. To keep informed about our information practices, please check this page periodically.
Contact Us
If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy statement, our online practices, or your dealings with this website, please contact:
Museum of Science
Online Privacy
1 Science Park
Boston, MA 02114
617-723-2500
Effective Date
This privacy policy is effective as of July 25, 2007.
