Privacy and Security

Summary

smartgirls.tv is a website created as part of a project researching able girls on tv and their audiences. This site is owned and operated by the researcher, and the research is part of a larger study undertaken towards a doctoral degree at Oxford Brookes University.

smartgirls.tv is a space where girls should feel safe to express their views on gifted girls on the television, and also on their experiences in real life

Protecting the safety and privacy of our users is a top priority at smartgirls.tv.

What Information You Provide
Visitors can visit our site without registering or providing personal information, but we do collect some personal information as outlined below.

Anonymity of Survey Respondents
Visitors are invited to fill out a questionnaire survey. It is completely optional for a respondent to fill out the survey. All survey responses are voluntary and anonymous. In our survey we only ask respondents their age, gender, country, and occupation. We do not request or surreptitiously collect the names, email or street addresses of respondents.

Anonymity of Forum members
smartgirls.tv does not establish the identity of contributors, either for smartgirls.tv's use, or for outsider access. Although we do collect email addresses for the purposes of sending membership passwords, we do not know the names or street addresses of our members, and we consider them to be anonymous.

Information smartgirls.tv Collects Automatically

Your web browser offers "cookies" which, if you allow their use, store small amounts of data on your computer when you visit a web site. Cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information about you and therefore cannot be used to identify you personally. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying your browser and our web sites are viewable even if you disable the cookie function on your browser. However, if you disable cookies, some features of our site may not be available to you.

We DO NOT use cookies or other non-consensual methods to take personally identifiable or online contact information about you or your family off of your computer. smartgirls.tv does not use cookies for direct marketing or promotional purposes. Cookies are also not used to collect information specifically about you for sharing with third parties.

What We Do With Collected Information
We use the personal information we collect from the survey to build a picture of audiences for the research project.

If you register to join the forum, we will use the registration information to confirm your membership and your password.

We may also use collected information to evaluate and administer our service, respond to any problems that may arise, and to determine what features are of most interest to our visitors.

We may, at times, produce reports containing aggregate information about our users such as demographic, age, and online usage information. These allow us to keep users up to date with the finding of the research project. We do not include personally identifiable information in these reports.

Contacting us
smartgirls.tv gives visitors the opportunity to email us with questions, comments and recommendations. We respond to these individual email addresses when appropriate and archive the exchange for reference, legal, and administrative purposes. We do not recontact the user, add her email address to our mailing list, or use it for any other purpose.

In each of these instances, visitors provide their information voluntarily. We never give or sell a visitor's personal information to anyone. We only use the information for the stated purposes. We do not ask for more information than we may need to fulfil our visitor's request.

Security
Our users' privacy and any personal information we may have about them are kept as secure as we are able. Passwords to access data at smartgirls.tv are only accessible to the researchers. All smartgirls.tv researchers are legally obliged by the university not to release email addresses or any other information about visitors.

Visitors Who Are Under 13
We ask all forum participants to confirm that they are over 13 years of age. If this is not confirmed, the forum will not grant membership.

Updating and Deleting Personal Information
The only personal information we have about any of our users is their email address. Forum members may update or delete their membership at any time by emailing us with their username. The subject of the email should include the words "END MEMBERSHIP".

UK and EC privacy directive

smartgirls.tv complies with the European Commission directive Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. You can get more information about this directive and Online Privacy from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.gov.uk

Visitors from Outside the United Kingdom
smartgirls.tv and the server which makes this site available worldwide are located in the United Kingdom. All matters relating to this site are governed by UK laws. Any information you provide will be transferred to the U.K. By visiting this site and submitting information you authorize this transfer.

Links to Other Sites

Different countries have different privacy rules. smartgirls.tv does provide links to other websites, some from other countries. These sites have different privacy policies. smartgirls.tv is not responsible for the privacy policies of these other sites.

smartgirls.tv is committed to ensuring and protecting the safety and privacy of all of its users. We strive to create a safe, fun site that girls can enjoy and that parents, carers or teachers are happy to have girls visit. If you have any questions or would like additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Content of Discussions
While we regularly monitor the message boards, due to the nature of discussion group or "bulletin board" technology on the Internet and the variations in quantity and timing of contributions, smartgirls.tv is unable to control the content of every message published on the site. Discussion forum material, in accordance with the technology involved, is not reviewed by smartgirls.tv prior to publication. The contributions on smartgirls.tv are written by anonymous members of the general public. smartgirls.tv does not dictate the content of the contributions.
Some material on the smartgirls.tv site may be inappropriate for young children. We do our best to remove any material that is inappropriate for teens. This has to be balanced with the need for smartgirls.tv to be a space where girls can express their opinions freely. There may be times when strong words are appropriately quoted from a TV show, or when they are used to express strong feelings. If this is done, it is at the moderator’s discretion whether to remove them.

Opinions presented by the public on smartgirls.tv reflect the opinion of the submitter and are not to be considered the official opinion of smartgirls.tv

Message board postings are moderated to prevent disclosure of personally identifiable information. Messages containing or seeking personal identifying information will be removed and membership cancelled

smartgirls.tv will not take responsibility for damages caused by any obscene or offensive material published on the site. Users visit smartgirls.tv at their own risk.

Protecting Our Site
We reserve the right to use or disclose any information without notice or consent as needed to satisfy any law, regulation or legal request; to conduct investigations of complaints or possible breaches of law; to protect the integrity of our site and our property; to protect the safety of our visitors or others; to fulfil your requests; or to cooperate in any legal investigation.

Changes To Our Privacy Policy
We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy as necessary to maintain the highest protection for our users and to comply with a changing environment. We recommend that you check the policy when you visit our site to be sure you are aware of and understand our current policy. If we make material changes to this policy or in how we will use or collect your personally identifiable information, we will prominently post such changes prior to implementing the change. We will not make retroactive changes in how we handle previously collected personal information unless legally required to do so.

We want all our visitors to have fun surfing our site and urge you to use common sense whenever disclosing personal information on this site or anywhere on the Internet. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us

Michele Paule

 

the smartgirls.tv name , mark, and all associated logotypes are owned by smartgirls.tv