Children's Privacy Notice - Create Your Own Comic Strips Online with MakeBeliefsComix

MAKEBELIEFSCOMIX.COM CHILDREN'S PRIVACY NOTICE

Who Operates This Website and the Associated Applications?

makebeliefscomix.com c/o
Guarionex Press Ltd.
201 West 77 St. Suite 6A
New York, NY 10024

The last update to our Privacy Notice was posted on August 23, 2023

MakeBeliefsComix is a website that encourages users to create digital comic strip stories. It is used by educators and families throughout the world to help users express their ideas, creativity, and stories in the form of comics. In so doing, they improve their literacy abilities and imagine, think, and create.

Protecting Children’s Privacy

This privacy notice governs our privacy practices when children are using our website

makebeliefscomix.com and our services, hereinafter and collectively referred to as the website.

If users of this website are under the age of consent (under the age of 17 unless the age of consent in their country/state/province/territory, etc., provides for 13, 14, 15, and 16-year-old children) we require consent from their parent, legal guardian, or an authorized school official before we can collect personal data from them.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in the United States requires us to tell parents or legal guardians about how we collect, use, and disclose personal data from children under the age of 13. COPPA also requires that we get consent from parents, legal guardians, or an authorized school official before we allow children under the age of 13 to use and interact with our website.

If you are a parent or legal guardian and believe that your child is using our website without your required consent, please contact us. Before we remove any information, we may ask for proof of identification to prevent the malicious removal of account information. If we discover that an unauthorized child is using our website, we will delete his or her information within a reasonable period of time. You accept that we do not verify the age of our users nor have any liability to do so.

Verifiable Parental Consent

Should we want to collect personal information from a child, COPPA and other global privacy laws require that we first get a parent or legal guardian’s consent in an email or other approved method sent to the parent or legal guardian, we will describe what information we would like to collect, how we propose to use it, how the parent or legal guardian can offer and cancel consent. If we do not get consent from the parent or legal guardian within a reasonable time frame, we will remove the child and parent information collected with the request.

Teacher and School Administrator Consent in Replace of a Parent

In most jurisdictions, for school-based activities, school administrators and teachers are allowed under children’s privacy laws to act for the parents or legal guardians to give consent when collecting personal data from children. Teachers and school administrators should always tell parents when collecting personal data from children on their behalf.

Personal Data We Collect From Children, How We Use It, and Parental Rights

Registration

When a child registers with our website, we may collect personal data from that child if appropriate. When we collect personal data from a child, we will hold that data only as long as reasonably necessary to allow the child to continue to use and interact with our website.

During the registration process, we collect data about a child. This personal data may include a child’s name, age, gender, username, email address, account name, password, the parent or legal guardian’s email address, and other contact information.

To comply with the COPPA in the United States and other global privacy laws, on our website where we ask for the age of a user who is under the age of 13 in the United States, and under the age of 17 in some countries outside the United States, we will ask for their parent, legal guardian, teacher, or other school administrator’s email address, or another process to give us their consent before we collect any personal data from a child under these ages. If you think that your child is involved in an activity that collects personal data and you or another parent or legal guardian has not received a request for consent to collect such data, please contact us using the information at the top of this page.

Automatic Information Collected

When children interact with our website, specific information may automatically be collected. We collect this information to make our website useful to children and other users. We also use this information for internal business purposes, including improving our website. Some examples of this information include the child’s mobile device identifier, type of web browser, type of operating system, the online service provider used, and the regularity with which the child visits different parts of our website.

This data and information are collected using online technologies such as cookies, web beacons, and other unique identifiers that are explained in the “Information We Collect and How We Collect It” section of our main website’s Privacy Notice.

How We Use Children’s Personal Data

We use children’s personal data and general information primarily to:

let them access and use the features of our website;
improve the features and usability of our website;
let us analyze data to see how our website is performing;
send email notifications to children and parents about our website and policies;
solve technical problems;
and send out general announcements.

De-Identified Personal Data
We may use de-identified data for product development, research, and other purposes. This data does not include any personal data or any links to such information. We will not attempt to re-identify any de-identified data and will prohibit any recipients of the de-identified data from attempting to re-identify individuals.

Disclosing Children’s Personal Data

We will not disclose a child’s personal data with other individuals or companies except in limited situations, including:

when other companies perform services for us, like customer support, email services, delivery services, data management services, help desk providers, law firms, payment processors, accountants, and shopping cart providers; however, these companies are prohibited from using a child’s personal data for purposes other than those requested by us or required by law;
disclosing a child’s personal data if required or permitted by law, for example, in response to a subpoena, law enforcement, court order, or a public agency’s request;
to protect the safety of a child;
to safeguard the security of our website and the companies that provide services for us;
To enable the child to participate in our website activities.

Retention of Children’s Data

We will not retain children’s personal data longer than needed to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected. We will also delete their personal data upon a valid request.

Parental Rights

As a parent or legal guardian, you have the following rights regarding your child’s use of our website and the personal data we hold about them, these rights include:

to review the personal data we collected from your child;
to revoke the consent to use or further collect your child’s personal data;
to request that your child’s personal data be changed or deleted;
to allow the collection and use of your child’s personal data, but not allow disclosure to third parties unless it is part of our service or legally required;
to send you a new notice and get your consent if we make changes to the collection, use, or disclosure practices to which you previously agreed.

*Parents can exercise their rights by contacting us using the information at the top of this page.