LeadAmerica Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy is effective as of December 1, 2005.

This Privacy Policy (and any revisions thereto) shall govern all information collected from or posted at our websites. While it is important to review the entire policy (set forth below), we know that you appreciate the most important information up front.

• We never share your personally identifiable information with third parties (except as may be required by law, legal process or for the security of our students, LeadAmerica or our systems, programs and network or as otherwise provided herein).
• We will remove any information publicly posted by a student on our website at the parents' (or legal guardian's) written request.
• We treat your data seriously, and use the same technology and security practices to protect it as we do LeadAmerica's most confidential data.
• We require parental consent before allowing any of our students to post on our websites. By consenting to the terms of this Privacy Policy, you are providing this consent.
• We will provide a copy of any personally identifiable information we have collected from or about one of our students or parents upon written request from the parent, and will correct any inaccurate personally identifiable information we collect and store.
• We will never ask you for your password or other security protection measures online. If you receive a communication purporting to be from us asking for such information, do not reply and please notify us right away.
• We are here to make sure your LeadAmerica experience, online and offline, is enjoyable, rewarding and educational. If you have any questions, relating to privacy, security or anything else we do online or offline, we welcome the chance to answer them. For questions relating to online issues and our webpages, please contact us at webmaster@lead-america.org. For other questions or inquiries, please see our Contact Information.  

LeadAmerica takes your and your children's privacy and safety very seriously. This Privacy Policy applies to all information collected or posted online through our websites, e-mail and online services.

Only registered users may post on our webpages and before a student can register on our website, their parent or guardian must submit an application authenticated with a credit card or other payment mechanism. The application includes their consent to the collection and use of their and their child's personally identifiable information in accordance with the terms and conditions hereof, as well as an acceptance of the all terms and conditions hereof, including acceptance of the terms relating to amendments or modifications hereof.

The student's participation in our program is not conditioned on acceptance of the terms and conditions hereof, but use of our online registration system or online services and networks is so conditioned. Make sure you have read them in their entirety and that you have asked any questions and understand and agree to these terms before proceeding. Your or your child's use of the website, online services or networks is proof of your acceptance of these terms, assuming the authentication of your payment-mechanism is obtained.

This Privacy Policy is effective as of the date first appearing above, and may be changed from time to time. The posted Privacy Policy remains in effect until 30 days after any proposed amendment is posted at our websites. The Privacy Policy in effect at the time any information is collected or posted applies to all information collected or posted by users on our websites. In the event the Privacy Policy changes, and the user continues to use the websites or service, or submits information to LeadAmerica via e-mail or other digital communication method following such change, the new Privacy Policy shall apply to all information from or about such user whether it had been collected before or following such change.

Please check back often to make sure that you are apprised of any changes to this Privacy Policy before using our websites or allowing your child to use our websites. You are deemed to have accepted these and any changed terms, in full, by using our websites following the effective date of any existing or revised Privacy Policy. If you don't agree to these terms, do not, and instruct your child not to, use our websites. Use of our websites is not a condition to a student's participation in our programs, but many student activities and information are shared on the websites and it provides a fun and richer LeadAmerica experience.

LeadAmerica uses secure connections when accepting any registrations or payment information. While no one can guarantee absolute security of any Internet communication, we use the most secure commercially-accepted technologies and methods of protecting your personal information.

One of the services we offer is the ability of LeadAmerica students and staff to network with other LeadAmerica students and staff. This is effected through our websites, personal webpages and discussion boards. Our students may be able to post personally identifiable information at our websites, which may include photos, full names, addresses, schools, special interests and contact information. We have set rules regarding the posting of personal information on our websites which are set forth in our Terms of Service. All uses of our webpages are governed by our Terms of Use. While we review the postings and webpages regularly to make sure that they comply with our terms of service, from time to time, we rely on parental supervision to make sure that all students are complying with our Terms of Service and safe computing practices. [You can learn more about safe computing practices at WiredSafety.org.] If we discover that a student has violated our Terms of Service or is otherwise engaged in practices we deem (in our sole and absolute discretion) to be inappropriate or unsafe for the student or others at our webpages, we reserve the right to remove their posts and restrict their access to our webpages. We also reserve the right to take other disciplinary actions, as we deem appropriate.

Our students may also request a directory of others who have attended their conference or other conferences. Unless you expressly notify us in writing that your child's contact information cannot be included in such a directory, we reserve the right to include your child's name, city and state, school and e-mail address and telephone number in this directory. The directory may be posted on our internal webpages in full or abbreviated form.

Our staff members often are asked to stay in touch or put together contact lists of students in their groups. They may ask our students to provide contact information to allow their group to stay in touch with each other. While this is not an official data collection and does not occur using our online services, websites or network, you should discuss this in advance with your child and advise them whether they should or should not be providing contact information with other students, their Team Leader or other staff member or others they meet while participating in a LeadAmerica conference or event.

We request personally identifiable information from you when you register your child for one of our programs or request information about our programs. This includes information about your and your child, any special needs (including dietary, faith-based, special family situation or medical needs) that apply to your child, emergency contacts and information about their school, classes and special interests. This information will be shared with our personnel, Team Leaders and onsite staff, accommodation partners and service providers, as well as transportation partners and other partners and providers contracted to provide services to the students in connection with their conference and to arrange for your child's participation in our programs. Note that this will include private health information about your child, should you identify any special medical situation or special ability needs, including prescription and medication information and medical treatments. You expressly consent to such use and sharing of such information as provided herein.

We also request information that we need in order to process your payment (including credit card or banking information, for example). LeadAmerica may use this information internally to process your child's application, your payment or for your child's participation in our programs. We will share your payment process information with our banking and financial service providers (under a confidentiality agreement) to enable them to process payments.

Note that we will send you communications from time to time about our own services, products and information which we believe will be of interest to you. In addition, we survey our students and their parents about our programs and other information which LeadAmerica believes to be helpful in helping design their programs and strategic relationships. From time to time, LeadAmerica shares the results of these surveys, in aggregate, as well as specific responses, with third parties. In some cases we select survey response quotes for use in our marketing materials or on our websites. In such cases, we use the first initial, last name and city and state of residence of the adult responder, and the first name, last initial and state of residence of the student responder.

While LeadAmerica will never share your or your child's personally identifiable information with third parties (except as may be required by law, legal process or for the security of our students, LeadAmerica or our systems, programs and network, or except as otherwise provided herein), there are several opportunities we have identified that may be of interest to families of our students. These may involve opportunities to receive products, services or information, on- and off-line, from our partners. We will never share your information with these third parties, but may offer these opportunities to you through our own e-mail communication. You may indicate your wish not to receive this information by checking a box on your online registration form. If you check that box, nothing will be sent to you by us offering special opportunities from third party partners. If you respond to any of these communications, note that each of these third parties has their own privacy policy and we are not responsible for the services they offer, or their treatment of information you provide to them. Please review the privacy policy of any provider or website you visit before providing any personally identifiable information or participating in that website's services or registration process. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, if you order products from our online store, the purchase information you have provided to us will be shared with our product supplier(s) and/or fulfillment house(s) for the express purpose of fulfilling your order request. This information shall be limited to information that is required to process and track your order, including your name, telephone number and shipping address and PIN.

We also track data on our users in aggregate, and in some cases personally identifiable, form. If we track this use and identify the user, we do not share that information with any third parties and use it only to identify specific services and features that will better serve that user's needs. The aggregated data does not identify you in any personally identifiable form, but helps us track trends and general information about our website users and our conference participants and their families. We may share this aggregated data with others and will use it and other information we collect to help fashion a better conference and online experience for our students and their families.

Some sections of our websites and online services are available, without registration, to the general public. We do not condition the use of those sections on the age of the student or having obtained parental or school consent. These site and service sections do not collect personally identifiable information from our site users. Note that certain passive data collection processes, including cookies, are used by our websites and online services and networks. You can learn more about that below.

We work closely with educators and schools in delivering and promoting our programs. We sometimes ask educators and schools to recommend students for our programs and/or scholarships. We may also provide information to the schools and educators about our students and applicants in order to help them learn more about our programs and suggest others who might benefit from our conferences and programs. The information shared may include name, address, telephone number and other personally identifiable information about the student, their school or their family as well as if they have inquired about or registered for a LeadAmerica program. The educators and schools also provide information to LeadAmerica about their students, which will be used to help identify potential LeadAmerica conference participants. That information will not be shared with third parties and will be used by LeadAmerica only for the purposes provided by the school or educators. If one of these students registers for a LeadAmerica program, this information will be combined with the registration information provided by the student and their parents, or collected through the website, online services of via e-mail.

We do not accept personally identifiable information from any student we know to be under the age of 13 without their parent's or school's consent. By agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy, the parents have consented to the collection and use of their child's personally identifiable information and use of our interactive communications, websites and posts on our discussion boards. If anyone learns that someone has misinformed us of their age, claiming to be 13 or older when they are really under 13 at the time the information is provided, they should notify us at webmaster@lead-america.org and this information will be promptly segregated and will be removed following confirmation of the misrepresented age.

In addition, parents may ask us to delete the personally identifiable information of any of our students. Information necessary for our records on any programs for which the student had been registered or attended will not be deleted pursuant to this request, but the student's online account will be terminated upon request. Note that any request to delete personally identifiable information provided by a student may impact that student's ability to participate in any of our programs and LeadAmerica reserves the right to determine whether or not to allow the student to proceed under these circumstances.

If any student inquires about our programs or otherwise e-mails us, we will respond one time to such inquiry. If the student is under the age of thirteen at the time the inquiry is sent, we will not store the e-mail address or other personally identifiable information provided by the student without providing notice to the parent. Otherwise, any information provided to us via e-mail shall be stored and used by us as data collected from our website or online service in accordance with the terms hereof.

We also use "cookies" to help create a better and, for our registered users, a more personalized experience. Cookies can only track information provided to the site itself. They are not "spyware" but only store information you have provided in personally identifiable form, or your website activities. This includes your user name and password, to avoid your having to retype it every time you return to the website. Cookie information is stored on your computer, not ours. Your browser and other security applications can be set to prompt you when a website is setting a cookie or to reject all cookies. Unless you accept our cookies, you will not be able to use our websites effectively, and many site sections and applications will not function properly or at all.

We also collect and maintain logs of our website usage. This includes information about the service providers used by our site visitors, their browsers, how long they visited the site and where they surfed on our sites. It also includes country of origin of any surfing session and other aggregate usage information collected by most sites and web services.

Note that corporate successors to LeadAmerica (by operation of law or otherwise) or its business, conferences or programs, are included within the term "LeadAmerica" for the purposes hereof.   Your information may be transferred to such entity, in the event of any acquisition of the business or assets of LeadAmerica or other business combination (by operation of law or otherwise).

For any questions about this or any of our policies, feel free to contact us at webmaster@lead-america.org.