Privacy Statement

The Junior Panthers Fan Club website is the place where Pittsburgh Panthers fans age 14 and under can come to find out more about their favorite Pittsburgh Panthers teams and student-athletes, play games and display their Panther Pride. The Junior Panthers Fan Club website believes in the power of children and we urge both children and their parents to use and enjoy our website. While we encourage the interactive nature of online media, we strive to educate parents and children about how to appropriately safeguard their privacy when using the website. The Junior Panthers Fan Club website desires to comply fully with the Federal Trade Commission's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Our information collection practices are described below. We require that children obtain permission from their parents and that parents submit written consent to the Jr. Panthers Fan Club before entering information on our website. (Parental Form: Jr. Panthers Fan Club). We urge parents to discuss with their children restrictions regarding the online release of personal information to anyone they don't know.

What Information Is Collected?

At the Junior Panthers Fan Club website, it's our policy to create website content that requires minimum collection of information from our visitors. Generally, the Junior Panthers Fan Club website limits our collection of information from children to what is known as non-personal identifiable information (e.g. birthday, gender, state and zip code). This information is collected so children can participate in activities (e.g. collect Paw Points and play games) without giving unnecessary personal information. From time to time, however, we may request limited personally identifiable information (e.g. child's email address and/or email address of parent or third party), as explained below, in order to conduct online contests or offer other online activities (e.g. electronic postcards, newsletters). The Junior Panthers Fan Club website does not condition a child's participation in any of our online activities on the disclosure of more information than is reasonably necessary to participate in the activity. If parents register online, we also collect from parents additional types of information (e.g., credit card and billing information) when they purchase products and offerings at our site.

Contests

The Junior Panthers Fan Club website occasionally offers contests (e.g., coloring contests, Coach's Tips, PAW POINTS, or other contests in which names/pictures of winners may be viewed online). To participate in a contest, a child is asked to provide his or her first name, email address, and club ID number. This will ensure that the member has obtained and submitted parental consent to participate and enter the required information. If the member's parent has not submitted the form, (Parental Form: Jr. Panthers Fan Club), the child will be unable to participate until they have done so. We do not condition a child's participation in an activity on the child's disclosure of more personal information than is reasonably necessary to participate in the activity. However, we do condition a child's participation on the disclosure of personal information that is reasonably necessary to participate. Sometimes, when we conduct contests that may involve more than a one-time contact, we ask additionally for the email address of the participant's parent. In such types of contests, we send the child's parent an email within two business days informing him or her of the child's entry and give the parent the option to have the child's entry deleted. All the information collected by the Junior Panthers Fan Club website is securely maintained, within the confines of available technology, and used only for the purpose of conducting the contest. Once the contest is finished, we then delete any personal information collected. The information collected in the Junior Panthers Fan Club website may be passed to a third party which may use the information to help run the contest and may not use it for other purposes and has agreed to maintain the confidentiality of such information.

Customer Service

In addition to being able to call our Athletic Department, Junior Panthers Fan Club members may also email us their questions. Other than a parental email address, we do not request that users submit any personal information online for inquiries. We may however ask for additional non-personal information to better help us respond to your questions. We use the parental email address to communicate directly with parents to provide them with answers that they and their child may find helpful. We do not sell, transfer or share the parental email address with third parties, with the exception that the information is transferred, disclosed and shared with our third party agent who uses the information solely to handle and manage customer service, but cannot use it for other purposes and has agreed to maintain the confidentiality of such information. Once we or our third party agent have had a chance to provide email responses to customer service email questions, the parental email address is deleted from our system.

Use of Information

The Junior Panthers Fan Club website uses or may use personally identifiable information that children provide for such purposes as sending requested electronic postcards and email messages on their behalf, conducting contests and responding to their questions regarding our products and services. The Junior Panthers Fan Club website currently does not disclose to third parties personally identifiable information that children provide, except from time to time, we may transfer, disclose or share such information with third parties who may be engaged by us specifically to handle and deliver certain online activities (e.g. conducting contests). Such third parties have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes. Additionally, in the event that all or substantially all of the assets relating to the Junior Panthers Fan Club website are transferred to another entity, personally identifiable information submitted to us may be transferred to the acquiring entity. Finally, we may also disclose personally identifiable information to third parties in order to comply with law or requests by law enforcement agencies, to enforce our Terms and Conditions or to protect the rights, property or safety of our website, users of our website and others.

Cookies and Log Data

Cookies are information files that your web browser places on the hard drive of your computer when you visit a website. Cookies cannot damage user files, nor can they read information from a user's hard drive. Cookies allow websites to "remember" users activities on a website as well as users visits to a site. At the Junior Panthers Fan Club website, cookies are used to determine the number of unique visitors to our website over a given period and to remember user screen names so that the need for multiple log-ins is eliminated. We do not store any personal information into cookies nor do we link or combine information collected through cookies to any personal information that children submit online when participating in our activities. You can, of course, disable cookies on your computer by indicating this in the preferences or options menus in your browser. Log data collected on web servers within the Junior Panthers Fan Club website's control supplies the Junior Panthers Fan Club website with aggregate information about the number of visits to different pages on our site. The Junior Panthers Fan Club website uses such aggregate information to improve access to our content based on our visitors' browsers and operating system types to make our content available to as many children as possible. We do not link the log data collected to the personal information that children submit online when participating in our activities.

Parental Access

At the Junior Panthers Fan Club website, our goal is to help parents assist their children in having a safe and fun online experience. That's why we've set up a system by which parents can print out and mail or fax us a signed form that allows them to review any identifiable information collected about their child, have this information deleted, and/or request that there be no further collection or use of their child's information. (Parental Form: Jr. Panthers Fan Club). The Junior Panthers Fan Club website takes steps to verify the identity of anyone requesting information about a child and to verify that the person is in fact the child's parent or legal guardian.

Security

The Junior Panthers Fan Club website has taken steps to maintain the secure nature of personally identifiable information collected, within the confines of available security, including limiting the number of people who have physical access to our database servers as well as electronic security systems and password protections which help guard against unauthorized access.

Questions/Concerns?

If you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding The Junior Panthers Fan Club website's privacy policy and/or practices, please

Email us at: marketing@athletics.pitt.edu

Write us at:
Junior Panthers Fan Club
Petersen Events Center
3719 Terrace Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15261

Or call us at: 412-648-8181

The Junior Panthers Fan Club website is intended for domestic viewers and is consequently directed towards residents of the United States.

This privacy policy was last updated in May 2004.