Privacy Policy

This is the official website of www.4Kids.org, a syndicated weekly newspaper feature appearing in newspapers throughout North America. Our mailing address is:

www.4Kids.org
c/o Melanie Farmer
1122 West Campus Road
238 J.R.P. Hall
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045

Communication to www.4Kids.org may be directed to the Contact Us page.
 
www.4Kids.org is hosted on an ALTEC server resident on the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS.
 
At 4Kids.org, we value your child's privacy and strive to protect his or her safety during their visit to our website. So as to ensure your child's protection, www.4Kids.org is compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 2000. www.4Kids.org will never require your child to submit any more personal information other than what is required for activity participation.

Any and all of the information collected by the www.4Kids.org server about visitors to the www.4Kids.org site is for internal review only. The only information collected is the domain name (but not the e-mail address) of visitors, and the e-mail addresses of those who communicate with us via e-mail. This information will never be shared or sold.
 
Kids may submit data to our website via e-mail or through our website forms. They are:

1. Ask Amy (www.4Kids.org/askamy) Members of our staff reply to e-mail sent to us. An e-mail address is required for this activity but the mail received to Ask Amy is never archived, shared or sold. A first name and last initial, age, gender, and hometown is optional but not required. Kids without direct Internet access can mail questions to Amy via the Postal Service. These addresses are also never sold, saved, or stored.
2. Kid Quest (www.4Kids.org/kidquest) Kids are asked to submit their initials, the name of their hometown and state. They are discouraged from submitting their full name. The results of Kid Quest are refreshed once every week but are never archived.
3. Surftificate (www.4Kids.org/safesurf/surftificate) Kids are asked to submit their first name only, the name of their hometown and state. They are discouraged from submitting their last name. They are then asked to complete a form about Web safety and have the option of adding a personal statement about Web safety. Their first name is appended to the "Surftificate" page which they may print out. This information is not archived.
4. Speak Out (www.4Kids.org/speakout) Kids are asked to answer a new question proposed once a week. They are asked to submit their first name and last initial, the name of their hometown and state. They are discouraged from submitting their last name. Responses can be made by filling out a blank form that does not require an email address. These answers are posted for one week. There is no automatic posting for Speak Out. Responses are looked over by staff for appropriateness and to delete any personal or contact information that may have been given. Kids can propose a Speak Out question; email is optional but not required for this activity and is not stored.
5. Nominations (www.4Kids.org/nominations) Kids are asked to nominate a cool website. Email is required for contact if the child wins this contest. They are asked for a first name, last initial, age, hometown and state. They are discouraged from submitting a last name. This information is not kept.
6. Contact Us (www.4Kids.org/contact) website visitors are encouraged to provide 4kids staff feedback about our site. A name, email address, age, gender, state, country, profession is requested. This information is not kept.

Under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, you as a parent can, at any time, contact www.4Kids.org to review your child's personal information or ask to have it deleted. You may also refuse to allow any further contact with www.4Kids.org and your child. To do so, please contact us.

All website reviews or links to websites appearing in the newspaper, in our archive, called "Cool Spots," or those that are in our "Back Issues" are carefully checked by our reviewers to ensure that they meet our strict guidelines. Nothing is automatically posted to our website.
 
We strive to ensure that none of these sites, to the best of our knowledge, contain pornographic material or links to pornographic material, encourage illegal activity or racism, provide instructions or discussions about performing illegal activities, engage in libelous or harassing activities, promote or utilize software or services designed to deliver unsolicited e-mail, or are otherwise inappropriate for children.
 
Should any visitor to our website discover such a link to any of the above directly from our pages, we encourage them to inform us immediately by visiting our Contact Us page.