The Marine & Oceanic Sustainability Foundation (MOSF) respects the privacy and security of its users; this policy explains our collection of and use of your personally identifiable information. You should always check the privacy policy of each web site you visit. The MOSF does not distribute, sell, share, or otherwise divulge information gathered about users on this site to parties not affiliated with the MOSF. Our goal is to use the information voluntarily given or otherwise divulged to enhance users’ experiences.
Please note that any information or material sent to the MOSF will be deemed NOT to be confidential. We will use our best business efforts to ensure that the information you submit to the MOSF remains private, and is used only for the purposes as set forth below.
Policy for Children Under 18
Our learning services for children are provided solely to educators of children. The MOSF’s educational learning services are not available to children under age 18 except when they are enrolled for access as an authorized user by a teacher or other school administrator who has been authorized to do so by the child’s parent or guardian. Children under 18 years of age are expressly prohibited from directly registering for any of our services or information. The MOSF does not use any information about children under 18 years of age for any marketing or promotional purposes whatsoever, either inside or outside the MOSF. We do not provide any personally identifiable information about children, regardless of its source, to any unrelated third parties, except as expressly provided by this Privacy Policy.
Your Consent
By using the MOSF’s Internet-based products and/or by browsing or navigating the MOSF web sites you accept, and agree to be bound by, the terms of this privacy policy. Collection, use, and disclosure of personally identifiable information is governed in accordance with the terms stated in this policy.
Information Tracking
In certain instances when using the MOSF’s Internet-based products, users may be asked to enter a first and last name and other personal information. We use this personal information only for the purpose specified at the time you input such information, including for access identity safeguards and other security purposes. The MOSF will not collect any information without the user’s express consent. Some usage of the web sites and services is tracked for verification purposes.
The MOSF uses a software technology called “cookies” to create a personalized web experience. The use of cookies is common in the Internet industry; you’ll find them at many sites. A cookie is simply a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) header that consists of a text-only string that is entered into the memory of a browser. This string contains the domain, path, lifetime, and value of a variable that a web site sets. If the lifetime of this variable is longer than the time the user spends at that site, then this string is saved to file for future reference. Cookies remember your the MOSF settings upon returning to the site. We do not use cookies to retrieve any other type of information from our users. Please note: Your browser must be set to accept cookies to use some of the MOSF–based web sites and services.
We do track certain information, such as navigation through the site and site usage. These data are used to analyze trends and/or internal statistical purposes only. No personal information is stored or used in any way as a result of this tracking, nor is this information disseminated to any third parties.
An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a number automatically assigned to your computer whenever you use the World Wide Web. Web servers—the computers that “serve up” web pages—automatically identify your computer by its IP address. The MOSF collects IP addresses for system administration and also to compile aggregate information and audit the use of our site. The MOSF web site logs IP addresses and browser types for systems administration purposes. These logs will be analyzed to improve the value of the materials available on the web site. A user’s session will be tracked, but the user will be anonymous.
We do not link IP addresses to any personally identifiable information. We can and will use IP addresses to identify a user when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our rules or terms of service or to protect our service, site, customers, or others.
Security Measures
The importance of security for all personally identifiable information is of utmost concern to us. We exercise great care in providing secure storage of your information on private network servers not available by direct web addresses. All user information and data are encoded and transmitted through SSL encryption to insure that no one other than the MOSF can read the transmitted information.
Please note: The MOSF web sites and services are at times password-protected. Subscribers may provide certain personally identifying information about themselves. Information provided by authorized users is not available to the general public on the Internet. We strongly recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. We have systems in place to provide secure transmission of your information from your computer to our servers. Only certain authorized MOSF employees or volunteers can access this information if it is relevant to their job duties. The MOSF has staff dedicated to maintaining this Privacy Policy and other privacy initiatives, periodically reviewing web security and making sure that MOSF employees are aware of and comply with our security and privacy practices.
The MOSF periodically conducts security audits to make sure we are doing everything possible to secure this data. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100 percent secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, the MOSF can’t guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we use our best efforts and employ state-of-the-art technology to ensure its security on our systems, including firewalls and secure sockets layer.
Use of Your Personally Identifiable Information
In certain cases you may choose to give us personally identifiable information about yourself, such as your name, and e-mail address in response to specific requests. This information is never passed to third parties. Only user IDs may be passed to the MOSF vendors, suppliers, or subcontractors (“Contractors”) in order to seamlessly integrate their product(s) with the MOSF Environment, or other MOSF Internet-based products. The MOSF enters into contracts with such Contractors which contain confidentiality and non-disclosure provisions requiring that such Contractors maintain the confidentiality of any personally identifiable information which may be disclosed by the MOSF to the Contractor in order to utilize such Contractor’s product, and the Contractor promises not to disclose such information to any other party.
The MOSF is not responsible for any actions or policies of such third parties to whom you may voluntarily provide personally identifiable information, and you should check the applicable privacy policy of such party when providing personally identifiable information to them. Personally identifiable information retained by the MOSF will be used only for internal purposes such as ensuring web site access security and tracking site and courseware usage.
We do not allow children under 13 to provide any direct personally identifiable information (for example, name, address, or school information); all such information will be collected solely from teachers and/or administrators. Such personal information provided by teachers and/or parents will be available only to the teacher and administrator, the student, and the student’s parent or guardian.
At times we use log-in information to identify you as an authorized user and ensure that you can see and use those areas of our web sites that are appropriate for you. For example, content consumers cannot access those areas of the MOSF web sites which are intended solely for content creators or administrators. Exceptions to this privacy protection practices described above would only occur if the MOSF becomes part of another non-profit. In those instances, use of the user’s personally identifiable information will be determined by a court, other governing body, or the acquiring entity.
Links to Other Web Sites
This and other MOSF web sites contain links to other third party web sites. The MOSF is not responsible for the content or privacy policies of these sites. Such third party web sites are independently owned, controlled, and/or managed web sites whose content we believe will be of possible interest and value to our subscribers. These other sites may send you their own cookies, collect data, or solicit personal information. While we let you know when you are visiting a site outside of the MOSF web site, we do not control the cookies or the content of third-party sites. Once you leave our servers, the use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site you’re visiting. That policy may differ from ours. If you cannot find the privacy policy of any of these sites via a link from that site’s home page, you should contact the site directly for more information before providing that site with any personally identifying information. We specifically recommend that children check with their parents or guardians before clicking links to any new sites.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
If this privacy policy changes, the revised policy will be posted on this site. Since this policy may change from time to time, please periodically refer to it. This privacy policy was last updated on December 12th, 2013.
We reserve the right to change this policy at any time by posting a notice of the existence of a new or amended internet privacy policy.