Privacy Policy of Tikatok Inc.

Revised January 2008

Privacy Summary for Parents

Protecting the privacy of children and their families is very important to Tikatok™. We provide this summary as a brief overview of our privacy policies and safeguards, but it does not serve as a replacement for the full privacy policy. You should read and understand the entire policy before giving consent to join the site.

Here is a list of the information we collect, and why:

1. Nickname and Password – Used for logging in to the site.
2. Real name – A name to be printed on physical books ordered by a parent only.
3. Age – So we can adjust the content and options we show you to be more appropriate to your age.
4. Parent’s Name, Address, and Phone number – We store this information as a means of verifying parental identity and consent, as required by the FTC and COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
5. Parent’s email – To communicate with you and receive consent for your child’s participation on the site.

Here are some of the privacy safeguards we provide:

1. The full name of the child is masked by a nickname on their profile and in the book view. Only the registered parent, and members that the parent has confirmed as an authorized family member, may order a book with the child’s real name printed on the cover.
2. As a parent, you fully moderate your child’s communication with others on the site. A notice is sent to your email address every time your child does the following: shares a book with the community, sends a book by email, adds another member to their friends list, submits or receives a comment about a book, receives a recommendation for their book, joins or creates a book club. In addition, your explicit consent is required for your child to authorize another member as “family.” Please only confirm family requests for which you have verified the identity of the member, and are comfortable with that member seeing personal information about your child.
3. Tikatok does not collect credit card information to process book orders. Orders are handled by a trusted third party, Google Checkout. An account with Google Checkout can be used with many other online retailers.

Even with these safeguards, we can’t fully protect your child’s privacy without your help! It is your responsibility to keep your child’s account and password safe, and to help your child understand the importance of protecting his or her personal information. We mask the child’s name on the front and back cover of the book, but cannot fully control the content of every book made by every child. Your child should not include his or her name, password, email address, phone number, home address, or photographic image in any book. Tikatok cannot protect this information if it is included in the content of a book created by your child.

About Tikatok and Tikatok.com.

Tikatok.com is a site where you can create books and become published authors. The site allows you to write books, read books by other members, and publish books in real hardcover or paperback copies. The site also allows you to build lists of family and friends, in order to share and discuss your books.

Like any publishing house, Tikatok is very concerned about protecting the privacy of our authors. Especially if you are under the age of 13, you should think about how your identity is presented online, and try not to reveal too many details about your life. For our part, we work hard to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), a set of rules about how we can use your information.

This Privacy Policy describes what personal information we collect about you, how it is used, and whether we share it with others. We also provide contact information in case your parents want to review the information we collect about you, or to ask us any other questions they may have about your online safety.

What Type of Personal Information Does Tikatok Collect?

Tikatok collects no more Personally Identifiable Information from you than is reasonably necessary for you to participate in our online activities or to comply with COPPA. Tikaok has different registration requirements and procedures depending on whether you are a child or an adult.

Child and Parent Registration

When you register for an account on Tikatok, we ask only for your name and birthdate and that you create a username for your account, which we call a nickname, as well as a password. You should not use any Personally Identifiable Information in your nickname or username, as your screen name may be visible to others on the site. We ask for your birthdate so we can adjust the content and options we show you to be more appropriate to your age. We store all of this information so that you may log on to the site, but your password is scrambled so that Tikatok personnel cannot see it.

We require that you either one of your parents or an adult guardian also register to use the site. The parent or guardian will also create a username and password, as well as furnish his or her address, phone number and e–mail address. We store this information so that the parent or guardian can log onto the site and also access your private viewing page, and so we can send important communications regarding the site and use of the site by its members. The person who registers as a parent or guardian must certify that he or she is the parent or legal guardian of the person who has registered under your nickname and password.

When a parent or guardian purchases a book, he or she is sent to Google Checkout to complete the order. This way, Tikatok does not have to collect, store or have access to any credit card or other financial information. If the parent or guardian chooses, the book may be printed with your real name as author and with biographical information. If not so selected, the book will be printed using your nickname as author.

Other Adult Registration

Interested adults, including non–parent relatives of a child member, may also register for an account on the site. As with the parent registration, Tikatok will require adult registrants to provide their full name, address, phone number, age, and email address, and to choose a nickname and password. In addition, Tikatok requires adult users to choose a description that will help communicate their reason for joining the site. Tikatok provides the following designations from which to choose: Grandparent, Aunt or Uncle, Journalist, Blogger, Publisher, Teacher, Other. This designation, as well as the fact that the user is an adult, will be associated with the user’s profile and made visible to other users on the site.

Creating, Printing and Deleting Books

Tikatok allows you to create picture books on the site, which include both text (the stories) and images (the illustrations). You should take care never to put Personally Identifiable Information in your books, either in the words or images you supply. You have the ability to set who is allowed to see your book: either everyone in a public display, just the Tikatok members on your “Friends” list, just the Tikatok members authorized by your parent as “Family,” or just you and your parent or guardian in a private display.

Any book on public display will only identify the author by nickname, and no biographical material will be attached. Books on public display may be ordered for printing by any user of the site, and will be printed with the authorship information shown on the display—that is, it will only show the author's nickname as used on the site.

A book in private display will by default only identify the author by nickname, and no biographical material will be attached. Books in private display may be ordered for printing only by the parent or guardian of the author, or a member authorized by the parent or guardian as “family,” who will have the choice in the printed material to identify the author by real name and also the choice to attach biographical material. Biographical material, which is Personally Identifiable Information, will be collected only at the time that a book is ordered from private display, and will be furnished only by the parent or guardian associated with the author's nickname and password.

You have the ability to delete a book at any time, at which point it will be completely removed from our system.

Surveys and Feedback

We may collect aggregate information in connection with surveys or other online activities that allow you to give us your feedback. We do not collect any Personally Identifiable Information in connection with surveys or feedback requests, nor is the information you provide connected to any Personally Identifiable Information we may have about you.

Site Management

We may collect information through technology to make our site more interesting and useful to you. For instance, we collect IP addresses and use technology to track traffic patterns on the site. Once you have logged into the website, we track your activities by using logs of database transactions and server interactions. This data is used to determine which books are the most popular. We also use this information to understand which areas of our website are most appealing or least appealing. Our site also uses cookies, which are pieces of text information that a website sends to your computer while you are viewing the website. Cookies provide information to the site so that the site will remember who you are. These technical methods may involve the transmission of information either directly to us or to another party authorized by us to collect information on our behalf. None of the information collected by through these methods is, or is connected to, Personally Identifiable Information about you.

E–mail Communication from You

If you contact us by e–mail, we use your e–mail address to respond to your specific request or question, after which the address is deleted. Your parent's or guardian's e–mail address, collected in the registration process, will be used it only for the purpose of providing notices requesting parental consent as required under COPPA.

E–mail Communication from Us

Our site may allow you to sign up to receive newsletters, birthday e–cards and e–mails regarding special Tikatok promotional messages or offers. The newsletters and e–mails will provide you with information about new website features, contests, and promotions.

What Information Does Tikatok Share With Others?

All Personally Identifiable Information collected by us is only used to provide services related to the Tikatok website. We do not share your Personally Identifiable Information with any third parties for marketing purposes. We may engage third parties to assist with services related to the website, such as technical and processing services, contest fulfillment, mailings, and analyzing website performance. These third parties are obligated to keep the information secure and confidential and must use the information only in connection with providing services to Tikatok.

When an adult orders a book or a gift card, we send only the information necessary to fulfill the order to Google Checkout and our printing house. Tikatok does not regulate financial transactions or collect or store any credit card information. Your parent should view the Privacy Policy of Google Checkout for more information about how they use your parents' personal information.

In the event that substantially all of the assets related to the Tikatok website were transferred or sold to another entity, all information, including Personally Identifiable Information we have in our possession, would be transferred to that entity.

We may also disclose Personally Identifiable Information to third parties in order to comply with court orders or with requests by law enforcement agencies, to enforce our Terms of Use, or to protect the rights, property, and safety of our website and other users of the site.

Our site may contain links to other websites, including websites directed to children. We have no control over the privacy practices or the content of any of our advertisers or other sites to which we provide links from our sites. These other sites may use cookies, collect data or solicit personally identifiable information. We have no control over these practices and strongly recommend that you check the applicable privacy policy of the website sponsor when linking to other websites.

Can my personally identifiable information be reviewed or corrected?

Your parent or guardian may review the Personally Identifiable Information we collect from you, request corrections, ask that we delete your Personally Identifiable Information from our databases, or refuse further collection or use of your information, by contacting us.

How do I contact you about your privacy practices?

To request further information about our privacy practices, you may contacti us.