Privacy Policy

Welcome to b-linked.org (the "Site," "us" or "we"), an online destination connecting Jewish teens. The Site is operated by B'nai B'rith Youth Organization, Inc. ("BBYO") ("Owner and Operator").

We care about your Internet safety and security. For more information on how to use the Internet safely and securely, please visit http://www.netsmartz.org/netteens.htm

Your privacy is very important to us. Because we gather certain types of personally identifiable information ("Personal Information") from users of our Site and for various activities and operational purposes, we feel you should know how we collect, use, disclose, manage, and store the Personal Information that you may voluntarily provide us and the Personal Information that is collected passively through the use of cookies or image tags on our website. This Privacy Policy is incorporated by reference in the Site's Terms of Use Agreement, which is binding on all Site users. ["Terms of Use Agreement"] This Policy applies only to the Personal Information collected by the Site and BBYO and does not govern any such information collected by its corporate affiliates or operational partners, unless specifically stated.

If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please do not participate in our online or off-line activities and services that require you to provide your Personal Information. (The type of Personal Information collected is listed below.) This Policy provides information regarding your choices to either Opt-out for when and how your Personal Information is used.

This Site may be subject to California privacy laws, even though it does not share its user's Personal Information with third parties for direct marketing purposes.

If you are a California resident and have an established business relationship with us and want to receive information about your California privacy rights, you must send a request to the following address with a preference on how our response to your request should be sent (email or postal mail). You may contact us in two ways. Send email to Privacy Administrator at cmintz@bbyo.org. Alternatively, you may contact BBYO at:

For requests sent via email, you must put the statement "Your California Privacy Rights" in the subject field of your email. All requests sent via postal mail must be labeled "Your California Privacy Rights" on the envelope or post card and clearly stated on the actual request. For all requests, please include your name, street address, city, state, and zip code. (Your street address is optional if you wish to receive a response to your request via email. Please include your zip code for our own recordkeeping.) We will not accept requests via the telephone or by facsimile. We are not responsible for notices that are not labeled or sent properly, or do not have complete information.

To all other users of this Site, if you have other questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact our Privacy Administrator at the following email address: cmintz@bbyo.org or:

The Site is an online destination connecting Jewish teens from around the world. Registered users will be able to register and create a user profile for database searches, post pictures, write a blog, find a mentor, learn about colleges and universities, purchases goods and services, take part in email, message boards and chat, or make a donation. To accomplish this, our users register and create their own profiles using personal information, as described below. To fulfill the purpose of this Site, some of this personal information is displayed to other users.

All users of the Site must be at least 13 years of age. This Site is designed for, and governed by and operated in accordance with, the laws of the United States. All users of the Site are required to provide true, current, complete and accurate Personal Information when prompted and we will reject and delete any entry that we believe in good faith to be false, fraudulent, or inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

Your continued participation on this Site indicates your acceptance of this Privacy Policy and of the collection, use, disclosure, management and storage of your Personal Information as described below. We may from time to time, transfer or merge any Personal Information collected off-line to our online databases or store off-line information in an electronic format. We may also combine Personal Information we collect online with information available from other sources, including information received from our affiliates or organizational partners. This Privacy Policy covers all such Personal Information and will remain in full force and effect as long as you are a user of the Site. We reserve the right to revise this policy at any time by updating this posting without advance notice to you. Such revisions shall be effective to you immediately upon posting. Therefore, we encourage you to check this Privacy Policy often.

We use your Personal Information to provide you with the features, services, or goods you request, to confirm donations and other purchases, and respond to questions related to the Site. We will also use your Personal Information to periodically notify you about updates, new features, programming and activities on behalf of the Site, BBYO or its organizational partners that may be of interest to you.

We may also use your information for hiring, operational and business purposes, or to find out how we can improve the Site via surveys or online tracking mechanisms. We may use aggregate Personal Information to help us to evaluate and modify existing services and features. We also use your Personal Information to develop new services and features that may be of interest to you.

We will not sell, exchange, rent, lease or otherwise disclose your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information to other third party marketers or any such persons that are not associated with BBYO unless it is necessary to: 1) conform to regulatory and legal requirements or to comply with legal process; 2) to protect the safety and security of our users, employees, or property; 3) to defend the rights of the Site; or 4) to enforce the Terms of Use Agreement

We will share your Personal Information with corporate affiliated entities and operational partners primarily for business and operational purposes, and on occasion, for promotional and marketing purposes.

It is also necessary that we share your Personal Information and Sensitive Personal Information with our operational service providers, the specialists that provide internal support to Site operations and activities and/or for Site design, development, hosting and operations including maintenance, management, storage and/or fulfillment of our membership, services, events and online stores. We use operational service providers to efficiently provide the full range of content, activities and membership services we bring to you and we request that our operational service providers also protect your privacy and not disclose your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information to third party marketers that are not associated the Site or its Owner or Operator. Additionally, such providers are not to use your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information for their own marketing or promotional purposes.

In the event that the assets of BBYO are sold or transferred, merged with a different company or entity, restructured, or subject to other fundamental corporate changes, we reserve the right to disclose any and all databases compiled from Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information collected by the Site to such successor. We will seek to obligate such successor to agree to the terms of the Privacy Policy, as it may hereafter be modified, but cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so or that the successor company will comply with this obligation.

We reserve the right to collect Personal Information using any new technology yet to be developed and to use such technology to provide new services and features to you. Specific information regarding your choice to Opt-in or to Opt-out to such use, or for sharing your Personal Information with organizational partners or affiliates, will be provided once the new technology, service, or feature is introduced.

Users who no longer wish to receive email from BBYO regarding events, Site features, programs, etc., or from our affiliates and/or operational partners, may opt-out of receiving these communications by logging in and changing their settings in the "My Settings" section of the Site, or by sending an email to the Site's Privacy Administrator at cmintz@bbyo.org. When sending an email to the Site's Privacy Administrator, please follow the directions below in "REVIEW, UPDATE, CORRECT, OR DELETE PERSONAL INFORMATION OR SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION."

We make no representation that this Site is operated in accordance with the laws or governed by other nations. If you are located outside of the U.S., you access this Site at your own risk and initiative, and are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. Please be aware that any Personal Information you transfer to us will be transferred to the U.S and subject to U.S. law. By using this Site, participating in any Site activities, and/or providing us with your Personal Information, you consent to this transfer of Personal Information to the U.S., and waive any claims that may arise under your own national laws.

Generally, you may browse the Site without providing any Personal Information. For certain activities, however, you may be asked to voluntarily provide Personal Information, which may include your first/middle and last name, location, address, email address, telephone number, mobile phone/text messaging device number, birth date, gender, employer or personal preferences, depending on the activity.

Unless stated otherwise, we do not request contact information for a mobile phone, text messaging or any wireless device that includes a domain name address (such as ".net" or ".com") as part of the contact information. Federal law prohibits the sending of commercial email messages directly to a wireless device that uses a domain name, unless you have first given your affirmative consent. We may inadvertently collect a wireless device number that includes a domain name when you send us an inquiry or register for membership. However, we will not knowingly use that contact information for sending email. We reserve the right to respond to user inquiries or requests sent via a wireless device that uses a domain name as such messages are not deemed to be commercial email and therefore, are not regulated by Federal law. However, when "computer to phone" commercial emails are prohibited by law, we may reject your wireless device contact information when such information is submitted for certain Site features or services. We will attempt to notify you if we will need new contact information.

Profile information, including photos, may be displayed to other users, to support the function of the site as a social networking and informational community. You may choose to have your profile display your full name, or other information, to other users. In order to add or remove your name or other information from your profile display, please visit "My Settings." By choosing to display personal information in your profile, any such content will be considered public material and will not be subject to the privacy protections generally afforded your Personal Information. Your full name and e-mail address will be used when you invite a friend via email to join the service or when you refer a page/article to a friend, and we will use your email address when we send notifications to you in relation to the Site and/or BBYO, its affiliates or operational partners.

For specific purposes (such as the purchase of goods and services) we may request a type of confidential personally identifiable information which shall be called "Sensitive Personal Information" and is defined as any individual's: (1) social security number or (2) account number, credit or debit card number, in combination with any required security code, access code or password that would permit access to an individual's financial account. This Sensitive Personal Information will only be used to implement the specific activity or event it was submitted for. We will not share your Sensitive Personal Information with any third party. We will retain this information, however, and make it available to you for any additional purchases you make through the Site.

However, more general Personal Information will be used to implement the specific activity or event and will also be used for the marketing of additional events, services and merchandising for the Site. We may contact you via email for administrative or informational purposes, including follow-up messages regarding goods or services you have purchased or other transactions you have undertaken. By law, such messages are not considered to be commercial email.

We use a tool called "Google Analytics" to collect information about use of this site. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they used prior to coming to this site. We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve this site. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit this site, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google's ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to this site is restricted by the and the Google Privacy Policy . You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits to this site by disabling cookies on your browser.

If a user invites a friend to join the Site, we will ask you for your friend's email address. BBYO will automatically send the friend an email inviting them to join the Site. We store this information to send reminders of the invitation to the friend. We do not sell or use these email addresses in any way other than to send communications about the invitation. The friend may contact us at cmintz@bbyo.org to request the removal of this information from our database.

When you join the Site, you will be asked to provide your parent or legal guardian's ("parent's") contact information. BBYO will send an email to your parents telling them that you have registered for the Site and sending them a link to a page on the Site with information for parents. If you do not know their email address, or they do not have email, we will send them a letter in the mail with the same information. We will not share additional information with your parents about your activities on the Site.

We store this information for two purposes: (1) we will send a notification to your parents when you register for an event on the Site. Your parents will be required to complete a parental authorization form for the event in order for you to participate in the event, and (2) we will send correspondence to parents periodically regarding Site and BBYO operations, features, activities and events.

The use of cookies is an industry standard and they are currently used on most websites, including this Site. Cookies are a small text file containing a unique identification number that is transferred from a website to the hard drive of a user's computer so that the website administrator or a third party operational service provider may identify the computer and passively track the user's activities on the website. Image tags work in conjunction with cookies and are small image files that may be located on select pages of our Site, or with-in web-based email newsletters that we may send. (Image tags are also called web beacons, web bugs, clear GIFs or single-pixel GIFs.) Tracking is important because we can better understand what parts of our website are used the most, when to launch new services and how to enhance current offerings. We may share the information we receive from cookies and image tags with third-parties in aggregate form, which means that such information does not contain specific Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information about any one visitor.

In short, cookies and image tags collect a user's Internet protocols and server information. Such data files allow our Site to remember your web browser when you visit our Site and are necessary tools for quick and efficient access to membership information and various services. A cookie will not allow the Site to learn any Personal Information (such as your real name and email address) or Sensitive Personal Information that you have not otherwise disclosed. Cookies and image tags allow the Site to remember important information that will make the Site easier for you to use and helpful in our administration of various activities. We do not use cookies or image tags to collect other Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information unless you give us permission to do so.

You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie or image tag is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all such devices. This is done through your browser. If you turn cookies off, you may not have access to many features at our Site that make your Internet experience more efficient and enjoyable -- like the features mentioned above -- and some of our other services will not function properly.

Although persons of all ages may visit our Site and participate in activities that do not require the collection of Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information, we do not knowingly or intentionally collect Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information from children under the age of 13. We will automatically reject and delete the registration or entry of any person we believe in good faith to be underage. Any false or fraudulent registration or entry from a minor will be deemed to be ineligible and will disqualify the minor membership or other participation in the Site.

We do not generally keep email correspondence sent to the Site. We request that you not place any Sensitive Personal Information in your email correspondence to the Site. You understand and agree that we are not responsible for Sensitive Personal Information that is improperly disclosed in emails to the Site.

As this Site sells goods and/or services, we will request Sensitive Personal Information that includes your credit card, debit card or other payment information. Alternatively, the Site may use a third party operational service provider to conduct the financial transaction in a secured manner; the third party payment will be accessible via a hyperlink from the Site and will be solely responsible for all financial transactions and the collection, use, and storage of your Personal Information. The Site may request additional Personal Information such as full name, billing and shipping address, email address and telephone number and any such information that is required to fulfill your order and to communicate with you regarding your order. Sensitive Personal Information will be encrypted or collected though a secured Internet connection generally via SSL or S-HTTP protocols. Such Sensitive Personal Information will also be stored in a commercially reasonable secure manner. We will only use your credit card and debit card number to complete the specific transaction you requested.

For your enjoyment and entertainment, this Site offers user interactive activities such as messaging, chat rooms, message boards, and/or public forums ("Public Areas"). We do not share any Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information that is entered into the Public Area registration section on the Site with third parties.

By submitting content to any area of the Site open to other users or the general public, your content will be considered public material and will not be subject to the privacy protections generally afforded your Personal Information. In short, by posting personal information online that is accessible to other users, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties.

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to save and archive any content of any nature posted to the Site and that we may, without liability to any user: 1) disclose such content if required to do so by law or to comply with legal processes; 2) to respond to claims that any of the content violates the property, privacy, publicity or other rights of others; or 3) to protect the rights, property or safety of the Site, its employees, users and members of the public. For more information on this Site's rules of conduct for these Public Areas, please see our Terms of Use Agreement

We reserve the right to monitor and edit any Personal Information about our users, including information about the use of website activities and services, the contents of users' email and messages for internal purposes, and when necessary, to disclose to law enforcement personnel, and/or the employer and/or Internet Service Provider of a user that is not in compliance with the Terms of Use Agreement or Privacy Policy. We will take such measures if we believe it is necessary to protect the security, integrity, and operations of this Site or its Owner or Operator. Without disclosure of Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information about individual users, we may provide aggregate statistics about our users, traffic patterns and related website information to operational partners, corporate affiliates.

This Privacy Policy does not cover third party advertising or third party content that may be present on the Site. This Site may provide banner and general advertising, in addition to other content provided by our Advertisers or operational service providers. Users may from time to time purchase goods or services offered through, or otherwise participate in or send messages concerning such advertising, promotions or third party content offered through the Site. Such correspondence, transactions and agreements are solely between the user and the Advertiser or the third party content provider and do not involve the Site. Also, Advertisers and such third party content providers may not have the same privacy policies that we do and you are encouraged to read their privacy policy first.

This Site often provides links to third party websites that could be of interest to our users, including the websites of our organizational partners and affiliates. As stated in our Terms of Use Agreement, we do not own or control these websites and therefore, are not responsible for the content, business practices, or operations of such websites. Third party websites linked on this Site may have different privacy policies and business practices than we do. The presence of a link to a third party website does not constitute or imply our endorsement, recommendation, or sponsorship of the third party content, goods, or services available through, or contained on, the Site. By use of this Site, you have agreed that you will use the hyperlinks to third party sites at your own risk.

BBYO also collects and uses Personal Information by other means, via telephone, direct mail, and direct from members of the public. The various uses of such Personal Information include, but are not limited to, membership, donations, events, job applications, and operational and business purposes.

We may use your Personal Information collected off-line for internal promotional or advertising purposes, however, we do not share it with third parties for promotional or marketing purposes. If Personal Information collected off-line will be used by BBYO, its corporate affiliates or promotional partners for promotional and marketing purposes, you have the opportunity to Opt-out of such use.

Your use of this Site is password-protected. In addition, we take every reasonable precaution to protect your information. We conduct the collection, management, maintenance and storage of website user information in a secure and commercially reasonable manner using acceptable industry standards of security technology and practices (such as electronic security systems and password protections) to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of Personal Information. We also request that our operational service providers take such precautions. BBYO databases are accessible only by authorized personnel.

However, please note that when users transmit Personal Information over an unsecured Internet connection, the Site is not responsible for the security of that information during the transmission stage as your email or registration could be copied or intercepted by unknown third parties. We use a secured connection only for the collection of Sensitive Personal Information, which is necessary for the purchase of goods or services, but we do not use a secured connection for other types of activities. Therefore, you understand, acknowledge, and agree that you transmit certain Personal Information over this Site at your own risk.

Phishing attacks attempt to steal consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials. "Phishers" use 'spoofed' e-mails to lead consumers to counterfeit websites designed to trick recipients into divulging Sensitive Personal Information such as credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords and social security numbers. We will NEVER send an email asking you to provide or confirm Sensitive Personal Information. If you receive a communication such as this, please immediately forward it to the Site's Privacy Administrator at cmintz@bbyo.org, and immediately delete it from your computer.

Generally, you may review, update or delete your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information collected by the Site. You may also correct factual inaccuracies. Certain types of Personal Information that are necessary to check eligibility, such as birth date or age, cannot be deleted, but may be modified by an authorized BBYO staff member with sufficient verification of the new information. Note that we reserve the right to terminate or delete any membership or entry if we believe the Personal Information submitted was knowingly false or fraudulent.

To review, update or delete your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information collected by the Site, please email the Site's Privacy Administrator at cmintz@bbyo.org. To have access to your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information, you must provide proof of identification such as full name, street address, city/state and zip code, user ID and password, and/or information about your recent activity on the website. We reserve the right to deny access to any user if we believe there is a question about your identity. And if the burden or expense of providing access to your Personal Information is disproportionate to the risks to your privacy, or if the legitimate rights of others would be violated, we may decide not to provide access to such information. In such cases, we will provide to you an explanation of why access cannot be provided and a contact person for further inquiries.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on October 2, 2005 and is effective immediately.

Copyright 2005 B'nai B'rith Youth Organization. All rights reserved.