Effective Date: May 18, 2018

General Information

The terms “we,” “us,” and “Company” refer to Midwest Parent Educators (MPE) Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization organized and existing under the laws of the State of Kansas, or any successor or assignee of the Company. The term “Midwest Parent Educators” or “MPE” refers either to the organization or the online platform as the context requires. The term “Services” refers to the services offered by MPE. The term “you” refers to any Member (or other party whose contact information has been provided to us over the internet) who is reading this Privacy Policy, or on behalf of whom this policy is being read.

The term “Website” refers to all website domains that are owned by Midwest Parent Educators, Inc.

The term “Personal Information” means information about an individual who is a Member and includes any “Supplemental Personal Information,” as defined further below, that we obtain.

We use your Personal Information for providing and improving the Service. By using our services, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.

Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms of Service, accessible at www.midwesthomeschoolers.org/terms-of-service.

The privacy of our visitors is important to us.

At MPE, we recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use and visit our websites including but not limited to https://www.midwesthomeschoolers.org, and how we safeguard your information. We never sell your personal information to third parties.

Information Collection And Use

While using our Service, we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to, your email address, name, phone number (“Personal Information”).

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

We collect this information for the purpose of providing the Service, identifying and communicating with you, responding to your requests/inquiries, servicing any purchases you make and improving our services.

As with most other websites, we collect and use the data contained in log files. The information in the log files include your IP (internet protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you visited throughout our site

We will use and disclose your Personal Information as follows:

  • To promote use, including continued use, of our Services. For example, if you leave your personal information when you visit our Website and do not sign up for any of our services or programs, we may send you one or more emails asking whether you wish to sign up. If you use any of our Services, and may benefit from using one or more other Services we offer, we may send you an email telling you about the other Service or Services.
  • To bill and collect sums owed to us for any of our products, programs and services you purchase. Uses for this purpose include sending you emails, invoices, receipts and notices of delinquency, to alert you if we need a different credit card number, and to otherwise try to collect money owed. We use third parties to handle secure credit card transaction processing and send billing information to such third parties, who maintain all information in confidence, to process your orders and credit card payments. To learn more about what steps we take to safeguard such data, see below.
  • To provide customer support and obtain feedback.
  • For internal use, whether in the form actually received or pseudonymously or anonymously, by way of example and not limitation circulating email addresses internally for identifying the most common web hosts used by our customers, or reviewing IP addresses for information about the general geographic areas of origin of our users.
  • To disclose the information that we have to you in response to any valid request from you to know what of your information we possess, and in response to a valid request to exercise your “right to be forgotten” as detailed further below.
  • To communicate with you concerning your account for an informational, as opposed to promotional, purpose.
  • To transfer your information in the event of the sale of substantially all of the assets of our business to a third-party or in the event of a merger, consolidation or acquisition. However, in such event, any acquirer will be subject to our obligations under this Privacy Policy.
  • To send you informational and promotional materials that you elect (“opt-in”) to receive.
  • Testimonials: We display personal testimonials of satisfied customers on our Site in addition to other endorsements. With your consent, we may post your testimonial along with your name. If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, you can contact us at info@midwesthomeschoolers.org.
  • Call & Video Recordings: We reserve the right to record MPE events. All call information may be used again for informational or promotional purposes. If you wish for a recording of you to be updated or removed, you can contact us using the contact details at the end of this privacy policy.

YOUR RIGHTS IN RESPECT OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

In accordance with applicable privacy law, you have the following rights in respect of your personal information that we hold:

  • The right to request access to and to receive your personal information that is collected by MPE.
  • The right to request updates to any of your personal information that is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • The right to erase your personal information such as when the information is no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which it was collected or processed.
  • The right to obtain the restriction of the processing undertaken by us on your personal information in certain circumstances, such as where the accuracy of the personal information is contested by you, for a period enabling us to verify the accuracy of that personal information.
  • The right to object on grounds relating to your particular situation, to the processing of your personal information, and to object to processing of your personal information for direct marketing purposes, to the extent it is related to such direct marketing.

If you wish to exercise one of these rights, please contact us using the contact details at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Cookies And Tracking Technologies: Technologies such as: cookies, beacons, tags and scripts are used by MPE. These technologies may be used in analyzing trends, administering the Sites, tracking your movements around the Sites and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We use cookies to remember users’ settings as well as for authentication and analytics. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level.

We may use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. This could include only showing you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to login to some of our features, such as forums.

We also use third party advertisements on https://www.midwesthomeschoolers.org and the other MPE websites listed previously to support our organization. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP, the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to measure and evaluate access to and traffic on the Public Area of the Site, and create user navigation reports for our Site administrators. Google operates independently from us and has its own privacy policy, which we strongly suggest you review. Google may use the information collected through Google Analytics to evaluate Users’ and Visitors’ activity on our Site. For more information, see Google Analytics Privacy and Data Sharing.

We take measures to protect the technical information collected by our use of Google Analytics. The data collected will only be used on a need to know basis to resolve technical issues, administer the Site and identify visitor preferences; but in this case, the data will be in non-identifiable form. We do not use any of this information to identify Visitors or Users.

You may opt out from the collection of navigation information about your visit to the Site by Google Analytics by using the Google Analytics Opt-out feature.

HOW TO CONTROL COOKIES

When you first visit this website we ask for your consent to use cookies. You can choose not to accept cookies but please be aware that services you request may not be available. If you delete your cookies or clear your cache, you may be asked to give your consent again. This is because a cookie is usually used to remember the choice you made the first time.

If you wish to revoke your consent to the use of cookies on this website you can either delete the cookies in your browser’s memory or clear your cache.

If you wish to prevent cookies being set before you visit this website, or most other websites, you can set your browser to block cookies. Most browsers allow you to do this in their settings.

You can also visit www.allaboutcookies.org for details on how to delete or reject cookies and for further information on cookies in general.

Behavioral Remarketing and Advertising

We may use remarketing services to advertise on third party websites to you after you visited our Service. We and our third-party vendors use cookies to inform, optimize and serve ads based on your past visits to our Service.

Google Marketing Services

On our website we may use the marketing and remarketing services of Google LLC (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA; “Google”). These services allow us to display advertisements in a more targeted manner in order to present advertisements of interest to users. Through remarketing ads and products are displayed to users relating to an interest established by activity on other websites within the Google Network. For these purposes, a code is used by Google when our website is accessed and what are referred to as (re)marketing tags are incorporated into the website.

With their help, an individual cookie, i.e. a small file, is stored on the user’s device (comparable technologies may also be used instead of cookies). Cookies can be set by various domains, including google.com, doubleclick.net, invitemedia.com, admeld.com, googlesyndication.com or googleadservices.com. This file records which apps users have visited, which content they are interested in and which offers have been used. In addition, technical information about the browser and operating system, referring websites, the length of the visit as well as any additional data about the use of the online products and services are stored. The IP address of users is also recorded, although we would like inform you that within the framework of Google Analytics, IP addresses within Member States of the European Union or in other contracting states to the Agreement on the European Economic Area are truncated.

All user data will only be processed as pseudonymous data. Google does not store any names or e-mail addresses. All displayed ads are therefore not displayed specifically for a person, but for the owner of the cookie. This information is collected by Google and transmitted to and stored by servers in the USA.

One of the Google marketing services we use is the online advertising program Google AdWords. In the case of Google AdWords, each AdWords customer receives a different conversion cookie. Cookies can therefore not be tracked through the websites of AdWords customers. The information collected by the cookie is used to generate conversion statistics for AdWords customers who have opted for conversion tracking. AdWords customers see the total number of users who clicked on their ad and were redirected to a page with a conversion tracking tag.

Google services make use of Google’s Tag Manager. For more information about Google’s use of data for marketing purposes, please see the summary page: https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads, Google’s privacy policy is available at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy.

The legal basis for the use of this service is Art. 6 paragraph 1 sentence 1 letter f GDPR. If you wish to object to interest-based advertising by Google marketing services, you can do so using the settings and opt-out options provided by Google: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences.

We also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads specific to you and your interests (“interest based targeting”). The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (For example, if you have been viewing sites about visiting Las Vegas, you may see Las Vegas hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about hockey). DART uses “non personally identifiable information”. It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers or credit card numbers. You can opt-out of this ad serving on all sites using this advertising by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx

You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.

Deleting cookies does not mean you are permanently opted out of any advertising program. Unless you have settings that disallow cookies, the next time you visit a site running the advertisements, a new cookie will be added.

Facebook

We use the “visitor action pixels” from Facebook Inc (1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA, or, if you are based in the EU, Facebook Ireland Ltd., 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2, Ireland (“Facebook”)) on our website.

This allows user behavior to be tracked after they have been redirected to the provider’s website by clicking on a Facebook ad. This enables us to measure the effectiveness of Facebook ads for statistical and market research purposes. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, i.e. we do not see the personal data of individual users.

However, this data is stored and processed by Facebook, which is why we are informing you, based on our knowledge of the situation. Facebook may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Usage Policy https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/. You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your computer for these purposes.

The legal basis for the use of this service is Art. 6 paragraph 1 sentence 1 letter f GDPR. You can object to the collection of your data by Facebook pixel, or to the use of your data for the purpose of displaying Facebook ads by contacting the following address: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads.

Facebook is certified under the Privacy Shield Agreement and thus guarantees compliance with European data protection legislation (https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnywAAC&status=Active).

TWITTER CONVERSION TRACKING

On our website, we use the Conversion Tracking Service of Twitter Inc. (1355 Market Street #900, San Francisco, California 94103, “Twitter”). Twitter stores a cookie on the user’s computer to enable an analysis of the use of our online products and services. Twitter Conversion Tracking tracks the actions of users after they have viewed ads or interacted with ads on Twitter. Twitter’s Conversion Tracking allows you to assign conversions such as link clicks, retweets or “like” data.

The legal basis for the use of this service is Art. 6 paragraph 1 sentence 1 letter f GDPR. If you wish to object to tracking, you can do so using the Digital Advertising Alliance tool at optout.aboutads.info.

Twitter is certified under the Privacy Shield Agreement and thus guarantees its compliance with European data protection legislation: (https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000TORzAAO&status=Active)

INTEGRATED SERVICES AND THIRD PARTY CONTENT

We may use services and content provided by third parties on our website (hereinafter collectively referred to as “content”). For this kind of integration, it is technically necessary to process your IP address so that the content can be sent to your browser. Your IP address will therefore be transmitted to the respective third party provider.

In each case, this data processing is carried out to safeguard our legitimate interests in the optimization and the commercial operations of our website, the legal basis of which is Art. 6 paragraph 1 sentence 1 letter f GDPR.

The Java programming language is regularly used to integrate content. Therefore, you can object to data processing by deactivating Java operations in your browser.

We have integrated contents from Google LLC into our website:

“Google Web Fonts” for using Google’s fonts;
“YouTube” for displaying videos.
Google is certified under the Privacy Shield Agreement and thus guarantees compliance with European data protection legislation (https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&status=Active).

Links to Third Party Websites from our Website

To the extent that our Website contains links to sites operated by third parties and not related to our products or services (“Linked Websites”), the Linked Websites are not controlled by us and we are not responsible for the privacy practices of those companies. Before disclosing your personal information to Linked Websites, we advise you to examine their privacy policies.

Safeguarding Your Information

The Company does not collect payment information from you except to the extent that the Company forwards your payment request directly to our merchant services provider, which is Stripe (www.stripe.com) or PayPal (www.PayPal.com), with neither the ability nor the intent to intercept or collect any such payment data.

The Merchant Services Provider only receives information necessary to verify that any payments between yourself and the Company are authorized. The Merchant Services Provider will use encrypted tools to communicate with your designated payee institution, or whatever other account you use to pay for orders to the Company. Your credit card information or other payment information is not retained by the Company except as provided below. The Company does not maintain records of your credit card number or other payment information.

Affiliate Disclosure

Some of the links on this website may be affiliate links, which means that we may earn a commission if you click on the link or make a purchase using the link. When you make a purchase, the price you pay will be the same whether you use the affiliate link or go directly to the vendor’s website using a non-affiliate link. By using the affiliate links, you are helping support the MPE community. We genuinely appreciate your support and your brand loyalty.

Disclaimer: Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube nor any other brand mentioned on our site(s) endorse or sponsor this site(s) and are in no way affiliated with MPE.

No Children Under Age 13

The Offerings are not intended for use by anyone under the age of 13, nor does MPE knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are under 13, you may not attempt to register for the Offerings & Services or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. In the event that we confirm that we have collected personal information from someone under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information promptly. If you are a parent or legal guardian of a child under 13 and believe that we might have any information from or about such child, please contact us at the email or mailing address provided at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy at any time. If we make changes, we will post them and will indicate on this page the policy’s new effective date. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you by email or through notice on the Offerings.

Questions

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns or wish to update, delete or change any Personal Information submitted on this Site, or have any questions about our Privacy Policy, please notify us via email at: info@midwesthomeschoolers.org. This shall also serve as the designated contact information for any valid exercising of the “right to be forgotten.”

How To Contact Us

Email: info at midwesthomeschoolers[dot]org (formatted to prevent spam emails)
Phone: 913.599.0311
Our website address is: https://www.midwesthomeschoolers.org.