INSTANTSERIALS.COM’s Privacy Policy sets forth how Instant Serials, Inc. and its affiliates (“Instant Serials”, “Company”, “We” and “Us”) collects, uses and protects personal information shared by the users (“You” or “User”) of the INSTANTSERIALS.COM website and its associated services and domains (collectively, “INSTANTSERIALS.COM" or “Website"). If you are under eighteen (18) years of age, “You” and “Your” includes your parents or legal guardian, or educators of K-12 schools. By using or accessing INSTANTSERIALS.COM, you are accepting the terms of this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy was most recently updated on November 22, 2010.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM is committed to providing a social, safe and entertaining literary and online experience for people of all ages. The service provides the means for communication and coordination among people who want to share a good story as it unfolds.

Users may disclose certain personal information (“personally identifiable information,” or “PII”) while registering for or using the Website, including but not limited to the User’s name, age, birth date, gender, E-Mail address, address and/or telephone number. We collect and store this information and may use the information as you interact with INSTANTSERIALS.COM and as otherwise set forth in this Privacy Policy. When Users update information, we keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information. Users may form and/or join groups, purchase group subscriptions, interact with other Users through the Website, perform searches, transmit information through message boards and online group discussions, and download promotional materials and learning resources.

We collect the browser type and IP address of all INSTANTSERIALS.COM visitors. We also store certain information from User’s browsers using cookies (small pieces of data stored on the User's computer) and use cookies to confirm that a User is signed in. Cookies can be blocked or removed by a User through the use of browser settings.

Users post User Content (as defined in the INSTANTSERIALS.COM Terms of Use) on INSTANTSERIALS.COM at their own risk. We cannot control the actions of other Users with whom you may choose to share information.

Any improper collection or misuse of information provided on INSTANTSERIALS.COM is a violation of the INSTANTSERIALS.COM Terms of Service and should be reported to support@InstantSerials.com.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM takes reasonable precautions to protect our Users' information, including locating account information on a secured server behind a firewall. Sensitive information (such as passwords), is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL). No security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on INSTANTSERIALS.COM will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on INSTANTSERIALS.COM. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content. Because email messages are not recognized as secure communications, we request that you not send private information to us by email or instant messaging services.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM may collect credit card information in connection with the purchase of subscriptions for reading groups. Credit card information is sent to the appropriate financial institution for procecssing and is not shared with other third parties and is not stored by INSTANTSERIALS.COM after the transaction is completed.

By using INSTANTSERIALS.COM, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred and processed in the United States.

If you have any questions about the security of INSTANTSERIALS.COM, please contact us at support@InstantSerials.com

INSTANTSERIALS.COM may use your name and email address to send you notifications regarding INSTANTSERIALS.COM, including but not limited to announcements, service-related notifications and responses to inquirers.

We may use personal information provided by our users, including but not limited to age, location, gender and website usage patterns, for the purpose of profiling the demographics of INSTANTSERIALS.COM users. Aggregate demographic information may be published or shared with third parties such as educators or sponsors.

We enable group members to privately chat online via message boards during the length of story. Only the Users’ first name and surname initial will be disclosed to group members.

In addition to the purposes described in Section 1, we may actively collect and use email addresses and user names to track usage and to ensure users are following the site's Terms of Use. In addition, we may use an email address and user name to ban a user temporarily or permanently from the Instant Serials story-sharing service if that user engages in inappropriate conduct on the site. We may also use email addresses and user names to enable parents to review PII that their children have submitted to the Instant Serials website and to provide notification regarding the site, such as any future amendments to this Privacy Policy. We also may use information in the aggregate to analyze site usage, as well as to research and develop new products, programs, or services.

We may use the IP address and/or cookies of INSTANTSERIALS.COM visitors in order to track usage of the Website, to allow items to remain in the User’s shopping cart when they are purchasing subscriptions, to determine a User’s time zone to allow the stories to be released at the designated time and to track the number of times a user signs in to the Website. Cookies can be blocked or removed by a User through the use of browser settings.

We may disclose information where we are required to do so by law, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena, or where we disclose information to service providers or other companies who provide support for the operations of our website and who do not use or disclose the information for any other purpose. To the extent permitted by applicable law, we also may disclose PII in response to a law enforcement agency's or other public agency's (including schools or children services) request or if we feel that such disclosure may prevent the instigation of a crime, facilitate an investigation related to public safety or protect the safety of a child using our website, protect the security or integrity of our website, or enable us to take precautions against liability.

If we sell all or part of our business or make a sale or transfer of our assets or are otherwise involved in a merger or business transfer, we may transfer PII to a third party as part of that transaction, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Finally, we may transfer PII and store it outside of the jurisdiction in which a group member of Instant Serials is located. As set out above, Instant Serials is operating from the United States, which was recognized as a country providing an adequate level of protection by the Federal Trade Commission, so that the information we collect will be mainly processed and stored there.

In order to ensure that only educators are able to create educational reading groups on INSTANTSERIALS.COM, we require certain information to verify that the user is an educator. When a user attempts to create an educational reading group on INSTANTSERIALS.COM, the user will be required to provide an email address associated with the school (i.e., domain extensions ending in .edu, .k12.co.us, etc.), information regarding his or her school affiliation and a certification that he or she is employed by a school as an educator, librarian, administrator or staff.

By creating an educational reading group that includes children under the age of 13, the educator is granting consent on behalf of the parents of the children under 13 to allow INSTANTSERIALS.COM to collect personal information as outlined above from such children and to allow the children to participate in message boards/discussion groups related to their reading group. When a child under the age of 13 is invited to join an educational reading group, parents will not receive the notification discussed in Section 3 of this Privacy Policy.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM may use information collected from a child for the purpose of determining whether he or she is eligible to use the INSTANTSERIALS.COM website and/or message board features. A child may be invited directly by a group subscriber (typically a teacher or relative) who knows the child and provides the name of the child and/or the email address of the child to INSTANTSERIALS.COM for the purpose of allowing the child to register to use the Website and become a member of the reading group that the group subscriber has created. INSTANTSERIALS.COM may collect the email address of a child from the group subscriber in order to send the child an invitation and link to join the reading group and register with INSTANTSERIALS.COM.

When a child first visits the INSTANTSERIALS.COM webpage, he or she will initially be prompted to enter the name of the group he or she has been invited to join. In order to register for the site and join the reading group, the child will be prompted to create a user name and password and to provide his or her first and last name and date of birth. The child will have the option to provide his or her email address. We use the PII that is collected to confirm that the child has been invited by the group subscriber to join a specific reading group for the purpose of reading serialized literature over a set period of time.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM requires users under 13 years of age who are not part of an educational reading group created by an educator to provide a parent’s or legal guardian’s valid email address in order to join a reading group. We may use the parent’s email address for the following purposes:

• to provide direct notice to parents of the PII that their child submitted to our Website;
  
• to activate parent control over their child’s PII and group membership, which includes but is not limited to canceling story-sharing privileges,
• to request parental consent for the child’s participation in group discussions;
• to send the parent communications either about the parent’s and child’s Instant Serials accounts or about features of our Website;
• to allow parents the opportunity to opt-out of our services on behalf of their child;
• to allow parents to request deletion of a child’s PII from our records; and
• for the other purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

The parent or legal guardian’s email address is associated with the child’s group membership, which expires at the end of story-sharing.

We may use personal information provided by our users and passively collected information for the following purposes:

• to track Website usage;
• to ensure users are following the site's Terms of Use;
• to ban a user temporarily or permanently from the Instant Serials story-sharing service if that user engages in inappropriate conduct on the site;
• to notify a parent or guardian of his or her child’s inappropriate, disturbing or concerning behavior and/or postings on the INSTANTSERIALS.COM website;
• to schedule the release chapters of serialized stories;
• to enable parents to review PII that their children have submitted to the Instant Serials website; or
• to provide notification regarding the site, such as any future amendments to this Privacy Policy.

We also may use information in the aggregate to analyze site usage, as well as to research and develop new products, programs, or services.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM will not share any PII collected from children with any unaffiliated third parties. We may disclose PII and passively-collected PII under the following circumstances:

• Where we are required to do so by law, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena;
• Where we disclose information to service providers or other group companies who provide support for the operations of our website and who do not use or disclose the information for any other purpose; or
• To the extent permitted by applicable law, we also may disclose PII in response to a law enforcement agency's or other public agency's (including schools or children services) request or if we feel that such disclosure may prevent the instigation of a crime, facilitate an investigation related to public safety or protect the safety of a child using our website, protect the security or integrity of our website, or enable us to take precautions against liability.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM does not permit children under 13 years of age to post messages to the private message boards / group discussion forums for their reading groups without prior written parental consent as discussed in Section 3 of this Privacy Policy. Children participating in education reading groups may participate in the private message boards / group discussion forums for their reading groups based on the consent of the educator/group leader.

Although the message boards / group discussion forums are accessible only by members of a particular reading group, please encourage your children to use caution when disclosing any information in such a forum. INSTANTSERIALS.COM is not responsible for use by others of information that is disclosed on a message board / group discussion forum.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM does not review message board / group discussion forum content or assess whether such content is inappropriate or offensive.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM will take appropriate action in the event that inappropriate and/or offensive content on the Website is brought to its attention.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM reserves the right to notify parents/guardians of any behavior and/or posts to a group discussion board by their child which IS deems inappropriate, disturbing or concerning.

Instant Serials Inc.
859 South York St.
Denver, CO 80209
1-888-827-9014
Fax 303-777-0478
support@InstantSerials.com

We do not allow third-party companies to solicit or advertise to our users. Our intention is to keep Instant Serials free from any of this sort of direct advertising.

The security of your personal information is important to us. We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online. When you enter sensitive information, such as your credit card number, or our membership subscription form, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).

INSTANTSERIALS.COM may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other web sites. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by INSTANTSERIALS.COM and does not apply to information provided to any other website.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM users may modify their email and password at any time by signing into their account profile. We keep the original and new email addresses. Notification from INSTANTSERIALS.COM will be sent to the current address.

Please contact us if you would like to access the PII that we have collected online from you or your child, correct factual errors in such information, request to have this information deleted, or request that we no longer collect or maintain such information.

Please be sure to include your email address and a telephone number where we can reach you. To protect you and your child's privacy and security, we will take reasonable steps to help verify your identity before granting you access to the personal information that we collect and maintain about you or your child.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM is intended for users of all ages. Users who are thirteen (13) years of age or older and below eighteen (18) years of age are permitted to use or access the Website only with the consent of their parents or guardians and represent and warrant that their access is with such parental consent.

Users under the age of thirteen (13) are permitted to use and access the Website with the consent of their parents or guardians and with a warrant that the children’s access is with such parental consent. INSTANTSERIALS.COM provides notice to parents or guardians when their child registers to join a social reading group and offers the opportunity to opt-out of the group. A child user may not participate in social reading group discussions without verifiable parental consent.

Student users under the age of thirteen (13) who register as part of an educational group are permitted to use and access the Website with the school/teachers acting as agents for parents in providing consent for collection of student’s PII within the school context.

Your use of INSTANTSERIALS.COM, and any disputes arising from it, is subject to this Privacy Policy as well as our Terms of Use and all of its dispute resolution provisions including limitation on damages and choice of law.

INSTANTSERIALS.COM reserves the right to change its Privacy Policy and Terms of Use at any time. Non-material changes and clarifications will take effect immediately, and material changes will take effect within 30 days of their posting on the INSTANTSERIALS.COM website. If we make changes, we will post them and will indicate at the top of this page the policy's new effective date. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or through notice on our home page. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at support@InstantSerials.com. You may also contact us by mail at Instant Serials Inc., 859 South York St., Denver, CO 80209.