Summary
This site is owned and operated by the Minnesota Reading Association (herein referred to as 'MRA'). Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At MRA, we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe.

Because we gather certain types of information about our users, we feel you should fully understand our policy and the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we gather and how we use it.

Information MRA Gathers and Tracks

MRA gathers two types of information about users:

• Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to receive our electronic newsletters, to participate in our message boards or forums, to email a friend, and from participation in polls and surveys:
• Information MRA gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers' needs and better understand the demographics of our audience. Under no circumstances does MRA divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.

MRA Gathers User Information In The Following Processes:

Optional Voluntary Information

We offer the following services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:

1. Electronic notifications policy
   We will offer a free electronic notification posting system to registered MRA members. MRA gathers personal information in the registration process for membership, including the email addresses of user registering. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by following the link provided in every email that points users to the subscription management page.
   
   
2. Message boards / forums policy
   MRA may institute a public message board or forum. Users of the site's Message Boards and Forums must register separately for these services (both are free of charge) in order to post messages, although they needn't register to visit the site or read posts by other users. During registration the user is required to supply a username, password, and email address.
   
   
3. Polling
   We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues. Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable to any particular user. MRA may use a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.
   
   
4. Surveys
   MRA may occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience. We sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our sponsors, advertisers and partners. We never share any of this information about specific individuals with any third party.

Aggregated Tracking Information

1. Usage Tracking
   MRA tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. MRA does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser).
   MRA sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking is never associated with individual users. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you.
   
   
2. Cookies
   We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. The cookie itself contains limited personal information that you provided at time of membership registration which is only viable for automatically logging MRA members into the online system when they visit the website. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. MRA uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above).
   You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, polling and surveys.

Use of Information

MRA uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.

As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to send out electronic newsletters and to enable users to participate in polls, surveys, message boards, and forums. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regular schedule (depending on the newsletter), and occasionally send out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in something we are doing. MRA never shares newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors or partners.

We may use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you. We track search terms entered in Search function as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a particular user enters.

Children

Consistent with the Federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting parental consent.

Security

MRA operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our customers.

Opt-Out Policy

We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:

• Opting not to receive our electronic notifications.
  
  
• Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users

Your Consent

By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by MRA. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.