Privacy Information:

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, passed by Congress in October 1998, requires the Federal Trade Commission to issue and enforce children's online privacy protection rules. As part of this website's compliance with these rules, and as a service to any of our visitors concerned about their online privacy, we provide the following Privacy Policy, which pertains to all content on the professor-astronomy.com website. For information specific to the privacy of children under age 13 on this web site, click here.

Collection of Personal Information

Professor-astronomy.com collects the following forms of personal information:

• Names and email addresses of subscribers to the Newsletter,
• Email addresses and any personal information revealed in emails sent by the reader to any email address using the professor-astronomy.com domain name,
• Email addresses and any personal information volunteered in emails submitted to the "Ask Professor Astronomy" feature,
• Information automatically collected by our web server, including the IP addresses of all computers accessing our web page, the operating system of viewer's computer (e.g. Windows XP or Mac OSX), the type of web browser used to access the site (e.g. Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.), the dates and times that pages are accessed, and the web site from which the viewer came. This information is NOT combined with any other personal information collected on the site.

Professor-astronomy.com does NOT place cookies.

Use of Personal Information

Names and email addresses of newsletter subscribers are used solely for distribution of the newsletter, and for no other purpose. Contact information from emails sent to professor-astronomy.com may be used for any necessary correspondence between the operators of professor-astronomy.com and the submitter.

Questions are submitted to "Ask Professor Astronomy" via a web-based form. Any personal information in the correspondence, such as email addresses and identifying information, is used only for correspondence and is not compiled for any other purpose.

On occasion, the operators of professor-astronomy.com may desire to identify a reader in the newsletter or on the website. In such a case, written/email permission will be requested by the administrators from the individual, and no information will be released without the express permission of the individual.

The automatically-collected information on the operating system, browser, IP address, etc. of the viewer may be used by the web server administrators to determine website usage, means of improving our web service, and other computer system administration. This information will not be used for any other purpose.

Release of Personal Information to Third Parties

Professor-astronomy.com will not release any personal information to third parties. As mentioned above, if written permission is obtained from an individual viewer, an individual's name (or part thereof) may be released in the context of text in the newsletter or on the web site. No email addresses will be released to any third party. No personal information whatsoever on children age 13 and under will ever be released to a third party nor displayed on the website.

Exception: Any personal or identifying information may be released to governmental or law-enforcement agencies should a request for such information be received. In this case, users will be notified when information is released.

Specific Information On Children's Privacy

In addition to the above information, the following information applies to children under the age of 13:

• Parents of children under the age of 13 have the following rights:
  • To review all personal information collected by professor-astronomy.com
  • To have all personal information on their child deleted.
  • To refuse to allow further collection or use of a child's information
  
  If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us via email, telephone or written correspondence. Contact information is at the end of this privacy notice. Requests to view all personal information collected on a child under 13 must be submitted in writing to the address below.

• Parental consent is not required for one-time requests for information, such as a child submitting a question to "Ask Professor Astronomy," we do request that children under age 13 obtain parental permission to submit questions. We do not verify that parental consent has been obtained. We delete all personal information once any responses have been delivered.

• Parental consent is necessary for a child under 13 to receive the newsletter. When a child under the age of 13 requests to receive the newsletter (delivered via email), the name of the child and parent's email address will be requested. This information is used for the sole purpose of sending an email to the parent. This email will request formal permission for the child to receive the newsletter; permission may be given by responding to the email or by sending written permission to the address below. Only after such permission is received will a child's name and email address be collected for the sole purpose of sending the newsletter.

• Under no circumstances will identifying information about a child under 13 be published on the professor-astronomy.com website, be published in any newsletter, or be given to any third party.

We encourage you to learn more about protecting children and their privacy on the Internet. Sources for such information include the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Federal Trade Commission.

Any questions or concerns regarding this privacy policy? Our contact information is below.

Sincerely,

The "Professor Astronomy" Administration

The contact information for this website is presented as an image below (it keeps email marketers from getting our personal information). If you cannot see the image, please contact us at: admin at professor-astronomy.com