Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy
PINKERTON CONSULTING & INVESTIGATIONS INC. policy for WAVE America is to respect and protect the privacy of our users. This policy statement describes how information collected by the WAVE America Web site is utilized and maintained.

Pinkerton administers the WAVE America program and Web site and has created this policy statement to demonstrate a firm commitment to information privacy. The following sets forth WAVE America’s policies and practices regarding the disclosure of information collected by waveamerica.com Web site. As new technology, legislation, online standards and additions to the Web site evolve, we may modify these policies to better address your privacy concerns. WAVE America encourages you to periodically review this privacy policy.

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THIS SITE
The WAVE America Web site is designed to provide information about the WAVE America program and be an interactive area to learn more about safe school initiatives, building the workforce of tomorrow and a resource center for Students, Parents, Teachers and the Community. The interactive Web site also presents different sections offering fun and exciting ways for individuals to participate in contests, games and submission of good news stories.

A majority of this site requires no registration of any kind for browsing. Although to participate in certain aspects of the WAVE America program (i.e., free e-mail, contest, good news) some levels of registration may be required. The information below will outline what information is required, when and how it will be used.

POLICIES FOR MINORS
WAVE America encourages parents to spend time online, play an active role in monitoring Internet usage by their children, and to help protect their privacy by instructing them never to provide personal information without permission. To help guard against disclosure of private information by minors on our Web site, we adhere to the following policies:

The WAVE America Web site does not provide any personally identifying information, regardless of its source, to any third party from our guests under 18 years of age.
When verifiable parental consent is not obtained, we will only use the online contact information (such as e-mail) to either (1) respond directly to the child's request on a one-time basis and not use that information to re-contact the child for other purposes; or (2) request the name or online contact information of a parent for the purpose of obtaining verifiable parental consent or providing parental notification.
We will NOT entice the child to divulge more information than is needed to participate in any activity. We will provide notice to children in age appropriate terms of what personally identifiable information is to be collected.
We will NOT knowingly provide any links to Web sites that are unsuitable for children.
We WILL encourage children to get their parent's permission before sharing personal information online.
We will not collect personally identifiable off-line contact information from children under 18 without prior verifiable parental consent.
We will place prominent notice wherever personally identifiable information is collected requesting the child to ask a parent for permission to answer the questions.

Although Guests under 18 years of age may be allowed to participate in some contests and promotions, if such a Guest wins, an e-mail notification will be sent to the winner. Publication of names, ages, or images for contest winners under 18 requires parental or guardian consent.

USE OF IP ADDRESSES
An IP address is a number that's automatically assigned to your computer whenever you're surfing the Web. Web servers -- the big computers that "serve up" Web pages -- automatically identify your computer by its IP address.

WAVE America collects IP addresses for the purposes of system administration, to report aggregate information to our advertisers, and to audit the use of our site. When Guests request pages from WAVE America sites, our servers log the Guests' IP addresses. We do not normally link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, which means that a user's session will be logged, but the user remains anonymous to us. We can and will use IP addresses to identify a user when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our terms of service or to protect our service, site, customers, or others. Some services within WAVE America, such as WAVE Line incident reporting, may capture IP addresses to be stored as part of the incident report.

DATA COLLECTION
Currently, WAVE America collects information online by:

3. Voluntary submissions of positive journalist news stories, contests, or surveys.

1. USE OF COOKIES
What are cookies? Cookies are pieces of information that a Web site transfers to an individual's hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies make Web-surfing easier for you by saving your preferences while you're at our site. We never save passwords or personal information in cookies. The use of cookies is an industry standard -- you'll find them at most major Web sites.

By showing how and when Guests use a site, cookies help us see which areas are popular and which are not. Many improvements and updates to the site are based on such data as total number of visitors and pages viewed. This information is most easily tracked with cookies. We use the information from cookies to provide services better tailored to our users needs.

WAVE America uses cookies to track user trends and patterns. This helps us better understand and improve areas of the WAVE America service that our users find valuable. Visitors to WAVE America always have the option of disabling cookies via their browser preferences.

Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, note that some parts of the WAVE America service will not function properly or may be considerably slower if you refuse cookies. For example, without cookies, you will not be able to set personalized preferences or you may have difficulty entering contests, or playing games.

WEB ENROLLMENT AND REGISTRATION FOR www.waveamerica.com
2. School Enrollment – Currently, public middle and high schools located in North Carolina may enroll their schools via the Web by completing an Enrollment Profile. The School Enrollment Profile is password protected and requires schools to verify specific information requested about their school. This information is used to properly update contact information and is used by the WAVE Line to better serve each school and district. Confidential information will not be shared, sold or distributed to any outside organizations.

Terms and Conditions.
3. Submitted Information – Journalistic News Stories, Surveys and Contests. The fun part of waveamerica.com is the surveys, sweepstakes and contests that we provide to keep our visitors coming back to our site again and again. Kids who want to participate are encouraged to ask for their parent’s permission before entering a contest [future], submitting a story or participating in a survey. Children under the age of 13 are required to provide their parent’s e-mail address as well. The parent’s are notified of their child’s entry and are provided the option to remove their child’s name from the list of entries.

Children will be told, in easy-to-understand language, exactly why the information is required (i.e., to contact winners). WAVE America may use this information to give us some idea about our visitors, so we can tell, for example, how many visitors to our site participate in a particular activity. No personal information obtained from a contest entry or journalistic submission is ever sold or directly transferred to third parties. Except for when the express written consent of a child’s guardian approves release of this information for fulfillment of contest and journalistic winners. WAVE America may also obtain information from a user when he/she, sends in a journalistic news article or participates in any of a number of other activities. All submissions to WAVE America become the property of WAVE America, and WAVE America is entitled to use the submissions in any manner it sees fit. However, we do not sell or transfer personal information about users who make such submissions to third parties. Once again, children are encouraged to ask a parent for permission to use any of the previously mentioned features of the site.

LINKS TO OTHER SITES
Users should be aware that when they are on WAVE America, they could be directed to other sites that are beyond our control. There are links to other sites from WAVE America pages that take you outside our service. For example, if you "click" on a banner advertisement or a WAVE America link, the "click" takes you off the WAVE America site. This includes links from advertisers, Center sponsors, and partners that may use WAVE America logo as part of a co-branding agreement. These other sites may send their own cookies to users, collect data, or solicit personal information.

PINKERTON CONSULTING & INVESTIGATIONS INC.'S policy does not extend to anything that is inherent in the operation of the Internet, and therefore beyond PINKERTON CONSULTING & INVESTIGATIONS INC. control, and is not to be applied in any manner contrary to applicable law or governmental regulation.

SECURITY
The importance of security for all personally identifiable information associated with our Guests is of utmost concern to us. We exercise great care in providing secure transmission of your information from your PC to our servers. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, WAVE America can't ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS
By using this site, you signify your assent to the WAVE America Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our site. Your continued use of the WAVE America sites following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes.

Copyright
Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations Inc. owns and operates this Web site. All content included on this Web site, including text, graphics, logos, buttons, icons, and images, is the property of Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations Inc., its licensors or its content suppliers, and is protected by U.S. and international copyright and trademark laws. You may not copy, publish, distribute, create derivative works of, or commercially exploit the content of this Web site, or use this Web site for any other purpose.

Contacting the Web site:
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this Web site, you can contact:

WAVE America Webmaster
Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations Inc.
13950 Ballantyne Corporate Place, Suite 300
Charlotte, NC 28277