Family Travel Forum Inc. (FTF) is a New York based media company that has published print and online media, and provided information services to assist and promote world travel with family members of any age, since 1996. The company’s websites, noted below and also operating under other URLs, are free services with travel and vacation content and community features for all users. The Family Travel Forum Privacy Policy applies to all of the company’s online properties including:
General FTF Privacy Policy In Brief
What you really need to know about the Privacy Policy of Family Travel Forum Inc. is that we respect your privacy and have a commitment to guarding any personal or other information collected from you while using any of our websites or services. In complying with the EU’s data protection policy, General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in effect May 25, 2018, we take every precaution to ensure that any personal or other data is safeguarded to the best of our ability and the ability of the software vendors we use that may process your data. You have data protection rights: to access, correct, update or request deletion of any your personal information stored by us, as outlined below.
How We Collect Your Data
Family Travel Forum Inc. may collect different types of personal or other data about site visitors who voluntarily subscribe, complete a survey, register for an online forum, enter a contest or provide an email address; and may track information about individuals’ website usage on the Family Travel Forum Inc. websites. We will never, ever share, barter, rent or sell any personal information received during transactions or communications with site visitors, users, registered users or members to any other party without notifying you, with the exception of situations where you may use a social media account to log in to our service, or unless required by law.
Family Travel Forum Inc. may, however, use this data about all site visitors and their travel patterns, as a group, to improve the relevance of our content and support our travelers’ network.
In addition to webforms, Family Travel Forum Inc. gives users an opportunity to submit their personal information to request certain reports and / or subscribe to our travel e-newsletter. Communication is important to our community of family travelers and their children. Your contact data is for our own internal use and may be shared with our email listserv system, MailChimp, which also complies with a strict privacy policy that is GDPR compliant. We appreciate your interest and pledge to send only travel or parenting-related news and product information to those who register with our e-mail list. Additionally, each email will explain how to unsubscribe from our list if you ever choose to no longer receive these updates or remove your email address.
FTF Privacy Policy on How We Use Your Information
Specifically, Family Travel Forum, Inc., publisher of the sites noted above, regards all personal information collected from you, our valued site visitors, as completely confidential. This includes personal data provided during registration or subscription processes and financial account information provided during transactions.
Family Travel Forum Inc. offers aggregated data about site visitors overall, and their travel patterns and preferences as a group, to its consulting division, marketing partners and advertisers. This may include traffic data, click-through rates, website users’ geographic location, content information, and any demographic information offered by the website member for the purpose of facilitating an advertising sale. Our goal is to provide you and your family with the best, most relevant information when you visit our sites.
How We Store Your Information
The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) on our registration or order forms, we, or the e- commerce sites we partner with, encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL – see Secure Sockets Layer explanation).
Family Travel Forum Inc. follows generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our websites, you can send us a message to FTF @ familytravelforum.com.
FTF Privacy Policy and Bulletin Boards / Blogs / Community
If you use a Family Travel Forum Inc. bulletin board, blog or community feature linked from or on any of these sites, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. Family Travel Forum Inc. is not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums. Any information you disclose when posting to a bulletin board, blog or community feature, including your registered user ID screen name, if available, becomes public and may be used by Family Travel Forum Inc. for online or offline promotional or commercial uses in any and all media.
Correcting / Updating / Deleting / Deactivating Personal Information re: FTF Privacy Policy
You have the following data protection rights: to know about, access, correct, opt-out of the sale of, or request deletion of any personal information collected by us and to not face discrimination for exercising your rights. If you request it, we are more than happy to share with you the data we have and/or completely remove your individual and/or company records from our system. Please make your request via email to FTF @ familytravelforum.com, and note that we will need to first validate your identity to our satisfaction to ensure you are authorized to receive or in any way act on this data.
If a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as zip code, phone, email or postal address), or if a user no longer desires our service, Family Travel Forum Inc. members, users and site visitors can send their request via web forms or by email and we will change the information requested. Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with an appropriate law enforcement investigation, current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our Ad servers or websites.
Children’s Data and COPPA Compliance
Family Travel Forum Inc. provides content and forums to children but does not knowingly collect or store any personal information about children under the age of 13, even as group data. However, children age 12 may be eligible to enter the FTF Teen Travel Writing Scholarship and if they do so, the personal information collected from them along with their application shall remain in the Family Travel Forum Inc. database until such time as they are disqualified from the competition or 90 days after the winners are announced, whichever is sooner. After that time, their information will be deleted from our storage. We encourage parents to monitor children’s use of this and all other Internet sites and to have minors ask for permission to share any information with this or any other site. If you are a parent and feel that your child may have submitted personally identifiable information that you would like us to delete, please contact us at +1 212-595-6074 or by email at FTF @ familytravelforum.com.
The Family Travel Forum Inc. owned and operated sites are free services for users, with travel and vacation content and community features to be used by registered students and others ages 13 and older. When younger children access this and other Family Travel Forum Inc. sites it should be under the guidance of parents. When children younger than 13 years make contributions to these sites they must have the express written permission of their parents. Please use the Contact Us page to contact Family Travel Forum staff for approval in order to activate your minor child’s account.
How Ad Servers and Third Party Collectors of Data Work
All users who receive an ad served by Family Travel Forum Inc.’s ad serving partners retain complete anonymity. As ads are delivered, advertisers may use software called “cookies” (the term cookies to include this tracking technology as well as pixels and web beacons) to collect information which is specific to how you use the Internet. In accordance with GDPR privacy regulations, users resident in European Union countries visiting Family Travel Forum sites will be shown a cookies permission form and must act to allow their use, if they so choose.
Because our sites are partially supported by affiliate marketing and internet advertising, we use affiliate networks which may use cookies that collect anonymous data for remarketing, interest categories, similar audiences, other types of interest-based advertising, and demographic and location targeting. This information is obtained solely for the purpose of making ads more relevant to you, and measuring a given ad’s effectiveness on behalf of the ad server’s clients and customers. Users who opt out of having cookies served during their session will be shown non targeted advertising.
Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.0)
The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.
First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The “help” feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at https://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/.
Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.
The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:
- IP Address
- Operating System type
- Operating System version
- Device Type
- Language of the website
- Web browser type
- Email (in hashed form)
Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor’s referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.
If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit Opt Out – NAI: Network Advertising Initiative. You may also visit http://optout.aboutads.info/#/ and http://optout.networkadvertising.org/# to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at YourAdChoices.com | AppChoices to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.
For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please click here.
Notification of Changes to the FTF Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy has been updated with more information from our advertising network as of May 1, 2022. If we decide to change our privacy policy, Family Travel Forum Inc. will post these 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. Regardless of later updates, Family Travel Forum Inc. will never use the information you submit under this current policy in a new way without first providing you an opportunity to opt-out or otherwise prevent that use.
Rest assured that we have deep respect for your privacy. If you believe we have not met this commitment to online privacy for you or your family, please contact us directly at +1 212/595-6074 or via email at FTF @ familytravelforum.com.
