MVS Privacy Policy

With the increasing number of web sites requesting personal information, we understand that you are concerned about how we use the information you provide to us.  We respect the privacy of visitors to our site, particularly because many of our visitors are youth.  To address your privacy concerns and describe our information practices, we have established this Privacy Policy.  As our site evolves, this Privacy Policy will also undergo changes.  We encourage you to review this policy when you notice new features on our site.

Children's Privacy

Missouri Valley Swimming, Inc. is dedicated to the safety of the youth who participate in our site's activities and complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).  Missouri Valley Swimming does NOT share personal information of registered members we know to be age 18 or under with ANY third parties, with the exception of USA Swimming, Inc. and only when necessary in the conduct and the member's participation at sanctioned swim meets.  In these cases, only information deemed absolutely necessary to conduct the meet is provided to USA Swimming or its member clubs.

We encourage parents and guardians to spend time online with their children and to participate in the interactive activities offered on our site.  No personal information should be submitted to, or posted on, Missouri Valley Swimming's web site by guests under 13 years of age without the consent of a parent or guardian.

For those visitors who register or submit personal information to our discussion forums and indicate that they are under the age of 13, we request contact information for a parent or guardian.  Missouri Valley Swimming promptly notifies parents of registered users under the age of 13 that their child has established a registered user account with the Missouri Valley Swimming web site and provides the parents with instructions for editing or deleting their child's personal information and/or user account from the web site or our discussion forums.

Our discussion forum registration system will not allow a visitor who indicates that he or she is under the age of 13 to setup and use a user account without providing an e-mail address or phone number of a parent or guardian.  If the parental contact information is found to be invalid, we will temporarily disable the user account until such time as valid parental contact information is provided to Missouri Valley Swimming.

How We Collect and Treat Personal Information

MissouriValleySwimming.com collects information when visitors register for a free user account to post comments or questions on our interactive discussion forums.  Other areas of our site may also list personal information (primarily on our "Contact Information" pages), but this information is typically limited to a member's name, address, phone number, club affiliation, and e-mail address.

Unless specifically authorized, certain personal information is automatically hidden from visitors to our site.  This information includes:

• Street Address
• Zip Code
• Home Telephone Number
• Work Telephone Number
• Fax Telephone Number
• USAS Registration Number (never shown)

Non-athlete members who wish to have their complete contact information shown on our web site pages may authorize its display by completing the "Contact Information Authorization" form and checking the "Authorized" box shown at the bottom of the form.  This authorization remains in force until such time as the member expressly withdraws it by giving notice to Missouri Valley Swimming.  Should the member later decide to withdraw this authorization, they must resubmit the authorization form again and check the "Not Authorized" option at the bottom of the form.

MissouriValleySwimming.com does not routinely collect personal information such as address, phone number, USAS Registration Number or education level for children under the age of 18.  Information contained on our "Contact Information" pages is provided by the MVS Office through each member's annual registration, or by a member submitting one of our information update forms.  Only non-athlete members above the age of 18 may request that their contact information be shown, and only when expressly authorized by that member.

When registering for a user account to allow posting comments in our discussion forums, we require the following information:

• Full Name
• E-mail Address
• Zip Code
• Name of MVS member Club or Team
• Birth date or birth year (to indicate age for privacy purposes as described above)
• Parental e-mail or phone number (if registered visitor is under the age of 13)
• Individual type (e.g. swimmer, coach, official, parent, etc. - used to grant proper access to forums for our registered users)

We use the information we collect to setup user accounts, send targeted announcements to select user groups (broadcast e-mail messages), inform registered users of issues involving their membership, and to contact the registered user when necessary.

Members may "opt out" of receiving broadcast information and notices when they are filling out our online registration form or one of our information update forms.  This information, with the exception of information related to members we know to be age 18 or under (as described above), may be shared with other MVS clubs or its members, but will never be shared with organizations outside of the Missouri Valley Swimming LSC.

We will not otherwise identify you personally to other companies, third parties or advertisers.  MissouriValleySwimming.com may provide demographic information in aggregate form to advertisers on our site, without identifying any user personally.  We do NOT and will NOT sell personal information to third parties!

We may use information provided by you when you participate in contests or surveys on our site to send information about MissouriValleySwimming.com to you, or to provide information to advertisers in aggregate form.

If you do not want MissouriValleySwimming.com to use your name and e-mail address for our own marketing or promotional purposes, please notify us using the Webmaster link located at the bottom of this page.

Privacy and Our Online Forums

MissouriValleySwimming.com provides open discussion forums for our members to discuss topics directly related to swimming.  These discussion forums are database-driven and are maintained by forum moderators within each forum.  Registration to access these forums is FREE, but we do insist that you abide by the rules and policies detailed below.  By registering a user account in our discussion forum area, you are verifying that you are over the age of 18 (unless noted as discussed above) and that you will abide by the rules shown below.

Although the administrators and moderators of our discussion forums will attempt to keep all objectionable messages off our forums, it is impossible for us to review all messages.  All messages express the views of the author, and neither the owners or operators of the Missouri Valley Swimming discussion forums, Missouri Valley Swimming, Inc., or those parties assigned to maintain or host the web site will be held responsible for the content of any message.

Spamming of any kind is not allowed on these forums.  Our forums are generally open to the public (once they have registered for a user account) to express their views on all topics related to swimming and in a mature fashion.  Slander, flaming and spamming will not be tolerated!  MissouriValleySwimming.com reserves the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason deemed objectionable by MissouriValleySwimming.com.  Repeated or blatant offenders may also have their user accounts permanently removed from the forums at the sole discretion of MissouriValleySwimming.com and without prior notice.

Within each forum, moderators are responsible for the content of the comments and questions posted in that forum.  While they must adhere to an acceptable use policy, each moderator may have a different policy for privacy or acceptable behavior in their own forum.  Moderators may choose to display name, contact information and other personal data in their forum for specific individuals, coaches, etc. involved in their organization.  This information is entered and displayed on an optional basis and is not required or requested by Missouri Valley Swimming. MissouriValleySwimming.com takes no responsibility for this content and bears no liability for actions resulting from the posting of such content.

Please bear in mind that any content you post in an online community is publicly viewable.  This information is disclosed by you and can be collected and used by others who visit that forum.

Links to Other Sites

Our web site contains links to other web sites that are operated by third parties such as sports news providers, sports organizations and merchants.  MissouriValleySwimming.com is not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of those web sites.  As always, we recommend that parents monitor the online activities of their children and that children check with a parent before visiting a site that is linked to MissouriValleySwimming.com.

Internet Protocol (IP) Address

MissouriValleySwimming.com uses your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our web site.  Your IP address is used to help identify you and to gather broad demographic information to share with advertisers.  When guests request pages from the MissouriValleySwimming.com site, our servers log the guests' IP addresses.  We do not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable.  This means that a user's session will be logged, but the user remains anonymous to us.

Cookies

Cookies are pieces of information that a web site transfers to an individual's computer for record-keeping purposes.  Cookies make web-surfing easier for you by saving your passwords, purchases, and preferences while you're at a web site.  The use of cookies is an industry standard.  You will find them used at most major web sites.

A cookie lets your computer remember that you have registered, which allows us to speed up your future activities at our site.  The cookie expires once you're done at our site, unless you have asked to have your user name and password saved to your computer when you visit our discussion forums.  Letting it do the record keeping saves you the trouble of entering information over and over again during a single visit.  On our site, we only use cookies in the forum areas of our discussion forums for security and session management purposes.

MissouriValleySwimming.com sites never use cookies to retrieve information from your computer that was not originally sent in a cookie.  Except as described below, our site does not use information transferred through cookies for any promotional, marketing, or tracking purposes, nor is that information shared with any third parties whatsoever.  MissouriValleySwimming.com does not use cookies to identify specific individuals, except in such cases as logging in to maintain content in the online discussion forums.

You may occasionally get cookies from our advertisers or sites linked to our web site.  We do not control these cookies, and these cookies are not subject to the MissouriValleySwimming.com cookie policy.  The use of advertising cookies sent by third-party servers is standard in the Internet industry.

Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you would prefer, you can set your browser to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent.  However, it is possible that some parts of the site, such as the discussion forums, will not function properly if you do so.

How to Update Your Personal Information

You can check the accuracy of, or modify your information, by contacting us at info@missourivalleyswimming.com.  Online update forms are also available on our site and are located in our E-Forms section.  If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, you may contact us at Missouri Valley Swimming, Inc., 15 East 7th Street, Suite 202, Lawrence, KS 66044, by calling (785) 841-0999, or via email at info@missourivalleyswimming.com.