Privacy Policy

Quick Links:
Ohio Parent Information Network (OH-PIN)

What information do we gather?

We may gather information about you from three sources:
• Information you give us - when you visit our site, you may participate in various surveys, registrations, questionnaires, or other means of communication. In all cases where you are asked to provide information, we will indicate what items we must have in order to complete the activity or transaction, and what items are optional (if information is not specifically marked as required, then it is optional). Choosing not to complete optional items will not exclude you from participating in the activity or transaction. However, if you choose not to provide required information, you will not be able to participate in that activity. We also provide you with the option of maintaining a profile, called 'My Q-Net' that describes to us what topics, forums, communities, or services are of interest to you. This profile requires you to provide a user name and password, so we can identify you when you log into our site. In addition, your profile may contain your email address and information about your work or employer, what type of work you do, and what special interests you have, as well as personal demographic information. You do not have to create a profile to use and enjoy our site, but you will not be able to take full advantage of the personalized functions we offer if you do not. Users of our site may also elect to receive newsletters or to subscribe to topical mailing lists. We offer our newsletters in both print and electronic form. To receive printed newsletters, we must have a name and address, or a fax number, if you wish to receive printed materials by fax. Electronic newsletters and topical mailing lists can be sent to an email address, so we do not require a name or any other demographic information when you subscribe to these services.
• Information we collect automatically - we may collect information about you automatically when you visit our site. This information may include Internet IP addresses, the type and version number of the browser you use, a history of the various topical areas, forums or communities you visit, or information gathered through the use of 'cookies'. Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer through the web browser, and that are saved on your computer. They enable our system to recognize you for various reasons. Please see the discussion below to get more details on how we use cookies.
• Information from other sources - we may collect information about you from other sources that we have agreements with to allow us to do so. These may be other organizations that we link to from our site, and we may get information from them about your visits to their sites, especially if you go to their site directly from ours. When these agreements exist, we will direct the other organization to disclose this fact within their privacy policy, and we will maintain a list of these organizations on our site for you to review. At the present time, we do not have any such agreements in force.

How is the information we gather used and with whom do we share it?

We do not sell, rent, or otherwise transfer any personal information you provide to us to any other party, except as noted below:
• If you provide a credit card number to purchase any products we offer or to pay for membership fees, we process this information through a third-party associate that validates and completes the transaction by posting it to your credit card company's records. In order to complete these transactions, we must transfer your credit card information to our third-party associate. You give us permission to transfer credit card information when you submit a completed credit card transaction form from our site. We use standard accepted encryption protocols to transmit this information, as do our third-party associates.
• If you give us permission to do so, we may provide other organizations with information about your use of our site, such as forums you belong to, communities you visit often, or services you have used. As described above, we only provide this information to organizations with which we have agreements in force, and we will disclose to you the terms of those agreements. Our goal in doing this is to provide you with a richer, more personal experience when you visit our site and the sites of our partner organizations. We will never provide any personally identifiable information to outside organizations unless you give us permission to do so.

We use the information we gather to do various things:
• The information in your profile is used to customize the resources you see when you visit our site. When you log in to your profile by providing your user name and password, our system is designed to gather news items, topics, and resources about those areas of interest you indicated in your profile and show you those first. You can always see and use resources outside of those areas indicated in your profile by navigating through our site, but using a profile allows you to focus on those areas that interest you the most and locate those resources quickly and efficiently. If you choose not to create and maintain a profile, you may still use any of the resources we offer, and we provide various ways for you to locate and retrieve these resources, such as our 'Search' feature.
• If you choose to participate in surveys or questionnaires, we may gather that information and aggregate it to analyze and report on trends relating to how our site is used, so that we may continue to improve it. We may also post and collect survey information from outside organizations to help them answer specific questions. When this occurs, you will be told what organization is sponsoring the survey and what they intend to do with the information gathered right on the page with the survey form.
• If you subscribe to a newsletter or topical mailing list, we use the name, address, email address, or fax number you provide to deliver the newsletter or to send messages posted to the topical mailing list. We do not provide this information to any outside persons or organizations without your permission.
• We use information gathered automatically to analyze trends, administer the site, track user movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use for reporting and sponsorship purposes. This information is not linked to any personally identifiable information.
• If we gather information about you from other organizations, we use it to improve our site for you. We never receive information from others in order to promote or market products or services.

How do we use cookies?

We place a cookie on your system when you log into your 'My Q-Net' profile. This creates a 'session' on our system, and you may take full advantage of the functionality of our system while this 'session' is open. However, for security reasons, we cannot allow the 'session' to remain open for very long. The cookie allows our system to recognize that you are still using our site, and therefore not to close your 'session'. This means you don't have to log in again, unless you leave our site completely and do not return before the cookie 'expires' (which means it is automatically removed from your computer by your browser). Our cookies expire within 10 minutes of the time you leave our site. No personally identifiable information is collected with cookies, and you may opt to reject cookies by changing the settings in your browser (see the Help section of your browser to learn how to reject cookies). However, you must accept cookies to create, maintain and use the functionality of the 'My Q-Net' profile.

What choices do you have about the gathering and use of your personal information?

You do not have to provide any personal information to use and enjoy our site. We do not automatically subscribe you to newsletters or topical mailing lists, even if you create and save a profile in the 'My Q-Net' area. You must actively request that we subscribe you to these services. If you do create a 'My Q-Net' profile, you can still choose which services you wish to receive, and you can change you choices at any time. You can also indicate in your profile if you do not want us to share information about you with other organizations. You may edit or change your choices by going to the 'My Q-Net' section of our site, where you will be required to log in and provide a password.

We will always indicate what information we gather through surveys or questionnaires is required. If we sponsor the survey or questionnaire, we will save the information permanently. If we post a survey or questionnaire for an outside organization, we will turn that information over to them and remove it from our system at that time. You may choose not to participate in a survey or questionnaire. If you do participate, you give us your permission to either save the information gathered, or turn it over to the outside organization that sponsored it when you submit the survey or questionnaire form.

If you have any questions or concerns about our privacy policy, please contact us at: or by writing to Webmaster, ECQNet, 700 Ackerman Rd., Suite 440, Columbus, Ohio 43202, or by calling (614) 447-0844 ext. 122.