Travel Channel, L.L.C, ("Travel Channel") respects your privacy, and we want you to understand the ways in which we do and don't use the information that you transmit when you visit our websites. This privacy policy applies only to the consumer-facing United States-based websites controlled by Travel Channel and/or its subsidiary and affiliated entities where this privacy policy is posted (collectively, the "Sites") and does not pertain to information you provide us in our retail store, or when you place orders with our catalog, or in other parts of Travel Channel, L.L.C. or its subsidiaries and affiliates. BY USING THE SITES, YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY, PLEASE DO NOT USE THE SITES.
The web is an evolving medium. If we need to change our privacy policy at some point in the future, we'll post the changes here. You can tell when this policy was last revised by referring to the "Last Updated" legend at the top of this page. Any changes to our privacy policy will become effective upon posting of the revised privacy policy. Use of the Sites following such changes constitutes your acceptance of the revised privacy policy then in effect. Thanks for making our Sites a part of your discoveries online!
The Sites are controlled and operated by us from the United States, and are not intended to subject us to the laws or jurisdiction of any state, country or territory other than that of the United States. Please note that we do not represent or warrant that the Sites are appropriate or available for use in any jurisdiction outside of the United States. Those who choose to access the Sites do so on their own initiative and are responsible for complying with all local laws, rules and regulations.
Kids Privacy Notice
A Note to Kids
The Travel Channel encourages you to get permission from your parents before sending any personally identifiable information about yourself (such as your name or your e-mail address) over the Internet, to us or to anyone else.
A Note to Parents
PLEASE READ. This section of the privacy policy explains our information collection and use practices online for children under the age of thirteen, including what we do with information that we collect and with whom we share that information. We ask that you take the time to review our policy so that you can know exactly how we collect and use information from kids, and so that you will know how you can review or request that we delete your child's information. If you ever have any questions or concerns about this policy, please contact us.
Some parts of the Sites require that personally identifiable information be submitted in order to participate. For example, if you want to receive one of our newsletters, you must give us your e-mail address. With the exception of DiscoveryStore.com, these parts of the Sites will have an age-screening mechanism to prevent children under the age of thirteen from registering. We won't knowingly allow anyone under the age of thirteen to register with any of our Sites, or to access those features that require registration, except as explicitly disclosed herein.
If we become aware that we have inadvertently received personally identifiable information from a user under the age of thirteen other than in a legally permissible situation, we will delete the information from our records as soon as we discover it.
As a parent or guardian, you may exercise your right to have your and your child's information deleted at any time. Additionally, you may review your child's personally identifiable information at any time. See Parents' Rights below.
We will not condition participation in any online activity on disclosure by kids of more information than is reasonably necessary to participate.
How We Use Personally Identifiable Information We Collect From Children Under Thirteen
When we collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen, we will only use that personally identifiable information for the express purpose for which it was collected. For example, if your child enters a sweepstakes, we will only use your child's e-mail address to enter him or her into the sweepstakes, to notify you of your child's entry, and to identify and notify your child if he or she is a potential winner. The personally identifiable information will not be used for any other purpose, and the personally identifiable information will not be used after the promotion is complete.
We do not share personally identifiable information collected from children under the age of thirteen with any unaffiliated third parties except with third-party service providers who help us maintain our Sites and provide other administrative services to us. We seek to ensure that these unaffiliated third parties may not use the personally identifiable information for any other purpose, and these unaffiliated third parties have agreed to maintain the confidentiality, security and integrity of the personally identifiable information.
If your child is selected as a potential winner of one of our contests or sweepstakes, we will notify you, via the e-mail address that your child submitted. We will only collect full name, mailing address and other personally identifiable information from you, the parent, and not from your child.
Additionally, in the unlikely event that all or substantially all of our assets relating to the Sites are sold or transferred to another party, all personally identifiable information collected and saved by us may be transferred to this acquiring party. Finally, we may disclose your child's personally identifiable information to third parties if we believe we are required to do so in order to comply with law (including court orders and subpoenas); to comply with requests from law enforcement agencies or the government; to enforce our Visitor Agreement; to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property and the rights, privacy, safety or property of our employees or other users of our Sites; to protect our operations; and to permit us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
Cookies and Non-Personally Identifiable Information
To help make our Sites more responsive to the needs of our users, we invoke a standard feature found in browser software, called a "cookie," to assign each user a unique, random number, a sort of anonymous user ID that resides on your computer. The cookie doesn't identify the user; it just identifies the computer that a user uses to access our Sites. A cookie can't read data off your hard drive. We do not link cookie data with personally identifiable information, nor do we store kids¿ personally identifiable information in our cookies. You can disable cookies at any time by changing the preferences in your browser.
Also, please note that our advertisers or third-party ad servers may assign their own cookies to your browser, a process that we don't control. For more about third-party ad servers, click here.
Finally, Travel Channel keeps records of certain non-personally identifiable information such as the number of hits a webpage receives, IP addresses and other aggregate data. We do not link this aggregate data with any personally identifiable information. Third parties that help us administer our Sites may have access to this non-personally identifiable, aggregate data, as may our third-party ad servers.
Parents' Rights
We want you to be comfortable with what your child is doing on our Sites. Therefore, you may contact Travel Channel at any time at the contact information below regarding privacy questions or concerns, or to request to review what personally identifiable information we have collected from your child. You may also contact us at any time to request that we delete your child's, and your, personally identifiable information, and/or refuse to permit further collection or use of your child's information. We will take steps to ensure that any person contacting us for a child's information is that child's parent or guardian.
E-mail:
Privacy_Policy@TravelChannel.com
See also Accessing Your Information and Changing Your Elections below.
General Privacy Notice
This section of our Privacy Policy relates to collection of information from individuals who are thirteen years of age and older. To review our Kids Privacy Policy, which applies to the collection of information from children under the age of thirteen, please click here.
What Information We Collect
The information gathered through our Sites falls into two categories: (1) personally identifiable information voluntarily supplied by users to our Sites through optional registration or other methods and (2) non-personally identifiable information that is routinely gathered as users navigate through our Sites as well as supplied to us by our users.
Personally Identifiable Information
There are lots of features and content, as well as other useful and fun activities, on the Sites that do not require submission of personally identifiable information. However, other elements of the Sites (such as our store and newsletters) do require the submission of personally identifiable information, such as your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address or credit card number.
The more you tell us about yourself, the more value we can offer you. Supplying such information is entirely voluntary. But if you don't supply the information we need, we may be unable to provide you with services we make available to other users to our Sites. For example, we can't sell you a Travel Channel DVD if you don't give us your mailing address, nor can we send you e-mails alerting you to any new service we're offering or breaking news that may interest you if you don't give us your e-mail address. Similarly, we can't notify you that you've been lucky enough to win a prize in a promotional contest if we don't know how to contact you.
Of course, even if you want to remain anonymous, you're still free to take advantage of the wealth of content available on our Sites without registration.
Non-Personally Identifiable Information
We and/or our third-party service providers collect non-personally identifiable information, which does not identify you when you interact with the Sites. Non-personally identifiable information is generally collected from four different sources: cookies, web beacons, IP addresses and information that you voluntarily provide.
Cookies
To help make our Sites more responsive to the needs of our users, we or our third-party service providers may invoke a standard feature found in browser software, called a "cookie," to assign each user a unique, random number, a sort of anonymous user ID that resides on your computer. The cookie doesn't actually identify the user; it just identifies the computer that a user uses to access our Sites. Unless you voluntarily identify yourself (through registration, for example), we won't know who you are, even if we assign a cookie to your computer. The only personally identifiable information a cookie can contain is information you supply. A cookie can't read data off your hard drive.
We use cookies to help us tailor our Sites to your needs, to deliver a better, more personalized service. In addition, we may use cookies to track the pages on our Sites visited by our users. We can improve our Sites if we know which pages our users are visiting and how often. Of course, you can set your browser not to accept cookies, but if you do, you may not be able to take advantage of the personalized features enjoyed by other users to our Sites.
Web Beacons
We or our third-party service providers may use software technology called "web beacons" (also known as "clear gifs," "web bugs" or "pixel tags") or other similar technologies in connection with the Sites. Web beacons are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to allow us to count users who have visited certain pages of the Sites and to help determine the effectiveness of promotional or advertising campaigns. When used in HTML-formatted e-mail messages, web beacons can tell the sender whether and when the e-mail has been opened. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user's computer hard drive, web beacons are embedded invisibly on web pages. Web beacons do not collect personally identifiable information.
IP Addresses
Our web servers automatically collect limited information about your computer's connection to the Internet, including your IP address, when you visit our Sites. (Your IP address is a number that lets computers attached to the Internet know where to send you data - such as the webpages you view.) Your IP address does not identify you personally. We use this information to deliver our webpages to you upon request, to tailor our Sites to the interests of our users and to measure traffic within our Sites.
Information That You Voluntarily Provide
We also collect non-personally identifiable information (such as your gender, age, zip code and your interest in science, animals, nature, travel, sports, books, television programs and the like) when you voluntarily provide it to us. We use this information to provide you with personalized services. For example, we offer personalized TV schedule listings and program reminders for Travel Channel TV offerings if you tell us which programs and topics you're interested in. Please note that we also consider aggregated information, which is not personally identifiable, to be non-personally identifiable information.
How Information Collected On Our Sites Is Used and Shared
Personally Identifiable Information
We may use your personally identifiable information to fulfill the purpose for which you provide it to us. In addition, we may share personally identifiable information with unaffiliated third-party service providers who help us maintain our Sites and provide other administrative services to us (including, but not limited to, order processing and fulfillment, providing customer service, maintaining and analyzing data, sending customer communications on Travel Channel's behalf, and entry collection, winner selection and prize fulfillment for contests, sweepstakes and other promotions). We seek to ensure that these unaffiliated third parties will not use the personally identifiable information for any other purpose than to provide the administrative services for which they are responsible. Because such unaffiliated third-party service providers that help us administer our Sites will have access to users' personally identifiable information, if you do not wish for our unaffiliated third-party service providers to have access to your information, please do not register or submit any personally identifiable information to us. Of course, you are always free not to input the information we request, and you may use our Sites anonymously.
We may use your personally identifiable information to confirm your registration with the Sites or to confirm a purchase or other transaction through the Sites, to e-mail you important information regarding the Sites, or to inform you of changes to this privacy policy or our Visitor Agreement. Because this information may be critical to your use of the Sites, you may not opt out of receiving these e-mails.
If you choose to make a purchase through any of our Sites, we may collect from you your credit card number, billing address and other information related to such purchase, and we may use such collected information in order to fulfill your purchase. We may also provide such information, or other personally identifiable information provided by you, to unaffiliated third parties as necessary to complete your purchase (for example, to process your credit card).
From time to time, Travel Channel may offer contests, sweepstakes or other promotions on our Sites to people over the age of thirteen. For information on contests or sweepstakes open to users under the age of thirteen, click here. If you enter a sweepstakes, contest or other promotion on our Sites, you'll have to provide personally identifiable information about yourself such as your name, address and/or e-mail address so that we can contact you if you win. We may share this personally identifiable information with any co-sponsor of the contest (as identified in the rules applicable to the particular contest, sweepstakes or other promotion). If you do not wish for us to share your personally identifiable information with our contest, sweepstakes or other promotion co-sponsors, please make sure to indicate that when you submit your entry. Please review the rules applicable to the particular contest, sweepstakes or other promotion carefully, as they may contain important information about how we or any co-sponsors will use your personally identifiable information. To the extent that such rules conflict with this privacy policy, the rules applicable to the particular contest, sweepstakes or other promotion will govern.
We may share your information with our affiliates, joint marketing and strategic partners and other unaffiliated third parties for research, administrative and internal business purposes, as well as for their marketing purposes. If you would prefer that we do not share your information with third-party marketers, please make sure to indicate that on our registration form. In addition, you may change your preferences at a later date, or request that we delete your information (see Accessing Your Information and Changing Your Elections below).
Sometimes, we might also contact you directly about our own or others' products and services, and we may also combine information we receive from you through the Sites with outside records to enhance our ability to market to you those products or services that may be of interest to you. If you'd prefer that we not contact you regarding products and services that we believe may be of interest to you, just indicate on your registration form that you prefer not to receive offers and information. And remember, you can always change your preferences, or request that we delete your information (see Accessing Your Information and Changing Your Elections below).
In the unlikely event that all or substantially all of our assets relating to our Sites are sold or transferred to another party, your personally identifiable information may be transferred to this acquiring entity. Finally, we may disclose your personally identifiable information to third parties if we believe we are required to do so in order to comply with law (including court orders and subpoenas); to comply with requests from law enforcement agencies or the government; to enforce our Visitor Agreement; to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property and the rights, privacy, safety or property of our employees or other users of our Sites; to protect our operations; and to permit us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain. Non-Personally Identifiable Information
Because non-personally identifiable information does not identify you, we reserve the right to use it for any purpose, and to share it with third parties for any purpose. For example, we may present information such as aggregated statistics on traffic to various pages within our Sites to our advertisers to help them understand our audience and confirm the value of advertising on our Sites. Please note that to the extent any non-personally identifiable information is combined with personally identifiable information, the combined information will be treated as personally identifiable information for as long as it is so combined.
Forums, Chat Rooms and Other Public Posting Areas
Please note that any information you include in a message you post to any chat room, forum or other public posting area is available to anyone with Internet access. If you don't want people to know your e-mail address, for example, don't include it in any message you post publicly. We urge you to exercise discretion and caution when deciding to disclose your personally identifiable information, or any other information, in any chat room, forum or other public posting area. PLEASE BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL WHEN DISCLOSING ANY INFORMATION IN CHAT ROOMS, FORUMS AND OTHER PUBLIC POSTING AREAS. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE USE BY OTHERS OF THE INFORMATION THAT YOU DISCLOSE IN CHAT ROOMS, FORUMS AND OTHER PUBLIC POSTING AREAS.
Third-Party Sites
You should note that our Sites include links to other websites whose privacy practices we don't control. For example, you may link to one of our partners to book travel, for other e-commerce purposes, or for additional content. Once you leave our servers (you can tell where you are by checking the URL in the location bar on your browser), use of any information you provide on other websites is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site you're visiting. These parties may have privacy policies and practices that differ from ours. If you can't find the privacy policy of any of these sites via a link from the site's homepage, you should contact the site directly for more information. We encourage everyone to be proactive in understanding how his or her information is collected and used online.
Third-Party Advertisers
We may use third-party advertisers to serve advertisements on the Sites. Please be advised that such advertisers may use cookies, web beacons and other technologies to, among other things, enable such advertisers to monitor which ads have been served to your browser and which webpages you were viewing when such ads were delivered. For more about third-party ad servers, click here. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS POLICY DOES NOT COVER THE COLLECTION AND USE OF INFORMATION BY ADVERTISERS.
Accessing Your Information and Changing Your Elections If you want to change your election on how we use or share your information, or you wish to review, update or delete the information you have provided us, please contact Privacy_Policy@TravelChannel.com .
Security
Discovery seeks to safeguard the personally identifiable information you provide. As effective as our safeguards are, no security system is completely impenetrable, so we cannot guarantee the absolute security of our database, nor can we guarantee that personally identifiable information you supply won't be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet.
Contact Us
If you have any questions regarding this privacy policy, please contact us by e-mail at Privacy_Policy@TravelChannel.com. Please note that e-mail communications will not necessarily be secure; accordingly, you should not include credit card information or other sensitive information in your e-mail correspondence with us.
Last updated: January. 24, 2008
