HOW WE PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY
At the Cool Mom Picks network (this includes Cool Mom Tech and Cool Mom Eats), we consider your privacy of critical importance. Hey, we visit lots of websites too! Therefore, we collect and handle all data in accordance with personal data laws.
This privacy policy describes in detail the types of personal information collected and recorded here, and how it’s used and disclosed, which is not scary at all, promise.
Please read it carefully. By entering, accessing, browsing or submitting information to us, you are acknowledging and agreeing to these terms and conditions.
If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at privacy@coolmompicks.com.
Log Files
Like many other Web sites, we use log files, which merely log visitors to the site. Pretty standard.
The information inside the log files that we may collect and store includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, your Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks or pages visited (browsing history) while you’re on our site.
We may also collect and store general, non-identifiable information like your general geographic location, like a city or metro area, but not your street address.
This information is used to analyze trends and track users’ movement around the site to help provide more relevant content for our awesome readers (that’s you!), to administer the site, and to gather basic, anonymized demographic information so we can serve you better.
It’s also used to monitor fraud or abuse of our site’s TOS — say, someone is entering a contest multiple times under different names, or spamming our comments.
To be clear, IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.
Cookies and Web Beacons
Cookies are small text files that your browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.) stores on your computer. It is not a program and cannot contain a virus. In your own browser settings, you can delete cookies, block cookies, or set the browser to request your permission to accept cookies.
The more technical explanation: A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.
Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that is stored about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.
The Cool Mom Picks network uses cookies for the most basic of purposes: To optimize website functionality, to store information about visitors’ preferences (including your device type and browser), to record which pages a visitor accesses or visits, and to personalize or customize our web page content based upon your browser type or other info your browser sends. This all allows us to offer you a better experience.
(Like, if we learn that 90% of you are using mobile devices to browse our site, we want to make sure we are mobile-optimized!)
We may also use this information to protect Cool Mom Picks and its users from spam, viruses, identity theft, illegal or harmful activities, and that’s good for all of us.
DoubleClick DART Cookie
Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads here. This enables them to serve ads to our visitors (that’s you) based on your visit here and visits to other sites.
You may opt out of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.
Advertising Privacy Statement and Affiliate Partners
This Site is affiliated with CMI Marketing, Inc., d/b/a CafeMedia (“CafeMedia”) for the purposes of placing advertising on the Site, and CafeMedia will collect and use certain data for advertising purposes. To learn more about CafeMedia’s data usage, click here: www.cafemedia.com/publisher-advertising-privacy-policy
Our advertising and affiliate partners are a select group that also include PubExchange, Amazon, ShareASale, Comission Junction, and RewardStyle (rstyle).
We publish ads that are tailored to reflect your interests. To help understand your interests, to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns, and/or to personalize the content for you to make it more relevant, AdThrive, Google and our other advertising and affiliate partners will track your behavior on our website and on other websites across the Internet using cookies, and technology including JavaScript or Web Beacons. They are sent directly to your browser, and automatically receive your IP address when this occurs.
We have absolutely no access to or control over these cookies used by third-party advertisers.
By using this Site, you consent to the use of such cookies and the sharing of data captured by such cookies with AdThrive, Google, and our other third party partners.
You can view, delete or add interest categories associated with your browser by visiting: Google Ad Settings. You can also opt out of the network cookie using those settings or using the Network Advertising Initiative’s multi-cookie opt-out mechanism. However, these opt-out mechanisms themselves use cookies; be aware that if you clear the cookies from your browser your opt-out will not be maintained.
A Note for EEA Visitors
If you reside in a country in the European Economic Area or EEA (hi EEA visitors! Send us some good pastries, will you?) then under the GDPR and applicable data protection laws you have the rights, among other things, to access your personal data, have us erase it, and/or restrict its further processing.
You will see GDPR-compliant consent checkboxes from our ad partners on your first visit here. This gives you an opportunity to opt-in to receiving personalized ads that better suit your preferences. Like if you are shopping for dorm furniture, you prooooobably don’t want to see ads for baby bottles.
If you wish to access or delete your personal data (if any) maintained by us or AdThrive related to advertising on our site, you can contact AdThrive at info@adthrive.com. If you wish to see a list of the advertising partners we work with or change which of those partners track your behavior using cookies, click the ad preferences icon. (Available in the EU.)
Google Analytics
Cool Mom Picks uses Google Analytics to gather and aggregate general information about user behavior. Google may use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of our site, compiling reports on site activity for us, and providing other services relating to site activity and internet usage.
Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf.
To the best of our knowledge, the information gathered by Google on our behalf is collected in such a way that in compliance with all privacy laws. It is also our understanding that neither we nor Google can easily trace saved information back to any individual user.
Email addresses
We can only obtain your email address if you opt-in to share it with us. That may happen in one of several ways:
-If you register with our site as a commenter, your email address will be stored in our system in your user profile, however not used for any purposes except as to verify that you are you when you comment.
-If you enter a contest or giveaway hosted by us or a select partner, and it specifies you are opting in to receive our emails and/or partner emails as a condition of entry. These contests are infrequent, and this condition, if used, will be clearly disclosed.
-If you choose to subscribe to our newsletter it requires sharing your email address with us, obvs. Our newsletters are hosted by MailChimp because they are a really cool company and we like how they do business. You can read the MailChimp Privacy Policy here.
Our newsletters are double opt-in, meaning you will receive a confirmation email with a link that you need to click to complete your subscription. This also keeps people from signing their frenemies up for emails they don’t want, which hahahahah that was so funny in middle school.
Please note that if you forward a newsletter to a friend, neither Cool Mom Picks nor MailChimp can see, collect, or store your friend’s email address. That would be pretty slimy.
If you wish to unsubscribe from our newsletters at any time for any reason, by all means, click the “unsubscribe” link that appears at the bottom of every email and newsletter we send. Just know we might cry. Also, you will be missing out on a lot of cool stuff.
Children’s Information
We are parents, and believe it is of utmost importance to provide added protection for children online.
We encourage parents and guardians to spend time online with their children to observe, participate in and/or monitor and guide their online activity. We do not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13, ever.
If you believe for some reason that we have in our database the personally-identifiable information of a child under the age of 13, PLEASE contact us immediately at privacy@coolmompicks.com and we will do everything we can to promptly remove it from our records.
Online Privacy Policy Only
This privacy policy applies only to our online activities and is valid for visitors to our website, regarding information shared and/or collected here. This policy does not apply to any information collected offline, or via channels other than this website.
Consent
By using our website, you hereby consent to our privacy policy and agree to its terms. We hope you do consent, because you seem really nice and we’d like you to stay.
Last updated June, 2021
