When we designed the Grips website, we wanted to offer a "kid-safe" community that can truly be trusted by parents. We use the Internet ourselves, so we share your concerns about privacy. Our policy meets or exceeds the requirements of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998.
Note that we do not allow third parties to advertise on our site.
Note that parents have the ability and flexibility to control how their children interact on our site and who they interact with.
Note that you must be an active member of a Grips affiliated tennis club or program to interact on our site.
Note that we have our own server, providing a more secure environment for our members’ private information.
Note that we never sell or exchange personal contact information (e.g., e-mail addresses).
1. Trust, Notice and Security
We fully disclose our policy about the collection, maintenance, use, disclosure, and security of personal information obtained from users of our online activities. By personal information, we mean a name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, or any other information that can be used to contact or identify an individual.
Concerns about privacy can be stronger in the online environment. Grips promises to follow this privacy and fair information practices policy that we specially designed for our Web site. Parents can trust Grips will not misuse any personal information about their children or about themselves.
Grips will change over time as we add exciting new features, services, and options. The Internet itself will also change as new capabilities and perhaps new laws emerge. This policy will be updated occasionally. Our philosophy of protecting user information from inappropriate uses and disclosures will not change. We promise to provide appropriate advance notice through the Web site of any change that materially affects the collection, maintenance, use, or disclosure of personal information from children or adults. Other changes to this privacy policy statement that reflect refinements, improvements, updates, and new features will be made as appropriate and posted as soon as possible. Whenever the privacy policy changes, we will modify the date and version number to reflect that a change was made.
Another important element of trust is security. The security of personal information is a high priority at Grips. We maintain this Web site and all associated data with technical, administrative, and physical safeguards appropriate for the type of data in question to protect against loss, unauthorized access, destruction, misuse, modification, and improper disclosure. We follow industry-proven security procedures such as encrypted administrative communication, restricted access to underlying machines, and firewalls at network access points. No computer system or information can ever be fully protected against every possible hazard. Grips is committed to providing reasonable and appropriate security controls to protect our Web site and its information against foreseeable hazards.
Grips requires that employees and contractors who have access to personal information from the Web site acknowledge in writing that they have read these privacy and fair information practices rules and that they are expected to follow it.
This Web site is operated by Grips Program, LLC. Our telephone number is 310-424-7828. Our e-mail address is privacy@gripsprogram.com.
2. Parental Involvement and Consent
We invite and encourage parents to get involved with the Grips program and are given the ability to control how their child interacts with other players.
Parents are given their own "dashboard" allowing them to participate in their child’s experience. This dashboard also allows parents to control how their children may interact on the site and with who they can interact.
Parents are also offered the opportunity to learn more about tennis, track their child’s progress in the program and interact with other parents of Grips players.
3. Use and Disclosure Limitations
Grips uses personal information about its Web site users only in defined and responsible ways. We do not share user information with third parties except when we have told users about the disclosures, when we have prior consent, or when required by law. Please see the "Registration" section for additional explanation regarding information collected when player’s join the program.
Use Policy: When Grips gathers personal information from users, we ask for permission first. Personal information is used for activities such as payment processing, sending certificates of achievement and new grips to your child when they advance color levels, sending birthday cards to your child, sending program and membership information.
User Choice: Whenever possible, Grips allows users to make choices about how their personal information will be used.
Disclosure Policy: We do not normally disclose personal information to anyone outside of Grips unless we have previously informed users about the disclosures. However, some data may be used from time to time by outside auditors, consultants, and others hired by Grips to assist in carrying out financial or operational activities. We permit these uses only when necessary to manage the Web site and its records or for another specific purpose consistent with this privacy policy. All recipients must agree in writing to safeguard personal information, to use it only for an authorized purpose, and to return it or destroy it upon completion of the activity. Please see the "Registration" section for additional explanation regarding information collected during an online donation.
Grips might be required to disclose personal information in response to valid legal process. This includes a search warrant, subpoena, or court order. In this respect, we are no different from any other record keeper. Disclosures may also be appropriate to protect the safety of a child, during emergencies if physical safety is believed to be at risk, to protect the security or integrity of our Web site, or to take precautions against liability. We think that these events are unlikely, but they are possible. We will take reasonable steps to limit the scope of any of these disclosures.
Registration: Grips requires certain personal information when registering a player for membership including: the parent’s name, billing address, shipping address (if different from the billing address), e-mail address, telephone number, credit card number and expiration date. Player information that must be provided includes name, gender, date of birth and club association.
All information will be collected in a secure fashion using 128-bit SSL technology.
4. Information Collection
Grips fully explains its information collection practices. We tell adults when information is required and when it is optional.
The only personal information required for players is collected during the registration process (see the "Registration" section above). Information that is not personal in nature (i.e., cannot be used to identify or contact a child) can be supplied by players as part of their personal profile. This might include information about the player such as whether they are right handed or left handed, the type of racket used, their tournament record, hobbies, etc. Parents have the option of providing an e-mail address for their child, but it is not required.
5. Access to and Correction of Personal Information
Grips is committed to maintaining accurate and appropriate information about our members.
We recognize that we need the assistance of users to make sure that their information is correct because users are the source of the information. Users may review, correct, and update the information that we maintain about them.
If you remove or change information on our system, the information may be retained for a period in our backup systems. Backup systems protect against the possibility of failures in the computer system. It can take weeks or months before information cycles out of backup systems. Information about purchases made through our Web site may be retained for longer periods as required by law, contract or auditing requirements.
6. Questions
Grips pledges to work with users to answer any questions about our privacy and fair information practices policy or our implementation of the policy.
If you have a complaint about our privacy and fair information practices policy or about our implementation of the policy, you can write to us at privacy@gripsprogram.com. Grips will try to resolve any problems that arise in a fair and prompt manner.
7. Technical and Other Matters: Cookies, Web Logs and Club Web sites
Grips discloses the defined and limited way that our Web site uses cookies and Web logs. We provide links to Grips affiliated clubs for your convenience and information and such sites have their own policies with respect to the collection and use of information.
Cookies: On the Internet, a cookie is a piece of information that a Web site transfers to a user's computer for record-keeping purposes. As a user moves from page to page at our Web site, a cookie is the only way that we have of knowing who you are. An activity on one page may depend on what you selected on a previous page. We use a cookie to keep track of your selection. Without cookies, users may be asked to provide the same information repeatedly. Some activities may not function at all.
The use of cookies is common on the Internet. Most major Web sites use cookies. Grips uses cookies only when appropriate. We never use cookies to retrieve information from your computer that was not originally sent in a cookie from us. We never use information transferred through cookies for marketing purposes. We never share cookies information with any third parties for marketing or other purposes.
You can control cookies from your end through Internet browsers (like Netscape and Explorer) or using other software. Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you prefer, you can set your browser to alert you when cookies are in use. You may also disable or refuse cookies. You can also erase a cookie that has been placed on your computer by us or by others. If you do not allow cookies to be used in the traditional way, it is possible that some parts of the Web site, like the Message Board, will not function as we designed them. It is your choice.
Web Logs: Grips maintains standard Web logs that record basic information about visitors to our Web site. These logs contain, for example:
- The Internet domain from which you access Grips (e.g., AOL.com, ABC.edu) and the address of the Web site you linked here from.
- Your IP address. An IP address is automatically assigned when you log onto the Internet. Static IP addresses may be personally identifiable in some instances. Dynamic addresses are usually not personally identifiable.
- The type of browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Netscape) and operating system (e.g., Windows 98) you use.
- The date and time you visited our site, and the pages you saw.
We use Web log information to design our Web site, identify popular features, and in similar ways. We do not try to identify individuals from Web logs or to link Web logs to other user information. However, if someone tries to damage our Web site or use it in an unauthorized or illegal way, we may share Web log information with law enforcement agencies.
Club Web sites: Grips allows a user to click through to a Web site maintained by Grips affiliated tennis clubs (e.g., Riviera Tennis Club). These Web sites are not controlled by Grips. These clubs may have different privacy policies, which we encourage you to review. When you click through to clubs' Web sites, you may get cookies directly from them or from the entity that serves the clubs. Grips does not see or use these cookies, and we do not control how other sites use cookies.
If you provide personal information to other sites, then those sites may use that information in accordance with its own policy. Grips only does business with responsible clubs, but we cannot control the way that someone else uses information that you disclose directly to them.
If you think that any club Web site is inappropriate, please contact us by e-mailing us at privacy@gripsprogram.com.