PRIVACY POLICY

THIS PRIVACY POLICY WAS LAST UPDATED ON 26 JULY 2007.

Welcome to Guinness World Records’ family of web sites (“Web Sites”) and thank you for visiting. We are committed to providing a quality experience and have developed our Web Sites to provide an informative and entertaining experience for users. We also respect the privacy rights of our online visitors and are committed to providing and maintaining a safe and secure online environment. This Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) explains Guinness World Records’ online information practices and describes how Guinness World Records collects, uses and shares any of the following information obtained from and about our online visitors (i) personally identifiable information ("PII") such as, your first and last name, address, telephone number, screen name, email address or credit card information and (ii) other information which does not allow us to personally identify you (“Non-PII”) such as, your first name, post code, city, age, gender, product and promotional preferences and household characteristics like presence of children or income bracket information.

PARENTS

We encourage parents/guardians to become involved in their children’s online experience. Please discuss use of the Internet and disclosure of information on our Web Sites or any web site with your children. Additionally, parents please discuss this Privacy Policy with your children so they better understand how to use our Web Sites and the kinds of information we may ask of them.

CHILDREN / MINORS

If you are under 18 years of age, you should ask your parent or guardian before giving any information on the Internet (like your name, email address, home address, phone number). Some areas on our Web Sites require our users to give us information, but we will not knowingly ask for, or accept, personal information from persons under the age of 13. If you are younger than 13, only your parent or guardian should access these areas of our Web Sites.

AGREEMENT TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND PRIVACY POLICY MODIFICATIONS

By using our Web Sites, you are agreeing to this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, or any of its terms, please do not use this Web Site or any other Guinness World Records Web Site. From time to time, and at any time, this Privacy Policy may be revised or changed. We will notify you of a material change by placing a notice on our Web Sites or by sending a notice to the primary email address you have specified. All users of our Web Sites should review this Privacy Policy periodically to be up to date on our most current privacy policies and practices.

This Privacy Policy only applies to information Guinness World Records collects online and not information collected offline. Additionally, this Privacy Policy only applies to Guinness World Records’ Web Sites and not to third party web sites to which we link.

USERS UNDER 13 YEARS OF AGE

Guinness World Records is fully committed to supporting and complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. Children can surf our Web Sites, view content, and download materials without Guinness World Records collecting PII. Our Web Sites may provide children the opportunity to send electronic postcards to family or friends. To send electronic postcards, we may ask for a first name, but we do not require children under the age of 13 to submit PII about themselves in order to send an electronic postcard. However, we do ask them to submit the email address of the recipient of such electronic postcards. All information collected from electronic postcards is used only to send the requested electronic postcard and is deleted once the electronic postcard is sent. We may also collect an email address and name from a child for the sole purpose of responding directly to a specific online request from the child. As soon as the response is sent to the child, all information collected from such request will be deleted.

WHEN PII AND NON-PII MAY BE REQUESTED

Registration or input of PII may be requested for participation in activities such as registrations, sweepstakes, contests, marketing and promotional activities, surveys, email newsletters, e-commerce or sending questions/comments to us. We will not require anyone to disclose more PII than we deem reasonably necessary to participate in the activity, fulfill your request or achieve our legitimate business objectives. However, if PII is requested for participation in an activity, you cannot participate without disclosing such PII.

Submitting a record attempt claim to Guinness World Records – Children are always keen to set new records and to try to break existing ones. A child can submit a claim for a record attempt to us by contacting us by email with details of the attempt. If our researchers decide that the attempt is suitable we will send the child the following documents: (i) Agreement regarding record attempts (this agreement is a legal document and needs to be signed by a parent or guardian if the child is aged 16 or under); (ii) Record attempt guidelines; and (iii) any further guidelines specific to that record attempt. A parent must complete the Parental Consent Form and fax or post that consent to us before this process commences.

Mailing List/Newsletter - A child can sign up to receive our newsletter. A parent must complete the Parental Consent Form and fax or post his/her consent to us, before this commences. The child's name and e-mail address is required for the monthly newsletter to be mailed. At any time, the parent/child can ask to unsubscribe their child from the newsletter.

Competitions - To enter children are required to answer a question online and we will ask for their name and e-mail address. We may also require a name and email address of the child’s parent or legal guardian to be provided as well. A child’s email address will only be collected by GWR to administer the competition and will be immediately deleted after conclusion of the competition and once the winning name has been chosen. The "winner" (and their parent or legal guardian where their email address has been obtained) will be notified by e-mail within 4 weeks of the end of the competition and then we may require the parent or legal guardian to (i) sign a form sanctioning his/her child’s participation in the competition and (ii) sign an affidavit of eligibility/release so that the prize can be released and mailed to the winner. The winner’s email address or postal address and the winner’s parent or legal guardian’s email address or postal address will then be deleted. If you win a competition we shall publish your name (but not your e-mail or postal address) on our site.

Quizzes – From time to time we may feature quizzes on our website for a child to compete in and we may publish the child’s scores on our global quiz scoreboard together with your name and the country you live in.

If at any time a parent/guardian wishes to withdraw their consent to any of the above areas, they can contact us using the information listed below and any information about their child will be deleted from the applicable area(s). We do not use the features of your browser to set "cookies" on your computer. As we said above, we request personal information (e.g. child's name, e-mail address, mailing address and/or birth date) in certain areas of our web site. For your convenience, the following is a list of those areas, the personal information we request and the reasons why:-

From time to time, we may also ask you to provide us with Non-PII. We may use this information for internal purposes or for sharing with third parties for any lawful purpose, without your permission. No third party will know who you are because of the use of your Non-PII.

We will not knowingly ask for, or accept, PII from persons under the age of 13. Before accepting PII from anyone, we ask a question designed to determine that person’s age. If we determine that the person may be under the age of 13 we will not knowingly accept that person’s PII at that activity or registration and that person will be restricted from participating in such web page activities at that time. If we have knowledge that a child under 13 has provided us with PII, we will delete such information from our records. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe your child has given us PII, please use the Contact Us form on a Web Site and enter your detailed request in the text box to review such information and to have it deleted from our records.

USE OF PII

We may use your PII in activities such as the ones indicated above. We may also use your PII for the following purposes: (i) to personalise and enhance our Web Sites and your Internet experience, (ii) for internal marketing and demographic studies, (iii) to contact you for non-marketing purposes (such as for feedback or customer service), (iv) to comply with applicable laws or requests by law enforcement agencies and (v) to protect the rights, property or safety of our Web Sites, users of our Web Sites and others.

The PII you disclose may be shared with third parties that provide support of our Web Sites’ activities, such as those who may administer an activity for us, those conducting online contests and sweepstakes and shipping companies or fulfillment houses that may deliver a product, prize or premium. These third parties will use your PII to perform their functions and may not use it for other purposes.

Guinness World Records does not sell or otherwise disclose PII to third parties, except as indicated in this section entitled “USE OF PII.” In the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganisation or other similar event, your PII may be transferred or shared with our successors or assigns. We may also share PII collected from one of our Web Sites with any other of our Web Sites and with other HIT Entertainment companies.

OPTING-OUT

If you wish to receive emails about Guinness World Records, including special offers, products and other information you might find interesting, you may opt-in to receive such information at the time of registration or at the time of collection of PII. If you are receiving such emails from Guinness World Records and wish to opt-out of receiving them, you can do so by (i) clicking on the designated unsubscribe link within the Guinness World Records email, (ii) choosing Contact Us from the appropriate section on the Web Site and entering “Remove,” along with the applicable email address, in the Comments box, or (iii) writing us at:

UK Address
Guinness World Records
Attn: Online Privacy Administrator
184-192 Drummond Street
3rd Floor
London NW1 3HP
United Kingdom

or

US Address
Guinness World Records
Attn: Online Privacy Administrator
1133 Broadway
Suite 1520
New York NY 10010
USA

E-COMMERCE

Purchases through our Web Sites may require disclosure of your PII, your credit card information and information about the name and address of the person receiving the purchases. The credit card information may be subject to verification by the issuing credit card company or other company. Sales and shipping records will also be generated and maintained. Unless you give us permission at the time we collect such information, we will not use this information for any purpose except the fulfillment and record keeping of the transaction.

SAFETY AND SECURITY

We have implemented various technical and organisational measures to secure and protect the information provided by you. However, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. While we try to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us. You use the Web Sites, and provide us with personal information, at your own risk. To the extent reasonably necessary to protect a user's safety, we may collect his or her name, address, and/or email address. To protect our security, to protect us against liability, or as required by law, we may collect a user's name and email address. PII collected pursuant to this provision will not be used for any other purpose.

USE OF TECHNOLOGY

USE OF COOKIES

During the course of any visit to a Guinness World Records Web Site, the pages you see, along with something called a "cookie", are downloaded to your computer. Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your computer's hard drive. Guinness World Records cookies do not contain any PII, but they do enable us to provide features such as personalization. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually change your browser. For additional information on finding and controlling your cookies, please see the provisions at the end of this Privacy Policy entitled “HOW TO FIND AND CONTROL YOUR COOKIES.”

Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used. Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued or to block all cookies. If you set the browser to block cookies, it will result in certain personalised services not being provided to the users on that computer.

WEB BEACONS

Our Web Sites contain electronic images (called a "single-pixel gif" or "Web beacon") that allow us to count page views or to access cookies. In general, any electronic image viewed as part of a web site, including an ad banner, can act as a web beacon. Web beacons are typically very small, 1 by 1 pixel size, banner like files, but their presence can be easily seen within Internet Explorer by clicking on "View" and then on "Source." Our Web beacons do not collect, gather, monitor or share any personal information about visitors to our Web Sites, they are just the technique we use to compile our anonymous, aggregated statistics about web site usage. The Web Beacon system we use to collect this information is called Omniture (www.onmiture.com) provided by Omniture, Inc.

COMPUTER PROFILES

Through the Omniture technology, we also collect and accumulate other anonymous data that helps us understand and analyse the Internet experience of our visitors. For example, we accumulate visitor data relating to referring domains, the type of browsers used, operating system software, screen resolutions, color capabilities, plug-ins, language settings, cookie preferences, search engine keywords and JavaScript enablement. We also record number of visits, paths taken and time spent on Web Sites and pages. None of this information is personally identifiable and we only share this information in the aggregate, reflecting overall web site or Internet usage trends.

CO-BRANDED MICRO SITES

Web pages and/or micro web sites may be included within our Web Sites and may be co-branded with third party names, logos and/or properties and are operated and maintained by us. While such third parties are sponsors of these web pages or micro web sites, they do not share in any PII collected within those web pages or micro web sites.

THIRD PARTY ADVERTISEMENTS

We may include on our Web Sites banner or text advertisements from third parties, or for web sites operated by third parties, that are not sponsors of and are not affiliated with our Web Sites. As such, we are not responsible for the content, polices or practices of the web sites operated by these third parties. In addition, these advertisements and/or links do not constitute sponsorship, endorsement or approval by us of the content, policies or practices of these web sites. All users should check the relevant web site's privacy policy and terms of use in order to understand their policies and practices regarding the collection and use of PII.

INTERNATIONAL USER NOTICE

As Guinness World Records operates globally, it may be necessary to transfer your information internationally, and in particular, your information may be transferred to and processed in the United States or the United Kingdom. For residents of the European Union: the data protection and other laws of other countries outside of the European Union may not be as comprehensive as those of the European Union; please be assured that we take all reasonable steps to ensure that your privacy is protected.

REVIEWING, UPDATING AND DELETING PERSONAL INFORMATION

All users may review their PII at any time. If you would like to review, modify or delete this information, please write to us with your detailed request at:

YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS

If you do not want us to disclose any of your PII to third parties who may use such information for direct marketing purposes, then please write to us with your detailed request at:

HOW TO FIND AND CONTROL YOUR COOKIES

If you're using Netscape 6.0:

On your Task Bar, click:
1. Edit, then
2. Preferences
3. Click on Advanced
4. Click on Cookies

If you're using Internet Explorer 5.0 or 5.5:

1. Choose Tools,
2. then Internet Options
3. Click the Security tab
4. Click on Custom Level
5. Scroll down to the sixth option to see how cookies are handled by IE5 and change to Accept, Disable or Prompt for action as appropriate

If you're using Internet Explorer 4.0:

1. Choose View, then
2. Internet Options
3. Click the Advanced tab
4. Scroll down to the yellow exclamation icon under Security and choose one of the three options to regulate your use of cookies

In Internet Explorer 3.0:

You can View, Options, Advanced, then click on the button that says Warn before Accepting Cookies.

If you're using Netscape Communicator 4.0:

On your Task Bar, click:
1. Edit, then
2. Preferences
3. Click on Advanced
4. Set your options in the box that says Cookies

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHICH OF THE SITES YOU'VE VISITED USE COOKIES?

If you're using Netscape 6.0:

On your Task Bar, click:
1. Edit, then
2. Preferences
3. Click on Advanced
4. Click on Cookies
5. Click the View Cookies button

If you're using Internet Explorer 5.0:

1. Choose Tools, then
2. Internet Options
3. Click the General tab
4. Click Settings
5. View Files

If you're using Internet Explorer 4.0:

On your Task Bar, click
1. View, then
2. Internet Options
3. Under the tab General (the default tab) click
4. Settings View Files

Internet Explorer 3.0:

On your Task Bar, click:
1. View
2. Options
3. Advanced
4. View Files

Netscape Communicator 4.0:

Netscape bundles all cookies into one file on your hard drive. You'll need to find the file, which it calls Cookie.txt on Windows machines.

HOW TO SEE YOUR COOKIE CODE

Just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.

Download Parental Consent Form