National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Privacy Policy

Please read these Website Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy (collectively, "Site Terms") carefully before using NCMEC's websites (the "Sites"). By using the Sites, you agree to be bound by the Site Terms. If you do not agree with the Site Terms, do not use the Sites.

PRIVACY POLICY

Maintaining the privacy of information that may be used, directly or indirectly, to identify you (“Personal Information”) is important to The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (“NCMEC,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) is designed to provide information about how NCMEC collects, uses, maintains, discloses, and safeguards Personal Information about visitors and users of our websites, online features, products, and services that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, “Sites”), or Personal Information that we may collect offline. In some instances, certain Sites may have different privacy policies that apply to the processing of Personal Information through those Sites. For that reason, we recommend that you review each Site’s privacy policy. 

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, NCMEC is a controller (i.e., responsible party) for the Personal Information practices described in this Privacy Policy. 

You can access specific topics within this Privacy Policy by clicking on the relevant links below:

1. Information NCMEC Collects 
2. Sources of Personal Information
3. How NCMEC Uses Personal Information
4. Legal Basis for Processing Personal Information
5. How NCMEC Discloses Information to Third Parties
6. Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies
7. Your Choices
8. Your Rights
9. Security & Retention
10. Children’s Privacy
11. Third Party Links 
12. Data Transfers
13. Changes to this Privacy Policy
14. Contact Information

INFORMATION NCMEC COLLECTS

The types of Personal Information we collect about you depends on how you interact with us. The following are the categories and specific types of Personal Information that we may collect:

• Contact Information/Identifiers, including name, email address, postal address, phone number, username, business contact information, or other similar identifiers and account information.
• Government Identifiers, including driver’s license number, Social Security number, passport number, and/or other governmental identification number. 
• Information Specific to the Sites, in certain instances, such as invoices, business and commercial communications, order status and history. 
• Demographic Information, including race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and gender.
• Device Information and Other Unique Identifiers, device identifier, internet protocol (IP) address, or similar unique identifiers.
• Internet or Other Network Activity, including browsing or search history, and information regarding your interactions with our Sites, mobile applications, emails, or advertisements.
• Geolocation Data, including information that permits us to determine your location, such as if you manually provide location information or enable your mobile device to send us location information.
• Payment Information, including credit or debit card number, or other financial information (when purchasing materials or making donations online). 
• Inferences, drawn from or created based on any of the information identified in this section.
• Sensitive Personal Information (where permitted and in accordance with applicable law), of the information listed above, Social Security number, data revealing racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health information and medical status, genetic information, information about a child and/or criminal status may be considered Sensitive Personal Information. This information is generally collected on a limited basis in furtherance of NCMEC’s mission.  

Generally, the provision of Personal Information is voluntary. However, we may not be able to fulfill the requested purpose of collection if you do not provide us with your Personal Information, such as to respond to your queries or request for customer service or to provide the full functionality of our Site to you. 

SOURCES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We collect your Personal Information in the following ways:

• Directly From You, when you use our Sites, volunteer or fundraise with us, make a donation, use the NCMEC CyberTipline, respond to a survey, sign up to receive emails, text messages, and/or postal mailings, or otherwise contact us directly. 
• Through Our Use of Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies, when you visit our Sites, open or click on emails we send you, or interact with us. We or third parties we work with automatically collect certain information using technologies such as cookies, web beacons, clear GIF, pixels, internet tags, web server logs, and other data collection tools. For more information, please see the “Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies” section below.
• From Our Third Party Partners, including from third parties that we have partnered with to provide you the Sites or with whom we collaborate regarding missing or exploited child cases, including but not limited to law enforcement and other government agencies.  
• Other Sources, including data analytics providers, data providers, or publicly available sources.  

HOW NCMEC USES PERSONAL INFORMATION

We use your Personal Information, including Sensitive Personal Information in limited instances, for the following business purposes:

• To identify you when you visit our Sites. 
• To provide and improve our products and services.
• To provide you with services through the NCMEC CyberTipline or similar programs, which may involve communicating with you about what has been reported.
• To provide you with our services or products that you have requested, such as training or educational materials.
• To complete a transaction that you initiate, such as when you purchase NCMEC products or donate to NCMEC. 
• To facilitate our relationship with you, such as when you volunteer with us.
• To conduct analytics.
• To respond to inquiries related to support or other requests.  
• To send marketing and informational materials including information relating to our programs and services.
• For internal administrative purposes, as well as to manage our relationships with partners and law enforcement in relation to missing and exploited child cases.
• To comply with legal obligations, to establish or exercise our rights, and to defend against a legal claim.
• To provide and maintain the functionality of our Sites, including identifying and repairing errors or problems.

LEGAL BASIS FOR PROCESSING PERSONAL INFORMATION 

We rely on the following legal grounds for the collection, processing, and use of your Personal Information:

• As necessary to provide a service or perform a transaction (such as when you donate to NCMEC);
• Consent (where you have provided consent as appropriate under applicable law);
• As necessary for legitimate interests (such as to protect individuals or maintain the safety and security of the Site); and
• Compliance with legal obligations, particularly in the area of social security and protection law, data protection law, tax law, and corporate compliance laws.

The provision of your Personal Information is partly a statutory requirement and partly a contractual obligation.

HOW NCMEC DISCLOSES INFORMATION TO THIRD PARTIES

We may disclose information in the following situations:

• Service Providers. We may disclose your information to service providers, including payment card processors. Among other things, service providers may help us to administer our Sites, conduct surveys, provide technical support, process donations, and assist in the fulfillment of orders placed through the NCMEC online store.
• Affiliates. We may disclose your Personal Information with subsidiaries, affiliates or strategic partners as needed to provide our products and services and generally as necessary in the administration of a global organization.
• Corporate Transactions. We may disclose your Personal Information in connection with a proposed or actual corporate merger, acquisition, consolidation, sale of assets, bankruptcy, insolvency or other corporate change.  Such recipient will be bound by terms and conditions reasonably similar to those set out in this Privacy Policy.
• Other Parties. We may disclose your Personal Information to legal, governmental, or judicial authorities, as instructed or required by those authorities or applicable laws, or to other parties in relation to legal process, such as in response to a subpoena. We may also disclose such Personal Information if we believe disclosure is necessary to prevent physical, financial, or other harm, injury, or loss.
• Law Enforcement. We may disclose your Personal Information to law enforcement agencies where we believe it is necessary to prevent or investigate illegal activity and/or to further the mission of NCMEC. 
• Additional Disclosures. From time to time, we may disclose your information to our attorneys, banks, auditors, securities brokers, and other professional service providers and advisors in connection with the purposes described above.
• Other Disclosures with your Consent. We may disclose your Personal Information with your consent to other unaffiliated third parties who are not described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy. 

COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES

Every time you come to the Sites, our Site automatically collects information, including, in some instances, Personal Information, through cookies, web beacons, and other similar tracking technologies (collectively “cookies”). Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. Cookies help the website remember information about your visit, which can make it easier to visit the website again and make the website more useful to you. Some cookies are deleted once you close your browser (session cookies), while other cookies are retained even after you close your browser so that you can be recognized when you return to a website (persistent cookies). More information about cookies and how they work is available at www.allaboutcookies.org. 

Cookies on our website are generally divided into the following categories:

We may use the information collected through cookies and related tracking technologies for the following purposes:

• To make our website easier to use and generally improve its performance.
• To gather metrics about how you interact with our Site.
• For security reasons.
• To provide personalized content. For example, we may store user preferences, your default language, device and browser information, and your profile information, which includes the level of your usage of the Site so we can identify you across devices and personalize the content you see.
• To advertise to you via behavioral based/targeted advertising and allow others to do the same. 

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually change your browser settings to prevent this. If you disable cookies, your ability to use some features of the Site may be limited. For mobile devices, you may be able to manage certain cookies using your built-in mobile device settings and controls. Any choices concerning cookies are browser and/or device specific. If you clear your cookies from your browser on any of your devices, your choices will need to be reset. You should check how to do this on your device(s) and operating systems. 

Some cookie providers may also offer opportunities to control your preferences. To learn how to opt-out of Google Analytics, an analytics cookie, please visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. 

Some of these cookies may be placed by third party service providers to help determine the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns or email communications.  The use of cookies by third-party service providers is within their control and not ours.  We do not control their websites or their policies and practices regarding your Personal Information, and you should be aware that different rules might apply to the collection, use or disclosure of your Personal Information by third parties in connection with their advertisements or promotions and other sites you encounter on the Internet.  This Privacy Policy does not cover any use of Personal Information that a third-party service provider may directly collect from you, and we do not undertake to confirm, investigate, or police their practices.

YOUR CHOICES

You may be able to make the following choices regarding your Personal Information:

• Emails. You may choose to provide us with your email address for the purpose of allowing us to send free newsletters and bulletins, surveys, and other news and informational materials to you. You can stop receiving emails by following the unsubscribe instructions in emails that you receive. If you decide not to receive emails, we may still send you service-related communications.
• Mailings.  If at any time you do not want to receive updates, newsletters, bulletins, or information from us, you can remove yourself from our mailing lists by emailing us (our contact information is below) with “NO SNAIL MAIL” in the subject line, along with your name, address and zip code.  Please note that our mailings are prepared in advance of their being sent. Although we will remove your name from our mailing list after receiving your request, you may still receive mailings from us that had been initiated prior to your name being removed.

Please address requests and questions about your choices to the information detailed in the “Contact Information” section of this Privacy Policy.

YOUR RIGHTS

Depending on where you are located (e.g., the European Union, Switzerland, United Kingdom), you may have certain rights regarding your Personal Information. The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your Personal Information and the requirements of applicable law. Specifically, you may have the following rights: 

• Right to access: You may have the right to obtain from us confirmation as to whether Personal Information concerning you is being processed.
• Right to data portability: You may have the right to request that we transfer the Personal Information we have collected about you to another organization, or directly to you, in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format, under certain conditions. 
• Right to correction: You may have the right to request that we correct any Personal Information about you that is inaccurate. 
• Right to deletion: You may have the right to request that we delete your Personal Information, under certain conditions. 
• Right to withdraw consent: Where we rely on your consent to process your Personal Information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time with future effect. Such a withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of the processing prior to the consent withdrawal. 
• Right to restrict processing: You may have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your Personal Information, under certain conditions. In such case, the respective data will be marked and may only be processed by us for certain purposes.
• Right to object to processing: You may have the right to object to our processing of your Personal Information under certain conditions, and we can be required to no longer process your Personal Information. If you have a right to object and you exercise this right, your Personal Information will no longer be processed by us for such purposes. Such a right to object may, in particular, not exist if the processing of your Personal Information is necessary to take steps prior to entering into a contract or to perform a contract already concluded. 

Please note that many of the above rights are subject to exceptions and limitations. Your rights and our responses will vary based on the circumstances of the request. If you choose to assert any of these rights under applicable law, we will respond within the time period prescribed by such law. You may also have the right to submit a complaint to your local supervisory authority if you are in the European Union, Switzerland, or United Kingdom.

In any event, your request must: (i) provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify that you are the person about whom we collected Personal Information or an authorized representative of that person; and (ii) describe the request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it. To exercise your rights, please contact us as stated in the “Contact Information” section of this Privacy Policy.

SECURITY & RETENTION

We have implemented generally accepted standards of technical and organizational security to protect Personal Information from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. All employees are required to keep Personal Information confidential and only authorized personnel have access to this information. Despite these protections, however, we cannot guarantee the safety of your Personal Information. In case there is unauthorized access to or use of your Personal Information, we may notify you of such access or use, including by electronic means if permitted by law.

We will keep your Personal Information for as long as we have a relationship with you. Once our relationship with you has come to an end, we will retain your Personal Information for a period of time that enables us to:

• Maintain business records for analysis and/or audit purposes;
• Comply with record retention requirements;
• Defend or bring any existing or potential legal claims;
• Deal with any queries or complaints you may have; and
• Comply with any other relevant laws and regulations. 

We retain Personal Information for as long as necessary to carry out the purposes for which we originally collected it and for other legitimate business purposes, including to meet our legal, regulatory, or other compliance obligations.

CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

NCMEC generally does not knowingly collect Personal Information directly from children under the age of 13 (or other relevant age of majority). If you believe we have collected Personal Information from your child in error or have questions or concerns about our practices relating to children, please notify us using the details in the “Contact Information” section below. 

THIRD PARTY LINKS

Our Sites may contain links to websites, content, or services owned or operated by third parties. Please note, we have no control over the privacy practices of websites or services that we do not own.  We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party website or application for details about what information is collected and how it is used and/or disclosed. NCMEC assumes no liability for how third parties may collect and/or use your Personal Information.

DATA TRANSFERS

NCMEC is headquartered in the United States, and we have operations, entities, and service providers in the United States and throughout the world. As such, we and our service providers may transfer your Personal Information to, or access it in, jurisdictions that may not provide equivalent levels of data protection as those of your home jurisdiction.  We will take steps provide an adequate level of protection to your Personal Information in the jurisdictions in which we process it.  If you are located in the European Union, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom, we transfer your Personal Information in accordance with applicable legal requirements, such as the derogations that permit transfers of Personal Information in limited circumstances (e.g., the transfer is necessary for important reasons of public interest or the transfer is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of a data subject or of other persons, where the data subject is physically or legally incapable of giving consent) and/or through the use of other measures, such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK Standard Contractual Clauses, or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to our practices, technology, legal requirements, and other factors. When changes are made to this Privacy Policy, they will become effective immediately upon posting. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically for the latest information on our information processing practices. To the extent that our Privacy Policy changes in a material way, we will notify you of the updated Privacy Policy to the extent required by applicable law. 

CONTACT INFORMATION

If you have questions regarding the Privacy Policy, please contact NCMEC's Office of Legal Counsel at The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 333 John Carlyle St., Suite 125, Alexandria, Virginia 22314; via telephone at 800-843-5678; or via email at [email protected]. 

This Privacy Policy includes an “effective” and “last updated” date below. The effective date refers to the date that the current version took effect. The last updated date refers to the date that the current version was last substantively modified.

Effective Date: October 2, 2024

Last Updated Date: October 2, 2024