Privacy Policy

KQED, Inc. (“KQED”) is committed to protecting the privacy of children who use our sites and applications.

The following policy is specific to KQED Youth Media Challenge and student privacy. See global site privacy policy here.

This children’s online Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) governs the KQED Youth Media Challenge platform and its services, at https://youthmedia.kqed.org (the “Site” and/or “Services”) and explains:

This Policy is in accordance with the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), and outlines our practices in the United States regarding children, including children under 13 years of age (“Child” or “Children”) and their personal information. For more information about COPPA and general tips about protecting children’s online privacy, please visit On Guard Online.

KQED Youth Media Challenge is a platform for standards-aligned media-making projects that give students the opportunity to publish media on KQED’s Youth Media digital showcase.

In accordance with COPPA, schools, school districts, teachers and other educational institutions (ie school or district) may act as a parent’s agent and can consent to the collection, use, and disclosure of your child’s personal information on your behalf. By engaging KQED to provide the Services, your child’s school provides such consent. This Policy does not govern any school’s collection, use, or disclosure of your child’s personal information through the Site or Service, and we are not responsible for any such collection, use, or disclosure. Schools should always notify parents about these activities.

Parents, please contact your child’s school to understand the school’s privacy practices. To access, change or delete information collected by your child’s school in connection with the Site or services which cannot be accessed, changed or deleted as described in this Policy, please contact the school directly.

Students access the challenge submission portal via a submission code from their teacher. When they submit a piece of media, we ask students to provide:

We will not require a child to provide more information than is reasonably necessary to participate on the platform. Since accounts and codes are initiated by your child’s teacher, we will also be able to tell what school and district your child is associated with.

In accordance with COPPA, we rely on schools, school districts, teachers and other educational institutions’ consent in lieu of a parent in collecting verifiable consent of students under the age of 13.

When posting content throughout the site, your child will be identified with their first name and last name initial and the name of their school and the city where their school is located. Content Generated by a Child

When your child uses the services, information about how your child uses the Services may be automatically collected. This information is generally used to help us deliver the most relevant information to your child and administer and improve the Site.

We gather certain information automatically and store it in log files, including IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data. We use this information to improve the content of the Site, market research purposes, communicate information to visitors and better tailor our Services to our users’ needs.

When children interact with our Site, we may log information using “Cookies.” Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive by a website. We may use both session Cookies (which expire when you close your browser) and Persistent Cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience on our Site. This type of information is collected to make the Site more useful to your Child and to tailor the experience with us to meet your Child’s special interests and needs.

The data collected is principally used for internal purposes only, in order to:

We use analytics services (including, but not limited to, Amplitude and Google Analytics) to help analyze how users use the Site. Analytics services use Cookies to collect information such as how often users visit the Site and we use the information to Site and Services. The analytics services’ ability to use and share information collected by them is restricted by their terms of use and privacy policy, which you should refer to for more information about how these entities use this information, and how you can opt-out of their use of such information.

We generally use your child’s personal information as follows:

We may also create anonymous and/or de-identified data records from your Child’s personal information by excluding information (such as your Child’s name) that makes the data personally identifiable to your Child. We use this anonymous data to enhance the content of our Services and improve the Site. We reserve the right to use anonymous data for any purpose and disclose anonymous data to third parties in our sole discretion.

Our Site and services allow your child to share their media projects on the KQED Youth Media showcase. Please ensure your child is mindful of his or her privacy needs as your child chooses what to share.

We may share personal information that your child provides or we collect in a limited number of instances, including the following:

If we discover that we have collected information from a child in a manner inconsistent with COPPA, we will take appropriate steps to either delete the information, or immediately seek the teacher’s consent for that collection. We do not disclose any personal information about children to third parties, except as provided for those exceptions listed above. Information collected from students (including personal information and information collected automatically) is never used or disclosed for third party advertising, including any kind of behaviorally targeted advertising, and the children’s personal information is never sold or rented to anyone, including marketers or advertisers.

Our Site may contain links to third-party websites or may integrate the functionality of third-party applications, such as YouTube, Vimeo, or SoundCloud.

You may access third-party content through our services and navigate to third party sites and services from links on our Site. Whether the third-party content appears within our services (such as in an embedded video player), or you leave our services to view the content on another website, the third party is in control of and independently produces, maintains, and monitors the content and third-party sites.

We have no control over, do not review, and are not responsible for these outside websites or their content or practices. Please be aware that the terms of this Policy do not apply to these outside websites or content, or to any collection of data after your Child clicks on links to such outside websites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of every website your Child visits. The links to third party websites or locations are for your Child’s convenience and do not signify our endorsement of such third parties or their products, content, or websites.

We work hard to protect our community and we maintain reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect against unauthorized use, disclosure of or access to personal information. In the event of an unauthorized release, disclosure, or acquisition of student information or student-generated content, KQED will notify affected individuals as required by applicable law. We want you to feel confident using our Site and services, but we cannot guarantee the security of any information you or your child transmit to us.

Information collected at the Site will not be stored for longer than is necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, or to otherwise meet legal requirements.

KQED Youth Media Challenge is hosted and operated in the United States and is subject to United States law. Any personal information you provide to KQED will be hosted on United States servers. By using this Service, you consent to the transfer to and processing of your personal information in the United States.

You can also reach KQED Youth Media Challenge by mail at:

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to contact us, please contact ymc@kqed.org

KQED, Inc. c/o
KQED Youth Media Challenge
2601 Mariposa Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

KQED may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make changes that we believe will materially affect your rights, we will notify you by email about these changes and post a notice to our service and change the “Last updated” date below. If you continue to use our service after we provide such notice, you are agreeing to accept these changes.