Privacy Statement

Thank you for visiting a Smithsonian Enterprises (SE) website and reviewing our Privacy Statement. SE is comprised of the following sites: Smithsonian magazine (www.Smithsonianmag.com), Air&Space Magazine (www.airspacemag.com), SmithsonianStore (www.SmithsonianStore.com), Smithsonian Tween Tribune (www.tweentribune.com), Smithsonian Books (www.smithsonianbooks.com) and Smithsonian Journeys (www.SmithsonianJourneys.org). SE does not collect your personal information when you visit our websites unless you choose to provide that information to us. Smithsonian does not sell, exchange, or release your personal information to outside parties without your consent. Once we obtain your consent, we consider it valid until revoked by you.

This Privacy Statement applies only to the online activities of SE. For direct mail and other marketing activities not involving electronic commerce, SE adheres to the Direct Marketing Association's privacy guidelines. If you would like more information, please visit the following website: www.the-DMA.org

If You Send Us Personal Information

SE’s websites will only collect personal information which you knowingly and voluntarily provide by, for example, sending emails, completing membership forms, registering for accounts, responding to surveys or ordering merchandise. If you provide us with personal information, we normally will respond to your inquiry, request, or order.

We also may contact you to provide information about Smithsonian activities, programs, membership and development opportunities, products, and special events that may interest you. Please note that if you purchase goods from the SmithsonianStore, you will automatically receive emails about new products, special offers, sales, and other promotions that may be of interest to you. In such cases, we may share limited personal information that we have collected from you, including personally identifiable information, so that SmithsonianStore.com or our trusted partners may contact you with offers that may interest you. Additionally, we may occasionally combine your personal information with information from other third parties to enable us or our third-party partners to provide you with a more personalized marketing experience. You will always be provided an opportunity to opt-out of all such communications, and you may unsubscribe from such communications at any time.

When we send you information by email, you always will have an immediate opportunity to decline further communication. Please use the contact specified in the email so that we can remove you from the list that contains your name. If you are uncertain about whom to contact, you may contact our webmaster at smithsonianmagazine@si.edu.

SE uses outside vendors to provide certain services on our behalf, such as e-mail distribution, order fulfillment, and shipping. These third-party vendors will have access to the information needed to perform their functions but may not use that information for any other purpose.

SE may offer opportunities for you to opt-in to receive information from non-Smithsonian entities. If you opt-in, you may receive correspondence from these organizations on programs, products, or services that might interest you. If you decide to opt-out of receiving any further correspondence from a non-Smithsonian entity, please correspond directly with that business or organization to be removed from their mailing list.

Otherwise, we will not share your name or information outside the Smithsonian unless you affirmatively authorize us to do so by opting-in.

Information Collected and Stored Automatically

If you visit our website, we automatically gather and store the following information about your visit so that we can track the use of our website in order to make improvements. This information is stored and used in aggregate form only, and is not used to contact you personally:

  • The IP address from which you access our website;
  • The name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, gmaill.com, if you are connecting from a Google Online account);
  • The type of browser and operating system used to access our website;
  • The date and time you access our site;
  • The pages, files, documents and links that you visit; and
  • The domain of the website which referred you to this website (the last website you visited before visiting this one).

Cookies

Click to review our Cookie Policy.

Children and Privacy

SE’s websites are intended to be accessible and enjoyed by general audiences. We do not collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen (13), without first providing the parent or legal guardian with notice and obtaining prior verifiable consent. In addition, if a visitor known to be a child sends an email to Smithsonian Magazine, we only will use it to respond to the writer and not to create profiles or otherwise retain the information.

Security

SE takes reasonable steps to design and manage our websites’ technology to ensure that its information technology systems, applications, and information technology infrastructure are secure. When you use your credit card for any purchase on a SE website, that transaction is encrypted using "Secure Socket Layer" (SSL) encryption to protect your credit card information when traveling over the Internet. Further, we require credit card processing be secured based on compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards.

Linking

Within SE’s websites are advertisements, widgets, and other content links to non-Smithsonian websites. These sites operate independently of SE and have their own privacy policies. The Smithsonian is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of non-Smithsonian websites, and such link is not intended to be an endorsement of the non-Smithsonian website or its content. For your protection, you should review the privacy policy of the site you linked to from our website.

Comments

Questions and comments about this Privacy Statement may be directed to us via email at privacy@si.edu. The Smithsonian Institution is a large organization with many people sharing responsibility for the content of its websites. Please help us respond to your comments and inquiries by sending them to the appropriate Smithsonian office. In order to help you contact the appropriate Smithsonian office, please consult our list of contacts at https://www.si.edu/contacts.

Last revised: August 22, 2014