PRIVACY POLICY for the

SESAME WORKSHOP 2023 BENEFIT VIRTUAL AUCTION SITE

This privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) describes how Sesame Workshop (also referred to in this Privacy Policy as “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, stores and uses Personal Information that has been provided to us, or that we have collected on the Sesame Workshop 2023 Gala virtual auction site (the “Auction Site”). “Personal information” is information that lets us know the specifics of who you are, and includes information that directly or indirectly identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked to, you as an individual or to your household, such as your name, address, email address, phone number, credit card number and other information that is not otherwise publicly available.  Personal Information includes: information that we expressly request you to provide in connection with certain activities on the Auction Site, such as setting up an account and participating in the auction by bidding for items; anonymous information that we automatically collect from your computer, phone or other device during your interaction with the Auction Site, such as a computer’s Internet Protocol address, a mobile device identifier, operating system, or general location such as zip code; and information that we infer from any combination of these things. If you prefer not to have your Personal Information managed in accordance with this Privacy Policy, please do not access or use the Auction Site.

PERSONAL INFORMATION RECEIVED FROM THIRD PARTIES

We may receive Personal Information about you from other sources, including data broker services, data enhancement companies, list rental services, third-party analytics providers, and social media-owned databases, including via your interaction with our social media pages (this includes aggregate data on our social media followers (e.g., age, gender and location), engagement data (e.g., “likes,” comments, shares, reposts and clicks), awareness data (e.g., number of impressions and reach) and individual users’ public profiles).  This may include certain donation information, including past donation history, amount donated each time, and frequency of donations. 

COOKIES

Personal Information may come from tracking technologies set by us or by our third party vendors (e.g., the Auction Site platform provider).  These tracking technologies may include “cookies”, pixels and web beacons. A “cookie” is a piece of information that a web site transfers to a user’s device for record-keeping purposes. As a user moves from one page or one screen to another, a cookie is used to tell us that it is the same device. We also may use a cookie to keep track of your selections. You may set your device to accept or not accept cookies and you may delete any cookies that you have received. However, should you decide to disable any cookies we place on your device, you may not be able to use certain services or features on our Auction Site. A pixel or web beacon is a one-pixel image (which may be visible or transparent) that may be embedded on a web page or e-mail message, and that may also provide us with information about usage of that page or e-mail message.

In all cases, we will only use your Personal Information in compliance with this Privacy Policy.

UPDATES

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy from time to time by posting the updated Privacy Policy online. When we do, the “Last Updated” line at the bottom will be revised and any additional notification will be provided in accordance with applicable law. We will not change how we handle previously collected information without providing notice.

OTHER WEB SITES AND SERVICES

Please keep in mind that the Auction Site is run on a third party web platform by our service provider, ClickBid, LLC (“ClickBid”).  ClickBid may collect Personal Information from you as part of their management and/or fulfillment of the Sesame Workshop 2023 Gala virtual auction.  We are not responsible for the privacy practices of ClickBid.

Our Auction Sitemay also link to other third party websites or apps, including content offered by third parties, that we do not control and whose privacy and data collection practices may differ from ours (“Third Party Platforms”). We are not responsible for the practices employed by any websites or services linked to or from the Auction Site, including the information or content contained within them.

When you go via our link to Third Party Platforms, you become subject to their terms of use and privacy policies rather than ours. You should review these other website privacy policies regarding any personal information that they may collect about you.

OUR USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may use the Personal Information to send you updates, special offers and other information about Sesame Workshop and its activities.  We may also share the Personal Information with third parties in order to help us better tailor our communications to your preferences.  We will also use the Personal Information to support internal operations of the Auction Site so that we can understand and monitor the usage of, and improve the performance of the Auction Site and your experience on it.

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you with the Auction Site, and for a reasonable time thereafter in accordance with our standard procedures or as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements. Even if we delete some or all of your Personal Information, we may continue to retain and use aggregate or anonymous data previously collected and/or anonymize or aggregate your Personal Information. Please note that we will not be liable for disclosures of your data due to errors or unauthorized acts of third parties.

CHOICE/OPT-OUT

You are free to choose whether or not to engage in any activity on our Auction Site, however, using certain features of the Auction Site may require that you provide us with Personal Information.

You can opt out of receiving further communications from us by:

  1. Sending an email to broadband@sesame.org to request that your Personal Information be removed from our database.  Please include the name and email address that you wish to have removed.
  2. Clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom of any email messages or other communications you receive from us.

We are not responsible for removing your information from the lists of any third party that has previously been provided with your Personal Information or is collecting your Personal Information through its cookies.

SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

Law Enforcement and Safety. In addition to the uses stated above, we may access, preserve and share your Personal Information when we have a good faith belief that it is necessary to: (i) respond to a legal request (like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) or otherwise to take action because we believe it is required or advisable under the law; (ii) detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity; (iii) respond to your requests for customer service; or (iv) limit our legal liability or to protect the rights, property, or personal safety of ourselves, any user of our Auction Site or our related websites or platforms, a third party or the general public including as part of investigations.


Business Transfer. If we sell or otherwise transfer part or the whole of Sesame Workshop or our assets to another organization (e.g., in the course of a transaction like a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, liquidation), Personal Information, and any other information collected through our Auction Site may be among the items sold or transferred. The buyer or transferee will be required to honor the commitments we have made in this Privacy Policy.


Security Notice. In the unlikely event that we believe that the security of your Personal Information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If a notification is appropriate, we would endeavor to do so as promptly as possible under the circumstances.
 

SERVICE PROVIDERS

In addition to ClickBid, we contract with third parties to provide certain services to facilitate the operations of our Auction Site (“service providers”), such as data hosting, analytics, donor management, payment processing, content delivery, and email marketing.  Our service providers may require access to certain Personal Information in order to provide their services.  Our service providers will be given access to your information only as is reasonably necessary to provide the services for which they are contracted. They will be required to abide by the terms of this Privacy Policy in their handling of Personal Information. 

INFORMATION STORAGE

The Auction Site is governed by and operated in, and in accordance with the laws of, the United States, and is intended for the enjoyment of adult residents of the United States.  Your information collected through the Auction Site may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which we or our service providers maintain facilities. We or our service providers may transfer information that we collect about you, including personal information across borders and from your country or jurisdiction to other countries or jurisdictions around the world.  We will ensure that your legal rights and protections travel with any transfer of personal information, as required by applicable law.
 

SECURITY

We implement and maintain technical and organizational measures to help secure your Personal Information. We host Personal Information in secure, cloud-based environments that use firewalls, encryption and other industry-standard technologies in an effort to prevent interference or access from outside intruders.  

While we strive to maintain the security of your Personal Information, we cannot guarantee that information security measures are fail-safe or guarantee that Personal Information on the Auction Site may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed without authorization.

SESAME WORKSHOP INFORMATION

The Auction Site is operated by Sesame Workshop, located at 1900 Broadway, New York, New York, 10023, USA, 212-595-3456, majorgifts@sesameworkshop.org. We use the following service providers: ClickBid, Stripe, Inc., Google, Inc. and comScore, Inc.

For questions or concerns about the Auction Site or our service providers, please write to broadband@sesame.org.  To report potential security vulnerabilities, please write to cyber.security@sesame.org.
 

Last updated: May 17, 2023.