About ROBLOX
ROBLOX is an online virtual world and building game for kids. ROBLOX works like this:
• a user creates a virtual character, that is his or her identity in the ROBLOX world
• users interact with other users through in-game chat, personal messaging (site contained), and user forums; privacy settings allow users or parents to restrict communications with other users
• each user is given one or more pieces of virtual real estate on which they can build houses, cars, machines, or anything else you can build with building blocks; these places are called “games”
• users search for, find, and play games made by other users; they play these games with other users from around the world, and are identified only by their virtual character name
• users earn tickets and/or ROBUX, our virtual currency; users earn these in a variety of ways, and use them to buy items for their characters, including virtual hats, shirts, and pants; users can also sell these items, earning tickets and/or ROBUX
• users can purchase premium services, including: Builder’s Club, a monthly subscription that grants the user more virtual places and a daily allowance, among other things; and, ROBUX currency, allowing users to buy virtual currency that can in turn be used to buy virtual goods
• users may sign up to receive our monthly newsletter which they may opt-out of at any time by following the unsubscribe link located at the bottom of each communication.
• a user creates a virtual character, that is his or her identity in the ROBLOX world
• users interact with other users through in-game chat, personal messaging (site contained), and user forums; privacy settings allow users or parents to restrict communications with other users
• each user is given one or more pieces of virtual real estate on which they can build houses, cars, machines, or anything else you can build with building blocks; these places are called “games”
• users search for, find, and play games made by other users; they play these games with other users from around the world, and are identified only by their virtual character name
• users earn tickets and/or ROBUX, our virtual currency; users earn these in a variety of ways, and use them to buy items for their characters, including virtual hats, shirts, and pants; users can also sell these items, earning tickets and/or ROBUX
• users can purchase premium services, including: Builder’s Club, a monthly subscription that grants the user more virtual places and a daily allowance, among other things; and, ROBUX currency, allowing users to buy virtual currency that can in turn be used to buy virtual goods
• users may sign up to receive our monthly newsletter which they may opt-out of at any time by following the unsubscribe link located at the bottom of each communication.
Requested Information
ROBLOX users may play as guests; in this mode, users remain anonymous and interact with the website and game in Menu Chat Mode – no free chat, no personal messaging to or from users, no posting to the forums, and other restrictions designed to prevent users from sharing personal information, intentional or otherwise. As guests, users are unable to save play statistics, accumulate points, share models, or participate in our virtual economy.
Users wishing to save statistics, share models, and participate in the economy are required to enter a username and password. We advise users to create a username that does not reflect their own name nor reveal personally identifiable information. We also advise users to pick a password that is not easy to guess, and to not share that password. For security reasons, we store passwords in encrypted form.
Registered users who are under 13 initially play in Menu Chat Mode. To opt-in to free (but filtered) text communications, users are required to provide and verify a parent’s email address. We use this information to inform parents that their child has signed up to use our service; we also use this information to obtain permission from parents for their child to participate in certain activities. The verification email we send informs parents of their child’s registration with ROBLOX and provides access to a parental control panel (parent’s may also create parental controls at any time). Under-13 users who do not enter a parent’s email address or who fail to verify one remain in Privacy Mode. Registered users who are 13 or older can opt-in to Privacy Mode, but begin with it turned off.
Regardless of security and privacy settings, all text on the site is filtered proactively to remove references to addresses, emails, phone numbers, age, and other personally identifiable information. All text is also filtered for profanity, phishing, and adult or suggestive content. Our system is a combination human and automated processes; like all filtering technology, our processes are not 100% effective.
Users wishing to purchase Builder’s Club or ROBUX are required to enter billing information, including name, billing address, credit card or PayPal number, and billing email. For children under 13, we request the parent’s billing information. Billing information is retained to support customer service inquiries, but we do not retain the full credit card number.
If you (or your child) choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site; ROBLOX does not store this information.
If your child opts-in to receiving our monthly newsletter we will send you a notice (to the email address your child provides for you) in order to allow you to opt them out of receiving it if you wish to do so. We will collect your child’s email address for the sole purpose of sending them the newsletter. You may opt your child out at any time by clicking the opt-out link in the newsletter verification email.
We do not collect any Personal Information from children, only username and password. We do not ask for or collect from a child under 13 personally identifiable information that is not reasonably necessary for that child to participate in any given activity online.
Collected Information
ROBLOX uses a software technology called “cookies.” Cookies are small text files that we place in visitors’ computer browsers to store their preferences. These cookies do not store personally identifiable information. For account security purposes, we may store a cookie that contains the encrypted user password; the original password cannot be recovered by hackers. Users who disable cookies in their browsers will not be able to logon to the ROBLOX website or play the ROBLOX game.
We also use cookies and “clear gifs” (on-page tracking code) to track user entry onto and movement within the ROBLOX website. This helps us credit advertisers appropriately, and measure the health and effectiveness of our website. For example, we use tracking to determine if new page designs are user friendly or too complicated. Our tracking approach is industry standard, and includes non-personally identifiable information such as IP address, browser type, and date/time.
Additionally, when visitors come to our site, we automatically collect some non-personally identifiable “computer” information, such as the type of computer operating system (e.g., Windows 95 or Mac OS), the web browser (e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer) being used, IP address, and information regarding the Internet service provider. This information is used to provide technical and community support.
We also collect performance data from within ROBLOX Studio or the ROBLOX Player. We use this data retrospectively to improve the user experience of our games. This information includes in-game networking activity, CPU load, and resource usage, among other relevant data.
Some of our business partners (e.g., advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies. This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by ROBLOX (www.roblox.com) only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
Information Sharing
We pass user billing information on to our transaction processing partners. This is done for non-anonymous payment types, including credit card, Pay by Phone, and PayPal payments. For recurring monthly transactions, PayPal retains the credit card authorization on file, but we do not.
We share aggregate web activity data, such as page views and unique visitor counts, with our advertising partners. No personally identifiable information is shared.
We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site.
To the extent permitted by applicable law, we also may disclose personally identifiable information in response to a law enforcement agency's or other public agency's (including schools or children services) request or if we feel that such disclosure may prevent the instigation of a crime, facilitate an investigation related to public safety or protect the safety of a child using our website, protect the security or integrity of our website, or enable us to take precautions against liability.
We will not use or transfer personally identifiable information in ways that are materially different from the ones described above without also providing parental notification of such practices and obtaining consent for any materially different uses.
Security & Privacy
The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card number) on our registration or order forms, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).
We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If you use a bulletin board, blog, or chat room on this Web site, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums.
Options for Parents
Parents can set up a parental control panel to manage the privacy settings of their children. If a child enters a parent’s email address during signup, the parent receives an email notification of the account creation and an invitation to establish a control panel for that account. Parents can also create a control panel at any time by creating a parent account and attaching it to their child’s existing account.
A parent receiving a verification email has three options. First, the parent can choose not to respond; in this case, the child remains in Menu Chat Mode. Second, the parent can choose to click the link in the email and review the settings; in this case, the child may be opted-in to free (but filtered) text communications, including free-text chat and personal messaging (site limited), forum posts, and site commentary. Third, the parent can choose to click the link in the email and then create a parental control account; in this case, the parent can set fine-grained security and privacy options.
Parents can close a child’s account by contacting ROBLOX customer service (see below). This hides the account from all other ROBLOX users and outside parties. The account data is not deleted, but retained internally for three purposes. Billing information and transaction histories are retained to resolve subsequent billing disputes and inquiries. Public domain content is retained for use by the community – e.g. a virtual shirt sold by the child to another user is kept in the system because the recipient now “owns” a copy of that article. Finally, user account history is retained to support subsequent customer service inquiries. All retained data for a closed account is private and visible only to employees.
We may store the date of birth of your child and graduate a player to have more Web site access once they turn 13. We will notify the parent once their child has reached 13 and may prompt the child to then provide us with their email address the next time they sign into their account. If your child opts-in to receive our monthly newsletter we will send you a notice (to the email address your child provides for you). We will only collect your child’s email address for the sole purpose of sending them the newsletter.
Updating/Accessing/Amending/Correcting Personally Identifiable Information
If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may correct, update, amend, or deactivate it by making the change on our member information page (or by emailing our Customer Support at info@roblox.com) or by contacting us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed below.
TRUSTe Children’s Online Privacy Seal Program
ROBLOX has been awarded TRUSTe's Children’s Privacy Seal signifying that this privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with TRUSTe's program requirements including transparency, accountability and choice regarding the collection and use of your personal information. The TRUSTe program only covers the site www.roblox.com and does not cover information that may be collected through downloadable software. TRUSTe's mission, as an independent third party, is to accelerate online trust among consumers and organizations globally through its leading privacy trustmark and innovative trust solutions.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact the ROBLOX Privacy Manager at (888) 858-BLOX. If you are not satisfied with our response you can contact TRUSTe here.
Privacy Policy Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to how we use Personal Information regarding parents. We will notify by email in order to obtain permission from parents for the new uses of the child’s Personal Information.
Contact Information
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding our privacy policy and/or practices, please contact us at the following e-mail address, telephone number, or address:
ROBLOX Privacy Manager
(888) 858-BLOX
info@roblox.com
PO Box 1265
San Mateo, CA 94401
Glossary of Terms
Privacy
Private Play Mode – users in this mode cannot free-chat, send or receive personal messages to or from other users, post to forums, or edit any free-text field
Communications
Personal Messaging – user-to-user and ROBLOX-to-user messaging inside the ROBLOX website
In-Game Chat – user-to-user messaging inside the ROBLOX game client
Forums – user and staff collaborative help and interest forums
Wiki – user and staff collaborative help and tutorial pages
Moderation
Text Filtering – all user-generated text is pre-filtered for inappropriate content
Text Filtering Black List – list of inappropriate keywords and word patterns
Image Moderation – all images are pre-filtered by human moderators
Abuse Reports – all users and content can be reported for abuse or inappropriateness
Relevant Dates
Effective Date – December 13, 2011
Last Updated – December 13, 2011
