Some of you have noticed that I've implemented a new policy for my contests this year.
I recently decided to require entrants to be of age thirteen or older. I don't want to exclude anyone, but there are certain stipulations that I no longer want to deal with when you knowingly gather personal information from someone under the age of thirteen as stated in the The Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule.
There is no way for me to know if you are thirteen or not, but I would hope that you would be honest when signing up for the contests hosted here.
In the last few contests of 2009 that I conducted I asked if entrants where over the age of thirteen in compliance with The Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule, and the majority of the time, there weren't any entrants under the age of thirteen. Which also helped me decide to implement this new policy.
Hopefully this is also going to cut down on a lot of extra work for me. Surprisingly the majority of the winners do not reply to the winner notification email within 72 hours resulting in me having to choose a winner multiple times just to find a person that will reply so I can send out the prize. It's taken months several times and it can be very discouraging.
With my new policy I will be asking for addresses right away so that prizes can be sent out directly. In mentioning this, if your name is drawn and your information is not provided, your entry will be disqualified. This is another reason why I will no longer accept entrants under the age of thirteen, because I am asking for personal information.
If you have any questions or concerns about the new contest policy, please feel free to leave a comment on this post or email me directly.
Thanks for your understanding.