© 2026 General Mills Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Effective Date: June 2021
Box Tops for Education, together with its owner, General Mills, Inc. and its affiliates (collectively referred to below as “General Mills,” “we,” “us,” and “our”) knows that maintaining your trust requires that we protect your privacy – so we are very sensitive to the privacy concerns of those who use our websites, our pages and applications on third-party social media platforms, our emails, and our mobile applications (collectively, our "Sites").
This Privacy Policy explains our information practices and the choices that you, as a user of this Site, can make about the collection and use of your information.
Please note that some of our programs are subject to separate terms of use and privacy policies. Where another program links to a different privacy policy, the privacy policy in the link will govern that program. Please read and review each applicable privacy policy carefully.
We may collect information about you (and the computer or device you use to access our Sites) in a variety of ways:
More detail on each of these is immediately below.
When you participate in our offers, programs, or Site features (or otherwise communicate with us), you may directly provide us with information, including (but not limited to) the following:
If you choose to access or make use of third-party social media platforms (such as Facebook or Twitter), we may receive personal information about you that you have made available to those services, including information about your contacts on those services. For example, some social media platforms allow you to push content from our Site to your contacts or to pull information about your contacts so you can connect with them on our Site. Some social media platforms also will facilitate your registration or log-in for our Site or enhance or personalize your experience on our Site. Your decision to use a social media platform will always be voluntary. However, you should make sure you are comfortable with the information social media platforms may make available to our Site by carefully reading and reviewing those platforms’ privacy policies.
When you visit or use our Sites, or when you view our online ads elsewhere, we may use cookies or other technologies (including pixels, tags, and web beacons) to collect information about your computer or device, and your internet or other electronic network activity.
The following are examples of the types of information we may collect in this way:
We may obtain information about you, even if we don't have a direct relationship with you, from other sources, such as public databases, other brands and groups within General Mills, retailers, data aggregators, and other commercially available sources. This information may include:
Please note that parts or all of the information we collect or obtain may be combined or linked (by us or by third parties providing services to us) for any of the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to help us customize how we communicate with you and to improve our products, services, and marketing efforts.
We use the information we collect (in combination with other information we or third-party service providers may have) to communicate with you regarding our products, services, and promotions, to provide you with other information, services, products, or other materials you request, to customize your interactive experience (including by providing you with relevant advertising on our Site and elsewhere), and/or to manage and improve our sites, products, and service offerings.
Some specific ways that we may use this information are as follows:
Even if the primary reason for collecting your information may be for a specific purpose, such as creating your account or registering you for a promotion, we may use the information for any of the other ways described in this section as well, including by sharing the information as permitted by law for the use of our family of brands, businesses, and affiliated companies.
We may share the information we collect with the following types of entities for business purposes:
When we disclose data for business purposes as discussed above, we disclose the following categories of data: all categories of data listed in the first section of this Policy above, under the heading "Information we collect from you, from your device, or from others," including the subsections entitled "Information you directly provide," "Information from social media platforms," "Information we gather from your device when you visit our Sites or when you view our online ads," and "Information we may obtain from other sources."
Some of the content, advertising, and functionality on our Site may be provided by third parties that are not affiliated with us. For example:
These third parties may collect or receive certain information about your use of the Site, including by using cookies and other technologies, and this information may be collected over time and combined with information collected across different websites and online services.
One of the third parties that provides services on our Site is Google Inc. Like many websites, we use Google Analytics, a service that provides information about how many users visit our Site, when they visit, and how they navigate the Site once they are here. Google offers a browser add-on that enables users to opt-out of having data about their visits reported to websites by Google Analytics. More information about the add-on is here.
We also may use other Google Analytics tools, such as Demographics and Interest Reporting, which enables us to learn more about the characteristics and interests of the users who visit our Site, and Remarketing with Google Analytics, which enables us to provide relevant advertising on different websites and online services. You can opt out of having your data used for these additional Google Analytics tools by visiting this page and opting out of ads provided by Google.
We are committed to keeping your online transactions safe and secure. We have put procedures in place to safeguard other information we collect from you. Please note, however, that we cannot absolutely guarantee the security of any information you provide online; you provide it at your own risk.
Our Site may contain links to the sites of our affiliates, and to sites that are owned and operated by third parties. These other sites may have their own privacy policies and are not governed by this Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices, security protections, or the content of sites owned and operated by third parties. Other sites may collect and treat information collected differently, so we encourage you to carefully read and review the privacy policy for each site you visit.
Our Site may, from time to time, contain interactive areas where Site users might submit comments or other content (including information about the user that might be displayed in the user's public profile within an online community) that may be visible to others. Users should be aware that when they voluntarily disclose personal identifiers (e.g., name, email address, etc.) or other personal information in content submitted for posting or publication, the information can be read and used by others. This may result in unsolicited messages from other posters or parties. We make no representations and undertake no obligations as to the security or use of information you voluntarily include when submitting content.
This Site may, from time to time, include a share-with-a-friend application that makes it easy for you to forward information or materials from our Site to friends or family by email. In order to address your email message, the application may ask you to input the recipient’s email address and/or similar information (including your email address). This information is used by the application to address your message so that it can be properly sent. We may temporarily maintain a log of this information for troubleshooting and fraud-prevention purposes. In the event that we are offering you some form of referral award for encouraging an action on the part of the recipient (for example, if you are to earn a reward if the recipient chooses to register for one of our offerings after receiving the email from you), we may also retain the information as necessary to establish that the referral award was earned.
Some web browsers may transmit "do-not-track" signals to the websites and other online services with which a user communicates. There is no standard that governs what, if anything, websites should do when they receive these signals. General Mills currently does not take action in response to these signals. If and when a standard is established and accepted, General Mills may revisit its policy on responding to these signals.
This Site is not directed to children and we will not request any information from children under 13 at this Site. General Mills does have other sites that are geared in whole or in part to a child audience. Our commitment to the privacy of children is described more fully in the privacy policies of those sites. General Mills and its affiliated companies take special care to protect the privacy of children under the age of 13. We have developed our child privacy practices to comply with Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 ("COPPA") as well as the guidelines established by the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU). We also recommend that parents monitor their children's Internet activities and learn and employ software or other tools that can help their children enjoy the fun and entertainment of an online experience without compromising their personal safety or allowing them to use the Internet in a manner inconsistent with their parents’ preferences.
This Site is intended for use by residents of the United States of America only. All matters relating to this Site are governed by the laws of the United States. If you are located outside of the United States and you contact us, please be advised that any information you provide to us will be transferred to the United States and that by submitting information you explicitly authorize this transfer and the processing of this information within the United States.
We may change or replace this Privacy Policy at our sole discretion at any time. Please check back from time to time to ensure that you are aware of any updates or changes in this Privacy Policy. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information collected by or through any Site that displays an authorized link to this Privacy Policy.
You always have the right to review and update the information that you previously provided to us at this Site. You may contact us as described in the "How to contact us and how to exercise your privacy rights" section below in order to arrange this or to ask us to remove you from our list of email addresses to which we send email newsletters. All of our email newsletters also contain an "unsubscribe" link that you can click through to unsubscribe from future email newsletters from that General Mills brand or group. Depending on the laws of your jurisdiction, you may also be entitled to request further transparency about our data processing practices, or access to, or deletion of, the personal information we collect about you. Requests should be submitted to us as described in the "How to contact us and how to exercise your privacy rights" section below. Once we receive your request, we may verify it by requesting information sufficient to confirm your identity. If you would like to use an agent to exercise your rights and that is authorized by the relevant laws, we may request evidence that you have provided such agent with power of attorney or that the agent otherwise has valid written authority to submit requests to exercise rights on your behalf. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights or choices, although some of the functionality and features available on the Sites may change or no longer be available to you. Any difference in the Sites will be related to the value of the information that is no longer available to us or usable by us.
Box Tops for Education does not sell any of the information you provide to us. For example, we do not sell your purchasing information on the receipt you scan to us, nor do we sell your name, email address, school information, etc.
As described in detail in the "Cookie Policy" section of this Privacy Policy below, third parties use a variety of cookies and similar technologies (referred to collectively below as “cookies” for simplicity) to collect information on our Sites for the business purposes described above, including providing analytics services to us and providing advertising on our Sites and elsewhere (so-called "online behavioral advertising"). Because some commentators believe that allowing third parties to collect information through these technologies (for advertising purposes) should be viewed as a “sale” of information, we offer you the opportunity to opt out of this activity by visiting the Cookie Preference Center found on each of our Sites. To access the Cookie Preference Center, click on the "Customize Cookie Settings" link found at the bottom of each Site (near the Privacy Policy link). Once in the Preference Center, you will be able to make choices about a variety of cookies, including third-party targeted advertising cookies and, where applicable, other cookies that we (or third parties) may use on that Site. Certain of our own Sites may also directly contain targeted advertisements. These are served to you by Google. Please click here if you want to restrict Google from using information it obtains through serving targeted advertisements on those Sites.
If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please Contact Us. You may also reach us by telephone at 1-800-248-7310 weekdays from 7:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Central Time. If you would like to exercise any legal rights you may have to access, delete, or otherwise address your personal information, please click here or, alternatively, you can reach us by telephone at the phone number and times listed in the previous sentence. For any questions or inquiries directly related to the Box Tops program, please Contact Us through this form as we only offer email support at this time.
We (and third parties that provide content, advertising, or functionality on our Site) may use cookies and other technologies to facilitate Site administration and navigation, to better understand and improve our Site, to determine and improve the advertising shown to you here or elsewhere, and to provide you with a rich online experience. We provide more details about these technologies below.
A cookie is a tiny file that is stored on your device. It contains a unique identifier, as well as the address and other information about the site you are visiting. Some cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around our Site and use its features, such as accessing secured areas. Other cookies collect information about how visitors use the Site (for instance, which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages). When combined with information collected when you register on a website, cookies allow us to welcome you back to the site or otherwise provide enhanced, more personal features. Cookies may also be used on our behalf by third parties managing our advertising on other websites to enable us to learn which advertisements bring visitors to our Sites and to otherwise improve or target our online advertising. Most browsers accept cookies automatically but can be configured not to do so or to notify the user when a cookie is being sent. If you wish to disable cookies, refer to your browser help menu to learn how to disable cookies. Please note that if you disable cookies, you may be unable to access some customized features on our Site.
A variety of other tracking technologies, like web beacons, pixels, and tags, are also used. These are small strings of code that are placed on a web page, email, or advertisement. When you access a page containing one of these technologies, you establish a communication with a web server, which collects certain information about your computer or device. This information may include your IP address, browser type, operating system type, and identifiers that have been stored in cookies. We (and third parties) may use these technologies to count the number of visitors to our Sites and to recognize users by accessing unique identifiers stored in cookies that we have set on their computers or devices. Being able to access these identifiers enables us to provide a personalized experience on our Sites. We may also include technologies like these in advertisements or in email messages to determine how these are acted on.
For purposes of the balance of this "Cookie Policy," we will include all of these technologies within the generic term "cookies."
As mentioned in the previous paragraphs, cookies are used for different purposes. Some cookies are "set" (delivered to your browser) by us. These are called "first party cookies." Others, called "third party cookies" are set by third parties who are given access to do so on our Site. We are proud to offer you multiple ways to make choices about accepting or rejecting some of these cookies. The primary way to do this is by accessing the Cookie Preference Center that we have established for each of our Sites (which you can access by clicking the "Customize Cookie Settings" link found in the bottom footer of each Site, near the link to the Privacy Policy). Within the Cookie Preference Center, you will find descriptions of each category of cookie (similar to those immediately below), and then you will be able to choose to reject certain categories of cookies, should you wish to do so (except that you cannot choose to opt out of receiving cookies falling within the "strictly necessary" category, because our Site will not function properly without these).
Cookies on our Sites fall into the following categories:
With respect to this final category of cookies described above (targeting cookies), we offer a second means of opting out of these cookies – beyond our Cookie Preference Center. The Cookie Preference Center relates to the cookies that are set on our Site but does not affect the rest of the online world. There is also an industry-wide opt out program for targeting cookies that you can access by clicking here. Through this latter program, you can opt out of receiving targeting cookies from a broad array of third parties on any site, not just ours. Please be aware, though, that this opt-out process is itself cookie-based. In other words, if you opt out, a cookie is placed on your browser that informs these third parties that they are not to use cookies with you for targeted advertising. As a result, if you subsequently clear cookies from your browser (as many people do periodically), your opt out will be lost until you reinstate it.