May 2008
Scholarships.com maintains high
standards for the protection of your privacy over the Internet. Scholarships.com
has created this privacy policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy
and to explain the types of information we obtain about visitors to our website,
how the information is obtained, how it is used, and how visitors can restrict its
use or disclosure. The following discusses our information gathering and dissemination
practices at Scholarships.com.
The only personal information Scholarships.com obtains about individual visitors
to our website is information supplied voluntarily by the visitor. Our website's
personal profile questionnaire requires users to volunteer contact information (name
and address for example), and demographic information (zip code, age, or income
level). We ask if we may make information about you available to our select list
of marketing partners (Opt In/Opt Out). Scholarships.com is very careful in selecting
its marketing partners. We work with reputable, leading companies and organizations
that provide products and services that are useful and of interest to students and
parents. When Scholarships.com shares your personal information with a third party
under any circumstance described in this Privacy Policy, your personal information
will become permanently subject to the information use and sharing practices of
the third party, and the third party will not be restricted by this Privacy Policy
with respect to its use and further sharing of your personal information. If you
initially decide to receive communications from our marketing partners, you may
need to contact and deal with them directly if you later decide that you do not
want to receive their communications or if you would like to change any information
you provided online. In this particular situation, any changes you would like to
make to your personal information must be given directly to the company who is communicating
with you at that point in time. 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 to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order,
or legal process served on our website.
It is the responsibility of the user to make all necessary changes in their profile
to ensure the information they have provided while completing their registration
or conducting a scholarship search remains current.
Users may make changes to the information in their personal profile at any time
by logging in at http://www.scholarships.com and entering the email address and
password they submitted when creating their profile. Once you have logged in, you
will be taken to the "Members’ Area". On that page is a text link to "My Profile".
Click on that link and you will be taken to a summary of your information, divided
into sections. You will see an "Edit This Section" option in the upper-right corner
of each section. Just click the "Edit This Section" link and you will be able to
modify and update your information. To protect the security and integrity of your
information, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before providing
access.
Users of Scholarships.com who wish to terminate their membership at Scholarships.com
may do so at any time by contacting our unsubscribe
department. Please be sure to type "Remove" in the subject field and submit
the email account associated with your profile, along with your password.
Scholarships.com is committed to safeguarding users' privacy on our website. We
require our employees to protect the privacy of information about our users and
visitors and expect our marketing partners to do the same. You can feel confident
that your individually-identifiable information will be protected when you visit
Scholarships.com. We have security measures in place to protect against the loss,
misuse and alteration of the information under our control.
Information Sharing & Email Preferences
Scholarships.com understands the importance of protecting personally-identifiable
information. We will not share, sell, rent or otherwise transfer this information
without the user's permission, and then only in accordance with the terms set forth
in this Privacy Policy. Our website provides users the opportunity to unsubscribe (opt-out)
from receiving email messages from Scholarships.com and its marketing partners or from having their information shared with our marketing partners. Users may
change their email preferences by
clicking here. Users may also opt-out by
clicking here. Please allow up to seven business days for these changes
to take effect.
We may communicate with our users through email to respond to visitor's email, to
send information that a user has requested, or to inform users of new or updated
scholarship awards and financial aid opportunities or additional education financing
information which may be of interest. In the event a user contacts Scholarships.com
via email, they will not be subject to receive any communication other than a response
to the email, unless specifically requested by the user (i.e. the user will not
be defaulted into receiving any secondary/promotional material).
Collection of Passive Information
To gauge the effectiveness of our website, we do collect some non-individually-identifiable
generic information about our visitors. Our web servers automatically recognize
a visitor's IP address, the web page from which a visitor enters our website, which
pages a visitor visits, and how much time a visitor spends on each page. This information
does not reveal a visitor's identity. We aggregate this information and use it to
help diagnose problems with our server, to administer our website, or to evaluate
and improve our website. We use cookies to tell our server that a visitor has initiated
a user session; however, they do not contain any personally identifiable information.
Some of our business partners (e.g., advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have
no access to, nor control over, these cookies. This privacy statement covers the
use of cookies by Scholarships.com only and does not cover the use of cookies by
our business partners.
We may share statistical and demographic information about our website's visitors
with our marketing partners. This information is only provided in the aggregate,
meaning that the information is about our website's visitors as a group and not
individually identifiable visitors.
Security Practices
The security of your personal information is important to us. If you prefer to do
so, you may use our "Secure Socket Layer" or "SSL" by clicking the padlock icon
on our home page prior to entering your information. You can learn more about SSL
by clicking here.
We follow generally-accepted industry standards to protect the personal information
submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, no method
of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure.
Therefore, while we strive to use commercially-acceptable means to protect your
personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can contact our privacy department.
Links to Other Websites
Scholarships.com contains text and banner links to other websites. Scholarships.com
is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of the aforementioned
websites.
Collection of Information from Children
In April 2000, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) became a law
that regulates the gathering of personal data online from children under the age
of 13. Scholarships.com abides by COPPA, and works diligently to ensure compliance
with the law. As such, Scholarships.com will not knowingly collect any personally-identifiable
information from, or allow the registration of, children under the age of 13.
Notification of Changes
If we are going to use your personally identifiable information in a manner materially
different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify you via email.
You will have a choice as to whether we may use your information in this materially
different manner. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices
that do not affect user information already stored in our database, we will post
a prominent notice on our web site notifying users of the change. In some cases
where we post the notice, we will also email users, who have opted to receive communications
from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices.
Testimonials
We post user testimonials on our web site, all of which are volunteered and none
of which contain personally identifiable information beyond said user's first name
and last initial. Each user is made aware of the purpose of their supplied testimonial
and the fact that it will be published at Scholarships.com. The user volunteers
this information and is made aware that they are under no obligation to participate.
We obtain the user's consent prior to posting this information along with, in most
cases, their photograph.
TRUSTe Privacy Program
This privacy statement covers www.scholarships.com. The above TRUSTe trustmark confirms that Scholarships.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe
Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission
is to build users' trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of
fair information practices. Because Scholarships.com wants to demonstrate its commitment
to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its
privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.
By displaying the TRUSTe trustmark, Scholarships.com has agreed to notify you of:
- What personally-identifiable information of yours or third party personally identifiable
information is collected from you through the web site
- The organization collecting the information
- How the information is used
- With whom the information may be shared
- What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of
the information
- The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or
alteration of information under control of Scholarships.com
- How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact
Scholarships.com's privacy department.
. If you do not receive acknowledgment of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been
satisfactorily addressed, you should then contact TRUSTe at
http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php. TRUSTe will then
serve as a liaison with Scholarships.com to resolve your concerns.
Scholarships.com has adopted privacy principles that state our commitment and define
our policy on safeguarding visitor and user privacy when we conduct our business.
Questions regarding this privacy policy statement, the practices of this website,
or your dealings with Scholarships.com should be directed to Scholarships.com's
privacy department. Alternatively, you
may contact us at:
Privacy at Scholarships.com
Scholarships.com, LLC
473 Central Avenue, Suite 6
Highland Park, IL 60035
