Privacy Policy
March 2010
Scholarships.com recognizes that your privacy is important. To demonstrate our firm
commitment to your privacy and to explain the types of information we obtain about
visitors to our website, how that information is obtained and used, and how visitors
can restrict its use or disclosure, we have created the Privacy Policy below. The
following discusses our information gathering and dissemination practices at Scholarships.com.
Information We Receive and How It Is Used
All personal information obtained by Scholarships.com about individual visitors
to our website is information supplied voluntarily by that visitor. Our website's
personal profile questionnaire requires users to volunteer contact information such
as name and address, and demographic information such as age and income level. We
ask if we may make that information available to our select list of marketing partners,
which are reputable, leading companies and organizations that provide products and
services of interest to students and parents. Our users choose whether to opt-in
or opt-out of sharing their information with these partners.
When Scholarships.com shares your personal information with a third party as described
in this Privacy Policy, your personal information will become permanently subject
to the information use and sharing practices of the third party. That third party
will not be restricted by this Privacy Policy with respect to its use and further
sharing of your personal information. If you agree to receive communications from
our marketing partners and later change your mind, you may need to contact those
companies directly. Any updates you wish to make to the information they possess
must also be forwarded to the company communicating with you at that point in time.
Users may make changes to the information in their personal profile at Scholarships.com
at any time by logging-in to the website and entering the email address and password
they submitted when creating their profile. After users have logged-in, they will
be taken to their Scholarship Search Results. In the tabbed navigation at the top
of the page, users will find a link to "Profile". By clicking on that tab, users
will be taken to a summary of their information, divided into sections. An "Edit
This Section" option in the upper-right corner of each section allows users to modify
and update their information. To protect the security and integrity of users’ information,
we will take reasonable steps to verify all new profile identities before providing
access. 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 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 our users and visitors by keeping their profile
information private, and expect our marketing partners to do the same. You can feel
confident that your user profile will be protected when you visit Scholarships.com.
We have security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration
of all user information under our control.
Scholarships.com is committed to safeguarding users' privacy on our website. We
require our employees to protect our users and visitors by keeping their profile
information private, and expect our marketing partners to do the same. You can feel
confident that your user profile will be protected when you visit Scholarships.com.
We have security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration
of all user 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 personal information shared with our marketing partners.
Users may change their email preferences by
clicking here. Users may also opt-in or opt-out entirely 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 visitors’ emails,
to send information that a user has requested, or to inform users of new or updated
scholarship awards and financial aid
opportunities. In the event a user contacts Scholarships.com directly via email,
they will not be subject to receive any communication other than a response to that
email such as promotional materials, unless the user specifically requests additional
information.
Collection of Passive Information
To gauge the effectiveness of our website, we collect generic information about
our visitors that is not individually-identifiable. 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 web server, to administer to our website,
or to evaluate and improve our website’s functions and resources. We use cookies
to tell our server that a visitor has initiated a user session; however, they do
not contain individually-identifiable information. Some of our business partners,
such as advertisers, use cookies on our site, but we have no access to, nor control
over, these cookies. This Privacy Policy 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
about individually-identifiable visitors.
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 percent
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 website, 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 those websites.
Collection of Information from Children
In April 2000, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was passed to
regulate 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 children under the age of 13, nor will children under the age of
13 be allowed to register with Scholarships.com.
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 the option to decide whether we may use your information in this manner.
In addition, if we make any material changes to our Privacy Policy that do not affect
user information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice
on our website notifying users of the change. In cases where we post notice of changes,
we may also email users who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying
them of those changes to our privacy practices.
Testimonials
We post user testimonials on our website, all of which are volunteered and none
of which contain individually-identifiable information beyond that user's first
name, last initial, and photograph. Each user is made aware of the purpose of their
supplied testimonial and the fact that it will be published at Scholarships.com.
Users are under no obligation to participate, and we obtain the user's consent prior
to posting this information.
TRUSTe Privacy Program
This Privacy Policy covers www.scholarships.com. The above TRUSTe trustmark confirms
that Scholarships.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an
independent, nonprofit organization with a mission 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 if 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