Privacy Policy
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. During registration, a user is required to provide certain categories of information, such as name, address, email address, a password, date of birth, gender and country of citizenship. In addition, a user may choose to provide other categories of information, such as career objectives, health or disability information, hobbies and other interests. Scholarships.com encourages its users to provide all of these fields of information so that users may maximize the effectiveness of the scholarship and college search. We ask if we may make that information available to our select list of marketing partners, which are reputable 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.
Regardless of your decision regarding the sharing of your personal information, we reserve the right to share aggregated demographic data and related usage information with our business partners. Such aggregate information will not contain any personal information that can identify any individual user.
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. Please allow up to seven business days for these changes
to take effect.
Scholarships.com may use your contact information periodically in order to send you email regarding updates at the Scholarships.com site, such as Scholarships.com opportunities and additional listings which may be of interest to you. The frequency of these messages will vary depending upon your profile, including the types of scholarships and other activities you have indicated an interest in. If you specifically provide Scholarships.com with permission at the time of registration, you may also receive commercial emails. Please note that email messages from third parties are not governed by the opt-out provisions of this Privacy Policy.
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 sites. Please be aware that Scholarships.com does not exercise control over the information, products, services or policies of third party companies accessible through our site. This Privacy Policy applies solely to the information collected by this site.
Collection of Information from Children
Scholarships.com abides by federal law and the guidelines set up by the Federal Trade Commission regarding youth privacy. 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.
In the event that Scholarships.com sells, signs or transfers some or all of its business to a successor or acquirer, Scholarships.com may sell, assign or transfer all of your information, regardless of your opt status, to such successor or acquirer.
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.
Acceptance of Terms/Changes to Privacy Policy
Your use of this site indicated an acceptance of the terms of the Privacy Policy. Scholarships.com reserves the right to update or amend this Privacy Policy from time to time without notice to users other than posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. After posting such amended Privacy Policy, all information provided to us will be subject to the terms of the amended Privacy Policy. Please visit this page periodically so that you will be apprised of any changes.
Other
In the event that Scholarships.com sells, signs or transfers some or all of its business to a successor or acquirer, Scholarships.com may sell, assign or transfer all of your information, regardless of your opt status, to such successor or acquirer.
Participation in the TRUSTe Privacy Program
Scholarships.com has been awarded TRUSTe’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. 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
430 Park Avenue, Suite 3A
Highland Park, IL 60035