MyMajors.com Privacy Policy
We at MyMajors, an on-line service owned by Townsend Communications, Inc. (“Townsend”), have created this Privacy Policy to describe our practices regarding information we collect on our web sites, mobile app, applications and other interactive features or services on our Sites that post a link to this Privacy Policy (each, a “Service” and collectively, the “Services”).
California Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance
Because we value your privacy, we have taken the necessary precautions to be in compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. We therefore will not distribute your personal information to outside parties without your consent.
INFORMATION COLLECTION AND USE
1. Registration and Profile Information
When you register with us or choose to participate in one of our features on our Sites or otherwise interact with us, you may be asked or required to provide certain information, which may include Personal Information (which is information that can be used to identify or contact a specific individual, such as your name and email address), account information (such as a password or other information that helps us confirm that it is you accessing your account) and demographic or other information (such as your school, gender, age or birthdate and zip code). We will also collect payment information (typically, credit card account information) if you choose to purchase products or services through the Services. Any information combined with Personal Information will be treated as Personal Information.
We use information about you, including Personal information and the information you provide in your Public Profile to: (1) allow you to participate in features we offer or to provide related customer service, including, without limitation, to respond to your questions, complaints or comments; (2) tailor content recommendations and offers we display to you; (3) process a transaction you initiate; (4) provide you with information, products or services; (5) send you special offers from us, our advertisers, or third-party business partners; (6) process your registration with our Services, including verifying your e-mail address is active and valid; (7) improve the Services and for internal business purposes; (8) contact you with regard to your use of the Services and, in our discretion, changes to our policies; and (9) for purposes disclosed at the time you provide your information or otherwise with your consent. Note that on MyMajors.com, educational organizations, financial providers, counseling educators, and similar third parties will be able to review your Full Profile , if you have opted-in to be contacted by third parties. MyMajors does not share your contact information with those third parties unless you request or agree to that sharing. However, MyMajors may send you information about MyMajors.com program services.
Note about Children: Our services are not intended for, marketed to or available to individuals younger than the age of 13, and individuals younger than the age of 13 should not submit personal information to us.
2. Community Forums, User Content, and Posting Content To Third Party Sites
The Sites may provide you the opportunity to participate and post content publicly in forums and blogs from the MyMajors family of websites, through interactive features and through other communication functionality (“MyMajors Blog”). You may choose, through such features or otherwise, to submit or post photographs, videos, questions, comments, suggestions or other content, (collectively, “User Content”). You may edit or remove information on your profile. You may contact MyMajors to remove information that you have posted publically in forums.
Note that anything you post to a Community Forum or in your Public Profile is public — others will have access to your User Content and may use it or share it with third parties. Information you choose to post or make available in the Community Forums may be viewed, collected and used by others. If you choose to voluntarily disclose Personal Information in your Public Profile or a Community Forum, that information will be considered public information and the protections of this Privacy Policy will not apply. Think carefully before you post and use caution before publicly disclosing any Personal Information.
In addition, an educator at your institution may have access to your personal information about academic advising. We allow other users to use contact information they have about you, such as your email address, to find you, including through contact importers and search, and they may also contact you through the Services of MyMajors.
3. Information Third Parties Provide About You And Social Media Platforms
Third parties may provide us with information about you. For example, if you are on a third party web site, and you opt-in to receive information from us, that third party will forward information about you to us so that we may contact you as requested. You may also choose to participate in a third party application or feature through our Services (such as logging in through Facebook Connect or otherwise linking the Services with another web site or interactive service) or on a third party web site or service (such as one of our Facebook applications or a similar application or feature on a third party web site or service) through which you allow us to collect (or the third party to share) information about you, including personal information. When you choose to participate, you may be opting to link your activity on our Services with that third party web site or service, which may then collect information about your visits to our Services and may publish that activity as you request to your profile or similar feature with that third party (such as if you choose to share your survey results you made on MyMajors.com with your connections on the third party web site). The information we collect is subject to this Privacy Policy. The information collected and stored by the third party remains subject to the third party’s privacy practices, including whether the third party continues to share information with us, the types of information shared, and your choices with regard to what is visible to others on that third party web site and service. The third party may allow you to remove the application or feature, in which case we will no longer collect information about you through the application or feature, but we may retain the information previously collected. In addition, we may receive information about you if other users of a third party web site or service give us access to their profiles and you are one of their “connections” or information about you is otherwise accessible through your “connections” web page, profile page, or similar page on a social networking or other third party web site or interactive service. MyMajors does not store the information in those circumstances.
We also may supplement the information we collect with outside records from third parties in order to provide you with information, services or goods you have requested. We may combine the information we receive from those other sources with information we collect through the Services. In those cases, we will apply this Privacy Policy to the combined information.
4. Referral Features
The Services may offer referral features whereby users may use an email tool to invite friends to use the Services using a one-time email. MyMajors stores this information for the purpose of verification, as well as tracking the success of our referral program. MyMajors will not use those referred email addresses for any other purpose (unless, of course, the referred user comes to a Service and registers as a user, in which case MyMajors may use the email address provided by the referred user in accordance with this Privacy Policy). The referred person may contact us at legal@MyMajors.com to request that we remove this information from our database.
5. Information MyMajors Collects Automatically When You Access The Services
Like other websites and online services, we and our analytics providers and other third party service providers may collect certain “Usage Information” whenever you access and use the Services. Usage Information may include the browser and operating system you are using, the URL or advertisement that referred you to our Services, the search terms you entered into a search engine that lead you to our Services (if applicable), all of the areas within our Services that you visit, and the time of day, among other information. We may use Usage Information for a variety of purposes, including enhancing or otherwise improving the Services and our products and services.
In addition, we automatically collect your IP address or other unique identifier (“Device Identifier”) for any computer, mobile phone or other device (any, a “Device”) you may use to access the Services. A Device Identifier is a number that is automatically assigned to your Device used to access a Service, and our servers identify your Device by its Device Identifier. Some mobile service providers may also provide us or our third party service providers with information regarding the physical location of the Device used to access a Service. Usage Information is generally non-identifying, but if we associate it with you as a specific and identifiable person, we treat it as Personal Information.
Usage Information is collected via tracking technologies, including:
Cookies and Log Files: Like most websites, MyMajors uses cookies and web log files to track usage of our Services. A cookie is a tiny data file which resides on your computer, and which allows MyMajors to recognize you as a user when you return using the same computer and web browser. If your browser settings do not allow cookies, you will not be able to use our Services as fully as intended. Log files are the record of your visits to the Services and include Usage Information. Like the information you enter at registration or in your Public Profile, cookie and log file data is used to customize your experience when you use the Services.
One type of cookie we use, known as a “persistent” cookie, is set once you’ve logged in to your account on the Services. If you do not log out of your account, then the next time you visit, the persistent cookie will allow us to recognize you as an existing user so you will not need to log in before using the Services. Of course, if you are using a public computer or sharing your private computer with others, you should log out of your account after each visit. If you log out of a Service, you will need to re-enter your password the next time you visit in order to log in to your account. We also use a cookie which functions as a “session” cookie, meaning that it is used to identify a particular visit. Session cookies expire after a short time or when you close your web browser.
Web Beacons: We, as well as our affiliate program partners, third-party tracking utility companies, and service providers employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. web beacons/web bugs), that help us better manage content on our site by informing us of what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of web users for our affiliate program. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. This information is used to help improve the overall quality and experience of our website.
An Embedded Script is programming code that is designed to collect information about your interactions with the Services, such as the links you click on. The code is temporarily downloaded onto your computer or other device from our server or a third party service provider and is deactivated or deleted when you disconnect from the Services.
In addition, we may use a variety of other technologies that collect similar information for security and fraud detection purposes.
THIRD PARTY AD NETWORKS AND ANALYTICS PROVIDERS
MyMajors works with network advertisers, ad agencies, third party traffic measurement services and other vendors to serve third party advertisements on and through the Services, to provide us with information regarding traffic on the Services, including the pages viewed and the actions users take when visiting the Services; to serve our advertisements on other web sites, within third party applications, and across the Internet; and to provide us with information regarding the use of the Services and the effectiveness of our advertisements. For example, if you clicked on an advertisement that led you to one of our Services, our service provider(s) may be able to tell us which advertisement you clicked on and where you were viewing the advertisement. In connection with providing analytics and advertisement services, our service providers may collect certain information about your visits to this or other web sites. We do not share Personal Information with these service providers, but they may set and access their own tracking technologies on your Device (including cookies and web beacons) and may otherwise collect or have access to information about you (such as your general interest in higher education and scholarships and Usage Information).
With regard to advertisements, we and our network advertisers may target advertisements for products and services in which you might be interested based on your visits to both the Services and other web sites. Tracking technologies, such as cookies and web beacons, including those set by third party network advertisers, may be used to, among other things, target advertisements, prevent you from seeing the same advertisements too many times, or to conduct research regarding the usefulness of certain advertisements to you. We may share Usage Information about visitors with third party advertising companies, analytics providers and other vendors for similar purposes. We may use a variety of companies to serve advertisements. You may wish to visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp, which provides information regarding the “opt-out” procedures of certain third party ad servers we may use.
This website uses Google AdWords This website uses the Google AdWords remarketing service to advertise on third party websites (including Google) to previous visitors to our site. It could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on our site, for example using the contact form to make an enquiry. This could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page, or a site in the Google Display Network. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to the MyMajors website. Of course, any data collected will be used in accordance with our own privacy policy and Google’s privacy policy.
You can set preferences for how Google advertises to you using the Google Ad Preferences page, and if you want to you can
opt out of interest-based advertising entirely by cookie settings or
permanently using a browser plugin.
MOBILE USE
If you use the Services through a mobile device or our mobile application, your mobile device ID, your mobile carrier, and your physical (GPS) location may be transmitted to MyMajors. You agree that MyMajors may store and use that information for security purposes (for example, for user verification and to ensure that MyMajors’s APIs are being used appropriately) and, if available, for purposes of assisting you in locating nearby stores, schools or other places of interest. MyMajors does not share your location information with third parties except for a location service provider Google Maps. If you wish to no longer allow MyMajors to track your physical locations you may turn this off within your device settings. When you have an interest through the Services, you may be able to opt-in to receiving text messaging reminders from MyMajors and partner third parties and Educational Institutions. If you choose to do so, you must provide to MyMajors your telephone number, which MyMajors or the third party you opt-in to text will store and use to send reminders to you. You may always opt-out by replying “STOP” to one of the text messages received to the number 80802. You also acknowledge and agree that use of the Services through a mobile device may cause data to be displayed on and through your mobile device which may be viewed by your mobile carrier or other access provider.
Texting Help: Text ‘Help’ for help to the number 80802
To Opt-out Instructions: Text ‘Stop’ to stop to the number 80802
Messaging Charges: Msg&Data rates may apply on all text messages sent and received
Age Qualifier: You must be 13 years of age to participate
INFORMATION SHARING
MyMajors does not share your Personal Information with third parties for their marketing purposes without your consent. MyMajors may share non-Personal Information, such as aggregate user statistics, demographic information and Usage Information with third parties, and third parties, including third party advertisers, content providers, and analytics providers, may collect such information when you visit the Services. We also may share your Personal Information with third parties with your consent, as disclosed at the time you provide us with information, and as described below or otherwise in this privacy policy:
1. Educational Institutions. We work with colleges, universities, military organizations, scholarship providers and educational institutions (“Educational Institutions”) to provide targeted recruiting and outreach to some of our members. For Services provided on MyMajors.com, we allow Educational Institutions to review your Full Profile (such as hometown, grade point average, and graduation year), whether or not you have chosen to restrict public access to some of that information. However, we do not share your contact information (email address, postal address or phone number) with these Educational Institutions without your consent and opting to when you register on MyMajors.com, but we may send you information on their behalf. This is a fundamental element of our free Services on MyMajors.com. In addition, you may indicate that you would like to receive additional information from Educational Institutions or other third parties and we will then share your information with those parties so that they may contact you per your request. We are not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of third parties, and, if you later decide that you no longer want to receive communications from a third party, you will need to contact that third party directly.
2. When You Request That We Share Your Information. We may offer opportunities and features through the Services that are brought to you by a third party or that otherwise involve sharing your information with a third party. If you request or agree at that time of registration to have your information shared, your information will be disclosed to that third party (or parties) and will be subject to the privacy policy and practices of that third party. You also may request, sometimes through your use of an interactive feature, a widget or third party application, that we share information about you with a third party and we will typically do so under those circumstances.
3. Service Providers. We will share your Personal Information with third parties to carry out your instructions and to provide specific services to you or to us as part of our Services, but subject to confidentiality obligations which limit their use and disclosure of such information. If you purchase any products or services, our billing partner will receive billing and financial information (e.g., credit card numbers) necessary to process your charges, including your postal and e-mail addresses, depending on your payment method.
4. Administrative and Legal Reasons. We may also disclose your information, including Personal Information, in response to a subpoena or when required by law; to defend our rights; in response to a written request from law enforcement regarding an investigation into criminal activity that may have occurred through or in any way using MyMajors’ Services or property; to provide information to a claimed owner of intellectual property who claims that content you have provided to us infringes on their rights; as part of an investigation into academic integrity; to protect and/or defend any applicable Terms of Use or other policies applicable to the Services; or to protect the personal safety, rights, property or security of any organization or individual. We may also use Device Identifiers, including IP addresses, to identify users, and may do so in cooperation with copyright owners, Internet service providers, wireless service providers or law enforcement agencies in our discretion. These disclosures may be carried out without notice to you.
5. Business Transitions. MyMajors may share Personal Information with its parent, subsidiaries and affiliates, primarily for business and operational purposes. In the event that MyMajors goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, or other corporate change, including, without limitation, during the course of any due diligence process, your information, including Personal Information, will likely be among the assets transferred. This Privacy Policy will become binding upon the new owner of the information until amended.
6. Sweepstakes, Contests and Promotions. We may offer sweepstakes, contests, and other promotions (“Promotion”) that may require registration. By participating in a Promotion, you are agreeing to governing terms, conditions or official rules, which may contain specific requirements of you, including allowing the sponsor(s) of the Promotion to use your name, voice, likeness or other indicia of persona in advertising or marketing associated with the Promotion. If you choose to enter a Promotion, Personal Information may be disclosed to third parties or the public in connection with the administration of such Promotion, including, without limitation, in connection with winner selection, prize fulfillment, and as required by law or permitted by the Promotion’s official rules, such as on a winners list.
UPDATING YOUR ACCOUNT INFORMATION AND CONTROL OVER YOUR PROFILE
You may be able to review the information you provided to us on a Service and make any desired changes to the information, or to the settings for your account on that Service, by logging in to your account for that Service and editing the information. For MyMajors.com, we reserve the right to send you information on our behalf and on behalf of third parties in connection with our providing the Services and therefore, with regard to MyMajors.com, if you no longer want to receive information from us, you will need to close your account for that Service or unsubscribe from the email you receive.
CLOSING YOUR ACCOUNT
If you wish to close your account with MyMajors.com, please send your request to legal@MyMajors.com and we will remove your Personal Information and Public Profile, if applicable, from the active databases. Please send your request using an email account that you have registered with MyMajors under your name. Closing your account on one of our Services does not necessarily mean you have closed your account on another one of our Services, and therefore, you may continue to receive communications from MyMajors in relation to your membership on another Service. For more information about deleting your account visit: http://mymajors.com/blog/index.php/delete-my-mymajors-account/
Even if your account is closed, information may remain in backup records and we may retain certain data if it may be necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse or for legitimate business purposes, such as analysis of aggregated, non-personally-identifiable data, account recovery or if required by law. All retained data will continue to be subject to the terms of the applicable privacy policy for the Service. Also, if you have posted content on or through the Services, such as in Community Forums, we may not be able to delete it.
THIRD PARTY CONTENT, LINKS TO OTHER SITES, AND MYMAJORS CONTENT FOUND OUTSIDE OF THE SITE
Certain content provided through the Services may be hosted and served by third parties, which may include third party widgets (such as those that allow you to “like” or “share” content with third party web sites and online services. In addition, the Services may link to third party web sites or content over which MyMajors has no control and which are governed by the privacy policies and business practices of those third parties. In addition, third-party partners of MyMajors from whom your order through the Services may have different privacy policies which apply to such partner’s use of your information.
Please also note that MyMajors content and widgets may be included on web pages and web sites that are not associated with us and over which we have no control. These third parties may independently collect data. MyMajors is not responsible for the privacy practices or business practices of any third party.
SECURITY
MyMajors takes commercially reasonable security measures 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, as in any real-life scenario, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
CONSENT TO TRANSFER
The Services are operated in the United States. If you are located outside of the United States, please be aware that information we collect will be transferred to and processed in the United States. By using the Services, or providing us with any information, you fully understand and unambiguously consent to this transfer, processing and storage of your information in the United States, a jurisdiction in which the privacy laws may not be as comprehensive as those in the country where you reside and/or are a citizen.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
MyMajors may update this Privacy Policy at any time and any changes will be effective upon posting so please review it frequently. In the event that there are material changes to the way we treat your Personal Information, we will display a notice on the Sites or through the Services. We may also notify you by email. However, we will use your Personal Information in a manner consistent with the Privacy Policy in effect at the time you submitted the information, unless you consent to the new or revised policy.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
If you have questions or comments about this privacy policy, please email us at legal@MyMajors.com or contact us at:
MyMajors
Attn: Privacy Policy Issues
20 E Gregory Blvd
Kansas City, MO 64114
(816) 361-0616
(816) 276-6800 (fax)