degreehound privacy policy
DegreeHound.com recognizes your expectation of privacy and security, and we greatly respect your privacy concerns. Your security and the security of your personal information is a top priority for DegreeHound.com. This privacy policy applies to the information you submit on the www.DegreeHound.com (“DegreeHound.com”) websites, and outlines how we gather information and how DegreeHound.com maintains your private data to ensure our goal of satisfied and trusted users. This Privacy Policy does not apply to websites maintained by other partners or companies that we link to or that we work with – for information on other partners’ policies; please refer to their own privacy policies. If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, you may contact DegreeHound.com at customercare@DegreeHound.com.
By participating in the Council of Better Business Bureau's BBBOnLine® Reliability Program, we have made a commitment to meet the program's strict requirements regarding how we treat your information and have our practices reviewed by BBBOnLine.
DegreeHound.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build user’s trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the site www.DegreeHound.com. Because this Web site 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.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact DegreeHound.com Customer Care at customercare@DegreeHound.com. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php. TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns.
Information Collection
In order to operate the DegreeHound.com services and to provide to you the valuable services that you request through this website, Bills.com LLC, d/b/a DegreeHound ("DegreeHound.com" or "we") must ask you to provide us with information about yourself.
The information we collect may be from the following sources:
•Information provided by you in connection with obtaining information on school programs that you have requested; this may include, but not limited to, the following: full name, address, city, state, zip code, work phone, home phone, email address, degree level, military affiliation, and citizenship status.
•Information you provide us when you register (such as your email address).
Information Sharing, Use and Disclosure
If you apply for any services offered through the DegreeHound.com website that are provided or fulfilled by third parties, those third parties will have their own privacy policies governing the use of the information that you have requested for DegreeHound.com to provide or transfer to them. You authorize DegreeHound.com to exchange the information you provide in the application forms with the third party service providers. These third-parties are prohibited from using this information for any other purposes, including marketing other offers directly to you.
When you register on our sites you will have the opportunity to opt to receive special offers from trusted third parties. If your preferences should change, please contact us at customercare@DegreeHound.com.
We do not share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies who are not agents or service providers except to provide products or services you have requested or under the following circumstances:
•Products or Service Requests on www.DegreeHound.com - If you submit a request for information, or a product or service on our site we will share the personal information contained in your request form such as your full name, telephone number and email address with our service providers to process and fulfill your request. For example, when you go to the education program request form at https://www.DegreeHound.com/apply , the information that you submit will be shared with our service providers to provide you with information on a degree or school program. Our service providers will contact you by telephone, email, or mail based on the information you provided to us, even if you have opted into the National Do Not Call List administered by the Federal Trade Commission, any state equivalent Do Not Call List, or the Do Not Call List of an internal company. If one of our service providers contacts you by telephone and you wish not to be contacted again by that service provider with respect to your inquiry, then you should specifically make a request to that service provider not to contact you again.
•As Permitted by Law - We may be required to share your personal information with law enforcement or government agencies in response to subpoenas, court orders, federal/state audits or similar circumstances. We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of DegreeHound.com's Terms of Use, or as otherwise required by law.
•Business Transfer - As with any other business, it is possible that DegreeHound.com in the future could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition occurs, the successor company would have access to the information maintained by DegreeHound.com, including customer account information, but would continue to be bound by this privacy Policy unless you consent otherwise.
Advertisements & Pop Up Windows
On occasion, you may receive advertisements for DegreeHound.com from third parties. For instance, when visiting a third party website, you may receive a "pop up" window advertising DegreeHound.com. Please note that such advertisements are served by the third party website that you have visited and are not controlled by DegreeHound.com. In addition, such advertisements may be placed by third party ad servers or ad networks. We maintain relationships with a number of the third party ad networks currently operating.
Newsletter
You may sign up to receive our newsletter that is sent via email on the home page and also on various pages on the site. If you decide you no longer wish to receive our newsletter, you may unsubscribe using the “unsubscribe” link on each email. If you have any problems, please contact us at customercare@DegreeHound.com.
Anti-Spam Policy
You will not receive DegreeHound.com email communications unless you submit your email address to us. Additionally, you may also receive emails that advertise DegreeHound.com's services from third party publishers. We have established firm ground rules for dealing with any third party email services to ensure that advertisements for DegreeHound.com are not sent out through a "Spam" mailing -- ensuring that our offers are sent only to those individuals who have given their permission to the third party email service to receive email communications. If any third party email publisher refuses to abide by DegreeHound.com's anti-Spam policy, we will not use that publisher's services. If you want to stop receiving emails from a third party, you should follow the opt-out instructions included in the third party email so that you will not be included in any future mailings. An "unsubscribe" link should appear within or at the top or bottom of the email you received. However if for any reason it does not work, please bring that to our attention by emailing us at customercare@DegreeHound.com.
Testimonials
If you submit a testimonial to us, we will ask for your permission to post your testimonial prior to posting on the Web site. We will post your name as given to us in your testimonial. We may post a photo of you or use a stock photo. Please be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit as a testimonial to be posted can be read, collected, or used by the general public, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit to us as a testimonial. If you would like to your testimonial removed at any time, please contact us at customercare@DegreeHound.com
Log Files
As is true of most Web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data. We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We do not link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information. IP addresses are tied to personally identifiable information to help us remember your information during your visit to the DegreeHound.com Web sites. We use an internal program that uses log files to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors (what pages were visited, for how long and in what order) to our site in the aggregate to assist us in analyzing user behavior and to improve the layout of the website to make it easier to use.
Tracking and Web Beacons
We utilize session variables to 1) help us manage our online advertising efforts by tracking where consumers come from and 2) remember what forms a consumer has already completed so that they won’t need to complete the same form twice. The session variables are attached to each user who begins to complete one of our forms (session variables are not attached to a site visitor who does not initiate a form) and let us know whether or not a consumer has completed a form on our site; these completions or non-completions are then attributed to our various advertising campaigns, which then tell us whether or not these campaigns are successful. The variables are stored along with a consumer’s personally identifiable information, and are used solely for the purposes outlined above. The variables expire when either, the customer leaves the site, or after twenty minutes, whichever comes first. We allow some of our business partners to use cookies and clear GIFs on this site, allowing them to track a successful completion of a form when a user visits this site. The information collected through this technology is not personally identifiable. 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. 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.
Cookies and IP Addresses
To serve you faster and with better quality, we use "cookies" technology. "Cookies" are small files of data that reside on your computer and allow us to recognize you as a DegreeHound.com customer if you return to the DegreeHound.com site using the same computer and browser. We send a "session cookie" to your computer if and when you enter personal information on the DegreeHound.com site. These cookies allow us to recognize you if you visit multiple pages in our site during the same session, so that you don't need to re-enter your personal information multiple times. Once you log out or close your browser, these session cookies expire and no longer have any effect. Cookies are not tied to personally identifiable information. Some of our business partners (e.g., advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies. See “Third Party Links.”
Confidentiality and Security
The security of your personal information is very important at DegreeHound.com and we take a number of steps to safeguard it. For example:
• We limit access to personal information to those employees or agents who assist us in providing requested products and services to you. Employees are required to comply with our strict policies and procedures regarding the handling of your personal information. Employees who violate these policies are subject to our normal disciplinary process.
• We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard personal information about you.
• We use industry standard data encryption technologies when transferring and receiving consumer data on the DegreeHound.com website.
• We have partnered with VeriSign to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we collect from you.
Opting-Out
If you do not want us to share your information with our partners, do not submit your information on the loan request or other forms on our Web site. Information submitted on our site is shared with our trusted third parties, in order to provide you with the specific services or information that you requested. If you no longer wish to receive communications from these third parties, please contact them directly. Third party advertisers that maintain their own mailing lists may send communications that advertise our services, and you may need to contact these parties directly in order to stop receiving their email communications. You may not opt-out from receiving critical services update emails. If have signed up to receive our newsletter, you may unsubscribe by clicking on the link within each email sent to you.
Third Party Links
This Privacy Policy applies to all information that you provide to DegreeHound.com. However, when you visit websites to which DegreeHound.com provides a link, keep in mind you will be interacting with a third party that operates under its own terms and conditions and/or privacy policies. If you choose to obtain certain services through a third party site, the data collected by the third party is governed by that third party's terms and conditions and/or privacy policy. A third party site will also have its own policy regarding the use of cookies and clear gifs. We encourage you to review the terms and conditions and privacy policies of third parties from whom you request services and share personally identifiable information.
A Special Note about Children's Privacy
You must be at least 18 years old to use this website. We do not knowingly collect, use or disclose personal information about visitors under 18 years of age. If you are under 18 years of age, you can use the services offered on our website only in conjunction with your parents or guardians. Please see our Terms of Use for more information.
Updating Your Information
If you want to access or update the personal information you submitted to DegreeHound.com, please contact DegreeHound.com Customer Care. In the alternative, you can write us at the address below and request that your personal information be updated or call the number below.
Questions and Suggestions
If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, you may contact us by email at customercare@DegreeHound.com
Or by sending a letter to DegreeHound.com:
Attn: Bills.com/ DegreeHound.com Customer Care
1875 South Grant Street
San Mateo, CA 94402
866-639-8507
Changes to this Privacy Policy
DegreeHound.com may update or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. If there are material changes to this Privacy Policy or in how DegreeHound.com will use your personal information, we will post such changes here, via email, or by notice on our home page. You will be notified of any material changes that affect the use of your personal information and asked to opt-in to the new use of your personal information. If you do not agree with the changes to how your information will be used, please do not continue to use this website.
By using this site, you signify your assent to the DegreeHound.com Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use www.DegreeHound.com. We reserve the right to make changes in this policy at any time. Please check the policy each time you use our website to ensure you are aware of any changes in our privacy practices. Our Privacy Policy will indicate the date it was last updated. Your continued use of our site will signify your acceptance of the changes to our Privacy Policy.
By participating in the Council of Better Business Bureau's BBBOnLine® Reliability Program, we have made a commitment to meet the program's strict requirements regarding how we treat your information and have our practices reviewed by BBBOnLine.
DegreeHound.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build user’s trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the site www.DegreeHound.com. Because this Web site 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.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact DegreeHound.com Customer Care at customercare@DegreeHound.com. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php. TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns.
Information Collection
In order to operate the DegreeHound.com services and to provide to you the valuable services that you request through this website, Bills.com LLC, d/b/a DegreeHound ("DegreeHound.com" or "we") must ask you to provide us with information about yourself.
The information we collect may be from the following sources:
•Information provided by you in connection with obtaining information on school programs that you have requested; this may include, but not limited to, the following: full name, address, city, state, zip code, work phone, home phone, email address, degree level, military affiliation, and citizenship status.
•Information you provide us when you register (such as your email address).
Information Sharing, Use and Disclosure
If you apply for any services offered through the DegreeHound.com website that are provided or fulfilled by third parties, those third parties will have their own privacy policies governing the use of the information that you have requested for DegreeHound.com to provide or transfer to them. You authorize DegreeHound.com to exchange the information you provide in the application forms with the third party service providers. These third-parties are prohibited from using this information for any other purposes, including marketing other offers directly to you.
When you register on our sites you will have the opportunity to opt to receive special offers from trusted third parties. If your preferences should change, please contact us at customercare@DegreeHound.com.
We do not share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies who are not agents or service providers except to provide products or services you have requested or under the following circumstances:
•Products or Service Requests on www.DegreeHound.com - If you submit a request for information, or a product or service on our site we will share the personal information contained in your request form such as your full name, telephone number and email address with our service providers to process and fulfill your request. For example, when you go to the education program request form at https://www.DegreeHound.com/apply , the information that you submit will be shared with our service providers to provide you with information on a degree or school program. Our service providers will contact you by telephone, email, or mail based on the information you provided to us, even if you have opted into the National Do Not Call List administered by the Federal Trade Commission, any state equivalent Do Not Call List, or the Do Not Call List of an internal company. If one of our service providers contacts you by telephone and you wish not to be contacted again by that service provider with respect to your inquiry, then you should specifically make a request to that service provider not to contact you again.
•As Permitted by Law - We may be required to share your personal information with law enforcement or government agencies in response to subpoenas, court orders, federal/state audits or similar circumstances. We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of DegreeHound.com's Terms of Use, or as otherwise required by law.
•Business Transfer - As with any other business, it is possible that DegreeHound.com in the future could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition occurs, the successor company would have access to the information maintained by DegreeHound.com, including customer account information, but would continue to be bound by this privacy Policy unless you consent otherwise.
Advertisements & Pop Up Windows
On occasion, you may receive advertisements for DegreeHound.com from third parties. For instance, when visiting a third party website, you may receive a "pop up" window advertising DegreeHound.com. Please note that such advertisements are served by the third party website that you have visited and are not controlled by DegreeHound.com. In addition, such advertisements may be placed by third party ad servers or ad networks. We maintain relationships with a number of the third party ad networks currently operating.
Newsletter
You may sign up to receive our newsletter that is sent via email on the home page and also on various pages on the site. If you decide you no longer wish to receive our newsletter, you may unsubscribe using the “unsubscribe” link on each email. If you have any problems, please contact us at customercare@DegreeHound.com.
Anti-Spam Policy
You will not receive DegreeHound.com email communications unless you submit your email address to us. Additionally, you may also receive emails that advertise DegreeHound.com's services from third party publishers. We have established firm ground rules for dealing with any third party email services to ensure that advertisements for DegreeHound.com are not sent out through a "Spam" mailing -- ensuring that our offers are sent only to those individuals who have given their permission to the third party email service to receive email communications. If any third party email publisher refuses to abide by DegreeHound.com's anti-Spam policy, we will not use that publisher's services. If you want to stop receiving emails from a third party, you should follow the opt-out instructions included in the third party email so that you will not be included in any future mailings. An "unsubscribe" link should appear within or at the top or bottom of the email you received. However if for any reason it does not work, please bring that to our attention by emailing us at customercare@DegreeHound.com.
Testimonials
If you submit a testimonial to us, we will ask for your permission to post your testimonial prior to posting on the Web site. We will post your name as given to us in your testimonial. We may post a photo of you or use a stock photo. Please be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit as a testimonial to be posted can be read, collected, or used by the general public, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit to us as a testimonial. If you would like to your testimonial removed at any time, please contact us at customercare@DegreeHound.com
Log Files
As is true of most Web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data. We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We do not link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information. IP addresses are tied to personally identifiable information to help us remember your information during your visit to the DegreeHound.com Web sites. We use an internal program that uses log files to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors (what pages were visited, for how long and in what order) to our site in the aggregate to assist us in analyzing user behavior and to improve the layout of the website to make it easier to use.
Tracking and Web Beacons
We utilize session variables to 1) help us manage our online advertising efforts by tracking where consumers come from and 2) remember what forms a consumer has already completed so that they won’t need to complete the same form twice. The session variables are attached to each user who begins to complete one of our forms (session variables are not attached to a site visitor who does not initiate a form) and let us know whether or not a consumer has completed a form on our site; these completions or non-completions are then attributed to our various advertising campaigns, which then tell us whether or not these campaigns are successful. The variables are stored along with a consumer’s personally identifiable information, and are used solely for the purposes outlined above. The variables expire when either, the customer leaves the site, or after twenty minutes, whichever comes first. We allow some of our business partners to use cookies and clear GIFs on this site, allowing them to track a successful completion of a form when a user visits this site. The information collected through this technology is not personally identifiable. 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. 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.
Cookies and IP Addresses
To serve you faster and with better quality, we use "cookies" technology. "Cookies" are small files of data that reside on your computer and allow us to recognize you as a DegreeHound.com customer if you return to the DegreeHound.com site using the same computer and browser. We send a "session cookie" to your computer if and when you enter personal information on the DegreeHound.com site. These cookies allow us to recognize you if you visit multiple pages in our site during the same session, so that you don't need to re-enter your personal information multiple times. Once you log out or close your browser, these session cookies expire and no longer have any effect. Cookies are not tied to personally identifiable information. Some of our business partners (e.g., advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies. See “Third Party Links.”
Confidentiality and Security
The security of your personal information is very important at DegreeHound.com and we take a number of steps to safeguard it. For example:
• We limit access to personal information to those employees or agents who assist us in providing requested products and services to you. Employees are required to comply with our strict policies and procedures regarding the handling of your personal information. Employees who violate these policies are subject to our normal disciplinary process.
• We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard personal information about you.
• We use industry standard data encryption technologies when transferring and receiving consumer data on the DegreeHound.com website.
• We have partnered with VeriSign to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we collect from you.
Opting-Out
If you do not want us to share your information with our partners, do not submit your information on the loan request or other forms on our Web site. Information submitted on our site is shared with our trusted third parties, in order to provide you with the specific services or information that you requested. If you no longer wish to receive communications from these third parties, please contact them directly. Third party advertisers that maintain their own mailing lists may send communications that advertise our services, and you may need to contact these parties directly in order to stop receiving their email communications. You may not opt-out from receiving critical services update emails. If have signed up to receive our newsletter, you may unsubscribe by clicking on the link within each email sent to you.
Third Party Links
This Privacy Policy applies to all information that you provide to DegreeHound.com. However, when you visit websites to which DegreeHound.com provides a link, keep in mind you will be interacting with a third party that operates under its own terms and conditions and/or privacy policies. If you choose to obtain certain services through a third party site, the data collected by the third party is governed by that third party's terms and conditions and/or privacy policy. A third party site will also have its own policy regarding the use of cookies and clear gifs. We encourage you to review the terms and conditions and privacy policies of third parties from whom you request services and share personally identifiable information.
A Special Note about Children's Privacy
You must be at least 18 years old to use this website. We do not knowingly collect, use or disclose personal information about visitors under 18 years of age. If you are under 18 years of age, you can use the services offered on our website only in conjunction with your parents or guardians. Please see our Terms of Use for more information.
Updating Your Information
If you want to access or update the personal information you submitted to DegreeHound.com, please contact DegreeHound.com Customer Care. In the alternative, you can write us at the address below and request that your personal information be updated or call the number below.
Questions and Suggestions
If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, you may contact us by email at customercare@DegreeHound.com
Or by sending a letter to DegreeHound.com:
Attn: Bills.com/ DegreeHound.com Customer Care
1875 South Grant Street
San Mateo, CA 94402
866-639-8507
Changes to this Privacy Policy
DegreeHound.com may update or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. If there are material changes to this Privacy Policy or in how DegreeHound.com will use your personal information, we will post such changes here, via email, or by notice on our home page. You will be notified of any material changes that affect the use of your personal information and asked to opt-in to the new use of your personal information. If you do not agree with the changes to how your information will be used, please do not continue to use this website.
By using this site, you signify your assent to the DegreeHound.com Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use www.DegreeHound.com. We reserve the right to make changes in this policy at any time. Please check the policy each time you use our website to ensure you are aware of any changes in our privacy practices. Our Privacy Policy will indicate the date it was last updated. Your continued use of our site will signify your acceptance of the changes to our Privacy Policy.