NorthStar Privacy Policy

 


Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Commitment

Your privacy is important to us. NorthStar Education Finance (NEF) has a strong commitment to providing excellent service, including respecting concerns about privacy. Below are the guidelines we use for protecting the information you give us or we obtain when you use this Website. By using this Website, you consent to the data practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with the data practices described in this Privacy Policy, you should not use the Website.

Important Information

Changes to this Privacy Policy: We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time by posting a new version online. This policy is effective when it is posted on the Website.  You should check this page occasionally to review any changes. Your continued use of the Website and/or continued provision of Personal Information to us will be subject to the terms of the then-current Privacy Policy.

Information We Collect

When You Visit our Website: We automatically collect and store Navigational Information from all users, including those with “Do Not Track” signals enabled in their web browsers.  We do not, however, automatically collect Personal Information from your computer when you browse this site.  When you look to access specific resources, we may request that you provide Personal Information.  This means that unless you voluntarily and knowingly provide us with Personal Information, we will not know your name, your email address or any other personally identifiable information about you.

"Personal Information": This refers to any personally identifiable information that you voluntarily submit to us, including contact information, such as your name, e-mail address, company name, address, phone number, and other information about yourself or your business. Personal Information can also include information about any transactions, both free and paid, that you enter into on the Website, and information about you that is available on the internet, such as from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter or publicly available information that we acquire from service providers.

"Navigational Information": This refers to information about your computer and your visits to this Website such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, operating system, referral source, time and length of visit, and pages viewed.  Please refer to the section below on Navigational Information for more details.

How We Use Information We Collect

We Never Sell Personal Information: We will never sell your Personal Information to any third party. NEF will not share information with third parties except to use in connection with the services provided to NEF.  Third parties may not collect, use, share, or store the information except as necessary to provide services requested by NEF.

Use of Personal Information:
In addition to the uses identified elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, we may use your Personal Information to:

We may use third party servicers to assist us with collecting and using Personal and Navigational Information as described in this Policy.  These third parties are not permitted to use or store Personal or Navigational Information for their own purposes and are held to the same security standards that we use to protect your information."

Use of Navigational Information: We use Navigational Information to operate and improve our Website. We may also use Navigational Information to provide you with personalized information about NEF and our products when you visit our Website.  Finally, Navigational Information may be used in combination with Personal Information to send you personalized information about NEF and our products.

Security of your Personal Information: We take strict security precautions to protect your confidential information. We permit only authorized employees who are trained in the proper handling of customer information to have access to confidential customer information.

Compelled Disclosure: We reserve the right to use or disclose your Personal Information if required by law or if we reasonably believe that use or disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or to comply with a law, court order, or legal process.

Navigational Information

Cookies: We use "cookies" to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web server. Cookies are not used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a Web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize pages on our Websites, or register for our blog, a cookie helps us to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. When you return to the same Website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the features that you customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of our Website. We also keep track of the pages you visit within our Website in order to determine what portion of the site is the most popular. This data is used to deliver customized content and promotions to customers whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.

Log Files: We may collect other information such as your computer hardware and software that is automatically collected by us. This information can include: your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times and referring website addresses. This information is used to provide general statistics regarding use of the Website. For these purposes, we do link this automatically-collected data to any Personal Information you have provided, such as name, email address, address, and phone number.

Clear Gifs (Web Beacons/Web Bugs): We employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs).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 or in emails and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We use clear gifs in our HTML-based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. We tie the information gathered by clear gifs in emails to our customers' Personal Information. If you would like to opt-out of these emails, please see "Opting-Out and Unsubscribing".

Opting Out and Unsubscribing

Reviewing, Correcting and Removing Your Personal Information: If you provide us with your Personal Information, you have the following rights with respect to that information:

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us. We will promptly change, correct, or delete your information and notify you of the action we have taken.