PRIVACY POLICY
Last updated: January 1, 2021
This privacy policy is meant to help you understand what data https://www.vestedacademics.com and its related pages (the “Website” or “Site”), is collected when you use the Website, why we collect it, what we do with it, and how we protect it. Vested Academics, which owns and operates the Website, is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. This is important, so we hope you will take time to read it carefully.
The terms “we,” “our,” and “us,” in this Privacy Policy refer to Vested Academics. “You” and “your” refer to you as a user of the Website.
BY USING AND/OR PARTICIPATING IN/ON THE SITE, YOU SIGNIFY THAT YOU HAVE READ THE TERMS IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY, AND COMPLY WITH, THEM. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO BE BOUND BY, AND COMPLY WITH, THESE TERMS, PLEASE PROMPTLY EXIT THE SITE.
Information We Collect
Information is collected from you at several different points during your visit to the Website.
Information You Give Us
Optional Information
At various points during your visit to the Website you may be asked to provide information about yourself, such as your email address, name, and phone number. For example, you are asked to provide your name, email address, and phone number when using the “Contact” button on the Website. Using the “Contact” button also allows you access to a text box where you can provide additional information. You have the choice about whether to disclose the information necessary to use these features.
Registration
A user must register in order to receive our services. During registration, a user is required to provide certain categories of information. Users who are students over the age of 18 must provide their name, phone number, and email address. Users who are parents wishing to create an account for their child who is over the age of 13 are required to provide the same information. Users who are parents wishing to create an account for their child who is under the age of 13 are required to provide their name and email address, which are used to send you our COPPA Notice and to give you a chance to consent to our privacy practices for those users.
Students Under the Age of 13
While the Website is not directed toward users under the age of 13, and users under 13 need parental permission to use the Website, we do provide certain services to individuals who are under the age of 13 through the Site, once their parents have received our COPPA Notice, consented to our privacy practices, and have finished registering their child.
It is our intention to adhere to the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA). Consequently, we do not collect, use, or disclose personal information of users under the age of 13 without parental consent. In order to get consent we will send an email to the address provided that will include a complete copy of our COPPA Notice and a consent form. If you wish to provide consent you should sign and date the form and return it to us.
We will delete your personal information if you do not provide consent within a reasonable period of time after we email you.
For parents of users under the age of 13, you may revoke your consent, refuse to allow us to further use or collect your child’s personal information, and direct us to delete the information by contacting us using the information provided in this Privacy Policy. If you revoke your consent, your child will not be allowed to receive services from us.
Information Collected After Registration
Once users have registered and become students/clients, we collect certain additional information. This information includes information students/parents provide on consulting contact forms, information in documents students upload and share with consultants, information students share with consultants in typed message form (i.e., “notes”), and information provided through our customer support form.
Passive Collection of Information
In addition to information that you actively provide us, we collect information about how you interact with the Website. For example, like many websites, we use “cookies” (which are discussed in more detail below). The types of passive information collected by the Website include, but are not necessarily limited to, your IP address, which type of browser you are using, where you go on the Website, and how long you stay on any part of the Website.
Analytics, Web Beacons, & Cookies
Analytics
We use the services of third parties to collect and analyze statistical data about visitors to our Websites, and to collect certain information and send out emails and other mailings/correspondence. Some of these analytic and/or mailing services collect personally identifiable information about you.
Web Beacons
The Website may contain electronic images known as Web Beacons (sometimes called single-pixel gifs) that allow us to count users who have visited certain web pages. Web Beacons are not used to access your personally identifiable information; they are a technique we use to compile aggregated statistics about usage of our Websites. Web Beacons collect only a limited set of information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the Web Beacon resides.
Cookies
We use “cookies” to collect and store information related to how our Site is used when you visit the Website in order to improve our services for you. Cookies are files with a small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a web site and transferred to your device.
We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. A session ID cookie expires when you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time.
We use session cookies to monitory your interaction with the Website. After you have been idle for a certain period of time, our server will log you out to protect the security of your account. We also use permanent cookies to track click streams. We do not link cookie data to personally identifiable information.
You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. The “help” feature on most browsers provides information on how to accept cookies, disable cookies, and how to receive a notice when receiving a new cookie. If you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some features of our Site.
Some of our business partners (such as advertisers) use cookies on our Websites. We have no access to or control over these cookies. Our privacy policy covers the use of cookies by us only and does not cover the use of cookies by any business partner(s).
We also use certain third-party remarketing services. These third parties use cookies in order to serve you ads based on your past visits to our Websites. What this means is that you may see ads on different sites across the internet that are targeted to you based on the parts of our Websites you have viewed, because a cookie has been placed on your machine. Remarketing allows us to tailor our marketing to better suit your needs and helps to display ads that are relevant to you. You can opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting Google’s Ads Settings page, located here: http://google.com/settings/ads/onweb/optout?hl=en. You can opt out of third-party vendor’s use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt out page, located here: http://optout.networkadvertising.org/#/.
How We Use Information We Collect
We use the information we collect to provide, maintain, protect, and improve the Website and the services we provide on them. We also use this information to do the following:
- To identify and communicate with you;
- To respond to your requests/inquiries;
- To provide services to students;
- To contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send;
- To inform our marketing strategy and approach;
- To correspond and maintain internal records regarding your inquiries about the Website (including this Privacy Policy and the “Terms of Use”) and other things you may want to discuss with us;
- To maintain certain third-party analytics reports, which track non-personal Website traffic activity for the purpose of improving the Website and providing the best services possible to visitors/users to/of the Website, including determining the content of greatest interests to Website visitors and what types of devices are accessing the Website; and/or restore lost data or help resolve Website visitor issues.
- To serve you advertisements for our services across different internet websites.
Contacting You By Email
We may use users contact information periodically in order to send e-mails regarding updates to the Website, such as new services we have decided to provide. The frequency of these messages will vary depending upon each users profile, including the types of information each user has indicated an interest in. In addition, we may send users free informational newsletters or notices relating to topics which may be of special interest, including financial aid and admissions tips. Finally, if a user specifically provides us with permission at the time of registration, the user may also receive commercial e-mails. Out of respect for the privacy of our users, we present the option to opt-out of receiving newsletters and/or commercial e-mails whenever such messages are sent by us by sending an opt-out request to: info@vestedacademics.com. E-mail messages from third parties are not governed by the opt-out provisions of this Privacy Policy, but all such third parties are strongly encouraged to include opt-out procedures in their messages to you.
Disclosure of Information to Third Parties
From time to time we may decide that it is more efficient to use third parties to perform specific services, such as sending newsletters or other correspondence to our users. If we use a third party to provide a specific service your information may be shared with those third-party partners to the extent necessary for those organizations to provide services to us or to our users. Any such organizations who receive user information for this purpose are required to keep the information confidential and only use it to provide services to us or our Site users.
We may also provide your information to third parties in the following circumstances:
- If you have authorized us to do so;
- We are legally required to do so, for example, in response to a subpoena, court order or other legal process;
- It is necessary to protect the legal rights, privacy, property, or safety of our organization, its subsidiaries, and/or affiliates, or our employees, agents, and/or contractors;
- To protect against fraud or other illegal activity or for risk management purposes;
- To protect the safety and security of visitors to the Website;
- To permit us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that you may sustain; and/or
- To enforce the Terms of Service.
We may also share aggregate, non-personal information about website usage with third parties. This aggregate information does not contain any personal information about our users.
The third-party services covered by this section do not include links to third-party websites found on the Website, which are governed by the provision of this Privacy Policy (When this Privacy Policy Applies) dealing with links to other websites.
Disclosures to Parents
For individuals receiving services on or through the Website who are under the age of 18, we may share some or all of that individual’s information, including but not limited to college applications, application materials, and/or personal statements/essays, with that individual’s parent or legal guardian.
When this Privacy Policy Applies
Our Privacy Policy applies to the Website. It does not apply to other websites or services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy. The Website may contain links to other websites or direct you to other websites when you use certain functionality on the Website, like when you want to sign up and pay for certain services we offer. However, once you have used these links and/or been redirected to leave our Websites, we do not have control over the other websites you visit and we are not responsible for their privacy practices. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information that you provide while visiting such websites. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to other linked websites.
Controlling Your Personal Information
People have different privacy concerns. Our goal is to be clear about what information we collect and what we do with it so that you can make meaningful choices about how it is used. If you choose, you may restrict our collection or use of your information through the Website in the following ways:
Do not submit information through the Website.
Do not visit third-party websites through the Website. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites.
Do not send us e-mails.
Terms of Use
Please also see our TERMS OF SERVICE, which sets forth the terms of use, disclaimers, and limitations of liability governing use of the Website.
Do Not Track Disclosure
We support Do Not Track. Do Not Track is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked.
You can enable or disable Do Not Track by visiting the Preferences or Settings page of your web browser.
Security
The security of your Personal Information is important to us, and we strive to implement and maintain reasonable, commercially acceptable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information we store, in order to protect it from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure.
While we strive to protect the information you provide to us, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or receive from us. This is especially true for information you transmit to us via email since we have no way of protecting that information until it reaches us since email does not have the security features that are built into our Websites.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will post any privacy policy changes on this page. You should check this page from time to time to make sure you are okay with any changes that we make. If we make significant changes to our privacy practices we will provide a more prominent notice of changes to this policy. This privacy policy is effective as of June 13, 2019.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please CONTACT us.