My Guidance Counselor PRIVACY POLICY
Effective Date: March 27, 2006
At My Guidance Counselor. (hereinafter referred to as "MyGuidanceCounselor," and including the website www.MyGuidanceCounselor.com), we value your right to privacy. This policy describes the types of information MyGuidanceCounselor gathers from its users and how that information is used. Please read this policy carefully before providing us with any personal information. If you have questions about this policy, e-mail us at info@MyGuidanceCounselor.com.
1. Registered versus unregistered users.
There is no official user registration for MyGuidanceCounselor, or on the MyGuidanceCounselor Web site, but all users have the option of providing various types of personal information to make the best use of our services and features.
You become a Registered User if you:
A. Submit a request to at least one learning institution for further information on educational programs that interest you; or
B. Choose and consent to receive periodic e-mail notifications from MyGuidanceCounselor that may provide you with additional, relevant information about a particular learning establishment, special offers, and for other, similar purposes. (See Section 2 for more details.)
You are choosing to become a Registered User if you avail yourself of at least one of these services. If you do not, then you are an Unregistered User. Providing your information is always voluntary and you can always choose not to provide it by choosing not to use our services or features. By providing your information or opting in to e-mail notifications, however, you agree to our use consistent with this statement.
2. Information we collect
A. From Unregistered Users
We encourage you to register with us in order to take advantage of everything MyGuidanceCounselor has to offer. However, you may choose not to register and still have full access to the site.
If you are an Unregistered user, then the information we collect from you is limited. We log your IP address in order to help diagnose problems with our server, administer our Web site and track usage statistics. Your IP address may vary each time you visit, or it may be the same, depending on whether you access our site through an always-on type of Internet connection (such as cable or DSL), or through a dial-up connection. Either way, it would be very difficult for us to identify you through your IP address, and we make no attempt to do so. If you reached our site by clicking on a link or ad from another site, then we also log that information. This helps us to maximize our Internet exposure and to understand the interests of our users. All of this information is collected and used only in the aggregate; that is, it is entered into our database, where we can use it to generate overall reports on our visitors, but not individual reports.
Cookies
We may place a small file known as a "cookie" on your computer's hard drive. A cookie may contain information that allows us to track your path through our Web site and to determine whether you have visited us before. However, unless you register with us, it will not contain any personal information that would allow us to identify you. Cookies cannot be used to read data from your hard drive and cannot retrieve information from any other cookies created by other Web sites. We use cookies in this manner to help us understand how visitors use the site, and to help us to improve the site. You may refuse to accept a cookie from us by following the procedures specific to your Web browser. Although you may do so, you may find that your browser reacts strangely when visiting not only our Web site, but other Web sites as well.
Clear Gifs
We also employ a software technology called "clear gifs," which help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with unique identifiers, 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. We do not tie the information gathered by clear gifs to our customers' personally identifiable information.
If you visit our site by "clicking through" from an another website, and you have registered with that website, then certain information about you that you provided to that website may be transmitted to us , such as the terms you were searching on that led you to us. You should review the privacy policy of the Web site from which you reached our site in order to determine what information was collected and for what purpose(s) you agreed that website could use that information. Regardless of the information that was transmitted to us, we don't keep it unless you register with us.
B. From Registered Users
If you choose to register with us, you'll benefit from being part of the MyGuidanceCounselor community. If you register with us, we will collect personal information from you. That information may include your name, mailing address, telephone number, travel preferences, age only insofar that our university affiliate requires it to determine program admission eligibility, user name and password. The information we collect may vary, but we only collect the information that you manually enter into our forms. We may store all or some of that information in a cookie file on your hard drive, so that our system will recognize you each time you visit our site. In that way, we can save your preferences from visit to visit and present you with a customized Web site, without requiring you to log into our site every time you visit.
If you visit our site by "clicking through" from an another website, and you have registered with that website, then certain information about you that you provided to that website may be transmitted to us, such as the terms you were searching on that led you to us. You should review the privacy policy of the Web site from which you reached our site in order to determine what information was collected and for what purpose(s) you agreed that website could use that information. We may or may not retain that information; if we do, then we will only use it in accordance with our privacy policy.
3. How we use the information we collect
We use the information we collect to help both of us! First, we share your registration information with the learning institution(s) you select in order for the school(s) to contact you. Second, once you have familiarized yourself with our Web site and all it has to offer, you may decide that you would like us to provide you with additional information automatically. For example, if you are interested in information on a particular learning establishment, you may want us to notify you if we locate any additional information about it. We would do that by sending you an e-mail. We might also use the information to enable us to notify you of MyGuidanceCounselor special offers, and for other, similar purposes. However, we will do so only if you specifically authorize us to. You can control whether you receive such e-mails by following the instructions elsewhere on this Web site, and we will make every reasonable effort to honor your request. We may also use the information you provide to allow us to contact you for administrative purposes, for example, to tell you about changes to our privacy policy.
Service communications e-mails as described above are the only e-mail we may send at this time.
We may also use certain information that you provide in order to present you with advertising that you may find interesting. This advertising may be on the Web site itself or through promotional e-mails. This benefits both of us. It benefits you because you see advertising that may actually be interesting to you, rather than annoying. It benefits us because advertising helps us pay the bills, and we can charge our advertisers more if they know that their ads will be seen by somebody more likely to find them useful.
Opting Out
We will never e-mail you if you tell us not to. If you do not wish to receive any promotional e-mail from us you may opt out of receiving it simply by NOT checking the box labeled, "Notify me of relevant news and offers from MyGuidanceCounselor.com."
You also cancel or correct your registration at any time. You can do this by e-mailing us with your User Name and the instruction "cancel registration" in the subject field of the e-mail. We will send you an e-mail to confirm your request. After we receive confirmation from you, we will remove your information from the active database, but some information may remain in our archives. If you believe we have erroneous information about you and you wish to update it, you may do so by contacting us at info@MyGuidanceCounselor.com.
4. Disclosure of your information
MyGuidanceCounselor does not sell or rent any personally identifiable information to any third party, other than our learning institution affiliates or any acquirer, as discussed in this policy. We may aggregate personal information from all of our users and provide that information in the aggregate to other parties, including advertisers, for marketing and promotional purposes. However, if we do so, that information will not be in a way that will allow any third party to identify you personally.
As you might expect, MyGuidanceCounselor must cooperate with legal authorities, and may in some circumstances be required to disclose personally identifiable information in response to requests from law enforcement authorities, or in response to a subpoena or other legal process. We don't expect this to happen, but if it does, we will provide only the information required. We can also turn over information about you if we believe we must in order to prevent a violation of the law, and by accepting this policy, you consent to our right to do so, in our sole discretion. You also consent to our disclosing information about you in the course of legal proceedings if we are legally required to do so, if we reasonably believe that doing so may mitigate our liability, or if doing so will assist us in enforcing our legal rights.
At some point, MyGuidanceCounselor may have related companies, merge with, or be acquired by another company. When that happens, then we may disclose to them the information you have provided to us, in which case we will request them to abide by this policy. We may also disclose some information to a potential acquirer, although such disclosure would be subject to restrictions on use. If we change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy and statement at any time, so please review it frequently.
Of course, MyGuidanceCounselor will take reasonable measures to secure the information you provide us, using industry-standard methods. All user information is protected by password and accessible only to authorized MyGuidanceCounselor personnel. However, there is a remote possibility that Internet transmissions containing your personal information may be intercepted by others. There is no way for us to ensure the privacy of your information before it arrives at our site or after it leaves our site.
This privacy policy is effective March 27, 2006. We reserve the right to change this policy at any time, and will post any changes to this policy on this Web site, in this privacy statement and other places we deem appropriate. Please check this page periodically for changes. You will be deemed to have been made aware of, and will be subject to, the changes to the privacy policy by your continued use of our services or the Web site after such notice has been posted for thirty (30) days.
If you have questions specifically about this Privacy Policy, or to legal issues pertaining to the practices of the MyGuidanceCounselor Web site or your use of the Web site, please contact us.
Due to the high volume of inquiries we receive, we regret that we cannot respond to individual phone calls asking for information about specific classes, education programs, schools, how to register for classes, or how to apply to schools