Last Updated: August 6, 2021

COLLEGE MONEY MATTERS PRIVACY POLICY

College Money Matters, Inc. (formerly Affordyouredu, Inc.) and its respected affiliated companies (collectively, “College Money Matters” or “we,” us” or “our”) is committed to protecting your privacy, whether you are a user, visitor, and/or donor. This Privacy Policy explains our policies regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal data when you use our website or donate to us (“Services”). By using the Services, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

What Does This Privacy Policy Cover?

This Privacy Policy covers College Money Matters’ treatment of information that identifies you or could reasonably be used to identify you that we, or our third-party partners, gather when you are accessing and using the Services, as well as usage information that is anonymized and not associated with you. This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that we do not own or control, or to individuals that we do not employ or manage.

What information does College Money Matters collect?

We collect information about you in three ways: directly from you, from automatically-collected network logs, and through cookies. We collect different types of information from you depending on your chosen level of engagement with our Services and the information needed in order to provide you with access to those Services.

User-Provided Information. When you register for as a user for our Services, we may ask you to share certain information with us. If you deactivate your registered user account, you may not be able to continue using certain Services that require registration. The following are examples of information that you might be asked to provide to us:

Personal Information: any information that can personally identify you, such as your name, physical address, email address, phone number, payment information, and other similar information.
Information Provided to the Financial Simulator: any information that may be used to determine your education finance needs, such as the amount saved for college by you and your family.
Demographic Information: any information related to your age or gender.
Shared Content: any information created by you that you choose to make public by using our Services including feedback comments that your registered user account and any information you have chosen to display may accompany your shared content.
Login Credentials: includes username, password, and a set of personal questions about you provided as part of the process to create an online user account which allows you to view your records at any time by logging into your account.

Information College Money Matters Automatically Collects. When you use our Services, our computer servers automatically capture and save information electronically about your usage of our Services. Examples of information that we may collect include:

Your Internet Protocol (IP) address
Your location
Kind of web browser or electronic device that you use
Date, time and length of your visit
Website that you visited immediately before arriving at our website
Pages that you viewed on our website
Certain searches/queries that you conducted

How does College Money Matters use the information collected?

Depending on the Services you choose to use, the following are some examples of the ways we use your information in order to provide those Services to you.

We use shared content and login credentials for everyday business purposes, such as calculating your financial information and providing enhanced or personalized services.
We use your information when collecting or processing donations.
We use your information to administer promotions and surveys.
We use cookies to collect information about your activity, browser, and device in order to provide you Services. Cookies are used by us to remind us of who you are and help you navigate our website when you visit. Cookies also allow us to save your preferences so you do not have to reenter this information each time you use our Services. You have the option of disabling cookies by using the settings on your web browser.
We use information for security purposes. We may use information to protect College Money Matters and our users and donors. We also use information to protect our Services.

When does College Money Matters share information?

These are the ways College Money Matters shares your information with third-parties:

When You Share Content with the College Money Matters Community. If you choose to share content through our Services, the shared content may be publicly accessible. If you do not want to share content publicly, you can use your privacy settings to limit sharing. You may delete some content that you shared, but some interactive shared content may persist in association with your registered user account, even after your account is terminated. Therefore, you should keep this in mind when participating in shared content activity through our Services.
Services Providers. We use third-party service providers and technologies to help deliver some of our Services to you. If and when you choose to use such Services, we may share your information with these third parties, but only as necessary for them to provide services to College Money Matters. We may also display links to third-party services or content such as social networks like YouTube and Facebook and general advertisements. By following links, you may be providing information (including, but not limited to Personal Information) directly to a third party, to us, or to both. You acknowledge and agree that College Money Matters is not responsible for how those third parties collect or use your information. Third parties must either agree to adhere to strict confidentiality obligations in a way that is consistent with this Privacy Policy and the agreements we enter into with them or we require them to post their own privacy policy. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of every third-party website or service that you visit or use, including those third parties with whom you interact with through our Services.
Fundraising and Marketing Outreach. As is customary in the non-profit world, we may send requests to support College Money Matters to people who have expressed interest in our programs or services, including reminders about upcoming educational deadlines or newsletters. We do not rent or sell your information.

We may also use information collected about you to work with third party marketing vendors to show you ads on third-party websites about educational services. We may also use your information to improve our marketing outreach by working with third-party vendors to build models to identify and reach new users online based on them displaying similar online behavior to our existing users.
Legal Requests. Sometimes the law requires us to share your information, such as if we receive a valid subpoena, warrant, or court order. We may share your information if our careful review leads us to believe that the law, including state privacy law applicable to your records, requires us to do so.
Funders and Other Contributors. We are able to offer our users optional programs and services that we would not otherwise be able to provide without the generous support of funders and contributors. These funds are often dependent on College Money Matters complying with the reporting requirements of the funder or contributor. If you participate in these optional programs and services, your information may be included in these reports.
Change of Control or Reorganization. We may share information with any successor to all or part of our organization. For example, if part of our not-for-profit reorganizes, we may give our user database to the resulting entity as part of that reorganization.
Other. We may share information for other reasons we may describe to you.

Does College Money Matters use aggregated data?

We collect statistical information about both unregistered and registered users that is not Personal Information and cannot be tied back to you, your account or your web browser (“Aggregate and De-identified Information”). Some of this information is derived from Personal Information.

We may use Aggregate and De-identified Information for various business purposes where permissible under applicable laws and regulations, including for analytics or to develop or improve our services and marketing. We may share this Aggregate and De-identified Information with third party service providers for their business purposes. Third party service providers may also share with us non-private, aggregated or otherwise non-Personal Information about you that they have independently developed or acquired.

We may also use and share Aggregate and De-identified Information for research, including research conducted by government entities, non-profit entities, and academic institutions. This may involve publishing findings or combining Aggregate and De-identified Information with other data sets, but such information will not be shared in a way that allows you or any other person to be personally identified.

What choices do you have about how we use your information?

You can opt out of receiving our marketing emails. To stop receiving our promotional emails, follow the instructions in any email you get from us or send a request to admin@collegemoneymatters.org.
You can control cookies and tracking tools. When navigating our website, your browser may give you the ability to control cookies or other tracking tools. How you do so depends on the type of tool. Certain browsers can be set to reject browser cookies. To opt out of having your online behavior collected for advertising purposes, follow the instructions here or here. To control flash cookies, which we may use on certain websites from time to time, you can go here. Why? Because flash cookies cannot be controlled through your browser settings. Options you select are browser and device specific.
Your browser may offer you a “Do Not Track” or “DNT” option, which allows you to opt out of certain of your online activities over time and across different websites. College Money Matters does not support Do Not Track requests at this time, which means that we may collect information about your online activity both while you are using the Services and after you leave our properties, as we describe above.

What security measures does College Money Matters use?

We use standard security measures but we know the Internet is not 100% secure. We cannot promise that your use of our sites will be completely safe. We encourage you to use caution when using the Internet. This includes not sharing your passwords.

Children’s Privacy

The Services are not intended for use by children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 years. If we become aware that a child under 13 has opened an account or otherwise provided us with Personal Information, we take steps to terminate the child’s account and delete such information.

Termination of Account

You may request deletion of your account by sending an e-mail to admin@collegemoneymatters.org. Please note that some information may remain in our records after deletion of your account.

Location of Users

We note that the Services are not intended for use by persons located in the United States.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make changes in the way we use Personal Information, we will notify you by posting an announcement on our website or sending you an email as required by law. Users are bound by any changes to the Privacy Policy when they access, visit, or use the website after such changes have been first posted.

How can you contact College Money Matters?

If you have questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy and practices, please send us a detailed email at admin@collegemoneymatters.org, and we will make every effort to resolve your concerns.