Consent and Privacy Policy

StudentDebt.org / Consent and Privacy Policy

Consent

You are providing your express “written” consent to Studentdebt.org to contact you at the email and phone number provided (including by auto dialer, text and pre-recorded messaging) via landline and mobile device (including SMS and MMS) even if your phone number is currently listed on any state, federal or corporate Do Not Call list. Standard message and data rates may apply. Consent is not required as a condition to purchase any of our goods and services. If you would prefer to contact us rather than having us contact you, please call us at 1 (888) 547-8597.

Privacy Policy

Credit.org is committed to assuring the privacy of individuals and/or families who have contacted us for assistance. Your privacy is held in strict confidence in compliance with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Privacy Act except as authorized to be released by you. We assure you that all “nonpublic personal information” shared both orally and in writing such as your name, address, telephone number, assets, liabilities and any other personal information concerning your finances will be managed within legal and ethical considerations.

What personal information is collected from you, and how we use it
In general, credit.org uses the information collected on our web site to help us understand who uses our web site and how it is used, to perform statistical analysis of user behavior or to evaluate and improve our online services, and to personalize your online experience. If you enter your email address, name and phone number, and ask for more information or send us an email with questions or comments, we may use your information to send you a welcoming email, electronic newsletters, contact you about services, information and news that may be of interest to you and provide you with targeted feedback, and may file your questions or comments for future reference. In addition, if you become a client of credit.org, we may use your information to send you an email with instructions on how to set up your account(s).

The web site also offers community boards, blogs, and chat rooms. You should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages.

We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen. Children under the age of thirteen may not submit any personally identifiable information to credit.org.

How your information is transferred to Third Parties
The following privacy practices detail circumstances under which we may release your information to a third party as permitted by law:

  1. When you have provided a request to do so, or when our staff has been served by a valid subpoena.
  2. We may compile data and aggregate information that you give us, and share it with our partners, advertisers and connected sites, but this information may not be disclosed in a manner that would personally identify you in any way.
  3. Access to nonpublic personal information about you may be released to contractors or agencies with legitimate authority to provide services to you, or to monitor credit.org’s practices for quality assurance or compliance purposes.

How to modify/delete your information
You may access or correct your personal information, privacy preferences and/or opt-out of communications by writing or calling credit.org at:

credit.org
PO Box 5438
Riverside, CA 92517-5438
Phone: 1.800.947.3752
Fax: 1.951.781.8027

Please include your name, address, and/or e-mail address when you contact us.

Credit.org’s use of cookies and web beacons
What is a cookie?
We automatically track certain data based upon your behavior on our site using “cookies” and other devices like pixel tags. We use this information to do internal research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behavior to better understand our users. This data may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on our site or not), which URL you next go to (whether this URL is on our site or not), what browser you are using, and your IP address. A cookie is a small piece of data that is sent from our web server to your browser which is saved on the hard drive of your computer. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites, and it will not damage your system. You can change your privacy preferences regarding the use of cookies and similar technologies through your browser. You may set your browser to accept all cookies, block certain cookies, require your consent before a cookie is placed in your browser, or block all cookies. Blocking all cookies will affect your online experience and may prevent you from enjoying the full features offered by credit.org. Whether you configure your web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.) to delete and/or control the use of cookies, or use the opt-out mechanism described below to manage cookies is at your discretion.

What type of cookies do we use and when?
There are two broad classes of cookiea: Session and Permanent. Session cookies are used to keep track of information needed by a user and their browser on their journey through a website. These cookies are used to recognize that you are logged into the website and help the website to remember your customized preferences. For example, by saving your language preferences, we may be able to have our services appear in the language you prefer. Session cookies have a short lifetime and expire within a few minutes of the user leaving the site. Credit.org uses session cookies to keep you logged in for the duration of your visit, which enables you to complete certain actions on the website. Credit.org uses permanent cookies to enable basic web traffic analysis using Google Analytics showing us which areas of the site are popular and those that are not often visited which allows us to prioritize our enhancements to our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, and where visitors have come to the site and the pages they visited. We also use cookies and anonymous identifiers when you interact with services we offer to our partners, such as advertising services or features that may appear on other sites. When showing you tailored ads, we will not associate a cookie or anonymous identifier with sensitive categories, such as those based on race, religion, sexual orientation or health. Credit.org does use some cookies from trusted third party sources to enable us to provide you with certain features on our website, for example our live chat facility which is provided, uses cookies to enable the chat software to work.

Web Beacons
We, our third party service providers, advertisers or our partners may also use “web beacons” or clear .gifs, or similar technologies, which are small pieces of code placed on a web page to monitor the behavior and collect data about the visitors viewing a web page. Web beacons may be used to count the users who visit a web page or to deliver a cookie to the browser of a visitor viewing that page. For example, if you often visit content on credit.org about debt relief, we may use web beacons to infer your possible interest in debt relief and may deliver an ad to you related to that interest.. The type of information collected might include the IP address of the computer, the web page being viewed, the date/time it was viewed, and user activity on the page. It’s important to understand that these technologies do not use personally identifiable information to make this happen but instead use anonymous identifiers within the cookies stored in your browser. We do not collect personally identifiable information through web beacons.

Use of your personal information submitted to other websites
Some of our sites contain links to or integrations with other sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., whose information practices may be different than ours. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if you accessed the third party website using links from our website or you linked to our website from a third party website. The use of cookies by our partners, affiliates, tracking utility company, service providers and others is not covered by our privacy policy. We do not have access or control over these cookies. We recommend that you check the policy of each website you visit and contact the owner or operator of such website if you have any concerns or questions.

Opt-out
If you do not wish to allow your browsing information on our sites to be aggregated and analyzed by us, you may choose to opt-out. When you opt out, we will place an opt-out cookie on your computer to track that you’ve opted out. The opt-out cookie tells us not to use your information for delivering relevant online advertisements. That opt-out cookie (like all cookies) is associated with a particular computer and browser, so for example if you get a new computer, install a new browser, or delete your cookies, you’ll need to opt-out again. If you opt out, you’ll still see the same ads from us online, but we just won’t know it’s you, so we won’t be able to apply any of your preferences to make them as relevant to you. We understand that some users may choose to opt out of our interest-based ads.

Users may opt back in using the following links:

Your access to our websites should not be affected if you do not accept cookies served by third parties. Please note that if your browser is set to block third party cookies, this feature may not operate or display properly.

Monitoring of Phone Calls
Credit.org may monitor and/or record out-bound and in-bound telephone calls for quality assurance purposes, where permissible by law. Any recording or information obtained from monitoring telephone calls is held in the same strict confidence as all the information we gather.

Privacy-Related Complaints
If you believe that credit.org has not complied with this Privacy Policy with respect to your personal information, you may write credit.org at the address indicated above. In your letter, please describe in as much detail as possible the ways in which you believe that credit.org has not complied with this policy. We will investigate your concern promptly.

Last Revised: 01/10/2019

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