Privacy Policy

This privacy policy is meant to help you understand what data Colby College, and its associated parties collects, including what data is collected when you use the Website, www.colby.edu, (the “Website” or “Site”), why we collect it, what we do with it, and how we protect it.

Colby College (the “College”), is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. This is important, so we hope you will take time to read this policy carefully.

The terms “we,” “our,” and “us,” in this Privacy Policy refer to the College. “You” and “your” refer to you.  With respect to the Site, using and/or participating in/on the Site, or by engaging with the College via email or other platforms, you signify that you have read these terms 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.  You may contact [email protected] for assistance in withdrawal from Colby email subscriptions.

Our Privacy Policy does not apply to other non-College materials, solicitations, websites, or services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy. In particular, the Website may contain links to other non-College websites or direct you to other websites when you use certain functionality on the Website, such as when you want to fill out an application for admission to the College. Once you have used these links and/or been redirected to leave our Website, we do not have any 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.

Colby College is located in the United States and is subject to the laws of the United States. If you are located in the European Union or elsewhere and you voluntarily submit personal information to us, your information will be used as provided in this Privacy Policy.

We collect the following information:

• Information you give us. We receive and store information you enter on the Website or give to us in other ways, such as through e-mail. For example, we store the information you provide us when you request information from the College Office of Admissions and Financial Aid through the “Request Information from Colby” page of the Site. We also receive and store your username(s) and password(s) when you login through the Site. We use a third-party to process payments for some of the services we offer that we describe on the Website, and so we do not directly receive and store your payment information (including your credit card information), although we do have access to this information through our third-party provider.
• Automatic Information generated from user interaction with the site. We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with the Site. For example, like many websites, we use “cookies” (which are discussed in more detail below). We also use Google Analytics, which collects additional site usage data (this is also discussed in more detail below).
• Information obtained by third party vendors. We receive and store information you provide to external entities including, but not limited to, the College Board, Student Search Service®, ACT, NRCCUA, Carnegie Communications, RaiseMe, YouVisit, CIS University Connection Registry, and other third parties vendors associated with the college search process.

The College uses the information we collect for legitimate interests of the College and to provide, maintain, protect, and improve our services. This includes but is not limited to the following:

• To provide you with information if you request it;
• To inform our marketing strategy and approach;
• To track user engagement across mobile, desktop, and other device platforms;
• To answer your questions;
• To process or collect payments/donations;
• To contact you about the opportunities the College has to offer;
• To correspond and maintain internal records regarding your inquiries about the Website (including this Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use) and other matters you may want to discuss with us;
• To maintain reports which may track personal Website and email traffic activity for the purpose of improving communications and providing the best services possible to visitors/users, including determining the content of greatest interest to Website visitors and the types of devices accessing the Website; and/or
• To restore lost data or help resolve Website visitor issues;
• To consider requests for accommodations;
• For research and statistical purposes;
• To provide you with information about Colby College and events that you might be interested in attending;
• To send surveys for research purposes;
• For compliance with legal obligations, to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process, and to enforce our agreements;
• To prevent or investigate fraud or other unlawful activity, and to protect the security of Colby College’s property, website, and other systems;
• To meet the obligations of private organizations with oversight over Colby College, such as accreditation organizations; and/or
• To protect the health, safety, or rights of you, other students, faculty, staff, and visitors

Your information may be shared with contractors and/or other third-party partners to the extent necessary for those organizations to provide services to us or to users. Any such organizations which receive user information for this purpose are required to keep the information confidential and only use it to provide services to the College or our Site users, such as you.

We may also provide your information to third parties in the following circumstances:

• If you have provided us with consent 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, or safety of our organization, its subsidiaries, and/or affiliates, or our employee, 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 Use.

We also may share aggregate, non-personal information about website usage with third parties. This aggregate information does not contain any personal information about our users.

We exercise great care to protect your personal information. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. This includes, among other things, using industry standard techniques such as firewalls, encryption (when appropriate), and intrusion detection. In addition, we limit our employees’ and contractors’ access to personal information. Only those employees and contractors with a business reason to know have access to this information. We also educate our employees about the importance of maintaining confidentiality of your information.

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 as we have no way of protecting that information until it reaches us since email does not have the same security features that are built into our Website.

If you have any questions about how we protect your information, please forward them to [email protected]

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 have any questions about the collection or use of your information, you may choose to contact us at [email protected].

If you are located within the European Union, you have the right to be informed of the College’s use of personal information, request access to personal information, correct inaccuracies, and request the erasure of personal information. These rights are subject to certain limitations. Exercising these rights is a guarantee to be provided a process and not an outcome. If you choose to exercise these rights or have questions about these rights you may contact us at [email protected].  Requests initiated by third parties must be validated by the data subject, including validation of the data subject’s identity.

Please also see our Terms of Use, which sets forth the terms of use, disclaimers, and limitations of liability governing use of the Website.

We use a technology on our website called “cookies” to collect and store information when you visit the Website related to how our site is used. A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyze web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use cookies to keep track of information about your current web browsing session which will be discarded as soon as you log out or close your web browser. This information also allows us to statistically monitor how many people are using our site and for what purpose. We use cookies to recognize new visitors to College websites, recognize past users, better understand the interests of users and website visitors, and improve the website to enhance the visitor experience. We may also make use of “persistent or memory based” cookies, which remain on your computer’s hard drive until you delete them.

An example of our use of these cookies is when we provide pre-populated forms you complete on our website based on information you have previously provided to us. Overall, cookies help the College provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. Although you have the ability to modify your browser to either accept all cookies, notify you when a cookie is sent, or reject all cookies, it may not be possible to utilize our services if you reject cookies.

We also use the services of Google Analytics, and may use other similar services, to collect and analyze statistical data about visitors to our Website. We also use Google advertising services, and may use other similar services, to arrange for you to see College advertisements when you visit certain third-party websites. These analytic and advertising services may collect personally identifiable information. You may elect to opt out of the use of non-personally identifiable data by Google Analytics by downloading and installing an add-on to your web browser.

To see the full Google Analytics privacy policy you can visit their privacy overview page.

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 August 10, 2018.