Privacy

The term “Personally Identifiable Information” means any information that could reasonably be used to identify you, including your name, address, email address, birth date, financial information, telephone number, or any combination of information that could be used to identify you. We allow you to decide whether to provide us with Personally Identifiable Information via the NEASC website.

You may also wish to register to participate in events. Our website will direct you to a third party registration service, where you will be prompted to provide your name, email address, school name, and relationship to NEASC and its Commissions. We will only use the Personally Identifiable Information you provide in connection with event registration to facilitate your attendance at our event.

You may wish to provide us with comments and feedback concerning the NEASC website generally. By communicating with us for these purposes, you may provide us with your email address and other Personally Identifiable Information. In these instances, we use any information you provide to us strictly for the purposes for which you submit the information.

Certain areas of the NEASC website are password-protected for members of NEASC commissions. If you are a commission member, we require that you complete a registration form in order to obtain a username and password. Our registration form will specify the information which you must provide in order to obtain a username and password, which may include such items as (i) name; (ii) mailing address; (iii) email address; (iv) phone number; and (v) school name. Our registration forms may additionally request information, which you may, at your option, choose to provide or withhold. This information is used by NEASC solely for internal purposes in providing the NEASC website.

We may from time to time conduct surveys via the Website or otherwise through links sent to you by email. You are free to choose whether you participate in a survey and, if you so choose, your participation will be subject to our Terms of Use and any additional terms related to the survey. We may ask that, in addition to providing your responses, you also provide Personally Identifiable Information. In these instances, we will use any information you provide to us to provide a report to you, as well as to anonymize and aggregate the data we collect through the survey for the purpose of improving our accreditation services.

We use the information given to us on the NEASC website from our users to respond to any requests our users make, and for operational purposes. Users who wish to edit or delete Personally Identifiable Information that they provided to NEASC may request NEASC to edit or delete the Personally Identifiable Information from its databases by contacting NEASC at the email address or phone number listed in the Contacting Us section below. Please understand, however, that it may be impossible to remove this information completely, due to backups and records of deletions. You may not remove de-identified, anonymous, or aggregate data from our databases.

NEASC will not sell, share, rent, lease, trade, or otherwise provide information collected on its website to independent third parties in ways different from what is disclosed in this Privacy Statement. We may disclose Personally Identifiable Information to companies performing services on our behalf, such as hosting or maintaining the NEASC website, providing services related to the NEASC website, collecting information, responding to or sending electronic mail, processing payments or other functions necessary to our business and website (collectively, “Site Vendors”). We will provide Site Vendors with only that information necessary to perform their functions, and we will not allow them to use your Personally Identifiable Information for any other purpose.

NEASC may disclose Personally Identifiable Information to third parties in special cases (i) to comply with legal requirements, such as a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena, or court order; or (ii) when NEASC has reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who, intentionally or unintentionally, may be causing injury or harm to NEASC users or other persons or violating the Terms and Conditions of the NEASC website.

In the event that NEASC, or any part of NEASC, is merged with or is acquired by another entity, that entity may then be responsible for the rights and obligations of the Personally Identifiable Information provided to NEASC. By using the NEASC website, you consent to the use of the Personally Identifiable Information you have provided by such an entity assuming control of NEASC's operations.

“Anonymous Information” is information that does not identify you, and may include statistical information concerning, for example, your use of our services or pages on the NEASC website that you visit most frequently. We use Anonymous Information to analyze the effectiveness of the NEASC website, to improve our services, and for other similar purposes. We may collect Anonymous Information through features of the software that supports the NEASC website, through cookies, and through other means described below.

• IP Address. For each visitor to the NEASC website, our web hosting servers automatically collect information about which pages are visited and the IP address or domain name (e.g., www.neasc.org) of visitors. We use your IP address to help understand any problems with our hosting service and to administer and manage the NEASC website. Your IP address may be used to help identify unique visitors to the NEASC website by identifying your computer and other general demographic information e.g. approximate location.
• Cookies. NEASC may place a "cookie" on the browser of your computer. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your computer's hard disk for record-keeping purposes. The use of cookies is common in the Internet industry, and most major websites use them to provide useful features to their users. The cookie may be used to tell when your computer has contacted the NEASC website. You may set your browser so that it does not accept cookies. Cookies must be enabled on your web browser, however, if you wish to access certain personalized features of the NEASC website.
• Tags. We may use so-called "pixel tags" — small graphic images (also known as "web beacons" or "single-pixel GIFS") — to tell us what parts of the NEASC website have been visited or to measure the effectiveness of searches customers perform on our Site. Pixel tags also enable us to send email messages in a format customers can read, and they inform us whether emails have been opened, to help ensure that our messages are of interest to our users. None of this data includes Personally Identifiable Information, and you can "opt-out" of receiving these types of emails from us by contacting us at the address or phone number provided in the Contacting Us section below. If any Personally Identifiable Information is collected using such tools, it will be subject to the terms of this Privacy Statement.
• Click-Throughs. We may send email messages, which use a “click-through URL” linked to content on the NEASC website. When you click one of these URLs, you pass through our web server before arriving at the destination web page. We track this click-through data to help determine interest in particular topics and measure the effectiveness of our user communications. If you prefer not to be tracked simply do not click text or graphic links in the email, or notify us at the contact address listed in the Contacting Us section below.
• Computer Configuration. In order to determine whether your computer is supported by our system, we may collect certain Anonymous Information. This information includes, but may not be limited to, your operating system and browser, as well as the presence of any software that the NEASC website may require to operate with your computer, or other third party software on your computer. This information is kept strictly confidential and is not shared with third parties, except as provided for in this Privacy Statement.

We may share Anonymous Information with external consultants working with NEASC to assess and improve the NEASC website and for other purposes. For example, NEASC may provide information to external consultants about how many people use the NEASC website and what features of the NEASC website they use. The summary information we may share would not be linked to any Personally Identifiable Information.

To enable us to better understand your characteristics and/or to provide services tailored to your needs, we may link Personally Identifiable Information with Anonymous Information (collectively, "Linked Information"). Linked Information will be treated and protected as Personally Identifiable Information under this Privacy Statement.

Although the NEASC website contains links to other websites (“Linked Sites”), this Privacy Statement applies only to the NEASC website. NEASC is not responsible for the information collection practices, privacy statements or the content of Linked Sites. NEASC does not disclose Personally Identifiable Information to the Linked Sites. The Linked Sites, however, may collect Personally Identifiable Information from the users of their site. Linked Sites are not under NEASC's control. To be sure that your privacy is protected, always review the privacy statements of any linked sites.

Some of the services accessible to you from the NEASC website are actually performed by our partners. You can tell whether you are on the NEASC website or a partner website by checking the Internet address (URL) in your browser window. When you are on our partner websites, your usage is governed by our partner's privacy policy.

Please note that NEASC does not collect your financial information when you make a payment to NEASC. NEASC uses a reputable Site Vendor (the "Payment Processing Company") to collect and process your payment information for any payments made online. Rest assured, however, that we have taken steps to ensure that the Payment Processing Company protects Personally Identifiable Information it collects from users in compliance with our Privacy Statement.

The NEASC website has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. Please understand that our security measures are not fail-proof and, due to the nature of internet communications and evolving technologies, we cannot provide, and expressly disclaim (to the extent permitted by law), assurance that the information we receive about you via the NEASC website will remain free from loss, misuse or alteration by third parties who, despite our efforts, obtain unauthorized access.

Please note that you play a key role in protecting the security of your Personally Identifiable Information. NEASC encourages all users of the NEASC website to use only current versions of web browsers on computers or other web-enabled devices with a current and up-to-date operating system. If you access the NEASC website through Internet access system maintained by your employer, please note that it is possible that your employer may monitor your Internet use. If you have been issued a password for the NEASC website, we recommend that you maintain your username and password in confidence, and that you refrain from disclosing this information to anyone who might "pretend" to be you with respect to your use of the NEASC Website.

NEASC reserves the right to modify this Privacy Statement at any time. We will post those changes to this statement so that you will always know what information we gather, how we might use that information, and whether we will disclose it to anyone. We recommend that you read this Privacy Statement each time you use the NEASC website.

Do Not Track. The NEASC website does not change its behavior when receiving a "Do Not Track" signal from browser software.

Assignment. This Privacy Statement shall not be assigned by you, either in whole or in part. We reserve the right to assign the rights and obligations under the Privacy Statement for any reason and in our sole discretion.

Privacy Protection for Children. The NEASC website is not directed at children and we will not accept or request Personally Identifiable Information from individuals we know to be under 13 years old. In accordance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"), if we learn that a child under 13 years old has provided Personally Identifiable Information, we will either (i) delete this information from our databases in accordance with our deletion procedures set out above, or (ii) obtain verifiable parental consent in accordance with COPPA.

Choice of Law and Jurisdiction. This Privacy Statement shall be construed in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to any conflict of law provisions. Any dispute arising under this Privacy Statement shall be resolved exclusively by the state or federal courts sitting in the judicial district that includes Suffolk County, Massachusetts.

Relationship to Terms of Use and Other Contracts. This Privacy Statement must be read in conjunction with our Terms and Conditions, and the provisions of our Terms and Conditions are incorporated herein. To the extent the Terms and Conditions conflict with the terms of this Privacy Statement, the terms of this Privacy Statement will control.