Pathlitics Privacy Policy

Last modified: July 1, 2024

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Introduction

Pathlitics LLC (“Company” or “we”) owns and operates the Pathlitics postsecondary navigation platform, inclusive of the website, app and any related software (the “Services”).

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This policy describes how we may collect, use, and disclose the Personal Information we gather from and about our users (“users,” “you,” “your”) in connection with your use of the Services, and your rights regarding that information. When we refer to “Personal Information,” we mean information that identifies, describes, or relates to an identified or identifiable individual, or information that is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.

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This Privacy Policy is also incorporated into our Terms of Use available at https://www.pathlitics.com/terms-of-use.

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If you are accessing or using the Services as part of an account provided by your education institution (an “Education Customer”), your privacy is also governed by our contract with the Education Customer.

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PLEASE NOTE THAT (I) PATHLITICS PARTNERS WITH SCHOOLS AND OTHER SPONSOR ORGANIZATIONS TO PROVIDE SERVICES THAT BENEFIT OUR USERS AND AS PART OF THOSE SERVICES WE MAY SHARE CERTAIN INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR INTERESTS WITH YOUR SCHOOL OR THE ORGANIZATION OR ENTITY THAT PURCHASED THE SERVICES FOR YOUR USE AND PROVIDED YOU WITH REGISTRATION INFORMATION FOR THE SERVICES; AND (II) INFORMATION YOU POST TO THE SERVICES, SUCH AS YOUR REVIEWS OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS,  WILL BE VIEWABLE BY OTHER USERS OF THE SERVICES. IT IS UP TO YOU HOW MUCH PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF YOU WISH TO DISCLOSE IN THE CONTENT YOU POST. THE INFORMATION YOU CHOOSE TO DISCLOSE IS AT YOUR DISCRETION. WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT REVEAL YOUR NAME, ADDRESS OR OTHER PERSONAL DETAILS ABOUT YOURSELF WHEN POSTING INFORMATION. YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO SHARE CONTACT INFORMATION IN THE AREAS OF THE SERVICES THAT ARE AVAILABLE TO OTHER USERS.

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Users Under the Age of 13

Our Services are not designed for or intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under age 13. Should we learn that we have inadvertently collected Personal Information from a child under age 13, we will take steps to promptly delete it. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at support@pathlitics.org.

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A Note About Personal Information Collected from Students of Education Customers:

When Education Customers who are subject to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”) contract with Pathlitics, they agree to designate us as a “school official” with a “legitimate educational interest” in providing the Services as the terms are used in FERPA §§ 99.31(a)(1).  Pathlitics remains under the direct control of the Education Customer with respect to the use and maintenance of FERPA-protected “education records” and use student Personal Information only as set forth in our agreement with the Education Customer and in compliance with applicable law. 

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Personal Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It

We collect several types of Personal Information from and about users of our Services, including information by which you may be personally identified, such as name, e-mail address, telephone number or other information or identifiers from which a person can be identified. Personal Information does not include data that is about you but does not identify you individually, such as aggregate data about the number of users that have reviewed or commented on a particular school or business. 

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We collect this information:

• Directly from you when you provide it to us.

• Automatically as you navigate through the site. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies.

• From third parties, such as Company partner organizations and Education Customers.

• From online service providers such as Google Analytics.

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Information You Provide to Us 

The information we collect on or through our Services may include:

• Information that you provide by filling in forms via the Services. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our Services, posting User-Provided Materials, or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our Services.

• Records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses), if you contact us.

• Details of transactions and payments you carry out. You may be required to provide financial information before placing an order through our Services or receiving payments from Company.

• Your search queries on the Services.

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You also may provide information, comments, and other materials (“User-Provided Materials”) to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on public areas of the Services, where they will be visible to other users of the Services, including users from your school, employer or other partner organization.  Your User-Provided Materials are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. Please note we cannot control the actions of other users of the Website with whom you may choose to share your User-Provided Materials. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User-Provided Materials will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. 

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Information We Collect Through Automatic Data Collection Technologies 

As you navigate through and interact with our Services, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

• Details of your visits to our Services, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Services.

• Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address which may contain geolocation information, operating system, and browser type and version.

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We aggregate this information and use it in a form that is not identifiable of any individual to estimate the number of users and usage patterns, recognize you when you return to our Services, improve our Services, and to monitor and help maintain the security of our Service.

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When this information is in a format that renders it to be considered Personal Information, we treat it in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

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The technologies we use for this automatic data collection include:

• Cookies (or browser cookies). A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your device. You may reject browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting, you may be unable to access certain parts of our Services. To learn more about cookies, including how to manage or delete them, visit the Tools, Help, or similar section of your website browser.

• Web Beacons. Pages of our Services and our e-mails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs). Web beacons allow us to track how our Services are used, to understand which links are clicked and to gather other, related statistics (for example, understanding the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity). When we send you emails, web beacons allow us to know which emails are opened.

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Information About You We May Receive from Third Parties

We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources including, but not limited to:

• Your school to the extent your school has purchased the Services for your use;

• A Pathlitics partner organization, such as an advocacy organization, with which you have a relationship and which has referred you to Pathlitics or the Services;

• Third party payment processors which facilitate the purchase of the Services.

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How We Use Your Personal Information

We do not sell or rent Personal Information of students and we do not serve targeted advertising.

We may use and share Personal Information that we collect about you or that you provide to us for the purposes described below:

• To provide, maintain, and administer our Services and its contents, including to provide you with access credentials, support services, and security;

• To provide you with notices about your account;

• To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection.

• In the event of a reorganization, merger, sale, assignment, bankruptcy, or similar organizational change, in which case we may need to transfer your Personal Information to that new or reorganized entity for them to use in accordance with this Privacy Policy;

• In the event of an investigation, during which we may share your Personal Information with entities assisting us, or as may be required by applicable law in response to a known or suspected violation of our terms of use, fraud prevention, or other unlawful use of our Website;

• To protect our rights and the rights and safety of others, or as required in the event of a court order or other lawful request;

• To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it;

• For any other purpose with your consent.

• To notify you about changes to our Services.

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We engage with third parties to support our delivery of the Services and to provide certain features for us, such as data hosting, analytics, content delivery, maintenance, security, and similar functions. These third parties may require a limited about of information, including Personal Information, in order to provide their services.

We may disclose aggregated information about our users, and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction.

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Opting Out of Contact With Us:

We send emails to customers who purchase our Services with information about our Services. You may opt-out of receiving email messages from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link found at the bottom of every email that we send. We do not send marketing emails to student Users.

If you have opted out of receiving communications from us, we may still send account-related communications regarding the Services. We do not send email messages on behalf of third parties.

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Accessing and Correcting Your Personal Information

You may be able to review and change elements of your Personal Information by logging into the Services and visiting your account profile page.

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You may also send us an email at support@pathlitics.org to request access to, correct or delete any Personal Information that you have provided to us. In some instances, we may not be able to delete your Personal Information except by also deleting your user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

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If you are accessing the Services through an account provided by your Education Institution, please contact the Education Customer with any request to access, correct, or delete your Personal Information, and we will work with them as needed to facilitate your request.

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If you delete your User-Provided Materials from the Services, copies of your User-Provided Materials may remain viewable in cached and archived pages, or might have been copied or stored by other users.

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Data Security

We have implemented measures designed to help secure your Personal Information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. We store Personal Information on our secure servers behind firewalls. Any payment transactions will be encrypted.

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The safety and security of your Personal Information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to the Services, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. We urge you to not share Personal Information in areas of the Services that are available to all users. The information you share in those areas may be viewed by any user of the Website.

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Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. As such, we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Information, and we are not responsible for security incidents not reasonably foreseeable or reasonably within our control.

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How Long We Retain Your Personal Information

We retain your Personal Information for as long as is necessary to provide you with access to our Services and for as long as we are legally permitted to do so, including for as long as may be necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our Terms of Use, and protect the security of our Services.

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Additional Information for Residents of Certain States

Certain US state laws provide their residents with certain rights related to their Personal Information. These rights include:

• Right to Know and Access Personal Information: You may access Personal Information we maintain about you and request to receive it in a machine-readable copy that is readily available to you by using the methods provided below. If we grant your request, we will provide you with a copy of the Personal Information we maintain about you in the ordinary course of business. We may not fulfill some or all of your request to access as permitted by applicable law.

• Right of Correction: You have the right to correct inaccuracies in the Personal Information we maintain about you.

• Deletion of Personal Information: You may ask us to delete the Personal Information we maintain about you by using the methods provided below  in the How to Exercise Your Rights section.

• Right to Consent to our Collection and Sharing of Sensitive Personal Information: You have the right to consent to our collection and sharing of Personal Information deemed to be “sensitive” under applicable law, and to withdraw your consent at any time. We request this consent prior to collection within the Services.

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Please note that we do not engage in activities that would be considered a “sale” of Personal Information under Texas or other US state privacy laws.

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Before we are able to fulfill your requests regarding certain rights, we are required by law to verify your identity in order to help prevent unauthorized access to your data. In addition, please note that the rights listed above are subject to certain exemptions to safeguard the public interest (for example, to prevent or detect a crime) and our interests (for example, to maintain legal privilege). As a result, requests to exercise these rights may be granted in whole, in part, or not at all, depending on the scope and nature of the request and applicable law. Where required by applicable law, we will notify you if we are unable to fulfill your request and of any reasons why we are unable to honor your request.

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When authorized by law, you may be allowed to use an authorized agent to exercise any of these privacy rights on your behalf. If you are an authorized agent acting on behalf of a Texas resident to communicate with us or to exercise a privacy right, you must be able to demonstrate that you have the necessary authorization and access to act on behalf of the resident. If you are an authorized agent trying to exercise rights on behalf of visitor to our Website, please contact us at the contact information below with supporting verification information required under applicable state law.

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How To Exercise Your Rights

If you access or use the Services in connection with an Education Customer, you may exercise your rights by making a request to the Education Customer. We will work with them as necessary to respond to your request.  

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For all others, to exercise your rights, you may contact us at legalnotices@pathlitics.org. Please explain what right(s) you would like to exercise and how you have interacted with us.

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We will comply with your rights within the time frame required by applicable law. We don’t discriminate or otherwise penalize anyone for exercising their rights under this Privacy Policy.

 

The chart below reflects our current practices and our practices that have been in place over the past 12 months.

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