PRIVACY POLICY
The Student Loan Consolidation Program is brought to you by Student Aid Centers, LLC. (SACA), is a marketing and student aid resource center that does not originate loans. All rights reserved.
This Policy explains what SACA does to keep information about you private and secure. We want you to know how we manage that information to serve you and that you do have choices about how it may be shared. This Policy covers our family of companies. Please review this Policy carefully.
WHAT INFORMATION DO YOU HAVE ABOUT ME?
To provide services and to help meet your needs, we collect only limited information about you from various sources.
- We get information from your requests for our products or services. You name phone number, mailing and email address, graduate information and approximate loan amounts outstanding or requested as well as other demographic information, such as career path, college attending/graduated, and other relevant marketing information is obtained through pre-approved loan applications and final loan applications and disbursements.
- We get information about your transactions through us and with others, but with limited detail, in most cases. For example, we may obtain your account balance information.
- Your credit history, from place such as credit bureaus are not handled by SACA. SACA uses registered and insured banking or loan institutions or servicing agents that receive sensitive information such as social security numbers and driver's license numbers and does not share that information with SACA. SACA, however, may be provided at time to time with such information under certain guidelines of compliance an loan originator or institution, may require us to have for purposes of servicing you.
HOW DO YOU PROTECT MY PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We take a number of steps to protect the privacy of information about you. Here are some examples:
- We keep information under physical, electronic or procedural controls that comply with or exceed governmental standards.
- We authorize our employees, agents and contractors to get information about you only when they need it to do their required work for us.
- We require companies working for us to protect information. They agree to use it only to provide the services we ask them to perform for us.
IS MY INFORMATION SHARED WITH OTHER COMPANIES?
Yes, as permitted by law. We may share information about you with outside companies that work for us. These may include firms that assist in marketing our products and services. We may also share information about you with outside financial companies that have joint marketing agreements with us. These arrangements give you the opportunity to receive additional products or services. This information also helps us design and/or offer new products and services that we believe you will like and use. Very sensitive information, typically, is gathered by the loan originators, loan servicers, and banking institutions. Your sensitive information such as social security number, driver's license number and credit reports that may be required to apply for a student loan or private loan is not distributed by SACA outside of our financial companies and affiliates for other than the intended purposes you've requested.
Is information about me shared with non-financial companies outside your family of companies?
Yes. We may share information about you with companies outside of our family as permitted by law. We also collect some information because federal or state law requires it. It is required that these contracted vendors to comply with strict standards of security and confidentiality, and they are not permitted to release, use or transfer any personal information to any other party for their own use. The Companies also require these various contracted vendors to maintain controls to protect your privacy including physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations.
Is information about me shared in any other ways?
Yes. We may also share information about you in other ways, as required or permitted by law. Here are some examples of ways that we share information.
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To protect against fraud.
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To respond to a subpoena.
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To service your account.
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To report to a credit bureau.
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With your consent.
What choices do I have about information sharing?
You may tell us not to share information about you with non-financial companies outside of our family of companies. Even if you do tell us not to share, we may do so as required or permitted by law. Also if you have authorized us to share information in connection with a particular product or service, we will continue to share information about you in connection with that product or service.
OR
You may tell us not to share the following information about you within our family of companies:
- Information from your applications to be used to determine your eligibility, such as your income.
- Information from credit reports, such as your credit history.
- Information from sources used to verify information you provide us, such as outstanding loans or employment history.
Even if you do tell us not to share, we may share other types of information within our family. For example, we may share name and address, information about transactions or balances with us, as well as survey results.
What about joint accounts?
Each person may separately make privacy choices, and joint account holders may make privacy choices for each other. If only one joint account holder makes a privacy choice, information about the other joint account holder may be shared.
How do you tell me about your Policy?
Our policy is listed here for your convenience. If you use us to help get to a lending institution that funds and/or originates your loan, you will receive a privacy policy from that institution. Student Aid Centers of America, however, does not make any guarantees as to the privacy policy of the institution that is privy to your private information when you open a new account or apply for a student loan or consolidation loan. We may change our Policy. We will send you a new policy if we broaden our information sharing practices about you. Our Policy is available at www.studentaidcenters.com/privacy.
SPECIAL NOTICE FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS
In order to comply with California law, the following applies if your account has a California mailing address.
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Even if you do not make privacy choice #1 listed above, we will not share information that we have about you with non-financial companies outside our family of companies, unless otherwise permitted by law.
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We will not share information about you within, or with financial companies outside, our family of companies unless we first provide you with further privacy choices or unless otherwise permitted by law.
SPECIAL NOTICE FOR VERMONT RESIDENTS
In order to comply with Vermont law, we will automatically treat accounts with Vermont mailing addresses as if you have made both of the privacy choices listed above. In addition, if we disclose information about you to other financial institutions with which we have joint marketing agreements, we will only disclose your name, contact information and information about your transactions.
This privacy policy covers areas regarding any personal identifying information you might supply to us. SACA respects the privacy of our customers and visitors to this site, and we are committed to protecting user privacy on the Internet. We will protect personal information you share with us through this site in the same way that we protect your personal information in all the other ways in which we interact with you.
COOKIES
We may use "cookies" to enhance your online experience. Cookies are pieces of data that we place on your computer's hard drive to help us identify you. The cookies that we place on your hard drive allow us to immediately tell us who you are when you return to the site. They are not used to collect any nonpublic personal information.
Our Web server automatically recognizes your domain name, but not your e-mail address. We do not collect nonpublic personal information from visitors to our sites unless you expressly provide it to us. The information we do collect from this site (such as domain name, number of hits, pages visited and length of user session) may be combined to analyze how our site is used. This information is then used to improve the usefulness of the site.
The types of personally identifiable information about you that we collect on this site and the ways in which we use such information include the following:
Contact information, such as your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number (land-line or cellular). We may use this information, for example, to you're your information that you request or to contact you about your accounts.
Identification information, such as a Social Security number or mother's maiden name may be used through our loan originators, loan servicers, or banking institutions to help provide you with application approval, identification, and loan disbursement, and other actions that are required under lending laws and guidelines.. This information helps us, for example, identify you as our customer and prevent unauthorized use of accounts or unauthorized disclosure of your information.
Financial information, such as your income, assets or liabilities. We may use this information, for example, to process applications.
The Companies carefully limit and control how we share personally identifiable information that we collect on this site. We may share this information with the following types of entities:
AFFILIATED COMPANIES and HOW IT MAY AFFECT YOU
SACA is a marketing organization and resource area of education loans. Affiliates of SACA may change from time to time due to acquisitions and divestitures. In an effort to fulfill our mission of supporting access to education, we may share your nonpublic personal information with our affiliates as permitted by federal law, specifically the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999.
GENERAL PRIVACY
We will, however, exchange personal information about you with your lender, your school, guarantors and the U.S. Department of Education and other departments of state and federal government as permitted by federal law and regulations. The Companies also will exchange certain personal information about you with selected credit reporting agencies, when we are legally required, such as in response to a subpoena and to prevent fraud or to comply with a legally permitted inquiry by a government agency or regulator.
Unless prohibited by law, you have the right, upon reasonable notice, to view any personally identifiable information collected from you through your visits to or use of this site, to make corrections to such information, if necessary, or to request that such information be removed from our systems. You may do so by contacting us at the address indicated at the end of this Privacy Policy Statement.
NON-AFFILIATED SITES and THIRD PARTIES
Our site may also permit you to access non-affiliated sites directly from our site to provide you with value-added information, functionality or services. If you provide personal information via these sites, your information may be shared with these third-party entities. It is also important to remember that, if you link to a non-affiliated site from our site, that party's privacy policy and its terms and conditions will apply to you. We encourage you to learn about each third party's privacy policy before sharing personal information with them. We are not, however, responsible for the collection and use of information by non-affiliated companies and organizations that may be linked to this site.
Please remember that this Privacy Policy Statement applies only to the SACA Companies and this site. It does not apply to sites that may be linked to or from our site or any other company or organization. If you link to a non-affiliated site from our site, that party's privacy policy and its terms and conditions may apply to you. We encourage you to learn about each third party's privacy policy before giving personal information to them.
WHO IS COVERED BY THIS POLICY?
This Policy covers the Student Aid Centers, LLC. and its owned affiliates.
This Policy applies to current and former consumer customers and site visitors. Separate policies may apply to customers of certain businesses, such as Private Banking. In addition, customers in certain states may also receive policies that apply to them. The privacy policies posted on our websites apply when you use those sites. In addition, our online consumer information practices are at www.studentaidcenters.com/
Effective Date and Changes
The effective date of this Privacy Statement is April 15, 2006. We reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy Statement. Any such changes will be reflected in the updated version displayed on this site.
Have Questions? Need Changing of Your Privacy?
For additional information about this Privacy Policy Statement, please feel free to contact us by phone or write us at: Student Aid Centers, LLC. 4328 Middle Lake Drive, Tampa, FL 33624
You do not need to contact us unless you want to make one of the privacy choices listed above. If you are a current customer, you do not need to contact us unless you want to change a choice you previously indicated to us.
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