Privacy

Policy

Last Updated: April 9th, 2021

Ralston College (“Ralston College,” “we,” “our,” and/or “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy of individuals who visit and use our website and related services (collectively, our “Services”). This privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy”) explains how we collect, use, and share information from users of our Services (“Users”) or their devices. If you are located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or the United Kingdom, “personal information” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.  

By using or accessing our Services, you agree to the collection, use, disclosure, and procedures this Privacy Policy describes.

Information We Collect

We collect a variety of personal information from or about you or your devices from various sources, as described below.

If you do not provide your information when requested, you may not be able to use our Services if that information is necessary to provide our Services or if we are legally required to collect it.

A. Information You Provide to Us

Registration Information. If you sign up for one of our webinars, symposia, meetups, or other events, we may receive your first and last name, age range, level of education, country of residence, interests, email address, the contents of a message or attachments that you may send to us, and other information you choose to provide. 

Payment Information. If you make a donation to Ralston College, a third-party service provider that handles payments for us will receive your payment card information or other billing information. 

Communications. If you contact us directly, we may receive additional personal information about you. For example, when you contact us through our website, we may receive your first and last name, email address, the contents of a message or attachments that you may send to us, and other information you choose to provide. If you subscribe to our newsletter, then we may collect certain information from you, such as your first and last name and email address. When we send you emails, we may track whether you open them to learn how to deliver a better customer experience and improve our Services.

B. Information We Collect When You Use Our Services

Device Information. We may receive information about the device and software you use to access our Services, including Internet protocol (“IP”) address, web browser type, operating system version, and unique device identifiers.

Usage Information. To help us understand how you use our Services and to help us improve them, when you use our Services, we may automatically receive information about your interactions with our Services, like log files, performance logs, diagnostic reports, the pages or other content you view, the searches you conduct, pages you request, the websites you visited before using our Services, and the dates, times, and durations of your visits.

Location Information. When you use our Services, we may infer the general physical location of your device and the geographic regions our Users come from. For example, your IP address may indicate your general geographic region.

Information from Cookies and Similar Technologies. We and third-party partners collect information using cookies, pixel tags, or similar technologies. Our third-party partners, such as analytics and advertising partners, may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across different services. Cookies are small text files containing a string of alphanumeric characters. We may use both session cookies and persistent cookies. A session cookie disappears after you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains after you close your browser and may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to our Services.

Cookies can also be used for functionality management, enabling us to make the user’s visit more efficient by, for example, remembering language preferences, passwords and log-in details.  We may also use pixel tags and web beacons on our Services. These are tiny graphic images placed on web pages or in our emails that allow us to determine whether you have performed a specific action. Below is an overview of the types of cookies we and third parties may use to collect information.

• Strictly necessary cookies. Some cookies are strictly necessary to make our Services available to you. We cannot provide you with our Services without this type of cookies. 
• Functional cookies. These are used to recognize you when you return to our Services. This enables us to adapt our content for you, and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
• Analytical or Performance cookies. We also use cookies for website and app analytics purposes in order to operate, maintain and improve our Services.

Where required by applicable law, we obtain your consent to use cookies. Please review your web browser’s “Help” file to learn the proper way to modify your cookie settings. Please note that if you delete or choose not to accept cookies from our Services, you may not be able to utilize the features of our Services to their fullest potential.

C. Information We Receive from Third Parties

Platform Provider. We may receive contact information of participants and viewers of our courses from a third-party platform provider who hosts our online courses. We also receive aggregated and deidentified metrics data about participants and viewers of our online courses hosted by this platform provider.

Third-Party Services. You may also post photos, comments, or reviews on our pages available through third-party platforms, including Twitter or Apple Podcasts. If you do so or if you otherwise provide information to our ads hosted on third-party platforms, we and other users may be able to view the personal information you make available through these third-party platforms.

Other Third Parties. We may receive additional personal information about you from third parties such as data or marketing partners and combine it with other personal information we have about you.

How We Use the Information We Collect

We use the personal information we collect:

• To provide, maintain, improve, and enhance our Services;
• To communicate with you, provide you with updates and other information relating to our Services, provide information that you request, respond to comments and questions, and otherwise provide customer support;
• For marketing purposes, such as developing and providing promotional and advertising materials that may be useful, relevant, valuable or otherwise of interest to you;
• To understand and analyze how you use our Services and develop new products, services, and features;
• To de-identify and aggregate information collected through our Services and use it for our business purposes;
• To find and prevent fraud, and respond to trust and safety issues that may arise;
• For compliance purposes, including enforcing our legal rights, or as may be required by applicable laws and regulations or requested by any judicial process or governmental agency; and
• For other purposes for which we provide specific notice at the time the personal information is collected.

Legal Bases for Processing European Personal Information

If you are located in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we only process your personal information when we have a valid “legal basis”, including when:

• Consent. You have consented to the use of your personal information, for example to submit your job application to our Services, or to use cookies.
• Contractual necessity. We need your personal information to provide you with the services you have requested, for example to respond to your inquiries.
• Compliance with a legal obligation. We have a legal obligation to use your personal information, for example to comply with tax and accounting obligations.
• Legitimate interests. We or a third party have a legitimate interest in using your personal information. In particular, we have a legitimate interest in using your personal information for product development and internal analytics purposes, and otherwise to improve the safety, security, and performance of our Services. We only rely on our or a third party’s legitimate interests to process your personal information when these interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.

How We Share the Information We Collect

We may disclose personal information we collect from or about you as described below or otherwise disclosed to you at the time of collection.

Partners and Affiliates. We may share any personal information we receive with our partners, subsidiaries, and affiliates for any of the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

Vendors and Service Providers. We may share any personal information we receive with contractors, vendors, service providers, and other third parties retained in connection with the provision of our Services.

Analytics Partners. We use analytics services such as Google Analytics to collect and process certain analytics data. These services may also collect information about your use of other websites, apps, and online resources. You can learn about Google’s practices by going to https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ and opt-out of them by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. 

Advertising Partners. We work with third-party advertising partners to show you ads that we think may interest you. These advertising partners may set and access their own cookies, pixel tags and similar technologies on our Services and they may otherwise collect or have access to information about you which they may collect over time and across different online services. Some of our advertising partners are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1#!/) or Digital Advertising Alliance (http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=2&lang=EN). If you do not wish to receive personalized ads, please visit their opt-out pages to learn about how you may opt out of receiving web-based personalized ads from member companies.

As Required by Law and Similar Disclosures. We may access, preserve, and disclose personal information about you if we believe doing so is required or appropriate to: (a) comply with law enforcement requests and legal process, such as a court order or subpoena; (b) respond to your requests; or (c) protect your, our, or others’ rights, property, or safety. 

Merger, Sale, or Other Asset Transfers. We may disclose and transfer your personal information to service providers, advisors, potential transactional partners, or other third parties in connection with the consideration, negotiation, or completion of a corporate transaction in which we are acquired by or merged with another company or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets. 

Consent. We may also disclose personal information from or about you or your devices with your permission.

Your Rights and Choices

If you are located in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the additional rights described below.

• You may request access to the personal information we maintain about you, update and correct inaccuracies in your personal information, restrict or object to the processing of your personal information, have the personal information anonymized or deleted, as appropriate, or exercise your right to data portability to easily transfer your personal information to another company. In addition, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, including in your country of residence, place of work or where an incident takes place.
• You may withdraw any consent you previously provided to us regarding the processing of your personal information, at any time and free of charge. We will apply your preferences going forward and this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before you withdrew your consent.

You may exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details at the end of this Privacy Policy. Before meeting your request, we may ask you to provide reasonable information to verify your identity. Please note that there are exceptions and limitations to each of these rights, and that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases instantly or within a reasonable period of time, we may retain information for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligations, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so.

Marketing Communications. You can unsubscribe from our promotional emails via the link provided in the emails. Even if you opt out of receiving promotional messages from us, you will continue to receive administrative messages from us.

Do Not Track. There is no accepted standard on how to respond to Do Not Track signals, and we do not respond to such signals. 

Third Parties

Our Services may contain links to other websites, products, or services that we do not own or operate. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties. Please be aware that this Privacy Policy does not apply to your activities on these third-party services or any personal information you disclose to these third parties. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such sites. If you have any questions about how these other sites use information from or about you, you should contact them directly. We encourage you to read their privacy policies before providing any personal information to them.

Retention

We take measures to delete your personal information or keep it in a form that does not permit identifying you when this information is no longer necessary for the purposes for which we process it, unless we are required by law to keep this information for a longer period. When determining the specific retention period, we take into account various criteria, such as the type of service provided to you, the nature and length of our relationship with you, and mandatory retention periods provided by law and the statute of limitations.

Security

We make reasonable efforts to protect your personal information by using technical and organizational safeguards designed to improve the security of the personal information we maintain. However, no electronic transmission or storage of personal information can be entirely secure, we can make no guarantees as to the security or privacy of your personal information.

Children’s Privacy

We do not knowingly collect, maintain, or use personal information from children under 13 years of age, and no part of our Services are directed to children. If you learn that a child has provided us with personal information in violation of this Privacy Policy, then you may alert us at enquiries@ralston.ac. 

International Visitors

We may transfer personal information from the European Union to the United States as needed to perform our Services that you have requested from us, or with your consent. 

Changes to This Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy may be revised from time to time. We will post any adjustments to the Privacy Policy on this page, and the revised version will be effective as of the last updated date. If we materially change the ways in which we use or share personal information previously collected from you through our Services, we will attempt to notify you of the changes through our Services, by email, or other means.

Contact Information 

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about our processing activities, please email us at enquiries@ralston.ac or write to us at:

Ralston College

P.O. Box 8302

Savannah, GA, 31412-8302.