Digital Privacy Policy

Franklin Cummings Tech is committed to respecting your privacy. As an unregistered user, you can visit most of franklincummings.edu without revealing any personal information. We currently do not collect any personal information about you unless you provide that information voluntarily. Any personal information you choose to provide us will only be used by Franklin Cummings Tech to conduct official college business. The college does not sell, rent, loan, trade or lease personal information collected on this site.

For purposes of this policy, “personal information” means any information concerning a natural person which, because of name, number, symbol, mark or other identifier, can be used to identify that natural person.

Personal Information We Collect

Some of the college site(s) and service(s) may collect personally identifiable information to further personalize your experience within a site. Some site(s) and service(s) require that you provide personally identifiable information to participate in the activities and offerings within.

Franklin Cummings Tech collects several types of information from and about users of our website, including information:

• By which you may be personally identified, such as name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, social security number or other personal information; and/or
• About your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our website, and usage details.

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 and other tracking technologies.

Information from You

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

• Information that you provide by filling in forms on our website.
• Use of the chat feature on our website.
• Records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses) if you contact us.
• Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes.
• Your search queries on the website.

You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on public areas of our website or transmitted to other users of the website or third parties (collectively, “User Contributions”). Your User Contributions are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users of the website with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.

Information From Automatic Data Collection Technologies

As you navigate through and interact with our website, 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 website, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Website.
• Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.

The information we collect automatically does not include personal information, but we may maintain it or associate it with personal information we collect in other ways or receive from third parties. It helps us to improve our website and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to:

• Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
• Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our website according to your individual interests.
• Speed up your searches.
• Recognize you when you return to our website.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

• Cookies (or browser cookies). To enhance and personalize your experience, some of our web pages use “cookies.” Cookies are text files that your Web browser places on your computer’s hard drive to store your preferences. You may refuse to accept 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 website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our website. When using cookies, we do not store personally identifiable information within the cookie.
• Strictly Necessary Cookies. These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.
• Flash Cookies. Certain features of our website may use local stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from, and on our website. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as are used for browser cookies. For information about managing your privacy and security settings for Flash cookies, see “Your Rights to Your Data” below.
• Web Beacons. Pages of our website or e-mails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit us, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity).

We do not collect personal information automatically, but we may tie this information to personal information about you that we collect from other sources or you provide to us.

How We Use Personal Information

We may use the information you provide about yourself, including any personal information:

• To present our website and its contents to you.
• To provide you with information, products, or services that you request from us.
• To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it.
• To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection.
• To notify you about changes to our website or any products or services we offer or
  provide through it. Most of our communications provide an “opt out” feature.
• In any other way we may describe when you provide the information.
• For any other purpose with your consent.

In addition, the Franklin Cummings Tech Website(s) and Service(s) may contain e-mail services, bulletin board services, chat areas, news groups, forums, communities, personal Web pages, calendars, photo displays and/or other message or communication facilities designed to enable you to communicate with others (collectively, “Communication Services”). The information we collect in connection with these Communication Services is used to provide an interactive experience. We use this information to facilitate participation in these Communication Services. Within many of these Communication Services, the college provides you with multiple privacy options that allow you to restrict the use and viewability of your information to others.

How We Disclose Personal Information

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

• To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
• To a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger or acquisition with another educational institution, in which personal information held by Franklin Cummings Tech about our website users is among the assets transferred.
• To third parties to market their products or services to you if you have consented to/not opted out of these disclosures. We contractually require these third parties to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
• For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
• With your consent.

Franklin Cummings Tech may also disclose your personal information:

• To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.
• To enforce or apply the terms of any of our user agreements; and
• To protect the rights, property, or safety of the college, our users, or others.

Your Rights to Your Data

You may send us an email at admissions@franklincummings.edu to request access to, correct, or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. We cannot always 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.

If you delete your User Contributions from the website, copies of your User Contributions may remain viewable in cached and archived pages, or might have been copied or stored by other Website users. Proper access and use of information provided on the website, including User Contributions, is governed by our terms of use in this Privacy Policy.

We also strive to provide you with choices regarding the personal information you provide to us. We have created mechanisms to provide you with the following control over your information:

• Tracking Technologies and Advertising. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this site may then be inaccessible or not function properly.
• Promotional Offers. If you do not wish to have your email address/contact information used by the college to promote our own or third parties’ products or services, you can opt out by sending us an email stating your request to admissions@franklincummings.edu. If we have sent you a promotional email, you may click the “unsubscribe” button or send us a return email asking to be omitted from future email distributions.

We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However, these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way.

Additional Information

We update our Privacy Policy as necessary. The most recent update to this policy was in April 2023. If you have any questions about this policy or about Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology’s data use, please contact admissions@franklincummings.edu.