Privacy

Policy

Last Updated: October 28, 2024

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”), including donors who make their donation via our website. This privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy”) explains how we collect, use, and share information from users of our Services (“Users,” “you,” and/or “your”).

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. In this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual. If you do not provide your Personal 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. PERSONAL 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 or sign up to receive a program application, 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 choose to use embedded pixels or other technologies to perform standard analytic services, such as tracking information about your receipt and interaction with our emails, whether and when you open them, whether you access any links included in our emails, how long you read our emails, whether you forward our emails and to whom, your Location Information (described below), and your Device Information (described below), to learn how to deliver a better user experience and improve our Services.

B. PERSONAL 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.

Personal Information from Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies.. We and third-party partners collect information about your activities on our Services using cookies, pixel tags, SDKs, or other tracking technologies. Our third-party partners, such as analytics, advertising, and security partners, may also 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. We use this information to provide you with our Services, prevent misuse, and ensure our Services are working properly. We use the following necessary Cookies:

Cookie Name	Provider	Purpose	Expiry
XSRF-TOKEN	Ralston	This cookie is written to help with site security in preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks.	Session
ralston_session	Ralston	Internally laravel uses ralston_session to identify a session instance for a user	Session
cookie-notice	Ralston	Remember the user's cookie preferences	1 Year
enable-marketing- cookies	Ralston	Remember the user's cookie preferences	1 Year
enable-performance- cookies	Ralston	Remember the user's cookie preferences	1 Year

• 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). We use the following functional Cookies:

Cookie Name	Provider	Purpose	Expiry
SOCS	Google	Stores a user's state regarding their cookies choices	13 months
AEC	Ralston	AEC cookies ensure that requests within a browsing session are made by the user, and not by other sites. These cookies prevent malicious sites from acting on behalf of a user without that user's knowledge.	6 months
SEARCH_SAMESITE	Ralston	SameSite prevents the browser from sending this cookie along with cross-site requests. The main goal is mitigate the risk of cross-origin information leakage. It also provides some protection against cross-site request forgery attacks.	Session
_hjSessionUser_	Hotjar	Hotjar cookie that is set when a user first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.	365 days
_hjSession_	Hotjar	A cookie that holds the current session data. This ensues that subsequent requests within the session window will be attributed to the same Hotjar session.	30 mins
PREF	YouTube	This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.	10 years from set/update
LOGIN_INFO	YouTube	This cookie is used to play YouTube videos embedded on the website.	2 years
YSC	YouTube	Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen.	Session
__Secure-YEC	YouTube	Used to detect spam, fraud, and abuse to protect advertisers and YouTube creators	13 months

• Analytical or Performance cookies. We also use cookies for website and app analytics purposes in order to operate, maintain and improve our Services. These providers may also collect information about your use of other websites, apps, and online resources. We also use the following analytical or performance Cookies:

Cookie Name	Provider	Purpose	Expiry
_cs_c	ContentSquare	Consent state: digit between 0 and 3. Used for capturing analytics on web pages	13 months
_cs_id	ContentSquare	Contains: user ID, timestamp (in seconds) of user creation, number of visits for this user	13 months
_hp2_props	ContentSquare	Event properties cookie.	13 months
_hp2_id	ContentSquare	Used to determine the highest-level domain a cookie can be set on (since public suffix domains block setting cookies on the top level).	Session
_ga	Google	ID used to identify users	2 years
_ga_	Google	ID used to identify users	2 years
_gid	Google	ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity	24 hours
_hjDonePolls	Hotjar	This cookie is set once a visitor completes a poll using the Feedback Poll widget. It is used to ensure that the same poll does not re-appear if it has already been filled in.	365 days
ajs_anonymous_id	Trustpilot	Used for Analytics and help count how many people visit a certain site by tracking if you have visited before	1 year
ajs_user_id	Trustpilot	This cookie helps track visitor usage, events, target marketing, and can also measure application performance and stability.	1 year

• Advertising Cookies: We or our third-party advertising partners place Cookies to show you ads we think may interest you. For example, we may show you ads about our products and services on third party websites and apps or show

Cookie Name	Provider	Purpose	Expiry
ar_debug	DoubleClick/Google Marketing	Store and track conversions	Persistent
_fbp	Facebook	Used by Facebook to deliver a series of advertisement products such as real time bidding from third party advertisers	4 months
NID	Google	This cookie is used to collect website statistics and track conversion rates and Google ad personalisation	1 year
ADS_VISITOR_ID	Google	Cookie required to use the options and on-site web services	2 months
APISID	Google	Download certain Google Tools and save certain preferences, for example the number of search results per page or activation of the SafeSearch Filter. Adjusts the ads that appear in Google Search.	2 years
HSID	Google	Download certain Google Tools and save certain preferences, for example the number of search results per page or activation of the SafeSearch Filter. Adjusts the ads that appear in Google Search.	2 years
SAPISID	Google	Download certain Google Tools and save certain preferences, for example the number of search results per page or activation of the SafeSearch Filter. Adjusts the ads that appear in Google Search.	2 years
SID	Google	Download certain Google Tools and save certain preferences, for example the number of search results per page or activation of the SafeSearch Filter. Adjusts the ads that appear in Google Search.	2 years
SIDCC	Google	Download certain Google Tools and save certain preferences, for example the number of search results per page or activation of the SafeSearch Filter. Adjusts the ads that appear in Google Search.	2 years
SSID	Google	Download certain Google Tools and save certain preferences, for example the number of search results per page or activation of the SafeSearch Filter. Adjusts the ads that appear in Google Search.	2 years
__Secure-1PAPISID	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to create a user profile and display relevant and personalised Google Ads to the user.	2 years
__Secure-1PSID	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to create a user profile and display relevant and personalised Google Ads to the user.	2 years
__Secure-1PSIDCC	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to create a user profile and display relevant and personalised Google Ads to the user.	2 years
__Secure-1PSIDTS	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to create a user profile and display relevant and personalised Google Ads to the user.	2 years
__Secure-3PAPISID	Google	Profiles the interests of website visitors to serve relevant and personalised ads through retargeting.	2 years
__Secure-3PSID	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to profile the interests of website visitors and display relevant and personalised Google ads.	2 years
__Secure-3PSIDCC	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to create a user profile and display relevant and personalised Google Ads to the user.	2 years
__Secure-3PSIDTS	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to create a user profile and display relevant and personalised Google Ads to the user.	2 years
__Secure-BUCKET	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to create a user profile and display relevant and personalised Google Ads to the user.	2 years
__Secure-ENID	Google	Targeting cookie. Used to create a user profile and display relevant and personalised Google Ads to the user.	2 years
DV	Google	This cookie is used to collect website statistics and track conversion rates and Google ad personalisation	1 Year
OTZ	Google	Aggregate analysis of website visitors	17 days
_BEAMER_LAST_UPDATE_	hotjar.com	Set by Beamer (hotjar.com). Stores the latest date in which the feed or page was opened.	300 days
_BEAMER_USER_ID_	hotjar.com	Set by Beamer (hotjar.com) to store an internal ID for a user.	300 days
_BEAMER_FIRST_VISIT_	hotjar.com	Set by Beamer (hotjar.com) to store the date of the user’s first interaction with insights.	3000 days
__hstc	Hubspot	The main cookie for tracking visitors	13 months
hubspotutk	Hubspot	This cookie keeps track of a visitor's identity. It is passed to HubSpot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts.	13 months
__hssc	Hubspot	This cookie keeps track of sessions.	30 minutes
__hssrc	Hubspot	Whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser.	Session
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	Youtube	Tries to estimate the users' bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos. Also used for marketing	179 days
VISITOR_PRIVACY_METADATA	Youtube	Youtube visitor privacy metadata cookie	180 days

 

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. PERSONAL 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.

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 Personal Information We Collect

We use the Personal Information we collect:

• To provide, maintain, improve, and enhance our Services;
•  To personalize your experience on our Services such as by providing tailored content and recommendations;
• 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 and advertising 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, features, and functionality;
• To generate anonymized or aggregate data containing only de-identified, non-personal information that we may use for any lawful purposes, such as to publish reports;
• To facilitate transactions and payments;
• 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 Personal 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 current or future partners, subsidiaries, and affiliates for any of the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

Vendors and Service Providers. We may disclose any Personal Information we receive with contractors, vendors, and service providers 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/.

Advertising Partners. We work with third-party advertising partners to show you ads that we think may interest you. Some of our advertising partners are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (http://optout.networkadvertising.org/) or Digital Advertising Alliance (http://optout.aboutads.info/) and serve ads through cookie-based technologies. Please visit their opt-out pages to learn about how you may opt out of receiving certain web-based personalized ads from member companies. These opt-outs will apply only to our third party advertising partners that are members of these organizations. These opt-outs will not apply if our partners serve ads through non-cookie based technologies.

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. For the avoidance of doubt, the disclosure of your Personal Information may occur if you post any objectionable content on or through the Services.

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. The use of your Personal Information following any of these events will be governed by the provisions of this Privacy Policy in effect at the time the applicable information was collected.

Consent. We may also disclose your Personal Information 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. 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, because 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 16 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 

Ralston College is responsible for processing your Personal 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.