Privacy Policy

Individuals’ privacy is important to Northwestern College (NC). To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our online information practices. Our privacy and public records obligations are governed solely by applicable Illinois statutes and by any applicable federal laws.

This notice applies to all information collected by or submitted to official NC websites. The following information explains the Internet privacy policy and practices that NC has adopted for its official websites. This notice shall not be construed as a contractual promise and NC reserves the right to amend it at any time without notice.

When you access an NC webpage, the user information and the essential and nonessential technical information listed below may be automatically collected – those categories are collectively referred to as “access” information. No other information is collected through NC’s official websites except when you deliberately decide to send it to NC (for example, by clicking on a link to send NC an e-mail). The information you might choose to send NC is listed below as “Optional Information.”

• Client Information: the Internet domain and Internet address of the computer you are using.
• Essential technical information: identification of the page or service you are requesting, type of browser and operating system you are using, and the date and time of access.
• Nonessential technical information: the Internet address of website from which you linked directly to NC’s website and the “cookie information” described below.

• When you send NC an e-mail: your name, e-mail address, and content of your e-mail.
• When you complete an online form: all of the data you choose to fill in or confirm, including credit or debit card information if you are ordering a product or making a payment, as well as information about other people if you supply such information.

Your client information is used to route the requested webpage to your computer for viewing. In theory, the requested webpage and the routing information could be discerned by other entities involved in transmitting the requested page to you. We do not control the privacy practices of those entities. Essential and nonessential technical information helps us respond to your request in an appropriate format (or in a personalized manner) and helps us plan website improvements. Optional information enables us to provide services or information tailored more specifically to your needs or to forward your message or inquiry to another entity that is better able to do so, and also allows NC to plan website improvements.

We may use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design NC’s website. For example, we may report that X number of individuals visited a certain area on our website, or that Y number of men and Z number of women filled out our application form, but we would not disclose anything that could be used to identify those individuals.

We may keep client information from our systems indefinitely after the webpage is transmitted, but we do not try to obtain any information to link it to the individuals who browse our website. However, on rare occasions when a “hacker” attempts to breach computer security, logs of access information are retained to permit a security investigation and in such cases may be forwarded together with any other relevant information in our possession to law enforcement agencies.

We use the information you provide about yourself when placing an order or request only to complete that order or request. We do not share this information with outside parties except to the extent necessary to complete that order or request. Similarly, we use the information you provide about someone else when placing an order or request only to complete that order or request. Again, we do not share this information with outside parties except to the extent necessary to complete that order or request.

We generally use return e-mail addresses only to answer the e-mail we receive. Such addresses are generally not used for any other purpose and by NC policy are not shared with outside parties.

Finally, we never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways unrelated to the ones described above without a clear notice on the particular site and without also providing you an opportunity to opt out or otherwise prohibit such unrelated uses.

Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our website.

Some official NC websites use “cookies.” Often a cookie enables the NC website to tailor what you see according to the way you entered the site (i.e., if you entered by pushing a button identifying yourself as a student, your subsequent views of information might be tailored for student audiences). For this kind of cookie, the information stored in that cookie might include the following (formatted for legibility):

Name: NC_cookie Session: 5770188679.136437
Timestamp: 469021878
Portal: 0
Expires: Tue, 01-May-2001 19:40:58 GMT
Domain: nc.edu
Path: /
Providing Information Is Your Choice.

There is no legal requirement for you to provide any information at our website. However, our website will not work without routing information and the essential technical information. Failure of your browser to provide nonessential technical information will not prevent your use of our website but may prevent features from working. For any optional information that is requested at an NC website, failure to provide the requested information will mean that the particular feature or service associated with that part of the web page may not be available to you. Our Commitment to Data Security

To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures in place to safeguard and secure the information we collect online, consistent with the policies of NC and with the laws and regulations of the state of Illinois.

Should you have other questions or concerns about these privacy policies and practices, please send us an e-mail at [email protected].

If you wish to review or change information gathered about you via an official NC website but you do not know how, the NC Webmaster will assist in locating the persons responsible for that site so that you may make your request for review or change of information directly.