Our Privacy Commitment
We are committed to excellence in customer service, and your privacy is important to us. Listed below is a description of the guidelines we use when protecting the information you provide or we obtain when you use our website or services provided through our website or any application linking to this policy (the “Edfinancial Services” or “Services”). This applies to Edfinancial Services and governs data collection and usage at all Edfinancial Services sites and services such as Edfinancial.StudentAid.gov.
What This Privacy Policy Covers
Information We Collect
We obtain information about you and your use of our Edfinancial Services when you register a user account with us, sign up to receive communications from us, or otherwise access or interact with our Edfinancial Services. The information we collect can include personal information (as described below) or non-personal information, which is information that does not identify or relate to an individual.
Personal information is information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. An identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, or an online identifier. We collect information through any correspondence that you provide to us whether through email, mail, phone calls, or through our Edfinancial Services.
We do not consider personal information to include information that can no longer be used to identify a specific natural person, whether in combination with other information or otherwise.
In some instances, we automatically collect certain types of information when you use our Edfinancial Services or correspond with us. Automated technologies may include the use of web server logs to collect IP addresses, “cookies” and web beacons. For more details regarding the information collected through the Edfinancial Services, please read the chart below.
| Categories of Information | Description of Category |
|---|---|
| Account Information | This is the personal information that is provided by you or collected by us to enable you to login and access your loan account with Edfinancial Services. This includes your first and last name, student loan account number, date of birth, mailing address, phone number, and email address. Some of the personal information we will ask you to provide is required in order to create your account. You also have the option to provide us with some additional personal information in order to make your account more personalized. We use your account information to verify your identity as an Edfinancial customer, enabling our representatives to answer specific questions to assist you with your account(s). If you wish to update any of your account information, you may do so by logging into your online account. |
| Services Usage Information | This can be personal information and non-personal information that is collected about you when you are using our Services, and this may include:
Our Services use cookies, unique identifiers, and similar technologies to collect information about the pages you view, functions that you access, the buttons and icons you click, and to remember your login information and Services settings to make it easier and more efficient for you to use our Services. Cookies. If you choose to register with the Edfinancial Services sites in order to utilize a service that requires you to log in, your user ID will be stored in a temporary “cookie” on your web browser. Cookies are small data files that are downloaded onto your computer or mobile device when you use our Services, which are unique to your device or account. Cookies make it easier for you to use our Services by saving your preferences so that we can use these to improve your next and subsequent visits to our Services – for example, remembering your login information. Cookies help us learn which areas of our Services are useful and which areas need improvement. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. The cookie that manages your login will be removed as soon as you close your browser. Other cookies are used for customization of content and contain information such as your device type, or the page from which you landed on an Edfinancial Services page or feature and do not contain any personally identifying information such as your name, email address, or loan information. Our cookies are not used to collect any nonpublic personal information. We do not link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information you submit while on our site. Cookies may be either persistent or temporary (or session) cookies. A persistent cookie retains user preferences for a particular website, app, or service, allowing those preferences to be used in future use sessions and remains valid until its set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date). A temporary cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. You can choose whether to accept cookies by changing the settings on your browser or device. However, if you choose to disable this function, your experience with our Services may be impaired and some features may not work as they were intended. When we use cookies or other similar technologies, we may set the cookies ourselves or ask third parties to do so to help us. We currently use Google Analytics to track visitors by collecting anonymous statistics with first-party cookies, small text files with a single string of anonymous text or numbers. We do not collect any personally identifiable information about website visitors using this tool. The type of information we collect includes pages visited, IP address, the type of browser you are using, the websites you visit immediately before and immediately after you visit our websites, and other anonymous data involving your use of our websites. By supplementing our records, this information helps us learn things like what pages are most attractive to our visitors. We do not link an IP address with the identity of a computer user. For more information about Google Analytics, please visit www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners. Pixels, Web Beacons. We or third party partners may use invisible pixels or beacons on our Services to count how many users access or use certain pages, features, or content. This information is collected and reported in the aggregate. We may use this information to improve our current Services offerings, develop new products or services, and target information to you that may be helpful and useful to you based upon your use of our Services. |
| Anonymized Information | We use anonymized and aggregated information that may be created or derived from your personal information or usage of our Services for purposes that include data analysis, improving our Services, advertising and marketing, and developing new features and functionality within our Services. |
Third-Party Links
Some areas of our websites may provide links to non-Edfinancial Services sites. If you follow a link to visit a site that is not an Edfinancial Services website, the privacy policy of that site and its terms of use apply to you. We encourage you to learn about the privacy policy of any third party before giving personal information to them.
Minimum Age Requirement
By law, Edfinancial Services cannot and does not knowingly collect, maintain, or process any information from persons who are not yet 13 years of age. If you are under 13 years of age, you can utilize the information provided in many areas of our site, but you are not authorized to submit information to us.
Your Rights and Options Regarding Your Personal Information
Personal information required to service your loans is retained by Edfinancial Services for a period of at least 7 years after full payment of the loan balance. Personal information may be retained longer than seven years when required by legal obligations and/or contractual obligations with your lender. You have the right to request a copy of your personal information and loan records. You may do so electronically via your online account or by contacting us via the methods listed below in the “Contact Information” section.
You may update, modify, or delete basic personal information associated with your student loan account(s) by logging into your online account or by contacting us via our email contact form.
If you are a resident of California, effective January 1, 2020, you may have additional rights with respect to your data under certain circumstances, which may include the following:
- The right to request access to a copy of your personal information and third parties with whom we have shared your personal information
- The right to request us to erase your personal information when we no longer need such data in connection with our services.
To exercise these rights, please contact us as set forth in the “Contact Information” section below.
Confidentiality and Security
The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as a social security number) on our registration or order forms, we encrypt that information. We follow industry-accepted best practices for protecting personal information, both during transmission and at rest on our systems. While no method of communication over the Internet or electronic storage is ever 100% secure, we have gone to great lengths to protect your personal information through the use of firewalls, intrusion protection systems, file level encryption of data while at rest, and encryption of data while in transit over our network. All systems provide extensive logging and automated reporting of issues enabling timely response, interdiction and corrective actions if necessary.
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.
If you have any questions about security on our website, you can contact us via our email contact form.
Special Notice to Non-U.S. Users Regarding Data Transfers
We store your personal information in the United States or other locations outside your home country. The privacy protections and the rights of authorities to access your information in these countries may not be the same as in your home country.
If you are located in a country outside the U.S. and submit personal information to us, you consent to the general use and disclosure of such information as provided in this Privacy Policy and to the transfer and/or storage of that information to the U.S. and other countries outside your home country.
Governing Law and Jurisdiction
This Privacy Policy shall be construed and governed under the laws of the United States and State of Tennessee (without regard to rules governing conflicts of laws provisions). You agree that venue for all actions, arising out of or relating in any way to your use of our Services, shall be in federal or state court of competent jurisdiction located in Knox County, Tennessee, within one (1) year after the claim arises. Each party waives any objections based on forum non conveniens and waives any objection to venue of any action instituted hereunder to the extent that an action is brought in the courts identified above.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
Edfinancial Services may occasionally update this Privacy Policy. This policy was effective on December 20, 2012 and last updated on April 24, 2020.
We encourage you to periodically review this Policy to be informed of how Edfinancial Services is protecting your information. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this Privacy Policy so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If we are going to use users’ personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection, we will notify users by posting a notice on our website for 30 days prior to such change.
Contact Information
If you have any questions about this policy please contact:
Customer Privacy
Edfinancial Services
120 North Seven Oaks Drive
Knoxville, TN 37922
Toll Free Numbers: 1-800-337-6884, or 1-855-337-6884
Online: Edfinancial.StudentAid.gov/Contact