Privacy Policy

Overview

America Edu ("we," "our," or "us") operates the website located at america.edu and related educational services (collectively, the "Platform"). We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of all personal information entrusted to us by the students, families, educators, and institutions who use our Platform.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use and protect it, when and why we share it, and what rights and choices you have over your own information. Please read this Policy carefully. By using our Platform, you agree to the practices described in this document.

If you have questions about this Policy or our privacy practices at any time, please contact us at privacy@america.edu or using the contact details provided at the end of this document.

Information We Collect

We collect information in two primary ways: information you provide to us directly, and information collected automatically when you use our Platform.

Information You Provide Directly

• Account Registration: Name, email address, username, password, and optionally your school, grade level, or educational role when you create an America Edu account.
• Profile Information: Academic interests, intended major or field of study, target institutions, geographic location, graduation year, and other education-related preferences you choose to provide.
• Communications: Messages you send us via contact forms, support requests, survey responses, or direct email communications.
• Scholarship and College Searches: Search queries, saved colleges, saved scholarships, and browsing history within the Platform's search and comparison tools.
• User-Generated Content: Reviews, ratings, or other content you submit about schools, colleges, or programs listed on our Platform.
• Newsletter and Marketing Subscriptions: Email address and communication preferences when you subscribe to America Edu email updates, guides, or newsletters.

Information Collected Automatically

• Usage Data: Pages viewed, features used, search terms entered, time spent on pages, clicks, and navigation patterns within the Platform.
• Device and Technical Information: IP address, browser type and version, operating system, device type, screen resolution, and referring URL.
• Cookies and Tracking Technologies: Session cookies, persistent cookies, pixel tags, and similar technologies used to maintain your session, remember preferences, and analyze Platform usage. See our Cookies section for full details.
• Location Data: Approximate geographic location derived from your IP address, used to provide regionally relevant college, school, and scholarship information.

Information from Third Parties

We may receive information about you from third-party sources including social media platforms (if you choose to connect or log in via social login), academic data partners, and analytics providers. We handle all third-party sourced information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

How We Use Your Information

America Edu uses the personal information we collect for the following purposes:

• Providing and Improving the Platform: To operate our website and services, process your searches and requests, maintain your account, display relevant college and scholarship information, and continuously improve the accuracy and usefulness of our Platform.
• Personalization: To tailor content, recommendations, search results, and featured opportunities to your stated educational goals, interests, location, and browsing behavior on the Platform.
• Communications: To send you account-related messages (registration confirmations, password resets, account updates), respond to your inquiries and support requests, and send you educational guides, scholarship alerts, and Platform updates if you have subscribed to receive them.
• Analytics and Research: To understand how our Platform is used in aggregate, identify areas for improvement, measure the effectiveness of our content and features, and conduct research into American education trends.
• Safety and Security: To detect, investigate, and prevent fraudulent, unauthorized, or illegal activity on our Platform, and to protect the rights, safety, and property of America Edu and our users.
• Legal Compliance: To comply with applicable laws, regulations, court orders, and other legal obligations, and to enforce our Terms of Use and other policies.

Sharing & Disclosure

We do not share your personal information with third parties except in the limited circumstances described below:

Service Providers

We share personal information with trusted vendors and service providers who assist us in operating our Platform — including cloud hosting providers, email delivery services, analytics platforms, customer support tools, and payment processors. These parties are contractually required to protect your information, use it only for the services they provide to us, and not disclose it to others.

Aggregate and De-Identified Data

We may share aggregated, de-identified information (data that cannot reasonably be used to identify you personally) with research partners, educational institutions, government agencies, or the public for purposes such as reporting on education trends, scholarship availability, or college enrollment patterns in the United States.

Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information when required by law, subpoena, court order, or other legal process; when necessary to protect the safety of any person; to respond to a government request; or to investigate suspected illegal activity or violations of our Terms of Use.

Business Transfers

If America Edu is involved in a merger, acquisition, consolidation, sale of assets, or other corporate transaction, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you via email and/or a prominent notice on our Platform of any such change in ownership or control before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

With Your Consent

We may share your information with third parties when you have given us clear, specific consent to do so — for example, if you choose to share your profile with a college, connect with a scholarship sponsor, or authorize a third-party application through our Platform.

Cookies & Tracking Technologies

America Edu uses cookies and similar tracking technologies to operate and improve our Platform. A cookie is a small text file placed on your device by a website to remember information about your visit.

Types of Cookies We Use

• Essential Cookies: Required for the Platform to function. These include session cookies that maintain your logged-in state, security tokens, and cookies that remember your preferences during a browsing session. These cannot be disabled without significantly impairing Platform functionality.
• Analytics Cookies: Provided by services such as Google Analytics, these help us understand how visitors interact with our Platform — which pages are most visited, how long users stay, where they come from, and where they exit. This data is used in aggregate and does not personally identify individual users.
• Preference Cookies: Store your settings and preferences, such as your saved college lists, scholarship searches, newsletter subscription status, and display preferences, so they persist across sessions.
• Performance Cookies: Help us monitor Platform speed, identify technical errors, and optimize the delivery of content so pages load quickly and reliably for all users.

Managing Your Cookie Preferences

You can control cookie settings through your browser's settings menu. Most browsers allow you to block or delete cookies. However, disabling essential cookies may prevent certain features from functioning properly. For analytics cookies specifically, you may opt out by installing the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On.

Data Security

America Edu implements industry-standard technical, administrative, and physical security measures designed to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. These measures include:

• Encryption of data in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS/SSL) on all Platform pages
• Encryption of sensitive data at rest in our databases and storage systems
• Access controls limiting staff access to personal data on a need-to-know basis
• Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments of our Platform infrastructure
• Secure password hashing using industry-standard algorithms — we never store passwords in plain text
• Employee training on data security practices and privacy obligations

Despite these measures, no Internet transmission or electronic storage system is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security, and we encourage you to use a strong, unique password for your America Edu account and to notify us immediately at security@america.edu if you suspect any unauthorized use of your account.

Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you with our services. Specifically:

• Active Accounts: Personal information associated with active accounts is retained for the duration of your use of the Platform plus a reasonable period thereafter to allow for account reactivation and dispute resolution.
• Deleted Accounts: When you delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal information within 90 days, except where retention is required by law or legitimate business necessity (such as records of financial transactions or legal disputes).
• Communications: Support and inquiry records are retained for 3 years to ensure quality and consistency in our responses and to address any follow-up questions.
• Analytics Data: Aggregated and de-identified analytics data may be retained indefinitely as it cannot be used to identify individual users.

Your Rights & Choices

You have meaningful rights and choices over your personal information. Depending on your location, you may be entitled to the following:

• Access: The right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correction: The right to request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information.
• Deletion: The right to request that we delete your personal information, subject to legal retention obligations.
• Portability: The right to receive your personal information in a commonly used, machine-readable format.
• Opt-Out of Marketing: The right to unsubscribe from promotional emails at any time using the unsubscribe link included in every marketing message or by contacting us directly.
• Withdraw Consent: Where processing is based on your consent, the right to withdraw that consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.
• Lodge a Complaint: The right to file a complaint with the relevant data protection authority in your jurisdiction.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at privacy@america.edu. We will respond to all legitimate requests within 30 days.

Children's Privacy

America Edu is committed to protecting the privacy of children and full complying with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and applicable state laws governing the collection of personal information from minors.

Our Platform is designed primarily for students aged 13 and older, parents, educators, and adult learners. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 without verifiable parental consent. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 13 without appropriate consent, we will take steps to delete that information as promptly as possible.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child under 13 has provided personal information to America Edu without your consent, please contact us immediately at privacy@america.edu and we will take immediate action.

For students aged 13 to 17, we encourage parental or guardian involvement in reviewing and understanding how our Platform works and what information is collected. Parents may contact us to request access to, correction of, or deletion of their minor child's personal information.

California Residents — CCPA Rights

If you are a California resident, you have specific rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), in addition to the rights described above.

• Right to Know: The right to request disclosure of the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the sources of collection, the purposes for collection, and the categories of third parties with whom we share it.
• Right to Delete: The right to request deletion of personal information we have collected about you, subject to certain exceptions permitted under California law.
• Right to Correct: The right to request correction of inaccurate personal information we maintain about you.
• Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing: America Edu does not sell personal information. We do not share personal information with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes.
• Right to Non-Discrimination: You will not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising any of your CCPA/CPRA rights. We will not deny you services, charge you different prices, or provide a different quality of service because you exercised a privacy right.

California residents may submit requests by emailing privacy@america.edu with the subject line "California Privacy Request." We will verify your identity before processing your request and respond within 45 days as required by law.

Third-Party Links

Our Platform contains links to third-party websites, including college and university websites, scholarship sponsor pages, government education resources, and other educational organizations. These third-party sites have their own privacy policies, which we do not control and are not responsible for.

We encourage you to review the privacy policy of every third-party website you visit through links on our Platform. Our Privacy Policy applies only to information collected through America Edu's own Platform and services. A link to a third-party site does not constitute an endorsement of that site's privacy practices.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal requirements, or other factors. When we make material changes, we will:

• Update the "Last Updated" date at the top of this page
• Send an email notification to registered account holders at the email address associated with their account
• Display a prominent notice on the America Edu homepage for a minimum of 30 days following the change

Your continued use of the Platform after any changes to this Policy constitutes your acceptance of the updated terms. If you do not agree to the updated Policy, please discontinue your use of the Platform and contact us to delete your account.

Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests related to this Privacy Policy or America Edu's privacy practices, please reach out to our Privacy team using any of the following methods:

For urgent security concerns (such as a suspected data breach or unauthorized account access), please email security@america.edu with the subject line "URGENT — Security Issue." We treat all such reports as high priority.