Cappex Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy applies to Web sites operated by Cappex.com, LLC ("Cappex"), including www.cappex.com and www.meritaid.com. Please read this policy carefully before sharing any of your personally identifiable information with us.
Cappex goes to great lengths to respect and protect your privacy. We promise that we will not share your contact information to a college, university, sponsor or advertiser without your express permission. We also promise that we will take all reasonable precautions to prevent your personal data from being accessed by unauthorized individuals.
Because our services require us to collect some fairly detailed personal and/or financial information, we want you to have the information you need to make an informed decision about sharing information with us. This Privacy Policy will outline our practices and procedures we follow when handling information input through our web site.
This Privacy Policy covers these main areas:
- Types of information we collect.
- How we use this information.
- Who we may share this information with.
- Security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information
- How to update your information
- Other provisions
1. Types of Information We Collect
Information is collected from our users at several different points during visits to Cappex
Registration - A user must register in order to use this site. During the registration process, a user is required to provide certain information, such as name, address, e-mail address, a password, date of birth, gender, country of citizenship, educational background, grades, and extracurricular activities. In addition, a user may choose to provide other information, such as intended major, career objectives, hobbies and other interests. This information may be updated and amended at any time after the initial registration. Cappex encourages its users to provide these fields of information so that users may maximize the effectiveness of our college search and matching services. If the user will be applying for financial assistance, certain financial and other information regarding the user's family will also need to be provided.
Collection of Information from Children - Cappex abides by federal law and the guidelines set up by the Federal Trade Commission regarding youth privacy. As such, Cappex will not knowingly collect any personal information from or allow the registration of young people under the age of thirteen (13) years.
Referring Friends - You can choose to let others know about Cappex through our referral feature. If you choose to use this feature, we will ask you for that person's name and e-mail address and Cappex will send him or her one or more e-mails inviting him or her to visit Cappex to learn more about our services. Cappex stores their contact information for the sole purpose of sending these e-mails.
Inviting Parents, High School Counselors and References - You can choose to allow others to monitor your account such as parents, guardians, high school counselors and references. If you choose to use this feature, we will ask you for that person's name and e-mail address and Cappex will send him or her one or more e-mails inviting him or her to visit Cappex to register and monitor your progress. By inviting these people to monitor your progress, you are granting permission to Cappex to share the details of your profile with them. This information includes the personally-identifiable data such as name, address, phone number, email address, grades, schools that are interested in you and other information you have provided to us or that we have collected.
Newsletter - If a user wishes to subscribe to any of our newsletters, we ask them to register by providing their contact information, including email address, geographic information (ZIP code), and other information about themselves (such as high school student, parent, etc.). Newsletter recipients will also receive offers from time-to-time from Cappex and select sponsors; however, you may opt-out of receiving these offers at any time.
Cookies and Web Site Information - We use "cookie" technology and web server logs to collect information about how our web site is used by you. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by your web browser on your hard drive. The cookies allow our web servers to recognize the computer used by you to access our websites. Cookies allow you to move from page to page on the website, by remembering the information about the entire session. Information gathered through cookies and by our web server logs may include the date and time of visits, your IP address, the pages viewed, time spent at our Web site, and the Web sites visited just before and just after our Web site. This information may be appended to your personal information provided by you to us to help us provide you with better service and information. It also may be collected on an aggregate basis, and shared with or collected by third-party Web analytics services to help Cappex understand our users' aggregated Web site usage patterns and related trends.
Click Tracking - This site uses ClickTale web analytics service. ClickTale may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, scrolling activity as well as text you type in this website. This site does not use ClickTale to collect any personally identifiable information entered in this website. ClickTale does not track your browsing habits across web sites which do not use ClickTale services. For more information see Privacy Policy for Information Collected by the ClickTale Web Analytics Service. We are using the information collected by ClickTale service exclusively for improving the usefulness of Cappex.com for our visitors. You can choose to disable the Service at http://www.clicktale.net/disable.html.
Information gathered through cookies and by our web server logs may include the date and time of visits, your IP address, the pages viewed, time spent at our Web site, and the Web sites visited just before and just after our Web site. This information may be appended to your personal information provided by you to us to help us provide you with better service and information. It also may be collected on an aggregate basis, and shared with or collected by third-party Web analytics services to help Cappex understand our users' aggregated Web site usage patterns and related trends.
User Communications - When you send email or other communications to Cappex, we may retain those communications in order to process, respond or improve our services.
Chat Rooms and Public Postings - The Cappex site may initially and/or in the future contain chat rooms, public posting forums or one-to-one communication forums permitting direct communications with other users. Any information provided by you in these rooms or forum is deemed to be information available to public viewing, not subject to any disclosure restrictions or representations. We are not responsible for any information posted and/or viewed in such portions of our website.
2. Use of Information
The information you supply to Cappex enables us to provide the college search and matching services which you select by matching your background to the admission requirements and/or preferred student backgrounds of colleges and universities. Participating colleges and universities may search the non-personally identifiable information of users (such as grade point averages or class standing, but not names or addresses) in order to decide which users they are interested in having apply for admission. Cappex will also recommend certain colleges and universities to students, and we will use a similar methodology to select which students should be informed of those opportunities. Under no circumstances will we share any of your personally identifiable information with colleges or universities without your consent. When a student appears to be a viable candidate for admission, a notice will be placed in your message in-box in the college center on our website, and we will send you an email that may contain a link to your message in-box. Once you have reviewed the notice in your message in-box, you may give us permission to release your contact information to such college or university so that they may directly contact you.
In addition, Cappex uses your information in order to customize our site to your interests and enhance your overall experience. Cappex uses various methods to recognize you, including requesting your e-mail address and password before accessing our site. Once Cappex recognizes you, pages, advertisements, including advertisements and offers in your college center, and other content is customized for you so that you can see what interests you the most. In addition, as described above, Cappex utilizes passive information to learn more about how you interact with our site. This passive information may be combined with your other information for purposes such as testing and improving your experience at our site and the compilation of broad aggregate demographic data and related usage information for internal purposes and for disclosure to third parties such as advertisers and content and Web analytics partners. This aggregate passive information does not contain any personal information which can identify any individual user.
Contacting You by E-Mail - Cappex may use your contact information periodically in order to send you e-mail regarding updates at the Cappex site, such as new Cappex opportunities and additional listings which may be of interest to you. The frequency of these messages will vary depending upon your profile, including the types of colleges and other activities you indicated having an interest in. Please note that e-mail messages from third parties are not governed by the opt-out provisions of this Privacy Policy.
Special Offers - We send all new users a welcoming email. Registered users will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, or a newsletter. Out of respect for the privacy, you may opt out of receiving these types of communications such as these offers at any time by following this link.
Optional Information - At various other points during your visit to Cappex, you may be asked to provide information about yourself. For example, you may wish to participate in a survey or a contest, or apply to a scholarship. Participation in surveys, contests or scholarships or the use of other services which require the input of additional information is completely voluntary on your part, and you have the choice about whether to disclose the information necessary to use these features of our site. Contact information will be used to process entries, send promotional material, notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving use of and satisfaction with the Cappex site. Cappex may also conduct surveys on behalf of colleges, universities and other parties in order to provide them marketing and business information; provided however, none of your personally identifiable information will be shared as part of such surveys without your consent.
Please be sure to consult the official rules of any contest or sweepstakes you enter on Cappex as specific data collection and usage practices may vary by contest or sweepstakes.
3. Sharing of Information
Cappex will not knowingly sell, share, rent or otherwise transfer your information other than in accordance with the terms set forth in this Privacy Policy.
Sharing Information with Colleges and Universities - During the registration process, and at certain points thereafter in connection with specific offers, Cappex asks you whether information about you may be sent to third parties, including colleges, universities and sponsors who have products, services and opportunities which may be useful to you. Certain actions on the site - including but not limited to adding a college to your list, asking a college a question, and indicating you are planning to apply to a college - may also result in your information being shared with colleges. Because Cappex understands how important your information is to you, we do not share any information that can identify you without your permission. If you give your permission to allow third parties to contact you, personal information about you (such as your contact information and other information collected during your visit to Cappex) may be shared with colleges, universities and other organizations. Regardless of your decision regarding the sharing of your personal information, we reserve the right to share aggregate demographic data and related usage information with our business partners and university and college users. Such aggregate information will not contain any personal information which can identify any individual user.
Parents, Counselors and Advisors - Cappex permits you to share access to your account with parents, guardians, school counselors or other trusted advisors. If you permit such access, an email will be sent to such person who, if they are not already registered at Cappex, will, after registering at our site and creating a password, have full or partial access to your account and personally identifiable information. If they are already be registered with Cappex, as may be the case of a high school counselor for example, and you grant them access, such access will be immediate. Thereafter, we will share with such persons your profile, messages to you about colleges and universities, and other information relating to you so they may assist you in making one of the most important decisions of your life.
Third Party Service Providers - From time to time, Cappex may decide that it is more efficient to use third parties to perform specific services, such as sending newsletters to Cappex's users. If we use a third party to provide specific services (such as sending newsletters to our users on our behalf), then personally identifiable information (such as contact information) may be shared with that party to the extent necessary for such third party service provider to provide these services. These third party service providers are only allowed to use personally identifiable information only for the purpose of providing the specific services requested by Cappex. These third party service providers have agreed to hold and use your confidential information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. The third party services covered by this paragraph do not include links to third party sites found on our site, which are governed by a more specific provision (Links to Other Sites) below.
Scholarship Administrators - If you applied for a scholarship on Cappex, your profile information may be shared with a third-party scholarship administrator to select scholarship recipients. If you are selected as a scholarship winner, a third-party scholarship administrator will contact you directly to verify your profile information, including but not necessarily limited to obtaining copies of academic transcripts, proof of financial need if required, or any other documentation Cappex or the scholarship administrator requires to award the scholarship and disburse funds to your college or university.
Links to Other Sites - Cappex may present links to third party websites in a format that enables us to keep track of where those links have been followed. This Privacy Policy applies only to web sites and services that are owned and operated by Cappex, LLC. As we do not control other sites to which we may link, they are not subject to our Privacy Policy. Please realize that we do not control the information provided by you to any other third party site to which you may link from the Cappex site.
Disclosure to Law Enforcement and Similar Disclosures - Cappex reserves the right to release personal information if required by law or in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary or appropriate.
Sale or Merger - In the event that Cappex sells, assigns or transfers some or all of its business to a successor or acquirer, Cappex may sell, assign or transfer all of your information, regardless of your opt status, to such successor or acquirer.
4. Security
Cappex has security measures in place to help protect against the loss, misuse and/or unauthorized alteration of the information you provide to us or that we collect. You are the only user authorized to update your profile, unless you provide your password information to another party. We will assume that anyone who has the required login information and password for your account is you, so please keep this information confidential. Parents, guardians and counselors with whom you permit to have access to your account will have their own login information and password, and will not be permitted to alter your information or authorize the release of your information.
Cappex helps protect personally identifiable information by utilizing both online and offline security methods, including firewalls, passwords and restricted physical access to the servers where your information is stored. Our staff is trained to comply with our security procedures, are bound by confidentiality and our security procedures are reviewed and revised periodically.
If you have any questions about security issues at our site, please send an e-mail to , and we will try to answer your questions.
5. Updating Your Information
You can update your personal information by clicking here, by clicking on the "Update Profile" link on the Cappex site, or by following the instructions included in any e-mail message you receive from Cappex. Users who are experiencing problems with updating their information should contact us at , and we will try to resolve your problems.
6. Other Provisions
Acceptance of Terms - Your use of this site indicates an acceptance of the terms of the Privacy Policy.
Disclaimer - Cappex provides information created both by Cappex, and by third parties. While our site strives to provide accurate advice, Cappex does not make any warranty regarding the accuracy, reliability or use of any information provided on this site. Please see our Terms of Use.
Choice/Opt-out - Cappex users are given the opportunity to "opt-out" of having their personally identifiable information used for purposes not directly related to our site. You may opt-out from receiving specified types of communications from Cappex by clicking here. Cappex will only communicate with you according to your instructions. If you have any questions relating to opting-out, please contact us at , and we will try to answer your questions.
Changes to the Privacy Policy - Cappex reserves the right to update this Privacy Policy from time to time without notice to users other than posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. After posting such amended Privacy Policy, all information provided to us will be subject to the terms of the amended Privacy Policy. Please visit this page periodically so that you will be apprised of any changes. Your use of this site indicates an acceptance of the terms of the Privacy Policy.
Your privacy is important to Cappex. If you have questions about any of the provisions described above, please contact us at .
Alternatively, you may contact us at:
Privacy at CappexCappex.com, LLC
2008 Saint Johns Avenue
Highland Park, IL 60035
Last Updated: September 12, 2011
