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Alumnifire Privacy Policy

May 6, 2021

Alumnifire, found at https://www.alumnifire.com, is owned and operated by Alumnifire, Inc.

Intro

Hey there! Thanks for checking out our Privacy Policy (the "Policy"). Privacy's a big issue, and one that we take seriously, so we ask that you read this document carefully so that you're aware of what happens to your data on Alumnifire.

In the Policy, we cover:

Our philosophy about privacy and data ownership.
What types of information we collect about you.
How and why we collect that information.
How your information is used.
Where we store it and our security practices.

So, yeah, important stuff. Also, you'll want to read our Terms of Service. That document is our contract with you governing your use of Alumnifire. You can't use the Service without agreeing to it. It also incorporates this Policy by reference, and it defines a number of key words and definitions, which all mean the same things here in the Policy as they do in the Terms.

Finally, before we get started, the terms "using" and "processing" information broadly refer to a collection of data activities. When we use those terms in this document, you should assume that they can refer to any and all of the following:

Using cookies on a computer.
Analyzing collected information and using or handling such information in any way.
Collecting, storing, or deleting information.
Evaluating, modifying, or combining information.
Disclosing or transferring information within our organization or among any affiliates based in the United States or internationally.

And now, on with the show...

1. Our philosophy about privacy

We believe you have a right to control how your data is used. We believe in being crystal clear with you about what we do with your data. We also believe you should be able to "pack up and go" at any time.

This Policy covers a lot, so here’s a quick summary:

By signing up for the site in general, you should expect to make the data you upload available to other people. You're signing up for a networking site, so you should expect that we need to show your name, job, etc. to other members who are looking to network with you.
Sometimes we'll ask for sensitive information in order to serve you better, like whether you're looking for a job. In these cases, we'll generally mention what we plan to do with this information at the time you're uploading it. If we don't say anything specific, assume other members of the site will have access to it.
If you delete your account, we don't keep any of your account data. There may be occasions where we need to keep some content you've created or uploaded. For example, if you've sent a message to someone else through the platform, we'll keep a record of the message for that other person. If you've included personal data in such a message, we probably won't be able to tell so we won't be able to remove it. For this reason (among others) we recommend that you not include Personal Information in messages you send to other users.

If you think our policies aren't clear, fair, or that we aren't following them, we encourage you to get in touch with us via the contact information at the bottom of the Policy.

1.1 Scope of the Policy

We're not responsible for the privacy and security practices of other companies and websites. The Policy covers only information that you provide us through your use of the Service.

The Service may contain links to other websites or services. Those links don't represent endorsements of those services, and if you visit them, we are not responsible for the privacy or security of any information you upload there. Always read the terms of service and privacy policy of any website you visit.

We may also partner with other companies or use their products to offer additional features. We work with companies that offer high quality and trusted products and services, but we are not responsible for their privacy and security practices.

In particular, we may partner with your school or institution. If we do, we still maintain separate privacy and security practices. We also ask your permission before sharing any of your Personal Information with a school or institution.

1.2. Updates to the Policy

From time to time, we may update the Policy. Sometimes those changes will be small, like correcting typos or changing the wording of a phrase or two. We won't bother you when that happens. But when a change is material, we'll either email all of the registered users of the site, or we'll post a conspicuous notice on the Site or App prior to the change becoming effective.

Every time you use the Service, you consent to the Policy in place at the time you use it. As such, your continued use of the Service after a change to the Policy constitutes your consent to that change. If you wish to opt out, you can delete your account by accessing your settings on the site.

1.3 Children

It's our policy that we don't allow children under age 13 to use the Service, and we do not knowingly collect any Personal Information from children under 13. Additionally, we require that anyone younger than 18 interested in using the Service obtain their parent or guardian's consent.

If you are a parent or guardian and find that your child has provided Personal Information on our Service without your consent, email us. We will make all reasonable efforts to delete such information from our databases.

2. What types of information we collect about you

We collect information from you because without it, there'd be no Alumnifire. Some level of Personal Information is required to help members of alumni networks to connect with each other.

The information we collect can be classified as follows:

2.1 Personal Information

"Personal Information" is information that can be used to identify you personally. You can take advantage of some basic features without providing Personal Information, but to register for the Service or take advantage of all the features, you'll need to provide information that qualifies as Personal Information, such as:

identifying information like your name and profile picture;
contact information like your email address, phone number, or mailing address;
login information like your username and password;
biographic information like your job history, education history skills, certifications, interests, needs, or expertise;
payment information like your credit card number, expiration date, security code, billing address and other billing details, bank account number, or bank routing number.

2.2 Settings

"Settings" are personal preferences that you can select to tailor the Service the way you want it. Settings are not Personal Information (they can't identify you personally).

2.3 Log Data

"Log Data" are sent to us from your browser when you visit our Service. These include your computer's IP address, your browser type, other webpages you've visited or transactions you've completed, certain demographic information like your physical location, and other statistics. Log Data do not constitute Personal Information nor are they treated as such.

2.4 Interactive Information

"Interactive Information" is how you interact with the site. When you do something on the site, the fact that you did something constitutes Interactive Information. This could be pages you visit, the amount of time you spend on those pages, search terms that you enter, Exchanges that you complete, Members with whom you communicate, specific times you access the Service, or other things. Interactive Information alone is not Personal Information.

2.5 Cookies

"Cookies" are small data files that we transfer to your computer, through your browser, for record-keeping. Cookie usage is a common practice for many websites.

When you log off the Service or close your browser, your computer will delete session Cookies but keep persistent Cookies. Many browsers allow you to turn "off" Cookies or prompt you before accepting a Cookie from websites you visit. Choosing not to accept Cookies will affect the functionality of the Service.

2.6 Web Beacons

"Web Beacons" are electronic images (sometimes called single-pixel gifs) used along with cookies to compile aggregated statistics to analyze the performance of an online service.

2.7 Third Party Information

"Third Party Information" is information about you made available from third- party sources. As described in the Terms, you can register to use the Service by logging into a SN Account (for example, your LinkedIn or Facebook accounts). If you do, you will be giving us access to some Personal Information contained in that SN Account (commonly your real name, email address, profile picture, friends or connections on that SN, groups you've joined on that SN, and other publicly available information you've added to that SN).

Please remember that we do not control the privacy practices of these SN services, and we encourage you to read their respective privacy policies.

3. How we'll use your information

We use your information only 1) as described in this Privacy Policy, 2) as described to you on the Site or App at the time you provide it, 3) in other ways with your express consent, or 4) as required by law or compulsory legal process.

We use your information to provide the following services to you:

3.1 Account and Profile

When you sign up for Alumnifire, we create an Alumnifire Account and a profile page for you. To create these, we use some of your Personal Information entered by you or provided as a part of Third Party Information, as well as Settings selected by you.

Your profile page is publicly visible to other users of the Service and consequently should reflect how much you want others to know about you. Be careful and protect information you consider sensitive and wouldn't want made public. You can always edit your profile information via the Service.

Some of your Personal Information is not included in your profile and will not be shared with other users or third parties. For example, we'd never share your login or payment information with a third party. We also do not share contact information with other users, and we'd ask your specific permission before sharing it with your school or another organization.

In very specific circumstances, where it is obvious that we are working directly with a partner organization, we will share your information back with that organization by default. You can always opt-out of having this information shared. A full list of partner organizations where we share information by default is listed in section 8 of the Policy.

Your Settings are used to optimize the site to your preferences. They are not visible to others and we do not share them with third parties, but we may use aggregated Settings data to analyze and improve the service.

3.2 Notifications

We'll send you notifications when something happens that might interest you, like:

Another member sends you a message
There is new activity or Content on the Site or App
We've added a new feature to the Service

or when there's something you need to know, like:

Your profile is incomplete
We've made a change to the Terms or Policy

We use your Personal Information and Settings to determine what notifications you receive, and we'll use contact information like your email address, phone number, or mailing address to contact you.

3.3 Marketing

In addition to notifications, we may also contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials, and other Content that may be of interest to you. We'll add settings to your profile so you can always opt out of any marketing or promotional material we plan to send.

Note: you cannot opt-out of certain notifications related to your use of the Service.

3.4 Referrals

You can invite or refer friends and colleagues to our Service. To do that, you'll often need to enter a friend's email address or select his or her social media account from a list. Typically, we use this information to send a one-time email or message and we do not store any information about your friend afterwards.

We may also offer a feature that allows you to import contacts from an address book and use those contacts to send invites. In such a case, we ask for a username and password for an email account, but we do not store that information once your contacts have been imported.

3.5 Paid product and service offerings

We may, in the future, provide you the ability to offer paid products and/or services to other members. The details of your offer(s) are considered Member Content. We may publish, use, share or otherwise disclose that Member Content publicly via the Service and may enable third parties to publish the offering on their websites.

3.6 Testimonials

We may post testimonials about our Service on the Site or App, and we may even ask you to provide one. If you choose to provide one, we would share it publicly along with any Personal Information you consent to include. If you change your mind and want a testimonial removed, contact us.

3.7 Requests

You may send us requests from time to time, like a request for a demonstration of the Service, or a request for help navigating the site or to report a bug, or a request for us to create an Alumnifire site for your organization. When you do, you'll need to enter certain details and contact information, which we will use to contact you. In most cases, such information will be sent to the Alumnifire team, but not stored in our databases.

3.8 Design and customization

We may use aspects of the Log Data from your browser and session Cookies to customize the site to your device, browser, screen size, location, and more.

3.9 Bookmarking

We may use aspects of your Interactive Information to store areas of the site you regularly visit, other members with whom you regularly communicate, or particular Content you regularly view so that you can access those things more quickly.

3.10 Persistent log-in

We may use aspects of your Log Data, like your IP address, as well as persistent Cookies to identify you so that you don't have to log in every time you visit our Service.

3.11 Analysis

We use your Log Data, Interactive Information, session Cookies, and Web Beacons in an aggregated and anonymized fashion to analyze the performance of our Service. Such analysis helps us improve the functionality of the Service and better tailor our content and product to suit our users' needs.

Currently we use Google Analytics, although in the future we may use other analytics services, to collect and enable many of the analytics tracking features we describe here. Some anonymized Interactive Information is stored on Google servers.

A note about Web Beacons: typically, our use of Web Beacons is limited to the implementation of them by a technology partner or service provider who offers us analytic services. For example, we currently use Mailgun and Mailchimp to send you emails (and may use others in the future). Both providers include Web Beacons in emails they send in order to determine if you've opened the email.

3.12 Third Party Users

We may allow third parties who did not attend your particular school or were not a part of your particular organization, such as recruiters, to access and use the Service. In such a case, we may allow those third parties to view part or all of your public profile on Alumnifire. Limit your profile information to only information you're comfortable sharing with such third parties.

We also have relationships with schools and organizations that manage alumni communities. In these cases, we may offer the school or organization access to analytics and data about the performance of our Service within their specific alumni community. Such analytics and data would contain aggregated and anonymized Log Data and Interactive Information. While the employees of such an organization would have access to your public profile and the Personal Information within by visiting the Service, we would only transfer additional Personal Information to them with your express, opt-in consent, except for those organizations listed in section 8, as described in section 3.1.

4. Sharing and disclosing your information

We share or disclose your information only 1) as described in this Privacy Policy, 2) as described to you on the Site or App at the time you provide it, 3) in other ways with your express consent, or 4) as required by law or compulsory legal process.

Beyond the uses described above, we make your information available to other companies, services, or people in the following cases:

4.1 Analysis

We may share aggregated information with third parties for analysis such as industry analysis, demographic profiling, payment processing, customer service and other purposes. In cases where we do this, any aggregated information shared in these contexts is limited to Settings, Log Data, Interactive Information, or information derived from Cookies or Web Beacons. Such information will be aggregated and will not contain your Personal Information.

4.2 Third party services

We may employ third party companies and individuals to perform Site or App maintenance, database management, analytics support, data processing or email and text message distribution. These third parties have access to your information only to perform these tasks on our behalf.

4.3 Mergers and acquisitions

If Alumnifire is acquired by or merged with another company or a similar corporate transaction takes place, we may share information about you with the other company. In such a case, we will notify you with a prominent notice on the Site or App or by sending notice to the email address listed in your account before transferring your information.

4.4 Legal investigations

We may share information about you to prevent or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety or other rights and interests of any person, violations of Alumnifire's Terms of Service, or as otherwise required by law or compulsory legal process.

4.5 Compliance

We may share information about you for legal compliance in response to subpoenas, search warrants, judicial proceedings, court orders, legal process, or other law enforcement measures, to establish or exercise our legal rights, or to defend against legal claims.

5. Updating and deleting your information

You can modify or delete Personal Information in your profile by editing your profile directly via the Site or App. You can also deactivate or delete your Alumnifire account entirely within your account settings. In either case, keep in mind that your Member Content will remain publicly viewable via the Site and App.

6. Security measures

To protect your privacy and information, Alumnifire uses multiple security procedures and practices to protect the Personal Information of users. While we believe that we meet or exceed industry standards to protect your Personal Information, no method of transferring such information over the internet or storing it digitally is 100% secure, nor can we guarantee the absolute security of your information. If you have any questions about security on our Service, email us.

6.1 General security

When you enter Personal Information on our Service, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). SSL is a web security standard that creates a secure connection between our web servers and your browser and protects your data from unauthorized access. Your Personal Information is password-protected and our main servers are locked and hosted by a leading provider. Access to the host environment is secure.

6.2 Phishing

We will never request your credit card or banking information, your Alumnifire Account ID, login password, or any other private Personal Information in a non secure or unsolicited email or phone call. If someone claiming to represent Alumnifire does ask for such information unsolicited, DO NOT provide it.

6.3 Protect your information: keep communication within the platform

Communications and Exchanges should be performed exclusively using our Service. Keeping communication within the Service protects you and your information. Do not request personal email addresses, Skype usernames, phone numbers, or other personal contact details from other users of the Service. Sharing personal information with and contacting other users outside of the Service may put you at risk.

6.4 Disclosure of breaches

We will of course make any legally required disclosures of any breach of the security, confidentiality, or integrity of your unencrypted electronically stored "personal data" (as defined in applicable state statutes on security breach notification). These notices will be done via email or conspicuous posting on the Site or App as quickly as possible and without unreasonable delay, taking into consideration the legitimate needs of law enforcement or any measures necessary to determine the scope of the breach and restore the integrity of the Service. In other words, if we need to stay quiet about a breach to help the good guys catch the bad ones, we'll do that until the coast is clear.

7. Jurisdictions and international transfer

Alumnifire operates in the United States and processes information described in this policy here in the U.S. Additionally, we work and share data as described in this policy with third parties who may perform their activities in other countries. As a result, your information as shared with Alumnifire and our partners may be subject to the laws of jurisdictions outside your own, and those laws may not afford the same privacy and data protection laws as your home jurisdiction's, particularly regarding demands or requests for information from government entities. By using our Service, you agree that your information may be collected, transferred, stored, and processed in the United States and in other countries.

8. Default information sharing

When joining a community on Alumnifire, your account will be set to share your profile information (including contact information like email address) with the moderators of that community by default. You may always elect to opt-out of sharing your personal information via a prominent setting during and after registration.

9. Get in touch with us

If you have suggestions or questions about this Privacy Policy, you can contact us at:

Email: feedback@alumnifire.com

Link to old versions

If you'd like to see older versions of the Privacy Policy and track what has changed, we've posted our revision history on GitHub