CommencementConnections.com Privacy Policy

Commencement Connections has provided this privacy policy because we value your right to privacy. This policy is effective as of April 1, 2009 and governs the collection of personal information through this website on or after this date. If you have not registered or otherwise provided personal information through this site on or after April 1, 2009, please refer to our previous privacy policy for information about how your personal information will be treated.

This policy describes the types of information Commencement Connections collects from its users and how that information is used. Please read this policy carefully before providing us with any personal information. If you have questions about this policy, contact us.

If you have signed up and bought shuttle tickets, we will send you e-mail messages at the email address you provided to us. You will be given the opportunity to unsubscribe from future promotional e-mails in any such e-mail we send to you.

Information we collect

1. Site Users and Customers

The information we collect from you is limited. We log your IP address in order to help diagnose problems with our server, administer our Web site and track usage statistics. Your IP address may vary each time you visit, or it may be the same, depending on whether you access our site through an always-on type of Internet connection (e.g., cable modem or DSL), or through a dial-up connection (e.g., AOL or Earthlink). Either way, it would be extremely difficult for us to identify you through your IP address, and we make no attempt to do so. If you reached our site by clicking on a link or advertisement on another site, then we also log that information. This helps us to maximize our Internet exposure, and to understand the interests of our users. All of this information is collected and used only in the aggregate; that is, it is entered into our database, where we can use it to generate overall reports on our visitors, but not reports about individual visitors.

2. Customers

If you purchase a ticket with us, we will collect personal information from you in addition to the non-personal information described above. That personal information may include your name, email address, mailing address, telephone number, travel preferences, college, department, or major of the graduate whom you intend to see, answers to survey questions, as well as contact information for other people that you provide to us. The information we collect may vary, but we only collect the information that you manually enter into our forms or otherwise authorize us to collect.

If you visit our site by "clicking-through" from a third-party then certain information about you that you have provided to that site may be transmitted to us by default. You should review the privacy policy of the Web site from which you reached our site in order to determine what information was collected and how you agreed that the third-party site could use that information. We may or may not retain that information; if we do, then we will only use it in accordance with our privacy policy, regardless of the policy of the third-party site from which you came to us.

How we use the personal information we collect

We use the personal information we collect to help serve you better and provide better service. We may also use your personal information to periodically contact you with news or important information from Commencement Connections, to provide you with other information or invitations related to your experience or the Commencement Connections community, and to request your feedback on our site and service provided during commencement. In addition to these periodic updates, we may email you additional materials, but only if you specifically request them. These might include opt-in surveys, newsletters, and other materials that you proactively request from Commencement Connections.

Unless you note otherwise, we will operate on the assumption that your use of CommencementConnections.com is for a one-time purchase. You may opt-out of any or all marketing communications from Commencement Connections in any commercial e-mail we send or at any time.

Although unlikely, we may also use certain information that you provide in order to present you with advertising that you may find interesting. This benefits both of us. It benefits us because advertising helps pay the bills, and we can charge our advertisers more if they know that their ads will be seen by somebody more likely to find it useful. It benefits you because you see advertising that may actually be interesting to you, rather than annoying.

Disclosure of your personal information

Commencement Connections does not sell or rent any personal information to any third party, other than participating hotels and universities on this site, as discussed in this policy. We may aggregate personal information from all of our users and provide that information in the aggregate to other parties, including advertisers, for marketing and promotional purposes. However, if we do so, that information will not be in a form that will allow any third party to identify you personally.

We also may share your personal information with third-parties specifically engaged by Commencement Connections to provide services to Commencement Connections (such as market research firms, marketing services providers and advertising agencies), in which case we will require those parties to agree to use any such personally-identifiable data solely for the purpose of providing the specified services to Commencement Connections. As you might expect, Commencement Connections must cooperate with legal authorities, and may in some circumstances be required to disclose personally identifiable information in response to requests from law enforcement authorities, or in response to a subpoena or other legal process. We don't expect this to happen, but if it does, we will provide only the information required. In other words, we will not simply turn over our database in response to a specific legal requirement. We can also turn over information about you if we believe we must in order to prevent a violation of the law, and by accepting this policy, you consent to our doing so, in our sole discretion. You also consent to our disclosing information about you in the course of legal proceedings if we are legally required to do so, if we reasonably believe that doing so may mitigate our liability, or if doing so will assist us in enforcing our legal rights. We also may share your information in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, and in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.

Steps we take to protect your personal information

Commencement Connections has implemented security procedures to help protect the personal information stored in our systems.

Payment Privacy

We use PayPal Merchant Service for online transactions. Please go to https://www.paypal.com/security for more information.

Children's Privacy

This website is a general audience site, and we do not knowingly collect information about children. Should a child whom we know to be under 13 send personal information to us, we will use that information only to respond directly to that child to inform him or her that we must have parental consent before receiving his or her personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change this policy should we deem it advisable to do so. If we make material changes that will affect personal information we have already collected from you, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you of the changes and to give you the opportunity to amend or cancel your registration.