Privacy & Security Statement

Parties

You, the visitor to our websites and mobile app, share information about yourself — and our websites and mobile app collect, use, protect and share this information — in the ways explained in this statement.

This statement includes the primary web servers for William & Mary and its administrative offices, academic units, graduate and professional schools, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, other affiliated organizations, and William & Mary Mobile.

Unless otherwise specified, references to William & Mary, our websites, our mobile app, and we/us/our within this document refer collectively to the above entities and web properties.

University Policies

Our websites and this privacy & security statement are subject to the policies and regulations of William & Mary and the Commonwealth of Virginia, including:

• Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
• William & Mary System and Data Classification Policy and Procedures

• William & Mary Policy for Departmental and Organizational Websites

How we collect data

• local logs of all access attempts
• 3rd-party analytics and marketing tools—including, but not limited to, tools from Facebook, Google, HubSpot, LinkedIn, Siteimprove and YouTube.
• web forms which you may choose to complete and submit to us
• browser cookies—small files stored in your browser—often containing only a random-looking set of numbers and letters meaningful only to our websites
• tracking pixels—invisible image files (or pixels)—often containing a link to an external server that receives user information such as interactions with an email or website

Individual browser settings play a crucial role in shaping how websites interact with your data, especially in terms of cookies and tracking mechanisms. By navigating to your browser's privacy or security preferences, you gain the ability to customize settings.

Privileged information

We treat different types of information differently. Here are 3 levels of information privilege we recognize:

• sensitive information
  • including credit card and Social Security numbers
• specific personal information
  • such as your full name, home address and phone number
• non-personal information
  • such as metadata, including cookies, provided by your web browser

What privileged information do we collect?

In accordance with William & Mary policies, including those enumerated previously:

• Your most sensitive information is not directly collected by or stored on our public websites, but our websites will connect you with secure servers that comply with W&M policy and industry standards to process transactions involving your most sensitive information
• Other specific personal and non-personal information that you or your web browser provide may be directly collected by and stored on our public websites

How we share and use privileged information

In accordance with William & Mary policies, including those enumerated previously:

• Your most sensitive information is not directly collected by or stored on our public websites, but our websites will connect you with secure servers that comply with W&M policy and industry standards to process transactions involving your most sensitive information
• Other specific personal and non-personal information collected on our websites will be shared and used in these ways:
  
  • Within William & Mary
    • to communicate with you about William & Mary
    • to provide personalized services or persistent authentication
    • to understand how you found and use our websites
    • to understand aggregate trends and patterns in the use of our websites
    • to improve and protect our websites and web infrastructure
  • external to William & Mary
    • by service providers acting on our behalf to communicate with you about William & Mary
    • By our 3rd-party analytics and marketing tools—such as, but not limited to, tools from Facebook, Google, HubSpot, LinkedIn, Siteimprove and YouTube.
    • by select partners with whom we have a contract
    • by other entities acting to protect our interests or fulfill W&M policy or legal obligation

Security

Consistent with the policies and regulations of William & Mary and the Commonwealth of Virginia, we work with W&M Information Technology (IT) to secure our websites and any privileged information we collect by applying physical, electronic and managerial procedures that:

• safeguard and secure servers from unauthorized access and use
• maintain data accuracy
• ensure the correct use of privileged information

Our 3rd-party service providers and select partners maintain their own privacy and security safeguards with regard to servers and data outside of the control of W&M IT. These include but are not limited to, tools from Facebook, Google, HubSpot, LinkedIn, Siteimprove and YouTube.

Links to other websites

Our websites may link to the websites of external entities with their own privacy and security policies.

We encourage you to read the privacy and security policies of websites not belonging to us.

Removal from email lists

We host many email communication lists that may not be managed by the same people who maintain our websites.

Official promotional and marketing emails contain instructions for contacting the list owner or requesting to be removed from the list.

Some lists (both official and unofficial) use the university's central listserv system maintained by W&M IT, from which you can manage your subscriptions directly—or contact W&M IT for assistance.

Please note that a subscription to some official email lists is required for enrollment, employment or participation in our programs.

Changes to our privacy & security policy statement

We reserve the right to update this privacy & security statement at any time—always subject to the policies and regulations of William & Mary and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Contact Us

We would love your feedback. Here are some tips to help you get your suggestions, comments or questions routed to the best person as quickly as possible:

The individual departments, offices and programs within our websites generally include an "About" menu item, which should help you contact those folks directly.

Our websites also have a "Contact Us" link, usually near the bottom of each page. This will provide you with general contact information for the organization or academic unit sponsoring the entire website.

For any other suggestions, comments, or questions about our websites, you may contact [[web]], and we will do our best to connect you with the appropriate individual.

3rd Party API Services

Some embedded YouTube videos use the YouTube IFrame Player API solely for retrieving the video content. We do not collect, store or utilize user data from YouTube API Services or allow 3rd parties to advertise on these pages. YouTube videos are loaded and played within your (client) browser in accordance with the YouTube API Services terms and Google privacy policy. You can manage your YouTube privacy, Google data, and Google security from your account.

Privacy policies and statements from additional 3rd party services in use:

• Vimeo privacy policy
• Tableau privacy statement
• Infogram privacy page
• EAB (YouVisit) privacy policy
• Curator.io privacy policy
• Google Maps privacy