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Privacy Statement

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Lee College (the “College”) cares about your privacy and believes in transparency. Any information you provide on this website will be used only in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy. The information you provide will never be sold or traded to other colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, or businesses.

This policy explains Lee College’s privacy practices for the public-facing website lee.edu (the “site” or the “website”) and other services provided by Lee College. This policy also covers the practices of certain third-party partners of Lee College who provide certain services that integrate with lee.edu. It does not cover the collection, maintenance, or storage of student records or class or academic data; such records are not related to lee.edu, although the website does provide links to those tools and services.

This privacy policy describes why and how Lee College collects and uses the personal information of its customers and website visitors. It also describes your options to choose how Lee College uses your personal data and how to contact the College with any concerns and requests to in relation to that. Lee College is an institution of higher education registered and existing under the laws of Texas, USA, with registered address: 511 S. Whiting St., Baytown, TX, USA, and is the data controller of the personal data that Lee College collects from you.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about any aspect of its privacy policy, please contact us using the details set out in the “Further questions and contacts” section at the end of this privacy policy.

Below you will find information about the following:

  • Collection of information
  • How Lee College utilizes information
  • Purpose of data processing
  • Cookies, tags, pixels
  • How Lee College shares your personal information and who it is shared with
  • International transfers
  • Security measures
  • Retention periods
  • Your rights
  • Changes to the privacy policy
  • Further questions and contacts

1. Collection of information

By using the Lee College website, you consent to the collection and use of your data as described herein. If you do not agree with the terms set out herein, please do not visit this website.

When you access and browse the site (including when you submit personal information to us through data entry fields on the website) Lee College will collect the following from you:

Contact information – Lee College receives and stores any information you enter on its site. The website and certain third-party pieces of software use forms to collect your personal information including your name, address, telephone number, and email address. The main purpose for which Lee College uses such information is to provide you with the services that you request from us.

Payments and billing information – When signing up for any of its services, products, or programs, Lee College may request additional personal and payment information such as your name, credit card information, Authorize.net or relevant service, billing address, personal, government or tax identification number, or other information, including but not limited to certificates, tax declarations, forms, payment documents, and other relevant documents.

Lee College uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information about your visit, including — but not limited to — your country, your browser version and kind of computer, the time and length of your online visit, and which website pages were visited. We do not use these or any tools to collect information about you personally, your browsing habits on non-Lee College sites, or your visits to other sites.

2. How information is utilized

Lee College collects, stores, and uses the information you provide for the following reasons:

Contact information – To contact you regarding inquiries you make on its site or its related services, the progress of your orders, status of the services, functionality changes to its products and its site, and — where you have opted to receive such information — emergency alerts and/or other/new services, and/or special offers/newsletters. Your email, telephone, and/or text messages may be used for this purpose, as well as to inform you about account issues, service interruptions or updates, service improvements or new services in accordance with applicable law.

Payment and billing information – Together with your contact details, payment and billing information is used to process payments or donations that you may choose to make, to invoice you for those or similar items, and to fulfill its legal obligations.

Information we receive from your use of our services or third parties - Lee College collects, stores, and uses the information that we receive from your use of its services or third parties to maintain your account and provide materials you request. If you purchase products or make donations, Lee College also collects, stores, and uses your collected information to have an accurate record of any inquiries, in case of a dispute, and to identify certain characteristics that could help the College optimize and improve our products and services.

3. Purposes of data processing

When you access or use our services, it is necessary to collect, use, and otherwise process your information, as set out in this policy. Lee College is committed to your privacy and follows a few fundamental principles when personal data is processed:

  • The College strives to collect only the minimum personal data that is necessary to deliver the services.
  • The College aims for full clarity on how your information is used to comply with legal or other lawful purposes.
  • The College relies on a number of legal bases to use your information, as set out in this policy:

Contract – The use of your information is necessary to perform any contractual obligations in order to provide any services to you.

Legal obligations – Use of your personal information may be necessary to comply with a legal obligation, a court order, or to exercise or defend legal claims. For example, the College may receive a request to disclose your personal information to regulatory bodies or law enforcement authorities; or to use your personal information for tax calculation and reporting.

The College’s legitimate interests – The use of your information is necessary to further legitimate interests, such as to:

  • Run, grow, develop, and deliver its services;
  • Detect and prevent fraudulent activities;
  • Enhance the security of its network and information systems;
  • Understand how people interact with its website;
  • Determine the effectiveness of its promotional campaigns and advertising; and
  • Enhance, modify, personalize, or otherwise improve its services and communications for the benefit of its users.

Consent – The College relies on consent of your personal information in order to send you marketing information (such as periodic notices and offers) by email, SMS, or telephone. You may withdraw your consent at any time by emailing webmaster@lee.edu using the details set out in the “Further questions and contacts” section of this policy.

4. Cookies, tags, pixels

As with most websites, cookies may be used to collect some of the information set out in this policy. A cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in your web browser on your computer, mobile or other handheld device, while you are browsing a website.

Cookies can store your account identifier, ordering status, personalization or website tracking. They can also be used for technical purposes, such as keeping track of your current shopping session and enabling you to proceed to check out and pay for your order or to save information which has already been entered (languages choices, and your region), so that the College can offer improved and more personalized services, products, and other relevant communication tailored to you.

You can manage your preferences regarding cookies by modifying your browser settings. Please note that if you simply disable all of its cookies or cookies in general in your browser settings, you may find that certain sections or features of the website will not work or will function improperly.

5. How we share your personal information and who we share it with

All personal information collected by Lee College is treated as confidential. The College may disclose all or some of your data in the limited circumstances described below and with appropriate safeguards to your privacy:

If Required by Law – The College will disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other legitimate governmental request.
 The College will share account and personal information with companies, organizations, or individuals when the College believes in good faith that access, use, preservation, or disclosure of the information is necessary to meet any applicable law, comply with regulation, legal process or enforceable request; to enforce or apply our Terms of Service and other agreements; to investigate potential violations; to protect against harm to the rights, property, or safety of Lee College, its users, or the public, as required or permitted by law. To the extent that the College is legally permitted to do so, the College will take all reasonable steps to notify you in the event that the College is required to provide your personal information to third parties as part of a legal process.

Third-Party Vendors – The College will share information with third-party vendors, Data Center services providers, external advisors/consultants, business partners, accounting and legal companies, collaborators who need to know information about you in order to provide various services on its behalf. This group includes vendors that help us provide its services, such as payment providers that process your credit card information or information about alternative payment methods and invoicing, and accounting companies as well as vendors that help us prevent fraud. The College will only share information about you that is necessary for the third-party vendor to provide the requested service. These companies will process the provided data under instructions of Lee College and in compliance with this privacy policy. The College does not authorize vendors to retain, share, store or use your personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes. The third-party vendors include companies that operate in various industries, such as fraud detection, technology service, Internet information providers, payments and data processors, specialty finance, media, Internet content & information industries, advertising & marketing and technologies, that are located in the territory of the European Union and the United States.

Other Third Parties – The College may disclose information about you to its Lee College business partners, external consultants, auditors, collaborators or other third parties, its employees, and individuals who are its independent contractors and who need to know the information in order to help us provide its services or to process the information on its behalf, and also for administrative purposes, billing, and all other purposes related to the management of your account. The College requires all of them to comply strictly with this privacy policy.

With Your Consent – With your explicit consent or at your direction, the College may share and disclose information to third parties. The College will not, however, sell, rent, share or otherwise disclose personally identifiable information for commercial purposes in any way that is contrary to the commitments made in this privacy policy. The College will take all reasonable steps to notify you when and what information might go to third parties, and you will be able to choose whether to share it or not.

6. International transfers

As an American institution of higher education, the processing of almost all personal data by Lee College will take place in the United States. Visitors to this website acknowledge that personal data provided or collected through this website will be transferred to the United States, and by continuing to use this website, you consent to this transfer.

Any transfers of personal information from one country to another will comply with any applicable data-protection and privacy laws.

Data subjects located in the European Union (“EU”) may have certain rights in connection with the processing of personal data under the GDPR. For more information about how data subjects may exercise their rights under the GDPR, please contact webmaster@lee.edu.

EU Residents Under the Age of 16

Lee College does not knowingly collect personal data from EU residents who are under 16. If you are an EU resident under 16, please do not provide any personal data on this website or on or through any of its features. If the College learns it has collected or received personal data from an EU resident under the age of 16 without verification of parental consent where required by applicable law, the College will delete that information. If you believe that Lee College may have personal data from or about a child under 16 located in the EU, please contact us at webmaster@lee.edu.

7. Security measures

Lee College uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software to encrypt the personal information you enter on its site, in order to protect its security during transmission to and from its site. When storing information, the College protects its security by strong encryption of critical data. When its partners process credit card information and payments, the credit card is subject to strong security measures.

The College maintains physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage, and disclosure of certain personally identifiable customer information. The College’s security procedures require us in some cases to request proof of identity before disclosing personal information to you.

To protect against unauthorized access to your account and information, the College and its partners implement session management, login expiration mechanisms, and other security precautions. As an additional safety measure, be sure to sign off when you finish using your account(s) or your computer or other device.

Although the College takes all these measures to maintain the safety and security of your personal information, please note that no transmission over the Internet can ever be guaranteed to be secure. Consequently, please note that the College cannot fully guarantee the security of any personal information that you transfer over the Internet to us.

8. Retention periods

Information collected on its website will only be retained for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected. In general, the College will automatically delete your account information 2 (two) years after you no longer have any active services with us. A versioned copy of your contact, payment, and billing personal data associated with your past invoices may be stored for a period of 7 (seven) years after deactivating an account.

9. Your rights

To learn which of your personal information Lee College is collecting and storing, please email webmaster@lee.edu. This person can help you to:

  • Confirm whether or not personal data about you is being processed;
  • Provide you with further details about how your personal data is processed;
  • Provide you with a copy of any data in the College’s possession;
  • Withdraw your consent to using your personal information, if required by law;
  • Consider any valid objection to the processing of your personal information;
  • Request to update or delete personal data in the College’s possession;
  • Restrict the way that your personal data is processed;
  • Consider any valid request to transfer your personal data to a third-party provider of services (data portability); and

Certain personal information may be exempt from these requests in certain circumstances, which include a need to keep processing information for the College’s legitimate interests or to comply with a legal obligation. If such an exception applies, the College will notify you when responding to your request. Please note that the College may ask you to provide us with information necessary to confirm your identity before responding.

Access to Information

Except for education records governed by FERPA, all information collected from this website, including the summary server log information, emails sent to the website, and information collected from web-based forms, may be subject to the Texas Public Information Act. This means that while Lee College does not actively share information, in some cases may be compelled by law to release information gathered from its web servers. The Texas Public Information Act, with a few exceptions, gives you the right to be informed about the information that Lee College collects about you. It also gives you the right to request a copy of that information, and to have the College correct any of that information that is wrong. You may request to receive and review any of that information, or request corrections to it, by contacting Lee College’s Public Information Officer. The Texas Public Information Act, with a few exceptions, gives you the right to be informed about the information that this website collects about you. It also gives you the right to request a copy of that information, and to have the college correct any of that information that is wrong. You may request to receive and review any of that information, or request corrections to it, by contacting Lee College.

10. Changes to the privacy policy

Lee College reserves the right to modify this privacy policy at any time. If the College decides to change its privacy policy, it will post the updates to this privacy policy here and in any other place it deems appropriate, so that you are aware of what information the College collects, how its used, and under what circumstances — if any — the College discloses it.

11. Further questions and contacts

If you have any questions regarding this privacy policy, if you wish to exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal information, or if you want to object to the collection or processing of your data by Lee College, whether entirely or partially, please contact us at webmaster@lee.edu.