Privacy Policy

The Association of Former Students (The Association) is committed to serving the Aggie Network and Texas A&M University. We are here to extend your Aggie experience long after you leave campus. While information about you is fundamental to our ability to do this, we fully recognize the importance of keeping personal information secure. Because we respect your right to privacy, we have always placed a high priority on protecting the personal information you provide us. We want you to understand our information safeguards, the information we collect, the information we share and the benefits when we share information about you.

This privacy statement covers the site www.AggieNetwork.com. Topics covered are:

1. What personally identifiable information The Association collects.
2. What organization collects the information.
3. How The Association uses the information.
4. With whom The Association may share user information.
5. What choices are available to users regarding collection, use and distribution of the information.
6. What types of security procedures are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under The Association control.
7. How users can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

Please note that by visiting or using AggieNetwork.com or any of the affiliated sites such as AggiePark.tamu.edu, you are accepting the practices and terms described in this privacy policy.

If users have questions or concerns regarding this statement, they should first contact our Web team by email at Web@AggieNetwork.com or by phone at 979-845-7514.

Information Collection and Use:

Information Collection
As part of our mission to support Texas A&M University, The Association and the Texas A&M Foundation maintain a joint database of Former Student and donor records. The Association collects information from our users at several different points on our Web site. Information provided to The Association and stored in the unified database is accessible to the Texas A&M Foundation. For information on how the Texas A&M Foundation may use this information, please review their privacy policy.

For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the “GDPR”), The Association of Former Students is the data controller. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we use the information that we hold. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization registered in the United States with an office at 505 George Bush Drive, College Station, Texas 77840. The GDPR applies to you if you reside in the European Economic Area.

Registration
In order to use certain aspects of this Web site, a user must first complete the registration form. During registration a user is required to give contact information (such as first name, last name, class year, ID (UIN, Aggie ID or last 4 digits of your social security number) and email address (if available)). We use this information to contact the user about services on our site for which he/she has expressed interest. It is optional, but encouraged for the user to provide demographic information (such as marital status and gender), and unique identifiers (such as, username and password), so we can provide a more personalized experience on our site.

Donation
We request information from the user on our donation form. A user must provide contact information (such as name, email, and billing address) and financial information (such as credit card number, expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill customers' donations. If we have trouble processing a donation, the information is used to contact the user. If you choose to make a donation to The Association with a credit card, your credit card number will be processed by a secure third-party service, Stripe. Credit card numbers are not stored on any of The Association's servers.

Other Sources
The Association also collects information from the following sources:

• Texas A&M University's information management systems.
• Information from any social media accounts you choose to link to your AggieNetwork.com account (LinkedIn, for example).
• Information you provide to us through forms, correspondence, newsletters or communication with us including telephone and the Internet.
• Noteworthy news items provided by local A&M Clubs or third party news services.
• US Postal Service Change of Address Service.
• Companies that perform marketing services on our behalf.
• Any external accounts you link to your AggieNetwork.com account, including Apple, Facebook, and Google.

Information Use

Profile
We store information that we collect through cookies and log files. A profile is stored information that we keep on individual users that details their viewing preferences. This profile is used to tailor a user's visit to our Web site. We do not share your profile with other third parties.

Cookies
On AggieNetwork.com, we utilize session, persistent and third-party “cookies” that store a small piece of data on a users’ computers and collect certain information about the users’ visit to our Site. We also use cookies to understand users’ browsing and buying activities so that we can measure the success of online advertising campaigns we run on the Site. Our Site also uses web beacons (either directly or from our partners), along with cookies, to determine if a user has visited a particular website. These beacons aid in providing more relevant advertising to the user, as well as measuring the success of marketing, but provide no personally identifiable information.

Cookies are small text files that web servers typically send to users’ computer when they visit a website. Cookies are stored as text files on users’ hard drive, and can be accessed by web servers when the user visits a website or views an advertisement.

Session cookies store information as a user is using the Site but is deleted once the browser session is finished.

Persistent cookies store information as a user utilizes the Site and uses that information in connection with future visits of the user to the Site.

Third-party cookies and/or web beacons are cookies or web beacons provided by our technology and/or advertising partners. Any third-party cookie or web beacon that we authorize for use on the Site only collects that information described below for the same stated purposes as if we were directly collecting the information. For a third-party cookie or web beacon, the third-party will have access to the collected information in order to provide us with information or services to enhance the performance and functionality of the Site.

The third-party cookies and web beacons we use collect non-personally identifiable information about users of the Site, including: browser used to access the site, date and time, the URL of the page being loaded, users who have visited a particular website(s), any previously assigned cookie identification (a unique identifier assigned to a user to identify repeat visitors), browser window size, the geographic location of the user, device and operating system used to access the Site. The information we collect from these cookies and web beacons is used to determine information about a user’s visit to our Site, including the number of visits, average time spent, pages viewed, navigation history through the website, and other statistics. This information is used to enhance the users experience while visiting our Site and to improve the performance of our Site by, among other things, allowing us to monitor Site performance, making the Site easier to use, and tailoring the Site (including the ads and offers a user receives) to better match a user’s interests and preferences. 

Linked External Accounts

We allow you to link your various third-party accounts, including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, to your AggieNetwork.com account to improve your login experience. When you use your third-party account with our site, you authorize that provider to share your basic third-party account information with us, which typically includes your name, username, and email address. At any time, if you would like the limited information we gather from external accounts deleted, simply unlink the third-party account from your AggieNetwork.com account (https://www.aggienetwork.com/aggie/editlogininfo/). You may also request data deletion directly through the third-parties by following their documented procedures.

If you are a current or former student with an active Texas A&M University NetID and Universal Identification Number (UIN), your AggieNetwork.com account is automatically enabled for authentication through Texas A&M’s Central Authentication Service. No account linking is required.

Web Analytics
You can browse our Web site without giving us any personal information. We use web analytic technology, including specifically Google Analytics and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting, to help us analyze traffic to the Sites in order to understand visitors' interests and to continually update our Site to improve a user's experience. Visit Google's Privacy Policy to learn how Google Analytics collects and processes data. You may choose to engage Google Analytics' currently available opt-outs for the web.

Third Party Advertising
This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by AggieNetwork.com only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Log Files
Like most standard Web site servers we use log files. This includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.

Marketing
We use information about you to enable marketing, targeted advertising and similar services from us or our partners, including direct and indirect marketing and online behavioral advertising that we believe may be of interest to you. To do so, we may share personally identifiable information about you (such as your mailing address or email address) to those vendors, though we do not allow them to re-sell or use that information for their own purposes. We use site instrumentation tools such as pixels that help us to determine, for instance, when a page has been viewed. We use web beacons (either directly or from our partners), along with cookies, to determine if a user has visited a particular website; these beacons aid in providing more relevant advertising to the user, as well measuring the success of an advertising campaign. We use third-party vendors to show advertisements on other websites to previous visitors to our sites. This could be, for example, in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page, or an advertisement on a social media after visiting our site. Emails or electronic newsletters we send may use similar analytical tools to gather email metrics and information to improve the reader’s experience, such as how many of the emails are opened, the type of device (e.g., mobile or PC) from which they were opened, and the associated member account details.

Communications from the Site

AggieNews from The Association
If a user wishes to subscribe to our email newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address. Out of respect for our users privacy we provide a way to opt-out of these communications. Please see the Choice/Opt-out section.

Service and Administrative Communications
On occasion, it might be necessary for us to send out a service-related announcement to provide you with information that may affect your use of our Web site or your personal privacy. We also automatically send administrative emails when you take certain actions, such as changing your password. Service and administrative communications are not promotional in nature and users cannot unsubscribe from them.

The "Find an Aggie" Tool (Online Directory of Former Students):

Accessibility
The "Find an Aggie" tool is accessible only to registered users of AggieNetwork.com. Your personal information is kept in a secure database that is only accessible to The Association staff and the Texas A&M Foundation (please see Information Collection for information on joint database with the Texas A&M Foundation). After registering with AggieNetwork.com you have the ability to set your own privacy settings for the information that is displayed in the Online Directory. If the suppression does not meet your requirements, you can email Records@AggieNetwork.com and we will be glad to ensure that your information is not displayed anywhere on AggieNetwork.com. All requests made to The Online Directory are encrypted with TLS level encryption.

Use and Sharing of Information
The Association collects and uses your personal information to operate AggieNetwork.com and the "Find an Aggie" tool. The information displayed in the Online Directory (database) contains fields such as your name, address, zip code, phone number, employer, and other statistics regarding you. By default, your phone number, and email address are hidden.

The Association does not sell, rent or lease the database to non-partner third parties. The Association may, from time to time, share data with third-party business partners and affiliates who will contact you about a particular offering that may be of interest to you, including, but not limited to, corporate partners and travel providers for the Traveling Aggies program. In addition, The Association may share data with trusted partners to help us send you email or postal mail, distribute the Texas Aggie magazine, produce and print a hard copy Directory of Former Students, provide customer support or arrange for deliveries. All third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide the services agreed upon by The Association and each party is required to sign a security agreement and maintain the confidentiality of your information.

The Association also provides a verification service using the database to TexAgs.com for their AgTag program. TexAgs.com does not have access to the database and verification is made through an automated secure online verification process developed by The Association.

To request that we do not share your information with third-party business partners or affiliates, please contact The Association's Records team at (979) 845-7514 or Records@AggieNetwork.com.

Record Limit
In order to ensure that the database is not compromised by any third party, we have limited the basic results returned to 30 at a time for up to 25,000 records (detailed results are limited to 500 per day). This limits one person from downloading the entire directory to their computer and then selling the list to advertising companies. This also helps keep the load speed of AggieNetwork.com at a reasonable level.

Information Use
The "Find an Aggie" tool is not intended for marketing or political purposes. If The Association has reason to believe that any user is utilizing the Directory for unauthorized purposes, The Association will terminate that users’ access to the Directory immediately. If you have questions about usage of the Directory, or if you feel you have been solicited as a result of your inclusion in the Directory, please contact The Association's web team at (979) 845-7514 or Web@AggieNetwork.com.

Find an Aggie Terms of Use
The use of “Find an Aggie” is limited to our noble mission of “maintaining ties of affection and esteem formed in University days.”

Find an Aggie is not for commercial, business, or political use. This includes promotions or fundraising, and trying to find potential clients or investors. No soliciting!

Any account suspected of data mining for any purpose, including the creation of or additions to outside databases, or asking members for personal information will have its access revoked and may be subject to fines in accordance with the CAN-SPAM act. Attempts to bypass the daily limit of lookups or other enforcement methods will result in the suspension of Directory privileges to your account and other accounts you may have used.

If an account is suspected to be in violation of these terms, Association staff may review any emails sent through the Find an Aggie tool.

All users are prohibited from using the site, or attempting to use the site, or enabling others to use the site, in a manner that:

• is or is likely to be perceived as defamatory, obscene, offensive, harassing, threatening, hateful, or abusive; impersonates or may appear to impersonate anyone else;
• discourages or is likely to discourage anyone from using all or any portion, features or functions of the site
• adversely affects or negatively reflects on The Association, Texas A&M, our goodwill, name or reputation

If you are trying to contact former students in your area, please contact your local A&M club. These clubs have the ability to contact their members in bulk. If you have any questions, please contact the Web Team at Web@AggieNetwork.com and we will evaluate your request and get back with you as soon as possible.

Email Privacy

Personal Email Accounts
The Association is very protective of your email address. We do not sell or give email addresses away, and we only share email addresses with trusted partners and affiliates as described above under “Marketing” and “Use and Sharing of Information”. We do use email to stay in touch with you, and if you so desire it is placed in the Online Directory of Former Students so that other former students can email you through our Web site (your email information will not be displayed). If you do not want former students to be able to contact you via email through our site, you can change your email address to "Private" in the Privacy Settings panel.

The Association will use only use this email to send official correspondence and approved emails on behalf of organizations it recognizes. These include Texas A&M, A&M Clubs, Classes and some other groups such as colleges. In addition, a select group of partner affiliates also send emails using The Association's email system; however, they do not have direct access to email addresses. These emails are targeted to a specific audience.

@AggieNetwork.com Email Accounts
The Association provides lifetime email addresses using Google Workspace. Google provides site administrators with a way to perform automated "email audits" to review emails of users. The Association does not use this feature and will never access your account without your permission. Staff members who are administrators of the @AggieNetwork.com email system can help you with technical aspects of your account, including initial setup and password resets, but they cannot log into your account or read emails.

Disclaimers

Legal Disclaimer
Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our Web site.

Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable)
We do not share any aggregate information with any third party advertisers or any other party.

Third Party Advertisers
The Association does NOT share Web site usage information about users.

Choice/Opt-out
Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications may opt-out of receiving these communications by using the link at the bottom of each piece of communication, or the user may contact us at (979) 845-7514, by mail at 505 George Bush Drive, College Station, Texas 77840-2918 or by email at Records@AggieNetwork.com to opt-out.

Links
This Web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we, The Association, are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Security

This Web site takes every precaution to protect our users' information. When users submit sensitive information via the Web site, their information is protected both online and off-line.

When our registration/donation form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry. The lock icon in the address bar of modern web browsers indicates the web site is using HTTPS, an encrypted protocol.

While we use TLS/1.2 and TLS/1.3 encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, records processing and our web team) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Finally, the servers that store personally identifiable information are in a secure environment, in a locked facility.

If users have any questions about the security at our Web site, users can send an email to Web@AggieNetwork.com.

If we have reason to believe your AggieNetwork.com account or your @AggieNetwork.com email account may have been compromised, we reserve the right to limit access to the account until we are able to confirm that the account is under the control of the legitimate account holder.

Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating Personal Information

If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as zip code, phone, email or postal address), or if a user no longer desires our service, we provide a way to correct, update or deactivate users' personally identifiable information. This can be done by logging in and clicking "Your Aggie Profile" link at the top right of each page, or by emailing our Records Team at Records@AggieNetwork.com, by phone at (979) 845-7514 or by mail at:

The Association of Former Students
Attn: Records Processing
505 George Bush Drive
College Station, Texas 77840-2918

Notification of Changes

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

If, however, we are going to use users' personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify users via email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. However, if users have opted out of all communication with the site, or deleted/deactivated their account, then they will not be contacted, nor will their personal information be used in this new manner. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices that do not affect user information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice on our Web site notifying users of the change. In some cases where we post a notice we will also email users, who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices.

Contact Information

If users have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at: