Web Privacy Policy

Policy statement

Binghamton University is committed to protecting personal privacy and the personal information collected through its website. This policy describes how the University obtains and uses information about visitors to its website, binghamton.edu.

The Binghamton University website uses cookies and similar technologies to understand and enhance visitors’ experiences. By continuing to use this website and not disabling cookies and beacons in your browser, as described further below, you consent to the University’s usage of these web technologies in accordance with this privacy policy.

Information You Give Us Directly

We receive personally identifiable information about you when you submit or share information on an online form or an external application, such as registering for one of our events, making a donation, submitting an application, requesting information, purchasing services or subscribing to emails from the University.

We may ask for the following types of information during such transactions:

  • Name
  • Contact information, such as email address, mailing address and phone number
  • Demographic information
  • Information relevant to academic programs and enrollment, events, donation and/or surveys

Information Collected Automatically When You Visit this Website

The University uses common web technologies on binghamton.edu to automatically collect and store non-personally identifiable information about your website visit. Data may include:

  • The Internet Protocol address of the computer that accessed our website.
  • The browser, its version and the operating system on which that browser is running.
  • Referral source indicating how you arrived at our website.
  • The date and time of the visit.
  • The pages that were visited, the amount of time spent at each page and engagement with website features.

The information that is collected automatically is used to improve this website's content and to help Binghamton University understand how users are interacting with the website. This information is collected for statistical analysis, to determine what information is of most and least interest to our users, and to improve the utility of the material available on the website.

The collection of information through binghamton.edu and the disclosure of that information are subject to the provisions of the Internet Security and Privacy Act.

How the website collects non-personally identifiable information

Cookies

Cookies are simple text files stored on your web browser to provide a means of distinguishing among users of this website. The use of cookies is a standard practice among websites. To better serve you, we use "session cookies" and "persistent cookies" to enhance or customize your visit to this website.

Session cookies are created automatically on the device you use to access this website. They do not contain personal information, nor compromise your privacy or security. binghamton.edu uses the cookie feature to store a randomly generated identifying tag on the device you use to access this website. A session cookie is erased during operation of your browser or when your browser is closed.

A "persistent cookie" is stored on a user’s computer hard drive. This persistent cookie will allow the website to recognize you when you visit again.

The cookies on this site are encrypted and do not save any personally identifiable information. The software and hardware you use to access this website allows you to refuse new cookies and delete existing cookies. Refusing or deleting these cookies may limit your ability to take advantage of some features of this website.

Pixels

A pixel tag, also known as a web beacon, is a tiny, transparent graphic image file embedded on a web page. Pixels are used on some web pages to understand how you interact with features on those pages. Pixels may also be used to customize content to your interests based on visits to some pages on binghamton.edu. Personally identifiable information is not involved in pixel tag use.

Digital Marketing Technologies Used by the University

Binghamton University and contracted service providers use marketing technologies such as cookies and pixels to automatically collect data about how visitors interact with website features, target ads on third-party websites and provide measurement services. This information is collected and stored in tools such as Google Analytics, customer relationship management systems and website optimization platforms.

Google Analytics

Binghamton.edu runs Google Analytics for tracking how visitors engage with our website. The platform also provides the following Google Analytics Advertising Features that may be implemented at any time on this website under this privacy policy:

  • Remarketing with Google Analytics
  • Google Display Network Impression Reporting
  • Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting
  • Google Signals, which enhances existing Google Analytics features with aggregated data, such as demographics and interests, from Google users who have enabled Ads Personalization and are signed-in to their Google accounts
  • Integrated services that require Google Analytics to collect data for advertising purposes, including the collection of data via advertising cookies and identifiers

Google details how it protects data confidentiality and security on its website.

You can opt out of having your site activity available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript that is running on websites from sharing information with Google Analytics about visit activity.

Third-party Advertising

The University uses third-party platforms, including Meta and Google Ads, to show our advertisements on websites not owned or operated by the University. These platforms may also use cookies, web beacons and other web technologies to serve our ads to users who previously visited this website, or to people similar to our website’s visitors, and to assess the effectiveness of our ads.

Customer match

Many digital advertising platforms allow organizations to target ads to known audiences using personally identifiable information that individuals have provided to the advertiser. Sometimes known as custom audiences or customer match, this is a type of ad personalization that uses email addresses or other unique identifiers. Platforms protect this data by “hashing” (an irreversible form of encryption) the identifiers before building custom audiences, and do not store data files with personally identifiable information in its systems.

Advertising vendors

You may view the privacy policies and consent mechanisms for vendors we frequently use:

This list is not exclusive and is subject to change at any time.

Zoom Video Communications

No mobile information will be shared with third parties/affiliates for marketing/promotional purposes. All other categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

Your Options/Rights

Manage your cookies

You have the ability to disable cookies at any time using the settings in your web browser. If you block cookies, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website. To learn more about managing cookies in your browser settings, refer to the support instructions for your browser:

To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

For information about opting out of:

Control your ad settings

You can manage or disable Google ad personalization  through Google’s My Ad Center or Ad Settings. Your settings will apply anywhere you’re signed in with your Google Account.

Other resources: