This Privacy Policy discloses the privacy practices for alumni.harvard.edu.

What Information Do We Gather About You?

We collect information from you when you access alumni.harvard.edu and when you subscribe to our email service. As a result of those actions, you might supply us with such information as your name, address, email, and phone number. You can choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features. Periodically, we may ask you to confirm the accuracy of your information to avoid disruption of services.

Users Located in the European Economic Area

If you are located in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway (the “European Economic Area”), please click here for additional information about ways that certain Harvard University Schools, Centers, units and controlled entities, including this one, may collect, use, and share information about you.

What Do We Use Your Information For?

We use your IP address to help provide more relevant service to you and to administer our website by identifying (1) which parts of our site are most heavily used and (2) which portion of our audience comes from within the Harvard network. With your permission, we may use your IP address and/or location to help you find alumni events near you. We do not link IP addresses or location data to anything personally identifiable. This means that user sessions will be tracked, but the users will remain anonymous.

The email address and/or mobile phone number you provide may be used to send you information, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.

In addition, visitor activity is tracked using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is subject to the privacy policy of Google, Inc., which you can find on Google’s website. These data are used to optimize our website for our visitors and do not include personally identifiable information such as name, contact information, or credit card numbers.

All personally identifiable information provided by alumni is strictly reserved for use by individual alumni and Alumni Affairs & Development (AA&D) for personal and University-related purposes only. Personal information is shared with third parties or made publicly available only under the following circumstances:

  • Printed and online directories. Directory information, including name, degree, address, phone, and email, may be included in printed and online alumni directories. Alumni may request to be excluded from directories.
  • Class notes. Information submitted voluntarily through the “Alumni Notes” area of the site may be published in alumni magazines or reposted to sites that are not password-protected.
  • Provision of services to users. User information may be shared with third-party partners to the extent necessary to provide and improve web services or other communications to users. Any third parties who receive user information for this purpose are prohibited from using or sharing user information for any purpose other than providing services to users.

Device Information Collected By Us

We may collect non-personal information about the computer, mobile device, or other device you use to access alumni.harvard.edu, such as IP address, geolocation information, unique device identifiers, browser type, browser language, or other information of this nature. We use this information in an aggregate fashion to track access to alumni.harvard.edu. At no time do we disclose site usage by individual IP addresses. Web server logs are retained on a temporary basis and then deleted from our systems.

Third-Party Cookies

Cookies may be set by an organization other than alumni.harvard.edu. These “third-party cookies” may, for example, originate from websites such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, or other social media services for which alumni.harvard.edu has implemented “plug-ins.” Since the cookie policies of these sites change over time, you should determine their policies by visiting the privacy policy pages of these sites directly. You may disable cookies through your individual browser options. If you would like to learn more about cookies, please refer to the following website: allaboutcookies.org.

Links To Third-Party Websites

We may provide hyperlinks to third-party websites as a convenience to our users; alumni.harvard.edu does not control third-party websites and is not responsible for the content of any linked-to third-party websites or any hyperlink in a linked-to website. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of third-party websites.

Email Policy

AA&D occasionally sends you email communications to inform you of news, events, and information relevant to you and the Harvard alumni community. If you require assistance in opting out of emails, please contact Alumni & Development Services at ads@harvard.edu.

If you send us email messages, you should be aware that information disclosed in email may not be secure or encrypted and thus may be available to others. We suggest that you exercise caution when deciding to disclose any personal or confidential information in email. We will use your email address to respond directly to your questions or comments.

Text Messaging Policy

By opting in to receive event notifications and other text messages on your wireless telephone, you consent to receiving text messages at the telephone number, including Short Message Service (SMS) messages. By opting in, you accept and agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy and the AA&D Text Messaging Terms and Conditions, which can be viewed here. If you require assistance in opting out of text messages, please contact the AA&D Alumni Help Desk at haa_alumnihelp@harvard.edu or 800-823-2478.

Information Protection

To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the appropriate use of information we gather about you, we have taken commercially reasonable steps to protect the information. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100 percent secure.

AA&D has taken reasonable precautions to secure the personal information available through the online community.

  • Areas of alumni.harvard.edu where personal information is displayed or can be entered are password-protected to allow access by registered users only. These areas include the online directory, profile update, account management, email forwarding, alumni notes (with the exceptions noted in the “Use of Information” section), discussion groups, Crimson Compass career networking, and registration for some events.
  • The site provides a "blind" email function that allows alumni to contact one another without having to make the prospective recipient's actual email address visible to the sender.
  • Users have the option to suppress the information fields in their records that they wish to keep private, which will prevent these fields from being viewed by other community members.

Contacting This Web Site

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this site, you can use this form to contact us.

Changes To This Policy

This Privacy Policy may be amended from time to time. Any such changes will be posted on this page. The effective date of this policy was May 6, 2014.