SECURITY
Help Prevent Identity Theft
The Internet allows you to handle information and transactions with greater ease and from just about anywhere. But this freedom also presents more opportunities for fraudulent persons to try to access your accounts. Thus, it's important for you to take steps to help safeguard your information.
Identity theft and fraud are crimes where a person deceptively gets a hold of another individual’s personal information, usually to attempt to steal money or establish lines of credit under the victim’s name. In the U.S., this type of illegal activity is estimated to cost individuals and businesses over $50 billion per year. This does not include the time and headaches individuals may experience in correcting their credit records and dealing with the other fallout from being a victim of identity theft.
Here are some ways thieves may attempt to electronically obtain important personal and information from individuals:
Phishing. An online scam involving fraudulent email messages asking for confidential information such as passwords or account numbers. Read more about phishing. College Within Reach will NOT send you an email requesting personal information, unless you initiated correspondence, and then we will only request you to submit that information via our secure link on our website at collegewithinreach.com. If you ever get an email that appears to be from College Within Reach and is requesting any of your personal information, please do not respond; instead contact us at phishing@collegewithinreach.com.
Hacking. The act of breaking into computer networks, databases or personal computers to obtain sensitive or confidential data. Prime targets include people accessing the Internet through public wireless hotspots, such as in airports.
It is important that you ensure that any computer you use has the most up-to-date security software. Additionally, College Within Reach strongly suggests that you do not use wireless technology, especially in free hotspots, to access or transmit any personal information.
Malware. Malicious software, which includes spyware, and viruses, that can secretly invade a computer or other electronic devices that connect to the Internet. It is typically hidden in email attachments, web pages, downloadable music or video files, and other programs commonly found for free on the Internet, such as screen savers. Again, make sure that any computer you use has the most up-to-date security software.
Learn more on how to help protect yourself from becoming a victim of identity theft.
For more information, visit the following websites:
Federal Trade Commission
Identity Theft Resource Center
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
College Within Reach Security Measures
Here are some of the ways we strive to keep your information safe:
• We secure all transactions using SSL and 128-bit encryption
• We do not send any personal account information in any non-secure emails
• We will never send you an unsolicited email that requests your personal information
Read more about how we help guard your privacy.
If you suspect that you’ve been sent a fraudulent email, please forward it to us immediately at phishing@collegewithinreach.com. Please note: This email address is exclusively for messages related to suspected email fraud. Please do not use this email address to send us general questions about your account(s).
For general inquiries, here’s how to contact us:
info@collegewithinreach.com
PRIVACY POLICY
As a user of Keeping College Within Reach you are entitled to know how we seek to protect your personal information and how we limit its disclosure.
We do not collect personal information through our website unless you willingly provide it to us, either directly by email or in those areas of the website that request information. In order to update your personal information (such as your email address) you must visit your user profile.
If you have set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. However, doing so may limit your access to certain sections of this website.
We use cookies to help us improve and manage our website. For example, cookies help us recognize new versus repeat visitors to the site, track the pages visited, and enable some special features on the website. This data helps us provide a better service for our website visitors.
Protection of Information
We do not disclose any non-public personal information (such as names on a customer list) about current or former customers to anyone, except as permitted by law.
Right of Refusal
We will not disclose your personal information to unaffiliated third parties (except as permitted by law), unless we first offer you a reasonable opportunity to refuse or "opt out" of such disclosure.
Internet Security and Encryption
To protect your own privacy, confidential and/or personal information should only be communicated via email when you are advised that you are using a secure website.
As a security measure, we do not include personal information in non-secure emails, and we advise you not to send such information to us in non-secure emails. Instead, you may take advantage of the secure features of our website to encrypt your email correspondence to us. To do this, you will need to use a browser that supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol.
We do not guarantee or warrant that any part of this website, including files available for download, are free of viruses or other harmful code. It is your responsibility to take appropriate precautions, such as use of an anti-virus software package, to protect your computer hardware and software.
- You should ensure that you use SSL and at least 128 bit encryption any time you provide personal information on the Internet. We also recommend that you do not use public wireless networks.
- Encryption is achieved through an electronic scrambling technology that uses a "key" to code and then decode the data. Encryption acts like the cable converter box you may have on your television set. It scrambles data with a secret code so that no one can make sense of it while it is being transmitted. When the data reaches its destination, the same software unscrambles the data.
- You can exit the secure area by either closing your browser, or for added security, you can use the Log Out button before you close your browser.
Other Security Measures
We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect your personal information. Our employees and agents have access to that information only so that they may offer you information relating to your inquiries.
Who We Are
This joint notice describes the privacy policies of College Within Reach and OppenheimerFunds, Inc. This notice was last updated February 23, 2009. In the event it is updated or changed, we will post an updated notice on this website. If you have any questions about these privacy policies, write to us at info@collegewithingreach.com.
Subject to Change
Our Privacy Notice and Legal Notices may be changed from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting a message on this website's homepage. We recommend that you review these notices periodically for changes.