Reading a scholarship site's privacy policy in ten minutes

Why it is worth ten minutes

A scholarship profile can hold your name, address, school, grades, plans and background. Several sites we reviewed say in their policies that they may sell or share personal information, and those policies differ in what they cover. Ten minutes before signing up tells you which kind of site you are dealing with.

Step 1: find the sell and share section

Search the policy for the words "sell" and "share". Look for sentences that say who receives data: colleges, scholarship providers, advertisers, marketers, data aggregators. For example:

• Fastweb says information "may be sold to colleges" and may be shared with "data aggregators, marketers".
• Bold.org says it may sell to or share information with scholarship providers and academic institutions.
• Niche has a table of third parties to whom it sells or shares data, including advertising partners.

Step 2: look for sensitive information

Search for "sensitive". Sensitive information can include ethnicity, citizenship, disability, health and precise location. ScholarshipOwl's policy says it may sell certain sensitive personal information, like ethnicity and citizenship, to third parties. If a policy names sensitive data, be careful about what you put in optional fields.

Step 3: find your choices

Look for "opt out", "Do Not Sell or Share" and "communication settings". ScholarshipOwl and Scholarships.com link a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" page. Appily describes opting out of data sharing with colleges. Niche lets users opt in to sharing with advertisers through communication settings. Use these before you build a full profile.

Step 4: note the date and the company

Policies change. Note the "last updated" date and the company that issues the policy. Fastweb's policy, for example, is issued by Iron Corp US Inc. If the company is not the one you expected, that is useful to know.

Step 5: decide what to share

1. Fill in the fields that decide eligibility for awards you want.
2. Leave sensitive optional fields empty unless an award needs them.
3. Turn off partner and marketing contact you do not want.
4. Use a separate email address for scholarship sites.

Reading the words carefully

A policy that says a site "may" sell data describes what it allows itself to do. It does not prove what happens to your record. A site with no sell wording is not automatically safer either; read what it says about sharing. Our privacy guide quotes each policy we could read and says plainly where we could not.