Online Policy FAQs

We collect information so we can identify you as our customer, to establish, manage and protect your accounts, to complete your transactions, to create and offer you products and services you might be interested in, to personalize and improve upon your experience with us, and to comply with various legal and regulatory requirements.

Certain Non-Identifying Information (NII) would be considered a part of your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) if it were combined with other identifiers (e.g., combining your ZIP code with your street address) in a way that enables you to be identified. But the same pieces of information are considered NII when they are taken alone or combined only with other NII (e.g., your viewing preferences). We may combine your PII with NII and aggregate it with information collected from other users to attempt to provide you with a better experience, to improve the quality and value of our services, and to analyze and understand how our website and services are used. We may also use the combined information without aggregating it to serve you specifically (e.g., to deliver a product to you according to your preferences or restrictions).

If you supply us with your email address, we may let you know by email about your lender’s products, services, and product enhancements that may interest you. You will have the opportunity to tell us you do not want to receive future messages with each message you receive. If you email a question or comment to us, we will use your email address to reply to you, and we will temporarily store your email address, your message, and our reply for quality assurance or to satisfy applicable laws and regulations. When we collect your email address this way, we will not use it for marketing our products and services without your permission.

If you wish to change any of your personal information, you may change it by logging into your Nelnet.com account, or by contacting Customer Service, either through email, by mail, or by telephone as listed in the “How to Contact Us” section.

We may employ third-party companies and individuals to facilitate our services, provide services on our behalf, perform website-related services (e.g., maintenance services, database management, web analytics, and improvement of the website’s features), assist us in analyzing how our website and services are used, and perform other services (e.g., sending postal mail and email, providing marketing assistance, and providing customer service). These third parties have access to your Nonpublic Personal Information (NPI), Non-Identifying Information (NII), and/or Personally Identifiable Information (PII) only to perform these tasks on our behalf. However, if you are redirected to a site or application maintained by a third party, the privacy policy of such site or application will control the use of any information you provide.

We may share your information with companies that are affiliated with us, such as our direct or indirect subsidiaries or parent or sister companies or nonaffiliated third parties to market products or services to you. As we continue to develop our business, we may buy or sell companies, subsidiaries, or business units. We may sell, transfer, or share some or all of our assets, including your PII, in connection with a merger, acquisitions, reorganization, or sale of assets including in the event of bankruptcy.

Sometimes the law or other circumstances also require that we disclose NPI and/or PII about you to nonaffiliated third parties. Some examples are: when you ask or permit us to do so; with agencies that assist us in servicing your loan; in response to subpoenas, court orders, or regulatory requests; with credit bureaus; when we suspect fraud or criminal activity; to protect our property and rights or those of a third party; to protect the safety of the public or any person; or to prevent or stop activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, unethical, or legally actionable activity.

We may collect information from your visit or as part of the registration and administration of your account, in order to personalize and improve upon your experience with us, such as, without limitation, age and individual preferences (i.e., Non-Identifying Information (NII)).

Nonpublic Personal Information (NPI) is nonpublic, personally identifiable financial information about you that we obtain in connection with providing a financial product or service to you. For example, NPI includes information regarding your account balance, payment history, and overdraft history, if applicable. We may collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about you as well, including:

• Your first and last name
• Your home address
• Your home or work telephone number
• Your birth date
• Your email address
• Your social security number

We may collect Personally Identifying Information (PII) about you from the following sources:

• Information from your loan applications or other loan and account forms
• Information about your transactions with us or others
• Information we receive from third parties, such as your academic institution

PII is individually identifiable information about an individual consumer collected by us and maintained in an accessible form.

Our services may place small text files (i.e., cookies) on a visitor’s device. Our cookies save anonymized data about individual visitors, allowing our services to recognize information about a visitor and help deliver personalized content and other services and functions. Cookies make your Internet experience quicker and more convenient. Our services use both session cookies, which terminate when a user closes his or her browser, and persistent cookies, which remain on the user’s device until they expire or are manually deleted. Our services also contain coding from our business and technology partners, which generate third-party cookies. Third-party cookies allow our business and technology partners to store Non-Identifying Information (NII) they can access when you visit this or other websites. Accepting a cookie from a web or device browser does not give us access to any Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Most website and mobile device browsers allow you to control cookies, including whether or not to accept them and provide the ability to remove them. You may set most browsers to notify you if you receive a cookie, or you may choose to block cookies with your browser. Blocking cookies may result in a lower quality experience for you while you are using our services.

When you use our services, we will identify the internet protocol (IP) address of your computer or handheld device. The IP address does not identify you personally, but it lets us identify the device you are using. We store IP addresses in case we need to track a connection for security purposes. We may also collect other device-specific information about the device you are using, including what type of device it is and hardware model, what operating system you are using, device settings, unique device identifies, geo-location data, and crash data. Whether we collect some or all of this information often depends on the type of device you are using and its settings, but device-specific information does not include Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Check the policies of your device manufacturer or software provider to learn more about the information your device makes available to us.

Our services contain coding known as web beacons that use 1×1 pixel images to capture and transmit the online activity of users on our services. These web beacons typically transmit information about form completions and other activities in order to measure advertising effectiveness or store analytics information. In addition, we may use web beacons in HTML-based emails. This allows us to evaluate the effectiveness of our email communications and our marketing campaigns by showing how many emails recipients have opened. However, web beacons do not give us access to any Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Like most websites, our servers utilize log files. Log files store information including internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks. Log files are used to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. We use log file information at times to help identify you as you browse and to gather broad technical and demographic information on who uses our website. However, web beacons do not give us access to any Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

We use Google Analytics to collect information about the use of our website. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit the website, what pages they visit, and what other sites they used prior to coming to the website. We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve the website. Google Analytics collects only the internet protocol (IP) address assigned to you on the date you visit the website, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit this site, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to this site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits to this website by disabling the Google Analytics cookie on your browser. You can also view and change the currently available opt-outs for Google Ads.

Do Not Track is a feature in your web browser that enables you to opt out of the third-party tracking of your online activities over time and across third-party websites. We do not track users across third-party websites to provide targeted advertising, and therefore, do not process or comply with any web browser’s Do Not Track signal or other similar mechanism that indicates a request to disable online tracking of individual users who visit this website or use our services. Third parties cannot collect any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from this website unless you provide it to them directly.