Privacy Statement

Student Information

Student information is protected by the Federal Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA). Parents and students should read WPI's FERPA Compliance Statement.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to the privacy of visitors to our Web site. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this Web site (www.wpi.edu).

Collection & Use of Personal Information
Many of the forms on our site require visitors to give us contact information (like their name and email address), unique identifiers (like their social security number), and demographic information (like their zip code, age, or income level). We use information from registration forms to send each visitor information about our University. This information is also used to contact the visitor when necessary.

Demographic and profile data is also collected through some of our web forms. We use this data to tailor the visitor's experience at our site, showing them content in which we think they might be interested, and displaying the content according to their preferences.

IP Logging
When a visitor sends us email via our forms, such as our Feedback Form, we collect that person's IP address (the unique identifier of a computer on the Internet) and use it to help us diagnose problems with our server. In fact, a majority of our webforms collect and pass along the sender's IP address to the recipient of the email generated by the form.

Cookies
In some areas of our Web site, we use cookies to save a visitor's password so it doesn't have to be re-entered each time that person visits our site. Our campus portal, myWPI, uses temporary cookies to maintain login sessions; these cookies do not contain personal information and are deleted from the users's computer upon leaving the system. Finally, some areas of the WPI Web site may employ temporary cookies to provide Web development staff with valuable information on how visitors are able to navigate through the site content. These cookies are labeled as being from wpi.edu, and enable us to adjust pathways and content as needed.

Confidentiality
All of the data collected via our web forms is confidential and internal to employees of the University. At no time will WPI sell or otherwise distribute to parties external to WPI the contact information or demographic data collected via its Web site.

Reporting Violations of this Privacy Statement
This site contains links to other sites, including the personal Web sites of WPI faculty, staff, and students, as well as student organizations and alumni groups/classes. WPI is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Web sites. Visitors who observe personal sites on the WPI server which violate copyright laws and/or the WPI Acceptable Use Policy should immediately report such activity to webmaster@wpi.edu.

Public Forums
This site makes use of discussion forums, the contents of which are accessible to users of the Internet. Please remember that any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information.

Security
This site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Certain portions of the WPI Web site are restricted by domain to members of the WPI community only. Still other pages may require users to enter their username and password. These pages are intended for internal use only, and generally require the CCC UNIX username and password offered to all faculty, staff and students.

Choice/Opt-Out
Our site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us at the point where we request information about the visitor.

This site gives users the following options for removing their information from our database to not receive future communications or to no longer receive our service.

  1. You can send email to webmaster@wpi.edu
  2. You can send mail to the following postal address:
    Web Development Office
    Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    100 Institute Road
    Worcester, MA 01609-2280
  3. You can call the following telephone number: 508-831-5656

Contacting the Web Site
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this Web site, you can contact:

Tara Myers
Director of Marketing
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
100 Institute Road
Worcester, MA 01609-2280
webmaster@wpi.edu