USC Privacy Notice

Information you submit voluntarily through our websites, such as your name, email, or other contact information, may be collected by USC to respond to your inquiries, as well as for internal marketing and development purposes.

USC websites may use online data entry forms to collect personally identifiable information, including your name and contact information (email, address, telephone number) and other identifiers in order to allow you to provide website feedback, register for events, or use USC’s online applications and services.

We may reveal personally identifiable information about you to unaffiliated third parties:

• if you request or authorize it;
• if the information is provided to help complete a transaction for you;
• if the information is provided to comply with the law, applicable regulations, governmental and quasi-governmental requests, court orders or subpoenas, to enforce our Terms of Use or other agreements, or to protect our rights, property or safety or the rights, property or safety of our users or others (e.g., to a consumer reporting agency for fraud protection etc.);
• if the information is provided to our agents, outside vendors or service providers to perform functions on our behalf (e.g., analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, providing customer service, processing orders, etc.); or
• as otherwise described in this Privacy Notice or in a more specific privacy notice associated with a particular department, unit or function.

We may share information that does not personally identify you without restriction.

We (and our authorized third parties) use cookies and similar technologies, such as pixels, web beacons, tags, and session replay tools to collect information about you, your device, and how you interact with our websites. Cookies are a type of technology that install a small amount of information on a user’s computer or other device when they visit a website. Some cookies are erased when you close your browser window and some persist over multiple sessions for a period of time. Pixels, web beacons and tags are types of code or transparent graphics that contain a unique identifier, and which provide analytical information about the user experience and help us customize our marketing activities. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, pixels, web beacons, and tags are embedded invisibly on web pages. Session replay tools record your interactions with our websites, such as how you move throughout our websites and engage with our webforms, and help us improve our websites and identify and fix technical issues visitors may be having with our websites.

In addition to the uses identified above, we use these technologies to analyze website usage by all of our visitors; to help us remember you and your preferences when you revisit the websites; and to remember you the next time you log in.

We may disclose information to or allow selected third parties, such as social media companies, advertising networks, and companies that provide analytics including ad tracking and reporting, to place cookies and other tracking technologies through the website to provide us with better insights into the use of the website or user demographics or to provide relevant advertising to you. These third parties may collect information about a user’s online activities over time and across different websites when he or she uses our website.

Many USC.edu websites use Google Analytics (or other similar web analytics tools) to collect information about visitor traffic and behavior. This allows us to identify usage trends and to improve the performance and content of our websites.

You can use the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on to disable tracking by Google Analytics.

Further general information about cookies and how they work is available at www.allaboutcookies.org. You can decline cookies by adjusting your browser settings but some features of the websites may not function. If you change computers, devices, or browsers; use multiple computers, devices, or browsers; or delete your cookies, you may need to repeat this process for each computer, device, or browser. We currently do not use technology that responds to do-not-track signals from your browser.

USC students can manage privacy settings for their directory information by following the instructions in the Request to Restrict Directory Information form. Faculty and staff can manage their directory information in Workday.

You can choose not to receive certain emails from us by “unsubscribing” using the instructions in any email you receive from us. This will not stop us from sending emails about your account or education with us.

In most cases, the lawful grounds for collecting and using your personal information is for USC’s legitimate interests in carrying out its business functions, provided that our interests do not outweigh your rights, interests, and freedom. We may also collect and use your personal information based on your prior consent, to carry out a contractual obligation, or to fulfill legal obligations. When the collection and use is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time, without such withdrawal affecting the legitimacy of the use that has occurred so far.

If you are located in the European Union, you may also have additional rights with respect to your Information, such as: (i) data access and portability; (ii) data correction (including the ability to update your personal data); (iii) data deletion (including the right to have USC delete your personal information, except information we are required to retain, by contacting us); and (iv) withdrawal of consent or objection to processing (including, in limited circumstances, the right to ask USC to stop processing your personal data, with some exceptions, by contacting us). You may also be able to file a complaint with the appropriate supervisory authority in the European Union.

USC is committed to safeguarding the personal information we collect. To ensure the security and confidentiality of your information, we strive to implement comprehensive security measures in an effort to prevent the loss, misuse, or unauthorized access of the information under our control.

USC reserves the right to modify this privacy notice at any time. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to this Privacy Notice. If we make changes, we will post an updated effective date at the top of the Privacy Notice. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Notice will constitute your acceptance of such change.