1. Who we are
E-Rate Keeper is a product of its parent company, which operates the service. In this policy, "E-Rate Keeper", "we", "us", and "our" mean that company. Disclosure of the parent company is available upon written request to E-Rate Keeper, 1235 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Unit #1382, Washington, DC 20003, or legal@eratekeeper.com.
For information about our customers, website visitors, alert subscribers and business contacts, we decide how it is used, and this policy describes what we do. For documents and information a customer uploads to the paid service, we process it on the customer's behalf to provide the service.
2. Information about schools and libraries
Our reports are built from open data published by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), which is in the public domain. It describes organizations and their E-rate activity: applications, funding requests, approvals, payments, deadlines, vendors, contracts, equipment budgets, enrollment and lunch counts, and denials.
USAC's public records also name the officials who certify E-rate applications and the contacts listed on them, with work email addresses and phone numbers. We use these to understand who handles E-rate at an organization and to contact them as described below. Our public reports do not display individual officials' contact details.
3. Student information
E-Rate Keeper does not collect, request or need student education records or personal information about students. E-rate relies on aggregate counts, and those are what we use. Customers agree not to upload student records. If student personal information is uploaded by mistake, tell us and we will delete it.
Because we do not receive student records, we are not acting as a school official under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) for our customers. If your organization needs a data privacy agreement for its own procurement process, write to us.
4. Information you give us
- Searches: the names, cities, states or ZIP codes you type into the lookup. These are not linked to you.
- Deadline alerts: the email addresses you add for a school or library, including colleagues' addresses, and which organization they are for.
- Estimates you adjust: numbers you type into a calculator or estimate stay in your browser and are not sent to us.
- Accounts: name, work email address, role, organization, and sign-in details.
- Documents and records in the paid service: quotes, contracts, bills, correspondence, and the information you confirm or enter about your organization's E-rate filings.
- Payments: billing contact, purchase order details and invoices. Card payments are handled by our payment processor; we do not store full card numbers.
- Messages: what you send us by email or through the service.
5. Information collected automatically
Our hosting provider records standard log information when you visit, such as IP address, browser type, pages requested, referring page, and date and time. We use it to run, secure and fix the service.
At the effective date of this policy, the website sets no cookies for tracking or advertising and runs no analytics or advertising scripts. If we add analytics, we will update this policy first.
6. Business contacts and outreach
We contact school and library staff about E-rate and E-Rate Keeper. We get their work contact details from public sources: USAC's published E-rate filings, state education department directories, and organizations' own websites.
Each outreach email identifies us, explains why we are writing, and includes an unsubscribe link. We honor unsubscribe requests promptly and keep a record of them so that we do not contact that address again. To have your work contact details corrected or removed from our lists, write to legal@eratekeeper.com.
7. How we use information
We use information to:
- build and show school and library reports and estimates;
- send deadline alerts to the people on each alert list;
- provide the paid service: prepare filing answers, track deadlines, keep the record file, and support you;
- bill customers and keep business records;
- contact school and library staff about E-rate and our service, which they can opt out of;
- secure the service, prevent misuse, and fix problems;
- comply with law and enforce our terms.
8. AI processing
Some features of the paid service use artificial intelligence models operated by a third-party provider, such as reading an uploaded quote or bill into line items, or drafting a reply to a USAC reviewer question. To do this, the content of the relevant documents is sent to that provider for processing. We use providers that do not train their models on that content. Free reports and estimates do not use AI.
10. Retention
Public data is kept and refreshed for as long as we offer reports. Alert subscriptions are kept until the subscriber or the organization removes them. Customer documents and records are kept for the life of the account; because E-rate rules require records to be kept for ten years, customers can choose to keep their record file for that period, and can export or delete it. Business contact details are kept until they are no longer useful or you ask us to remove them, and we keep a record of opt-outs so that we can honor them. Logs are kept for a limited period for security.
11. Security
We use reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards, including encryption in transit. No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you as the law requires.
12. Your choices and rights
- Unsubscribe from marketing email with the link in any message, or by writing to legal@eratekeeper.com.
- Leave a deadline alert list with the link in any alert, or ask the organization's account to remove you.
- Ask for your work contact details to be corrected or removed from our outreach lists.
- Depending on where you live, you may have the right to know what personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, and to receive a copy. Send requests to legal@eratekeeper.com. We will verify your identity before acting, will not discriminate against you for making a request, and you may appeal a decision by replying to our response. You may use an authorized agent.
13. Children
The service is for school and library staff, not children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
14. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. If a change is material, we will post the new version with a new effective date and, if you have an account, notify you by email before it takes effect.
15. Contact
Privacy questions and requests go to legal@eratekeeper.com, or by mail to E-Rate Keeper, 1235 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Unit #1382, Washington, DC 20003.