Privacy Notice

The following privacy notice describes what we collect from you when you visit www.sbcc.edu and how we use this information. Please read this privacy notice carefully so that you understand our privacy practices. 

Effective Date of Privacy Notice

The privacy notice was last revised on November 7, 2021.

Online Privacy Notice

Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) is concerned and committed to protecting your privacy to the greatest extent possible, subject to applicable state and federal law, through our compliance with our privacy policies and this privacy notice. 

This privacy notice describes our policies and practices regarding the most common ways we collect, use, disclose, or otherwise process your personal information. Except as specifically described, our sites are operated in accordance with the laws of the United States. In certain circumstances, we may provide you with supplemental disclosures regarding our data processing activities.  

This notice does not apply to information collected from or about current or former employees, contractors, volunteers, and other workers of SBCC (“Workers”) as part of their employment or working relationship with SBCC.

What Information Is Collected

We automatically collect certain information from you when you visit www.sbcc.edu. This data is used in conjunction with Google Analytics to gather metrics on site usage. The information we collect is not linked to anything that identifies you as an individual. Your session will be tracked but you will remain anonymous as a user.   

User-provided Information

We may also collect other information as described in this notice or other specific college privacy notices. You may be required to provide personal information to access or use certain parts of our sites, or features of our sites or services, including but not limited to: applying or enrolling at one of our campuses or programs, subscribing to a newsletter or email list, purchasing, donating, filling out a form, participating in any of our programs, special events or promotions, contacting us with a comment, question or complaint, etc. If you do not provide the requested personal information, you may not be able to access or use the features of our sites or service where such information is requested.

How We Use Your Information

This website does not collect personally-identifying information about you except for information that is voluntarily provided to us so that we can serve your needs and our legitimate business and/or educational purposes. Your personally-identifying information may be used by SBCC to help us improve the website, and also for our institution's marketing and promotional purposes. It will be treated confidentially within our institution. Our policy is not to share this information with third parties. Although we may employ "cookie" technology on this website, it will only be used to track non-personal information such as type of browser, operating system, SBCC internal transactions (such as fiscal services forms, online registration, or requests for assistance) and domain names in order for us to improve our visitors' experience online.

We may also use your personal information for operational and other lawful purposes such as security, analytics, operations, fraud detection and prevention, reporting, making back-ups and legal compliance.

Legal Basis for Processing (for personal information subject to the GDPR)

With respect to personal information subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we rely on the following lawful bases for processing:

  • Our legitimate interests, such as monitoring our website usage
  • To provide you with services or perform on contractual obligations, such as managing our relationships with our suppliers and alumnae
  • For compliance with our legal obligations
  • With your consent, when applicable 

Protecting your Information

We take reasonable physical, managerial, and technical safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of your personal information against loss, unauthorized access, and illegal use or disclosure. Such personal information is stored by the College in secure locations and College staff is trained on procedures for the management of personal information, including limitations on the release of information.  

The security of your personal information is important to us, but please remember that no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your personal information and privacy, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you disclose online.

Cookies

Cookies are text files stored on your computer and accessible only to the websites which create them. A cookie does not collect personal information about you. 

Our websites may use cookies to keep you logged into secure areas of the website and/or to keep track of your preferences as you interact with certain services. You may disable cookies in your browser; however, our websites may not work properly if you do so.

Log Files 

Our websites automatically gather anonymous information about our visitors including IP addresses, browser types, and the times and dates of webpage visits. The information collected does not include any personally identifiable details and is used to improve our services and administer our websites.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to help operate our sites more efficiently and to monitor the level of activity of our sites. For information on how Google uses data from sites that share information with Google, see: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites  (or other relevant URL that Google may provide from time to time). 

You can prevent the use of Google Analytics relating to your use of our sites by downloading and installing the browser plugin available at this URL: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en 

Clear Gifs 

When you use the sites, we may employ clear gifs (also known as web beacons) which are used to track the online usage patterns of our users anonymously. No personal information is collected using these clear gifs. In addition, we may also use clear gifs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened by recipients.

External Website Links

From time-to-time, we will link to external websites that we neither own nor control. Santa Barbara City College is not responsible for the content, privacy practices, or web accessibility needs on these websites.

Social Media Presence

If you share our content through social media, such as liking us on Facebook or tweeting about us on Twitter, those social networks will record that you have done so and may set a cookie for this purpose.

If you wish to opt-out of any of these social interactions please refer to the specific social media platform for instructions on how to do so.

Opting-Out of Emails

Marketing or public information emails you may receive from the College contain options to unsubscribe. However, there are certain internal or safety-related email messages that are delivered to all SBCC students and employees that will not contain an opt-out option as these are considered critical internal communications.

Opting-Out of SMS/Text Messages

The College may send text messages regarding student information, class schedules, or messages from faculty or staff about school-related items. Recipients have the option of opting out of such messages by replying with STOP, CANCEL, END, or QUIT to messages received.

Special Notice to EU residents:

If you are located within the European Economic Area (European Union, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) grants you certain rights concerning the collection of your data.

These rights may include:

  1. Right to access your information held by us
  2. Right to correct inaccurate or incorrect information about you
  3. Right to the erasure of your information when it is no longer necessary for us to retain it
  4. Right to restrict processing of your personal information in specific situations
  5. Right to object to processing your information, including sending you communications that may be considered direct-marketing materials
  6. Right to object to automated decision-making and profiling, where applicable
  7. Right to complain to a supervisory authority in your jurisdiction within the EU

SBCC’s ability or obligation to comply with your requests may be limited by applicable law.

Please contact if you wish to exercise any of these rights.

Special Notice to Parents and Children

All information submitted on this site must comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), effective April 21, 2000. Detailed information about this Act can be found at business.ftc.gov/privacy-and-security/children%27s-privacy

Contact Information

If you have questions about our privacy notice or the privacy practices it describes, please contact .

Changes to this Notice

This notice reflects SBCC’s current practices and may change from time to time, so please check the notice periodically for updates. SBCC encourages you to periodically review this policy to be informed of how SBCC is protecting your information.