This Privacy Policy Statement explains the policies of United Student Aid Funds, Inc. ("USA Funds"), and its affiliates Secondary Market Services Corp.-Hawaii ("SMS Hawaii") and Northwest Education Loan Association ("NELA") (altogether, the "Companies" or "us," "We," "we," "Our," or "our") regarding any personal identifying information you might supply to us. The Companies respect the privacy of our customers and visitors to this site, and we are committed to protecting user privacy on the Internet. We will protect personal information you share with us through this site in the same way that we protect your personal information in all the other ways in which we interact with you.

We may use "cookies" to enhance your online experience. Cookies are pieces of data that we place on your computer's hard drive to help us identify you. The cookies that we place on your hard drive allow us to immediately tell us who you are when you return to the site. They are not used to collect any nonpublic personal information.

Our Web server automatically recognizes your domain name, but not your e-mail address. We do not collect nonpublic personal information from visitors to our sites unless you expressly provide it to us. The information we do collect from this site (such as domain name, number of hits, pages visited and length of user session) may be combined to analyze how our site is used. This information is then used to improve the usefulness of the site.

The Companies collect only limited "personally identifiable information" on this site. Personally identifiable information is information about you, such as your name, address, telephone number and e-mail address. We gather this information so we can deliver the products and services you request and to administer our business. This information also helps us design and offer new products and services that we believe you will like and use. We also collect some information because federal or state law requires it.

The types of personally identifiable information about you that we collect on this site and the ways in which we use such information include the following:

• Contact information, such as your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number (land-line or cellular). We may use this information, for example, to send you information that you request or to contact you about your accounts.
• Identification information, such as a Social Security number or mother’s maiden name. This information helps us, for example, identify you as our customer and prevent unauthorized use of accounts or unauthorized disclosure of your information.
• Financial information, such as your income, asse