Terms of Service
Last updated: [Month Day, Year]
These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern access to and use of
EduShieldID's identity verification and financial-aid eligibility platform
(the "Service"), provided by [Company Legal Name] ("EduShieldID," "we,"
"us"). By creating an account, accessing the school administration portal,
or completing a verification as a student, you agree to these Terms. If
you are using the Service on behalf of an Institution, you represent that
you have authority to bind that Institution.
1. Who These Terms Cover
The Service is used by two categories of users:
- Institutions: schools, colleges, universities,
and their staff, who use the school portal to configure verification
workflows, review roster matches, and approve or deny verification and
financial-aid eligibility requests.
- Students: individuals who submit identity
documents and complete liveness verification at the request of an
Institution.
2. The Verification Service
EduShieldID verifies student identity through document capture, liveness
detection, and OCR analysis (via our provider, Persona, and related
tooling), matches the result against roster data supplied by the
Institution, and applies automated fraud-risk scoring. The Institution's
administrators, not EduShieldID, make the final decision to approve or
deny a verification or eligibility determination. EduShieldID provides the
tooling and data; it does not make enrollment, admissions, or financial-aid
decisions on an Institution's behalf.
3. Accounts and Eligibility
You must provide accurate, current information when creating an
account and keep your login credentials confidential. You are responsible
for activity that occurs under your account. Institutions are responsible
for the accounts of their administrators and for ensuring those
administrators are authorized to handle student data under FERPA and the
Institution's own policies.
4. Acceptable Use
You agree not to:
- Submit false, altered, or another person's identity documents.
- Attempt to bypass, spoof, or interfere with liveness detection or
fraud-scoring mechanisms.
- Access, scrape, or export data outside the scope of your
authorized role.
- Use the Service to make eligibility, enrollment, or financial-aid
decisions unrelated to legitimate educational purposes.
- Reverse-engineer, probe, or attempt to circumvent the security of
the Service.
5. Institution Responsibilities
Institutions are responsible for: (a) having a lawful basis, consistent
with FERPA and applicable state law, to collect and share student data
with EduShieldID; (b) providing accurate roster and eligibility data for
matching; (c) reviewing verification and fraud-risk outputs before acting
on them; and (d) promptly notifying EduShieldID of any suspected
unauthorized access to their administrator accounts.
6. Fees and Billing
Institutions pay fees according to the order form or subscription plan
agreed with EduShieldID. Fees are billed on a recurring basis and are
non-refundable except as required by law or expressly agreed in writing.
Late payments may result in suspension of an Institution's access to the
Service.
7. Intellectual Property
EduShieldID retains all rights, title, and interest in the Service,
including its software, verification workflows, fraud-scoring models, and
branding. These Terms do not grant you any rights to our intellectual
property beyond the limited right to use the Service as intended.
8. Disclaimer of Warranties
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available." Identity
verification and fraud-scoring results are provided as decision-support
tools; EduShieldID does not guarantee that any verification outcome,
fraud score, or roster match is error-free, and Institutions remain
responsible for their own enrollment, admissions, and financial-aid
decisions. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all
warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a
particular purpose, and non-infringement.
9. Limitation of Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, EduShieldID will not be liable
for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or
any loss of data, revenue, or goodwill, arising from use of the Service.
Our aggregate liability for any claim relating to the Service will not
exceed the fees paid by the relevant Institution in the twelve (12) months
preceding the claim.
10. Termination
We may suspend or terminate access to the Service for any account that
violates these Terms, poses a security risk, or upon expiration or
termination of an Institution's subscription agreement. Institutions may
terminate their subscription as set out in their order form. Certain
records may be retained after termination as required by our
data-retention obligations or applicable law.
11. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be
communicated to Institution administrators in advance of taking effect.
Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes
acceptance of the revised Terms.
12. Governing Law
These Terms are governed by the laws of [State/Jurisdiction], without
regard to its conflict-of-laws principles, unless a separate signed
agreement with an Institution specifies otherwise.
13. Contact Us
Questions about these Terms can be directed to
legal@[yourdomain].com.
Privacy Policy
Last updated: [Month Day, Year]
EduShieldID ("EduShieldID," "we," "us," or "our") provides an identity
verification and financial-aid eligibility platform used by educational
institutions ("Institutions") to verify students ("Students," "you"). This
Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the
choices you have. It applies to the EduShieldID website, student portal,
school administration portal, and related services (together, the
"Service").
Because EduShieldID processes education records on behalf of
Institutions, in most cases the Institution is the party responsible for
the student data under FERPA, and EduShieldID acts as a "school official"
with a legitimate educational interest, bound by the same use and
re-disclosure restrictions as the Institution. If you are a student with
questions about how your specific school uses your data, you should also
contact your Institution directly.
1. Information We Collect
We collect the following categories of information:
- Identity and contact information: name, date of
birth, email address, phone number, and student/institution ID
numbers.
- Verification data: government-issued ID images,
selfie/liveness capture images and video frames, and the results
returned by our identity-verification provider, Persona.
- Documents: enrollment letters, financial-aid
forms, and other supporting documents you or your Institution upload,
along with data extracted from them via optical character recognition
(OCR).
- Roster and eligibility data: enrollment status,
program, term, and financial-aid eligibility data provided by your
Institution for matching against your verification request.
- Fraud-signal data: device and browser
characteristics, IP address, and behavioral signals used by our
fraud-scoring engine to flag potentially fraudulent verification
attempts.
- Usage data: log data, pages viewed, and actions
taken within the portal, collected automatically and via cookies (see
our Cookie Policy).
- Billing information: for Institution
administrators, invoicing and payment-method details, processed by our
payment processor.
2. How We Use Information
- To verify student identity and confirm enrollment or financial-aid
eligibility on behalf of an Institution.
- To run OCR analysis, roster matching, and fraud-risk scoring as
part of the verification pipeline.
- To let school administrators review and approve or deny
verification requests.
- To send notifications about the status of a verification or
appeal.
- To maintain audit logs required for compliance, dispute
resolution, and security investigations.
- To bill Institutions for use of the Service.
- To monitor, secure, and improve the Service, including detecting
abuse and fraudulent activity across the platform.
We do not sell student personal information, and we do not use it for
behavioral advertising.
3. How Information Is Shared
- With your Institution: verification results,
submitted documents, and eligibility outcomes are shared with the
Institution that initiated the verification request.
- Service providers: we share data with vendors who
perform services on our behalf, including identity verification
(Persona), cloud hosting and storage, and payment processing. These
providers are contractually restricted to using data only to provide
services to us.
- Legal and safety: we may disclose information
where required by law, subpoena, or court order, or to protect the
rights, property, or safety of EduShieldID, our users, or others.
- Business transfers: if EduShieldID is involved in
a merger, acquisition, or asset sale, information may be transferred
as part of that transaction, subject to the same protections
described here.
4. Data Retention
We retain verification records, submitted documents, and audit logs for
as long as needed to fulfill the purposes described in this policy,
satisfy the retention requirements agreed with the relevant Institution,
and meet our own legal, accounting, and security obligations. Retention
periods for specific record types are set out in our data-retention
schedule, available to Institution administrators on request. Students
can review applicable retention windows in the
Privacy Settings page of the student portal.
5. Security
We apply technical and organizational safeguards appropriate to the
sensitivity of the data we handle, including encryption of sensitive
fields at rest, encrypted transmission (TLS), role-based access controls,
rate-limiting, two-factor authentication for administrative accounts, and
audit logging of access to verification records. No system is completely
secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
6. Your Rights and Choices
Depending on your location and your Institution's policies, you may
have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of your
information, or to object to certain processing. Because much of this
data is held on behalf of an Institution under FERPA, requests to access
or amend education records should generally be directed to your
Institution, which may route the request to us. You can manage cookie
preferences at any time as described in our
Cookie Policy, and manage
certain retention and notification preferences from your account's
Privacy Settings.
7. International Data Transfers
EduShieldID is hosted in the United States. If you access the Service
from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to
and processed in the United States, which may have different data
protection laws than your home jurisdiction.
8. Children's Privacy
The Service is intended for use by or on behalf of students in
connection with an Institution's enrollment or financial-aid processes.
Where a Student is a minor, we rely on the Institution's authority under
FERPA and applicable state law to process the minor's information, rather
than obtaining separate consent directly from the minor.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make
material changes, we will notify Institution administrators and update
the "Last updated" date above. Continued use of the Service after an
update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
10. Contact Us
Questions about this Privacy Policy can be directed to
privacy@[yourdomain].com.