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Privacy Policy

The Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission (the “Commission”) administers the educational and scholarly exchanges between Romania and the United States of America. The Commission was inaugurated in May 1993, with the support of the American and Romanian Governments, following the bilateral agreement between the U.S. Department of State and the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The activities of the Commission are carried out in virtue of Law No. 50/2014 and supervised by its Board of Directors. Their main objective is to “increase mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States of America and Romania through planning, administration and execution of a program of educational exchange.”

This Privacy Notice describes the Commission’s policies and practices regarding its collection and use of your personal data, and sets forth your privacy rights. We recognize that information privacy is an ongoing responsibility, and so we will from time to time update this Privacy Notice as we undertake new personal data practices or adopt new privacy policies.

The Commission is the owner and administrator of the www.fulbright.ro website. All questions related to the functioning of the website or the privacy policy should be directed to office@fulbright.ro.

1. Collection and use of personal information

The Commission is dedicated to protecting the confidentiality and privacy of information entrusted to it. We collect only the personal information that is provided voluntarily so that we can offer information and/or services to those individuals. By submitting personal information to the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission, you are also agreeing to the use of this information in accordance with this Privacy Statement.

The type and quantity of information we collect and how we use it depends on the personal information you choose to provide and why you are providing it.

For example, if you decide to send us your personal data voluntarily in an e-mail with a comment or question, we will use your data only to reply to your message. With the exception of legally-ordered investigations, we do not forward e-mails to any outside organizations. In most cases we do not delete the messages we have received. At your request, we can delete a message and the e-mail address associated with it. Such requests should be sent to office@fulbright.ro.

We may collect information when you:

Make an enquiry about our programs or awards or about studying in the USA
Apply for an award or program
Register to attend one of our events
Volunteer with us

The information we may collect from the above interactions may include, but is not limited to:

Your name, address, telephone number, mobile number and/or e-mail address
Information you enter onto the application forms
Records of your correspondence with us
Images, photographs or video if you take part in an event with us
Anonymous details of your visit to the website, including technical information such as the IP address, browser type and version
Other details relevant to your communications with us

We will mainly use the data we collect to:

Provide you with the services or information you asked for
Administer your application and award or place on our programs
Keep a record of your relationship with us
Manage your communication preferences
Understand how we can improve our services, products or information
Keep you up to date with the Commission’s work
Support and further our mission

Applicants and participants in the Fulbright/Humphrey programs administered by the Commission

The Commission collects and processes personal information in connection with the application and award selection processes for the Fulbright/Humphrey Programs (the “Program”) to which you are applying. The Program is funded by partner countries and the U.S. Congress through the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (“ECA”) of the U.S. Department of State.

Who controls and processes your data

The Fulbright Program is represented in Europe by binational Commissions, which serve in a limited way as data controllers for some data. The Commissions process your personal data on behalf of the Program. The Institute of International of Education (“IIE”), the agency contracted by ECA to administer the Fulbright Program for which you are submitting an application, processes your data through their management of the application platform used for the Program.As a sovereign state, the United States is not subject to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (EU Regulation 2016/679) (“GDPR”), but the Commission and IIE are separate legal entities from the United States Government and will comply with applicable data protection regulations, including GDPR.

The Commission will process the personal data in accordance with the specific Data Privacy Statement included on the application platform (starting with 2018) or sent by e-mail to all the applicants and participants in our programs before the Data Privacy Statement was included on the online platform.

Alumni of the programs administered by the Commission

The Fulbright Commission relies on its legal obligation, as stipulated in Law No. 50/2014 (Art 3., A, 10), to process personal data associated with the alumni of the programs administered by the Commission. We collect only the personal information that you provided voluntarily at the time of the application. As always, if you wish to have the Commission update or delete your personal information or otherwise refrain from communicating with you, please contact us at office@fulbright.ro.

If you no longer wish to receive e-mails about the Commission’s activities and events, please click here.

2. Use of the fulbright.ro website

As is true of most other websites, the Commission’s website collects certain information automatically and stores it in log files. The information may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, the region or general location where your computer or device is accessing the internet, browser type, operating system and other usage information about the use of the website, including a history of the pages you view. We use this information to help us design our site to better suit our users’ needs, to administer our website, analyze trends, track visitor movements, and gather broad demographic information that assists us in identifying visitor preferences.

The Commission’s website also uses cookies and web beacons. It does not track users when they cross to third party websites and does not provide targeted advertising to them.

The Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission has a legitimate interest in understanding how the visitors use its website. This assists the Commission with providing more relevant information and services.

Cookies and web beacons

Web cookies are small text files sent by the website to your computer or mobile device in order to enable it to remember specific information about the internet connection session. Web beacons are transparent pixel images that are used in collecting information about website usage, e-mail response and tracking. Like most websites, the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission uses cookies and web beacons.

We use cookies and web beacons for the following main reasons:

To remember your preferences when you visit our site
To improve your experience of our website (e.g. accelerate page loading by saving some elements that make up the pages to the cache of your device)
To allow us to collect anonymous user statistics through Google Analytics – understanding where visitors go on the site helps us improve the information we provide.
To use social media plug-ins from sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, in order to embed content from these social media channels in our website.

Although most browsers automatically accept cookies, you can choose whether or not to accept cookies via your browser’s settings (often found in your browser’s Tools or Preferences menu). You may also delete cookies from your device at any time. However, please be aware that if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to fully experience some of our websites’ features.

Further information about managing cookies can be found at www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

When someone visits www.fulbright.ro we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behavior patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site.

External links

Our website contains links to social websites and other types of third party websites. By using these links you are leaving our website and going to an external site where you are subject to the privacy policies of the external party.

We make every effort to post links only to verified and secure third party websites, however, we are not responsible for the content contained in them. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

3. How long we keep your data for

The Commission will hold your personal information for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity. If you request that we stop sending you marketing materials we will keep a record of your contact details and the appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted by us.

4. Sharing your information with other parties

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may allow our suppliers to access and use your personal data to allow them to perform services on our behalf (e.g. payment processing). In these circumstances, we will not give these organizations any rights to use your personal information except to provide services to us and in accordance with our instructions.

5. Your rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation

You have rights under the GDPR including:

the right to access your personal data;
the right to have your personal data rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
the right to have your personal data deleted or removed if there is no reason for its continued storage and processing;
the right to object to your personal data being processed and to restrict the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances;
the right to request the transfer of your personal data to another party;
where you have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal data for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent. Please note that the withdrawal of your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing of personal data based on your consent before its withdrawal.

These rights may be limited, for example if fulfilling your request would reveal personal data about another person, or if you ask us to delete information which we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests in keeping.You may address your requests to the address below. You can, in principle, exercise your rights free of charge, subject to statutory exceptions.

6. Data security and integrity

The Commission has reasonable security policies and procedures in place to protect personal information from unauthorized loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction. Despite the Commission’s best efforts, however, security cannot be absolutely guaranteed against all threats. To the best of our ability, access to your personal information is limited to those who have a need to know. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information. We also make reasonable efforts to retain personal information only for so long as the information is necessary to comply with an individual’s request or until that person asks that the information be deleted.

7. Changes to this policy

The Commission may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect our current privacy practices. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to be informed about how the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission is protecting your information.