Effective Date: October 26, 2023
This Privacy Policy describes how Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois (“TRS”, “we”, or “our”) collects, uses, shares, and protects personal information when you interact with our website (www.trsil.org) and email communications (the “Services”).
For questions, please contact us at webmaster@trsil.org or write to us at:
Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois
Attn: Communications Department
2815 West Washington Street
Springfield, Illinois 62702
In addition to our general website, TRS provides a member-only portal that enables active members and retirees to keep tabs on their membership, conduct certain transactions, file forms and communicate with TRS. TRS receives most of the information available on the member portal from your employer, however, in limited circumstances we collect information from you directly. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the TRS member-portal.
Personal Information We Collect
Depending on the nature of your interaction with TRS, we may collect the following personal information:
- Contact information and any other information you choose to include when you communicate with us via email, mail, phone, or other channels.
- Account information, such as your name, email address, date of birth, and username and password.
- Survey information in response to questions we may send you through the Services, including for feedback and research purposes.
- Device information and online user activity when you utilize or interact with our Services, as described in the next section.
Online User Activity, Cookies and Information Collected by Other Automated Means
When you interact with our Services, certain information about your use of our Services is automatically collected. This includes:
- Usage details about your interaction with our Services (such as the date, time, and length of visits, and specific pages or content accessed during the visits and referring website addresses);
- Device information including the IP address and other details of a device that you use to connect with our Services (such as device type and unique device identifier, operating system, and browser type); and
- Location information where you choose to provide access to information about your device’s location.
Much of this information is collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies (collectively, “cookies”), which may be operated by our partners who assist us in collecting information about usage of the Services, security, or providing other services to you. For example, we use Google Analytics to collect usage details. You can learn more about privacy and Google Analytics by visiting https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245, and opt out of collection of your data by using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
We may use other third-party cookies for the above purposes. You may modify your browser setting to disable or reject cookies across the internet; but if you do so, some features of our Services may not function properly or be available. While your browser or device may include “Do Not Track” functionality, please note that we do not respond to such signals.
How We Use Your Personal Information
We use the personal information we collect from you to:
- Provide our Services to you, including to maintain your account and provide other important notices.
- Respond to your requests, questions and comments and provide support.
- Send you information and resources we feel may be of interest to you, such as our newsletter.
- Manage, operate, and improve the Services, diagnose and fix technology problems, and monitor the performance of our Services.
- Comply with legal requirements and industry standards, detect, investigate, and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be fraudulent or illegal, and protect the rights of TRS, you, or others.
We may use and share information in an aggregated or de-identified manner at our discretion, including for research, analysis and improvement of our Services.
How We Share Your Personal Information
We share personal information we collect:
- With service providers that we believe need the information to perform a technology, business, or other professional function for us such as IT services, maintenance and hosting of our Services, email providers, accounting, auditing, and tax services, and other professional services.
- With analytics partners who collect information via cookies on our Services to assist us with measuring visits and traffic on our websites so we can measure and improve the performance of the website.
- For legal purposes where necessary to comply with applicable law, to respond to requests from law enforcement agencies or other government authorities or third parties, as permitted by law and without your consent when it is necessary to protect you, TRS, or our property, in emergency situations, or to enforce our rights.
How We Protect Your Personal Information
We use a combination of physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect the information we collect through the Services, which may include encryption, monitoring, and access controls.
This website is the official site of the Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois. We are an agency of the State of Illinois subject to all the protections afforded agencies of the state. Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on the Services, tampering with or modification of this system, including supporting hardware or software, are strictly prohibited and may be subject to criminal prosecution under federal and state law, including without limitation, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Illinois Computer Crime Prevention Law.
TRS requires Social Security numbers (SSNs) for tax reporting obligations associated with payment of benefits and refunds and for internal verification and administrative purposes. You may rest assured that TRS understands identity protection concerns, complies with all applicable identity protection laws, and has policies and procedures in place to protect your SSN. We will never require you to transmit your SSN over the internet unless the connection is secure, or the SSN is encrypted. We will redact your SSN from information or documents before release as part of a public records request. We will only print your SSN on documents and forms that we mail to you as part of an application or enrollment process, to establish, amend, or terminate your TRS account, or to confirm the accuracy of your SSN.
We will not:
- Sell, lease, loan, trade or rent Social Security numbers to a third party for any purpose;
- Publicly post or display Social Security numbers;
- Print Social Security numbers on any card required to access our services;
- Require you to transmit Social Security numbers over the internet, unless the connection is secure or the Social Security numbers are encrypted; or
- Print Social Security numbers on any materials that are mailed to you, unless state or federal law requires that number to be on documents mailed, or unless we are confirming the accuracy of the Social Security number.
Your Privacy Options
You may have certain choices when it comes to how we collect and use your personal information:
- Update or view account information. Please visit your account to update and view certain information associated with your account, such as your email address.
- Opt-out of marketing communication. If at any time you no longer wish to receive promotional email communications from us, you can click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email.
Updates to This Privacy Policy
We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Effective Date” at the top of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information described in this Privacy Policy.