Privacy Glossary
Privacy Glossary
Affiliates: Companies related by common ownership or control. They can be financial and nonfinancial companies. Discover affiliates include companies with a Discover or DFS name and financial companies such as Diners Club International Ltd., PULSE Network LLC, The Student Loan Corporation, and GTC Insurance Agency, Inc.
Browser: An application used for accessing sites or information on a computer network. Examples include Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.
Business Partners: Companies we partner with to jointly market and/or deliver products and services to you. Business Partners include affinity or co-brand Business Partners. For example, we partner with Amazon to offer customers the option to "Pay with Cashback Bonus" at Amazon.com. We also partner with certain organizations, like trade associations, to offer financial products using their organizational logo.
Cookies: Cookies are small pieces of text that are placed in your browser by the websites you visit and the advertising companies and content partners for those sites.
Consumer Privacy Statement: A Discover product-specific privacy notice, which we provide to customers at account opening and annually thereafter, as required by law. It generally describes our privacy practices and provides you with the right to opt-out of certain types of information sharing.
GPS (Global Positioning System): When activated, this identifies a user's precise location.
IP address: A unique "Internet Protocol" number assigned to a device connected to the Internet.
Jailbroken or rooted device: A mobile device that has been altered to remove the controls and limits of the operating system or carrier.
Online services: Websites such as discover.com and mobile apps provided by Discover Financial Services.
Operating system: Software that controls the operation of a computer and directs the processing of programs, such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS.
Personal Information: Any information relating to, describing, capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with an identified or identifiable person or household.
Pixel tags: Enables two websites to share information. It consists of a small piece of software code that incorporates a graphic image on a web page or e-mail.
Service Providers: Third parties with whom we have a contractual relationship to perform services on our behalf. Service Providers may not use personal information for any other purpose other than carrying out the services.
Session: The time from when a customer is logged in to when the customer is logged out.
Social media site: An online platform that allows users to create a public profile and interact with other users on the website, such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
Third-party websites: Sites that are not owned or operated by Discover and are not subject to our Online Privacy Statement.