An Important Notice from TIAA-CREF Tuition Financing, Inc. about its Privacy Policy

Please read this notice carefully.  It gives you important information, in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act (GLB), about how TIAA-CREF Tuition Financing, Inc. ("TFI") handles nonpublic personal information it may have about you in connection with the Independent 529 Plan (the "Plan"). It applies to all past, present and future Account Owners in the Plan.

Information It May Collect

TFI may collect nonpublic personal information about you from various sources. That includes information that:

• you provide on applications;
• you provide on forms;
• you provide during consultations;
• may be needed to complete your requested transaction;
• is about your participation in the Plan or your relationship with other TIAA-CREF companies; or
• is from third parties such as consumer reporting agencies.

TFI uses your nonpublic personal information to effect your participation in the Plan or to provide you with related services. Unless you opt out of receiving information about products and services offered by other affiliated TIAA-CREF companies, your nonpublic personal information may be shared among these companies to determine your possible interest in their products and services and to mail you information about them. The other affiliated TIAA-CREF companies include insurance companies, broker-dealers, investment companies, investment advisors and a trust company. Your Plan information also is available to Tuition Plan Consortium, LLC, the Plan Sponsor.

TFI limits access to your nonpublic personal information to its employees who need to know that information to: (1) effect your participation in the Plan; or (2) provide related services to you. TFI also uses affiliated companies and independent service providers to:

• process your transactions;
• provide you with materials about the Plan;
• mail you account statements and materials that you request; and
• provided you haven't opted out, other information about other TIAA-CREF products and services.

To protect your privacy, these service providers are subject to agreements of:

• strict confidentiality;
• limited use; and
• nondisclosure.

TFI also protects your nonpublic personal information by physical, electronic and procedural safeguards as required by federal and state laws.

Disclosure of Your Information

Unless you opt out, your name and address may be provided to Participating Institutions in the Plan for purposes of sending you information about their educational programs. TFI does not disclose your nonpublic personal information to anyone outside of the Plan, except as described in this policy, unless it has received proper authorization from you or is required or permitted by applicable law to do so.

Your Right to Opt Out

You must opt out if: (1) you do not wish to have your nonpublic personal information shared among the TIAA-CREF companies for purposes of providing you information about their other products and services; or (2) you do not want TIAA-CREF to provide your nonpublic personal information to Participating Institutions in the Plan for purposes of providing you information about their educational programs. You may opt out of one or both of these types of sharing. You may opt out by calling us TOLL FREE at 1 (888) 381-8283. Your opt-out becomes effective as soon as practicable and remains in effect until you revoke it in writing. You may revoke your opt-out by writing to us at Independent 529 Plan, P.O. Box 55191, Boston, MA 02205-8217.

Changes in Privacy Policy

TFI periodically reviews its policies. It reserves the right to amend them. If it amends this Privacy Policy, it will continue its commitment to keeping your nonpublic personal information secure. It will notify you of any material changes before they become effective.

NOTICE ABOUT ONLINE PRIVACY

The nonpublic personal information that you provide through the Plan Web site is handled in the same way as the nonpublic personal information that you provide by any other means, as described above. This section of the notice gives you additional information about the way in which nonpublic personal information that is obtained online is handled.

When you visit the Plan Web site, you can go to pages that are open to the general public or log onto secure pages to enroll in the Plan, access information about your Account, or conduct certain transactions on your Account. Once you have opened an Account in the Plan, access to the secure pages of the Plan Web site is permitted only after you have supplied your Social Security Number or Taxpayer Identification Number and Personal Identification Number (PIN). This information serves to verify your identity, so that only you can access your Account and initiate transactions through the Plan Web site.

The following categories of personal information will be requested from you if you choose to enroll in the Plan or access your Account online: (1) your name and your Beneficiary's name; (2) complete physical address information; (3) telephone numbers; (4) your gender; (5) Social Security Numbers or Taxpayer Identification Numbers for yourself and your Beneficiary; (6) your date of birth and your Beneficiary's date of birth; (7) depending on your method of contribution, certain banking information; (8) at your option, your relationship to the Beneficiary and your e-mail address; (9) your Beneficiary's expected enrollment year ; and (10) names of five Participating Institutions that you would like to track (i.e., for possible college attendance by your Beneficiary) which you may change at any time.

TFI is committed to protecting your privacy online. When you enter personal data into the Plan Web site (including your Social Security Number or Taxpayer Identification Number and your PIN) to enroll or access your Account online, the information is secure. When you log onto these secure pages, we use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol for protecting information. SSL has been universally accepted on the Internet for authenticated and encrypted communication between clients and servers. In addition, all online enrollment or Account transaction data that you send to us and we confirm back to you, is sent over an encrypted SSL connection protected with a mechanism for detecting tampering -- that is, for automatically determining whether the data has been altered in transit. This means that the data sent is encrypted and can only be decrypted by our Web server. Your data is stored on a secure server behind our firewall, which means no one from the outside can access this server.

To use this section of the Plan Web site you need a browser that supports encryption and dynamic Web page construction. We strongly recommend Netscape navigator version 4.0 or higher, or Microsoft Internet version 4.0 or higher.

To help ensure the confidentiality and integrity of your information:

• Do not share your PIN, Social Security Number or Taxpayer Identification Number with anyone.
• Call the Plan's toll-free number at 1 (888) 718-7878 if you suspect any willful misuse of this site.

If you provide personal information to effect transactions on the Plan's Web site, a record of the transactions that you have performed while on the Web site is retained by the Plan.

If you decide not to enroll online and you want to request that Plan materials be mailed to you, or you want to subscribe to the Plan e-mail newsletter, you can click on another section of the Web site (i.e., the Request Materials by Mail page of the Open an Account section) to provide your name, mailing address and e-mail address, respectively. The personal information that you provide on that page of the site will be stored and used to market the Plan more effectively. Although that page of the Web site does not use SSL encryption protocol, your information will be safeguarded in accordance with federal and state privacy laws and industry norms.

If you need to inform us of changes or corrections to personal information that you have provided through online enrollment or online Account transactions, please follow the instructions in the My Account section of the Plan Web site, or download and complete an Account Services form and mail it to the address provided on the form.

If you have provided us with mailing or e-mail information in order to request mailing of an enrollment kit or to subscribe to our e-mail newsletter, you will not be able to review and correct that information online. However, if you want to request another enrollment kit or re-subscribe to the e-mail newsletter, and your mailing or e-mail information has changed, you can go to the Purchase a Tuition Certificate page of the Open an Account section of the Web site and click on the Request Materials by Mail link to enter your new e-mail and/or mailing address.

TFI uses cookies on the Plan Web site to measure marketing results for the Plan. This process renders all visitors to the Plan Web site anonymous and will not personally identify you. Please read the notice below about the limited way that cookies are used on this site:

Because your privacy is important to us, we are advising you that a cookie will be placed on your browser that (1) identifies a particular Internet advertisement that brought you to the Plan Web site and tracks the pages visited on this site; or (2) otherwise counts your computer as it enters the Plan Web site and tracks the pages visited on this site. The sole purpose of this cookie, which you may delete at any time, is to count the number of visitors to the Plan Web site so that marketing results for the Plan can be measured and navigation of the site can be enhanced. Absolutely no personally identifiable information about you will be collected, used, or stored through this process. We do not track or record information about individuals who visit this site. If you provide personal information on this Web site, such as by enrolling online, or requesting Plan materials or the e-mail newsletter, that information will be collected, stored and used (as discussed above) in accordance with federal and state privacy laws.

Effective date: 12/06.