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Privacy Policy
Your Privacy Rights
Last Updated: July 9, 2010
This Privacy Policy describes:
- The information we collect about you;
- How we use that information;
- How we may share it;
- How we protect it; and
- Any choices you may have regarding such uses and disclosures.
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By using this Website, you
agree to the terms of the Privacy Policy.
Information We Collect From You and About You
We may collect the following information from you and about you while you
use the site.
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Information You Provide to Us. We may collect and
keep any personal information you provide to us through our Website or
in any other manner. This includes information that identifies you and
financial information. Information that identifies you may include your
name, email address, date of birth, mailing address, telephone number,
and Social Security number. Financial information may include your
income, assets, or debts. We use this information to provide you with
services. In addition, we gather the names and email addresses of people
who contact us through our Website with questions about our company. We
collect this information for the sole purpose of responding to such
inquiries and do not store the contact information unless requested, for
example job applicants who submit resumes.
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Information from Third Parties. We may obtain
information about you from vendors, contractors, and other third
parties. You authorize Fynanz and Lenders to obtain a personal
credit profile from credit bureaus for credit pre-qualification and
identity verification. You further agree that we may verify your
identity and the information you provide us with third
parties.
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Cookies and Other Automatically Collected
Information. We collect information about your computer and
your visits to our Website, such as your IP address, geographical
location, browser type, referral source, length of visit, and page views
through the use of log files. We use cookies on our Website, including
session ID cookies and persistent cookies. A cookie is a text file sent
by a web server to a web browser, and stored by the browser. The text
file is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a
page from the server. This enables the web server to identify and track
the web browser and load the pages according to a user's preferences for
that particular site, including the personalization of content. Cookies
are not tied to personally identifiable information. More importantly,
using cookies also helps us protect the security of your account.
Session ID cookies follow your activities on our site so that we can
ensure that no one is making changes to your profile, applying for loans
or making loans on your behalf. This information is encrypted.
We may send a cookie that can be stored by your browser on your
computer's hard drive. We may use the information we obtain from the
cookie in the administration of our Website, to improve its usability
and for evaluating our marketing effectiveness as described above. We
may also use that information to recognize your computer when you visit
our Website (if you select the "remember me on this computer" option),
and to personalize our Website for you. Most browsers allow you to
refuse to accept cookies. (For example, in Internet Explorer you can
refuse all cookies by clicking "Tools," "Internet Options," "Privacy,"
and selecting "Block all cookies" using the sliding selector). However,
blocking cookies can also have a negative impact on the usability of our
Website.
Cookies may have long-term expiration dates and can stay in your
hard drive for months at a time. While you can remove them as instructed
by the "help" content in your chosen browser, disabling cookies will
prevent you from using our site. As with many transactional websites,
cookies must be enabled in order to use our Website.
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Information Collected by Third Parties. We use
third-party tracking services that use cookies to track non-personally
identifiable information about visitors to our site. This may include
page views and referral page information to track the success of our
marketing efforts to bring people to our site as well as overall site
performance. We use web beacons to track the number of new users who
join our site in response to certain advertising efforts. No personal or
sensitive information is transmitted to advertising partners. However,
third parties may use IP addresses to avoid double-counting the number
of new members who joined as a result of the advertising campaign or for
other purposes.
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How We Use Information
We use information we collect about you to:
- Provide services and products you request;
- Provide customer service;
- Manage your relationship with us;
- Communicate with you by email, postal mail, or telephone about
products or services we offer or are offered by third parties;
- Enforce our terms and conditions;
- Operate our business;
- Enable our financial services partners to implement automatic payments
and fund transfers;
- Contacting you if there is a problem completing a transaction you
requested or to discuss a problem with your account; or
- Comply with our legal obligations or as otherwise permitted by
law.
Certain personal information must be supplied during the registration
processes, as indicated below, in order to (a) enable users to login to the
site, (b) determine eligibility for loans using our proprietary credit
scoring process, (c) verify your identity and the identity of any proposed
cosigners, (d) establish borrowers' ability to request loans by verifying
that they are at least 18 years of age, (e) identify or guard against
potential fraud, and (f) abide by anti-terrorism laws and regulations.
We may use your financial information to provide loan offers to you from
Lenders or to match you with potential loans and services that you may be
eligible to receive.
When you register with us and authorize or request it, we may obtain a
credit report from a credit bureau to determine your creditworthiness. We
will also use your required and optional information to facilitate other
activities and transactions with you. This may include assigning you a
borrower credit grade based on your academic characteristics and financial
information.
We use aggregated information about your computer and your visits to our
Website, such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type,
referral source, length of visit, and page views in the administration of
our Website to improve its usability and to evaluate the success of
particular marketing/advertising campaigns, search engine optimization
strategies and other marketing activities. We use non-identifying and
aggregated information to help optimize our Website based on the needs of
our users.
In addition, we gather the names and email addresses of people who
contact us through our Website with questions about our company. We collect
this information for the sole purpose of responding to such inquiries and do
not store the contact information unless requested by these people, for
example job applicants who submit resumes.
How and When Your Information Is Shared With Other Parties
We may share your information with:
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Service Providers. Fynanz shares your personal
information with authorized service providers that perform services on
our behalf. These entities include credit bureaus, fraud databases,
collection agencies, electronic payment service providers, customer
support call centers, and companies that support surveys, marketing
services, or other services and features offered through our Website.
Information is shared with these third parties only to the extent
necessary for us to process the transactions you initiate or perform
other specific services on our behalf. These third parties are not
permitted to share or use such information for any other purpose. Third
parties or their servers may be located within or outside of the United
States.
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Lenders and Marketing Partners. If you request a
loan by providing your information and submitting our online form, we
may share your personal and financial information with Lenders or other
marketing partners who may have financial products, services,
promotions, contests, or sweepstakes suited to your interests. We may
also share your personal and financial information with third-party
investors who will help finance your loan after you sign a loan
agreement with the Lender. You must contact those Lenders directly to
learn about their privacy and security practices because they are
separate companies and are not governed by our Privacy Policy. You agree
that you are bound by those privacy and security policies to the extent
they apply to the use and sharing of your information. We may also
disclose your personal and financial information to other third parties
as permitted by law.
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Special Notice to California Residents. We will not
share any personal information about you with any of our affiliated
companies to the extent prohibited by applicable California law or to
the extent your prior consent to share is required by applicable
California Law.
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Special Notice to Vermont Residents. We will not
share any personal information about you with our affiliated companies
to the extent prohibited by applicable Vermont law or to the extent your
prior consent to share is required by applicable Vermont law.
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Additional Disclosure. We may disclose your personal
and financial information with law enforcement or other government
agencies as required by law or for the purposes of limiting fraud. We
reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information
when we believe that disclosure is necessary to establish, protect, or
exercise our rights, defend against legal claims, or as otherwise
required by law. We may also disclose your personal and financial
information to respond to a subpoena or similar investigative demand,
court order or request for cooperation from a law enforcement or other
government agency, or legal process served on our Website. We may also
share your information with third parties in connection with a
substantial company transaction, such as the potential or actual sale of
all or a portion of our business, a merger, consolidation, asset sale,
or bankruptcy.
California Residents. If you are a resident of
California, in addition to your rights set forth in this Privacy Policy, you
have the right to request information from us regarding the manner in which
we share your personal information with third parties for their direct
marketing purposes. California law gives you the right to send us a request
at a designated address to receive the following information:
- The categories of information we disclosed to third parties for their
direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year;
- The names and addresses of the third parties that received that
information; and
- If the nature of the third party's business cannot be determined from
its name, examples of the products or services marketed.
We may provide this information in a standardized format that is not
specific to you. The designated email for these requests is privacy@custudentloans.org.
How You Can Access or Correct Your Information. You can
access all of your personal and personally identifiable information that we
collect online and maintain by visiting your profile in the My Account
section of our site. This section of the site is password-protected to
better safeguard your information. As a registered user, you can update your
password, email address, physical address, phone number, and financial
account information at any time on the Website, and if you need to change
any other information in your profile, you can contact us at customer.care@custudentloans.org.
This information, along with all of your other personal data, is maintained
in your member profile.
Non-Personal and Aggregate Information. We may retain
and share non-personal information we collect and information about you and
other customers collectively that is not personally identifiable. We may
combine it with non-personal information we obtain from other sources, and
may share any aggregated information in any form with third parties. You may
not access or correct your non-personal or aggregate information.
Links to Other Sites. We may offer links to partners'
sites or to third-party websites that have their own privacy policies. We
make the decision to provide links to these sites based on the quality of
information provided at the time the links are enabled, and we make every
effort to monitor the continuing quality of content provided on these sites.
The Privacy Policy does not apply to these external sites. Further, Fynanz
has no control over the content of these sites. Please review the privacy
policies of these websites before you provide them with any of your personal
information.
How We Protect Your Personal Information
Safeguards. We use appropriate physical, technical, and
procedural safeguards to protect your personal information from unauthorized
access and disclosure. We encrypt the transmission of your personal
information over the internet and only permit authorized employees, business
partners, Lenders, and third-party service providers to have access to your
personal information. We encourage you to take care when you handle or
disclose your personal information, including passwords. No system can be
completely secure, and we do not warrant that your personal information,
transactions, or communication will always remain secure.
Children's Privacy. We do not knowingly collect,
maintain, or use personal information from our Website about children under
age 13. If we learn that we have collected information from a child under
the age of 13, we will promptly take all reasonable steps to delete the
information.
Your Choices
You may choose not to provide us with personal information. However, we
will be unable to provide you with our Services if you do not provide us
with personal or financial information. Furthermore, due to the nature of
our services, you may not opt out of the transfer of personal information to
Lenders.
Changes to This Privacy Policy. We may amend this Privacy Policy on one
or more occasions by posting a revised policy on this Website or a similar
website that replaces this Website.
Contact Information. If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy
or our information practices, you may contact us at:
Fynanz, Inc
Attn: Compliance Department
104 West 27th Street 4th floor
New York, NY 10001
Or
privacy@custudentloans.org
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