DebtWatch.com Privacy Policy
UPDATED - August 1, 2008
DebtWatch.com has established a summary of consumer privacy practices that applies to all
of its businesses.
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DebtWatch, Inc. respects the privacy of our consumer users and has developed this
Privacy Policy to demonstrate its commitment to protecting your privacy. As an individual
who is a user of our websites (including DebtWatch.com and ValueLoan.com),
or otherwise as a user of the services provided by DebtWatch or its divisions
and subsidiaries (including ValueLoan Loans, SiteTools, or DebtWatch Settlement Services), this Privacy Policy is intended
to describe for you:
We encourage you to read this Privacy Policy carefully when using our websites or
services or transacting business with us. By using our websites, you are accepting
the practices described in this Privacy Policy.
INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
In General. We may collect personal information that can identify
you such as your name and e-mail address, as well as other information that does
not identify you. When you provide personal information through our websites, the
information may be sent to DebtWatch servers located in the United States and
other countries around the world.
- Information you provide. We may collect and store any personal information
you enter on our websites or provide to us in some other manner. This includes identifying
information (such as your name, home or mailing address, e-mail address, and telephone
number), information about your home or prospective home, your financial information
(such as your income, assets, or debts), your Social Security number, personal information
(such as your gender and age), and, if you lock-in a loan through Home Loan Center
or DebtWatch Loans, information about your lock-fee payment method (valid credit
card number, type, expiration date or other financial information).
- Information from other sources. We may also periodically obtain both personal
and non-personal information about you from other DebtWatch.com businesses, business partners,
contractors and other third parties. Examples of information that we may receive
include credit reports, information about your home and additional demographic information.
However, DebtWatch does not pull a credit bureau report on loan customers without
express permission.
- Information about others. We may also collect and store personal information
that you provide to us about other people (such as co-applicants), including their
name, address, phone number, Social Security number, financial information, or other
personal information.
Use of cookies and other technologies to collect information. We use
various technologies to collect information from your computer and about your activities
on our site.
- Information collected automatically. We automatically collect information
from your browser when you visit our websites. This information includes your IP
address, your browser type and language, access times, the content of any undeleted
cookies that your browser previously accepted from us (see "Cookies" below),
and the referring website address.
- Cookies. When you visit our websites, we may assign your computer one or
more cookies,
to facilitate access to our websites, to personalize your online experience, and
to record information about your visit to our websites. Through the use of a cookie,
we also may automatically collect information about your online activity on our
websites, such as the web pages you visit, the links or advertisements you click,
or the other actions you conduct while on our websites. The cookies do not store
any personally identifiable information about you. Most browsers automatically accept
cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies. If
you choose to decline cookies, please note that you may not be able to sign in or use
some of the interactive features offered on our websites.
- Other Technologies. We may use standard Internet technology, such as web beacons
and other similar technologies, to track your use on our websites. We also may include
web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or newsletters to determine whether messages
have been opened and acted upon. The information we obtain in this manner enables
us to customize the services we offer our website visitors to deliver targeted advertisements
and to measure the overall effectiveness of our online advertising, content, programming
or other activities.
- Information collected by third-parties. We may allow third-parties, including
our authorized service providers, DebtWatch.com companies, advertising companies, and ad networks,
to display advertisements on our site. DebtWatch and these companies may use tracking
technologies, such as cookies, to collect information about users who view or interact with these
advertisements and connect to the DebtWatch websites. Our websites do not provide
any personal information to these third parties. This information allows DebtWatch
and these companies to deliver targeted advertisements and gauge their effectiveness.
HOW WE USE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT
In general. We may use information that we collect about you to:
- deliver the products and services that you have requested;
- manage your customer relationship and provide you with customer support;
- perform research and analysis about your use of, or interest in, our products, services,
or content, or products, services or content offered by others;
- communicate with you by e-mail, postal mail, telephone and/or mobile devices about
products or services that may be of interest to you either from us, other DebtWatch.com companies
or other third parties;
- develop and display content and advertising tailored to your interests on our site
and other websites;
- verify your eligibility and deliver prizes in connection with promotions, contests
and sweepstakes;
- enforce our terms and conditions;
- manage our business and
- perform functions as otherwise described to you at the time of collection.
Financial information. We may use financial information to match you
with lenders or to provide loan offers to you, to verify your identify, to protect
against or identify possible fraudulent transactions, otherwise as needed to manage
our business, and, if you request a loan through DebtWatch Loans or Home Loan
Center, to determine your eligibility for a loan and to charge you for any lock
or processing fees.
Job applicants. If your personal information is submitted through
our websites when applying for a position with our company, the information will
be used solely in connection with considering and acting upon your application.
We may retain your personal information for a period of time, but only for the purpose
of considering your application for current or future available positions. This
information may be shared with the other DebtWatch.com companies for the purpose of evaluating
your qualifications for the particular position or other available positions, as
well as with third-party service providers retained by us to collect, maintain and
analyze candidate submissions for job postings.
Please review
"Your choices about collection and use of
your information"below.
WITH WHOM WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
We want you to understand when and with whom we may share personal or other information
we have collected about you or your activities on our websites or while using our
services.
Personal information. We do not share your personal information with
others except as indicated below or when we inform you and give you an opportunity
to opt out of having your personal information shared. We may share all types of
personal information with:
- Authorized service providers: We may share your personal information with
our authorized service providers that perform certain services on our behalf in
connection with your request for a loan. These service providers may include credit
bureaus, title companies, flood or other insurance providers, appraisal companies,
escrow companies, closing agents, other financial institutions, marketing and customer
services firms, credit card payment processors, as well as companies that support
contests, sweepstakes, surveys, or other features offered through our websites,
or that provide business analysis or website support. These service providers may
have access to personal information needed to perform their functions but are not
permitted to share or use such information for any other purposes.
- Business partners: When you express interest in promotions offered through
our websites or our services, we may share your expression of interest with the
businesses with which we partner to offer you those products, services, promotions,
contests and/or sweepstakes. When you elect to engage in a particular offer or program,
you authorize us to provide your e-mail address and other information to that business.
- Other lenders or investors. If you submit a completed DebtWatch, we may share your personal information
with lenders on the DebtWatch network with whom you are or may be matched, or
if you are matched with DebtWatch Loans, third party investors to whom we intend
to transfer your loan after closing. If you finish the first page of the DebtWatch
QF (by hitting the "continue" button on "Page 1: Tell Us About Your
Loan") but leave portions of the QF incomplete, we may share your personal
information with lenders on the DebtWatch network or with DebtWatch Loans, who
may help you complete your loan request and possibly extend loan offers to you.
However, no credit check will be performed by DebtWatch unless you authorize us
to do so by submitting a completed QF. The lenders with whom you are matched (i.e.,
the lenders with whom DebtWatch shares your information) will be disclosed to
you, and DebtWatch will not share information with other lenders not disclosed
to you. Because the lenders on the DebtWatch network with whom you are matched
may retain or use your personal information whether or not you qualify for, or obtain,
a loan from them, you should contact these lenders directly concerning their privacy
and information sharing practices.
- Special notice to California
residents: DebtWatch will not share any personal information about you with other
DebtWatch.com companies to the extent prohibited by applicable California law or to the extent
your prior consent to share is required by applicable California law.
- Other Situations. We also may disclose your information:
- In response to a subpoena or similar investigative demand, a court order, or a request
for cooperation from a law enforcement or other government agency; to establish
or exercise our legal rights; to defend against legal claims; or as otherwise required
by law. In such cases, we may raise or waive any legal objection or right available
to us.
- When we believe disclosure is appropriate in connection with efforts to investigate,
prevent, or take other action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud or other
wrongdoing; to protect and defend the rights, property or safety of our company,
our users, our employees, or others; to comply with applicable law or cooperate
with law enforcement; or to enforce our website terms and conditions or other agreements
or policies.
- In connection with a substantial corporate transaction, such as the sale of our
business, a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, or in the unlikely
event of bankruptcy.
Any third parties to whom we may disclose personal information may have their own
privacy policies which describe how they use and disclose personal information.
Those policies will govern use, handling and disclosure of your personal information
once we have shared it with those third parties as described in this Privacy Policy.
If you want to learn more about their privacy practices, we encourage you to visit
the websites of those third parties. These entities or their servers may be located
either inside or outside the United States.
Aggregated and non-personal information. We may share aggregated information
(i.e., information about you and other customers collectively, but not specifically
identifiable to you) and other non-personal information we collect under any of
the above circumstances. We may also share it with third parties and DebtWatch.com companies
to develop and deliver targeted advertising on our websites and on websites of third
parties. We may combine non-personal information we collect with additional non-personal
information collected from other sources. We also may share aggregated information
with third parties, including advisors, advertisers and investors, for the purpose
of conducting general business analysis. For example, we may tell our advertisers
the number of visitors to our websites and the most popular features or services
accessed. This information does not contain any personal information and may be
used to develop website content and services that we hope you and other users will
find of interest and to target content and advertising.
Third-party websites. There are a number of places on our websites
where you may click on a link to access other websites that do not operate under
this Privacy Policy. For example, if you click on an advertisement or a search result
on our websites, you may be taken to a website that we do not control. These third-party
websites may independently solicit and collect information, including personal information,
from you and, in some instances, provide us with information about your activities
on those websites. We recommend that you consult the privacy statements of all third-party
websites you visit by clicking on the "privacy" link typically located
at the bottom of the webpage you are visiting.
HOW YOU CAN ACCESS YOUR INFORMATION
If you have submitted a QF to us, you can update your personal information by contacting
our Customer Care Department
customercare@debtwatch.com
for assistance. More information about how to contact us is provided below.
YOUR CHOICES ABOUT COLLECTION AND USE OF YOUR INFORMATION
- You can choose not to provide us with certain information, but that may result in
you being unable to use certain features of our websites because such information
may be required in order for you to obtain services from DebtWatch.
- Federal and state regulations require that we store completed loan QFs for various
periods of time. In order to comply with these requirements, we may be unable to
delete your information from the DebtWatch database.
- When you initially use our websites, you will be given a choice as to whether you
want to receive e-mail messages or newsletters from DebtWatch. You may later modify
your choice by contacting our Customer Care Department at customercare@debtwatch.com You also
will be given the opportunity, in any commercial e-mail that we send to you, to
opt out of receiving such messages in the future. It may take up to 10 days for
us to process an opt-out request. We may send you other types of transactional and
relationship e-mail communications, such as loan offers, requests for additional
information, service updates or announcements, administrative notices, and surveys,
without offering you the opportunity to opt out of receiving them. Please note that
opting out of receipt of promotional e-mail communications will only affect future
activities or communications from us. If we have already provided your information
to a third party before you have changed your preferences or updated your information,
you may have to change you preferences directly with that third party.
- Under our Do Not Call policy you may instruct us not to call you for marketing purposes
by calling our Customer Care Department at customercare@debtwatch.com. We will implement your
instructions within 30 days. We have policies and procedures in place and train
our employees to honor your request. Please note that we may still need to call
you for servicing or other non-marketing purposes.
- If you do not want us to send you postal mail for marketing purposes, you may remove
your name from current and future mailing lists by contacting our Customer Care
Department at customercare@debtwatch.com.
HOW WE PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We take appropriate security measures (including physical, electronic and procedural
measures) to help safeguard your personal information from unauthorized access and
disclosure. For example, only authorized employees and authorized third-party service
providers are permitted to access personal information, and they may do so only
for permitted business functions. In addition, we use encryption in the transmission
of your sensitive personal information between your system and ours, and we use
firewalls to help prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to your personal
information.
We want you to feel confident using our websites to transact business. However,
no system can be completely secure. Therefore, although we take steps to secure
your information, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal
information, searches, or other communications will always remain secure. Users
should also take care with how they handle and disclose their personal information.
Please refer to the Federal Trade Commission's website at
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/data.shtm for information about how
to protect yourself against identity theft.
OTHER INFORMATION ABOUT OUR PRIVACY PRACTICES
Special Notice to California Residents
If you are a resident of California, in addition to the rights set forth in this
Privacy Policy, you have the right to request information from us regarding the
manner in which we share certain categories of personal information with third parties
and the DebtWatch.com companies 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 their
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 e-mail address for these requests is
privacy@debtwatch.com
Children's privacy
Our websites are general audience sites, and we do not knowingly collect personal
information from children under the age of 13.
Visiting our websites from outside the United States
This Privacy Policy is intended to cover collection of information on our websites
from residents of the United States. If you are visiting our websites from outside
the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to,
stored, and processed in the United States where our servers are located and our
central database is operated. The data protection and other laws of the United States
and other countries might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. Please
be assured that we seek to take reasonable steps to ensure that your privacy is
protected. By using our services, you understand that your information may be transferred
to our facilities and those third parties with whom we share it as described in
this privacy policy.
No Rights of Third Parties
This Privacy Policy does not create rights enforceable by third parties or require
disclosure of any personal information relating to users of our websites.
Changes to this Privacy Policy We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to
reflect changes in our practices and services. When we post changes to this Privacy
Policy, we will revise the "last updated" date at the top of this Privacy
Policy. If we make any material changes in the way we collect, use, and/or share
personal information that may impact you, we will notify you by sending an e-mail
to the e-mail address you most recently provided us in your account, profile or
registration (unless we do not have such an e-mail address), and/or by prominently
posting notice of the changes on our websites. We recommend that you check our websites
from time to time to inform yourself of any changes in this Privacy Policy or any
of our other policies.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our information-handling
practices, or if you would like to request information about our disclosure of personal
information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes, please contact
us by e-mail or postal mail as follows:
Privacy @ DebtWatch, Inc.
1726 Stoner Ave
Los Angeles CA 90025
privacy@debtwatch.com
© 2008 DebtWatch.com. All rights reserved.
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