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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
224 West 30th Street, Suite 604
New York, NY 10001
Or
privacy@custudentloans.org