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Personal finance collaboration software for professionals and their clients
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Privacy Policy

 

Last Revised: July 29, 2011

 

 

Balance Financial (“Company”) is committed to protecting your privacy. We have prepared this Privacy Policy to describe to you our practices regarding the Personal Data (as defined below) we collect from users of our website, located at www.balancefinancial.com, (“Site”) and Services (as defined in the Terms of Service). Capitalized terms not defined in this Privacy Policy have the meanings given in our Terms of Service located at www.balancefinancial.com/consumer_terms_of_service
1.            User Consent. By submitting Personal Data through our Site or Services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy and you expressly consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Data in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

2.               A Note About Children. We do not intentionally gather Personal Data from visitors who are under the age of 13.

3.              A Note to Users Outside of the United States. Your Personal Data may be processed in the country in which it was collected and in other countries, including the United States, where laws regarding processing of Personal Data may be less stringent than the laws in your country.
 
4.                 Types of Data We Collect. “Personal Data” means data that allows someone to identify or contact you, including, for example, your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, as well as any other non-public information about you that is associated with or linked to any of the foregoing data.  “Anonymous Data” means data that is not associated with or linked to your Personal Data; Anonymous Data does not, by itself, permit the identification of individual persons. We collect Personal Data and Anonymous Data, as described below.
(a)                 Information You Provide to Us.
  • We may collect Personal Data from you, such as your first and last name, gender, e-mail and mailing addresses, professional title, company name, and password when you create an account to log in to our network (“Account”).

  • We may collect verification information, such as your date of birth or social security number, to confirm your identity at the time of enrollment. To protect access to your Account, we will also ask you to verify your identity in the event you contact customer support for assistance with your Account. This information will only be used to verify critical information about you, including your contact information, in relation to your Account.

  • In order for you to benefit from the full functionality of our Services, you must also provide your third party account credentials to allow us to access your account data at those other financial institutions for your use.

  • We ask you to provide us your mother’s maiden name or another unique identifier in order to identify you in case you forget your password.

  • When you order Services on our Site, we will collect all information necessary to complete the transaction, including your name, credit card, bank account information, billing information and shipping information. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted over 128- bit Secure Socket Layer (“SSL”) technology and then encrypted into our payment gateway provider’s database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems and who have agreed to keep the information confidential. After the transaction, this sensitive payment information will not be stored on our servers.

  • We retain information on your behalf, such as files and messages that you store using your Account.

  • If you provide us feedback or contact us via e-mail, we will collect your name and e-mail address, as well as any other content included in the e-mail, in order to send you a reply.

  • When you participate in one of our surveys, we may collect additional profile information.

  • We also collect other types of Personal Data that you provide to us voluntarily, such as your operating system and version; and other requested information if you contact us via e-mail regarding support for the Services.

  • We may also collect Personal Data at other points in our Site that state that Personal Data is being collected.

(b)                 Information Collected via Technology.
  • To make our Site and Services more useful to you, our servers (which may be hosted by a third party service provider) collect information from you, including your browser type, operating system, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address (a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the Internet, which may vary from session to session), domain name, and/or a date/time stamp for your visit. 

  • We also use cookies and URL information to gather information regarding the date and time of your visit, the information for which you searched and which you viewed, pages visited and the average time spent on our Site. “Cookies” are small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer’s hard drive while you are viewing a web site. We may use both session Cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent Cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience on our Site. We may set and access Cookies on your computer to track and store preferential information about you. We may gather information about you through Cookie technology (for example, we may assign a Cookie to you to limit the number of times you see a particular Balance Offer or to help determine which Balance Offers to serve to you). Please note that most Internet browsers will allow you to stop Cookies from being stored on your computer and to delete Cookies stored on your computer. If you choose to eliminate Cookies, the full functionality of the Services may be impaired for you. We may use third party service providers to help us analyze certain online activities. For example, these service providers may help us analyze visitor activity on the Site. We may allow these service providers to use Cookies or other technologies to perform these services for us. We do not share any Personal Data about our customers with these third party service providers, and these service providers do not collect Personal Data on our behalf. Our third party service providers are required to comply with our Privacy Policy.

  • Our third party service provider employs a software technology called Web Beacons that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Web Beacons are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users.

(c)            Information Collected from You About Others. If you decide to invite a third party to create an Account, we will collect your and the third party’s names and e-mail addresses in order to send an e-mail and follow up with the third party. You or the third party may contact us at membership@balancefinancial.com  to request the removal of this information from our database.
 
(d)                 Information Collected from Third Party Companies. We may receive Personal and/or Anonymous Data about you from companies that provide our Services by way of a co-branded or private-labeled website or companies that offer their products and/or services on our Site. These third party companies may supply us with Personal Data,. We may add this information to the information we have already collected from you via our Site in order to improve the Services we provide.
 
(e)                  Online Bill Payment. Our bill payment service is a web-based service that allows you to view and pay your bills on the Internet. This service is currently provided by a third party. Before using our bill payment services, you should carefully review our third party provider’s separate privacy policy associated with its service.
 
5.                      Use of Your Personal Data
(a)                 General Use. In general, Personal Data you submit to us is used either to respond to requests that you make, or to aid us in serving you better. We use your Personal Data in the following ways:
  • facilitate the creation of and secure your Account on our network;

  •  identify you as a user in our system;

  • analyze Site usage and improve our Site and Services;

  • provide the Services you request;

  • improve the quality of experience when you interact with our Site and Services;

  • send you a welcome e-mail to verify ownership of the e-mail address provided when your Account was created;

  • send you administrative e-mail notifications, such as security or support and maintenance advisories, money alerts, and communications relevant to your use of the Services;

  • market research, planning, troubleshooting, planning problems, detecting and protecting against error, fraud, or other criminal activity;

  • enforce our Terms of Service;

  • respond to your inquiries related to employment opportunities or other requests;

  • make telephone calls to you, from time to time, as a part of secondary fraud protection or to solicit your feedback; and

  • send newsletters, surveys, Balance Offers, and other promotional materials related to our Services and for other marketing purposes of Company.

(b)                 Creation of Anonymous Data. We may create Anonymous Data records from Personal Data by excluding information (such as your name) that make the data personally identifiable to you. We use this Anonymous Data to analyze request and usage patterns so that we may enhance the content of our Services and improve Site navigation. We reserve the right to use Anonymous Data for any purpose and to disclose Anonymous Data to third parties in our sole discretion, including:
6.                   Disclosure of Your Personal Data. We disclose your Personal Data as described below and as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy.

(a)              Third Party Service Providers. We may share your Personal Data with third party service providers to: provide you with the Services that we offer you through our Site; conduct quality assurance testing; facilitate creation of accounts; provide technical support; and/or provide other services to the Company. These third party service providers are required not to use your Personal Data other than to provide the services requested by Company.
 
(b)               Affiliates and Acquisitions. We may share some or all of your Personal Data with our parent company, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under a common control (“Affiliates”), in which case we will require our Affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy. If another company acquires our company, business, or our assets, that company will possess the Personal Data collected by us and will assume the rights and obligations regarding your Personal Data as described in this Privacy Policy.
(c)            Other Disclosures. Regardless of any choices you make regarding your Personal Data (as described below), we may disclose Personal Data if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary (i) in connection with any legal investigation; (ii) to comply with relevant laws or to respond to subpoenas or warrants served on Company; (iii) to protect or defend the rights or property of Company or users of the Services; and/or (iv) to investigate or assist in preventing any violation or potential violation of the law, this Privacy Policy, or Terms of Service.
 
7.                   Third Party Data Collection.
(a)          Information Disclosed to Ad Networks.  In the future we may use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Site. These companies may collect and use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, go to www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

(b)           Third Party Websites. We may offer links to third party websites, including as a part of Balance Offers. When you click on a link to any other website or location, you will leave our Site and go to another site and another entity may collect Personal Data or Anonymous Data from you. We have no control over, do not review, and cannot be responsible for, these outside websites or their content. Please be aware that the terms of this Privacy Policy do not apply to these outside websites or content, or to any collection of data after you click on links to such outside websites.

8.                    Your Choices Regarding Your Personal Data
(a)                 Choices. We offer you choices regarding the collection, use, and sharing of your Personal Data.
 
(i)                  We will periodically send you free newsletters and e-mails that directly promote the use of our Site or Services. When you receive newsletters or promotional communications from us, you may indicate a preference to stop receiving further communications from us and you will have the opportunity to “opt-out” by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in the e-mail you receive or by contacting us directly (please see contact information below).
 
(ii)        Despite your indicated e-mail preferences, we may send you service related communication, including notices of any updates to our Terms of Service or Privacy Policy.
 
(b)            Changes to Personal Data. You may change any of your Personal Data in your Account by editing your profile within your Account or by sending an e-mail to us atmembership@balancefinancial.com. You may request deletion of your Personal Data by us, but please note that we may be required to keep this information and not delete it (or to keep this information for a certain time, in which case we will comply with your deletion request only after we have fulfilled such requirements). We may retain your information for fraud or similar purposes. We may also retain your information for the purpose of bill payment processing. For example, if you request a payment through the Services, we will need to retain a record of the payment in case there is ever a dispute or a chargeback. When we delete any information, it will be deleted from the active database, but may remain in our archives. 
 
9.                   Security of Your Personal Data. We are committed to protecting the security of your Personal Data. We employ industry–standard physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to help protect your Personal Data from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. We also require you to enter a password to access your Account information. Please do not disclose your Account password to unauthorized people. From the time you submit your Login ID and password, communications between your computer and the Company are encrypted using 128- bit Secure Socket Layer (“SSL”) technology to make your information unreadable as it passes over the Internet. While the Company uses these and other reasonable efforts to protect your Personal Data, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, Company cannot guarantee absolute security of your Personal Data.
 
10.                Contact Information. We welcome your comments or questions regarding this Privacy Policy. Please e-mail us at membership@balancefinancial.com or contact us at the following address or phone number:
 
11.                Changes to This Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is subject to occasional revision, and if we make any material changes in the way we use your Personal Data, we will notify you by sending you an e-mail to the last e-mail address you provided to us and/or by prominently posting notice of the changes on our Site. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will be effective upon the earlier of thirty (30) calendar days following our dispatch of an e-mail notice to you or thirty (30) calendar days following our posting of notice of the changes on our Site. These changes will be effective immediately for new users of our Services. Please note that at all times you are responsible for updating your Personal Data to provide us with your most current e-mail address. In the event that the last e-mail address that you have provided us is not valid, or for any reason is not capable of delivering to you the notice described above, our dispatch of the e-mail containing such notice will nonetheless constitute effective notice of the changes described in the notice. In any event, changes to this Privacy Policy may affect our use of Personal Data that you provided us prior to our notification to you of the changes. If you do not wish to permit changes in our use of your Personal Data, you must notify us prior to the effective date of the changes that you wish to deactivate your Account with us. Continued use of our Site or Service, following notice of such changes shall indicate your acknowledgement of such changes and agreement to be bound by the terms and conditions of such changes.