Biz2Credit - Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 1/2/08

Biz2Credit, LLC 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 website, or otherwise as a user of the services provided by Biz2Credit this Privacy Policy is intended to describe for you, the information we collect about you, how that information may be used, with whom it may be shared, how you may access the information you provide us, and your choices about such uses and disclosures.

This Privacy Policy describes how we handle your personal information for our services. It applies generally to the Biz2Credit.com website and other related websites where this policy appears in the footer of the page. Some Biz2Credit-branded websites or websites we operate may be governed by separate privacy policies. The policy that applies on any of our domains or subdomains is always the policy that appears in the footer of each website.

Subject to the requirements of applicable law, we strive to provide a consistent set of privacy practices throughout the global Biz2Credit lending and trading community. By accepting the Privacy Policy and the User Agreement in registration, you expressly consent to the terms described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance for new users and is otherwise effective on February 1, 2008.

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 website, the information may be sent to Biz2Credit servers located in the United States.

Information you provide. We may collect and store any personal information you enter on our website 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 business or prospective business, your financial information (such as your income, assets, or debts), your Social Security number, personal information. We may also periodically obtain both personal and non-personal information about you from business partners, contractors and other third parties. Examples of information that we may receive include credit reports, information about your business and additional demographic information. However, Biz2Credit 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 website. 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 website, we may assign your computer one or more cookies, to facilitate access to our website, to personalize your online experience, and to record information about your visit to our website. Through the use of a cookie, we also may automatically collect information about your online activity on our website, such as the web pages you visit, the links or advertisements you click, or the other actions you conduct while on our website. 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 website.

Other Technologies. We may use standard Internet technology, such as web beacons and other similar technologies, to track your use on our website. 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, advertising companies, and ad networks, to display advertisements on our site. Biz2Credit 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 biz2credit.com. Our website does not provide any personal information to these third parties. This information allows Biz2Credit 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;
develop and display content and advertising tailored to your interests on our site and other website;
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, or other third parties;
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 Biz2Credit Get a Loan, to determine your eligibility for a loan and to charge you for any advisory, lock or processing fees.

Job applicants. If your personal information is submitted through our website when applying for a position with our Biz2Credit, 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.

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 website 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, insurance providers, attorney companies, appraisal companies, escrow companies, closing agents, other financial institutions, marketing and customer services firms, credit card payment processors, as well as companies that support surveys, or other features offered through our website, 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 website or our services, we may share your expression of interest with the businesses with which we partner to offer you those products, services, and/or promotions. 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.

Biz2Credit.com users: Your User ID may be displayed throughout Biz2Credit and is therefore available to the public. All of your activity on our sites is traceable to your User ID. Other people can see your feedback, businesses, products, classified ads or services that you have posted in the Community. Notices are sent to members regarding suspicious activity and policy violations on our sites and refer to User IDs and specific items.

Other lenders or investors. If you submit a completed Biz2Credit Get a Loan Qualification Form ("QF"), we may share your personal information with lenders on the Biz2Credit network with whom you are or may be matched. However, no credit check will be performed by Biz2Credit 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 Biz2Credit shares your information) will be disclosed to you, and Biz2Credit will not share information with other lenders not disclosed to you. Because the lenders on the Biz2Credit 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.
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 Biz2Credit, 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 website 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 to develop and deliver targeted advertising on our website and on website 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 website 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 website. There are a number of places on our website where you may click on a link to access other website that do not operate under this Privacy Policy. For example, if you click on an advertisement or a search result on our website, you may be taken to a website that we do not control. These third-party website may independently solicit and collect information, including personal information, from you and, in some instances, provide us with information about your activities on those website. We recommend that you consult the privacy statements of all third-party website 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 registered through Biz2Credit.com, you can access and update your personal information through Settings in My Account for assistance.

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 website because such information may be required in order for you to obtain services from Biz2Credit.
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 within a specified time period from the Biz2Credit database.
When you initially use our website, you will be given a choice as to whether you want to receive e-mail messages or newsletters from Biz2Credit. You may later modify your choice through Settings in My Account. 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 business 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. 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.
You may instruct us not to call you for marketing purposes through Settings in My Account. We will implement your instructions within business 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 Settings in My Account.

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. 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 website for business transactions. 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.

No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing

We and our users do not tolerate spam. Make sure to set your Biz2Credit notification preferences so we communicate to you as you prefer. To report Biz2Credit-related spam or spoof emails to Biz2Credit, please forward the email to privacy@biz2credit.com.You may not use our communication tools to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate our User Agreement. We automatically scan and may manually filter messages to check for spam, viruses, phishing attacks and other malicious activity or illegal or prohibited content..

OTHER INFORMATION ABOUT OUR PRIVACY PRACTICES

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 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@biz2credit.com

Children’s privacy

Our website are general audience sites, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13.

Visiting our website from outside the United States
This Privacy Policy is intended to cover collection of information on our website from residents of the United States. If you are visiting our website 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 website.

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 website. We recommend that you check our website 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: