HomeLoanCenter.com
Privacy Policy for Consumers
Your Privacy Rights
Last Updated: 8/18/2008
HomeLoanCenter.com 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 LendingTree or its divisions and subsidiaries (including
LendingTree Loans, Home Loan Center, Inc., HLC Escrow, Get Smart, or
LendingTree Settlement Services), this Privacy Policy is intended to describe
for you:
We encourage you to read this Privacy
Policy carefully when using our website or services or
transacting business with us. By using our website, you are accepting
the practices described in this Privacy Policy.
If you have any
questions about our privacy practices, please refer to the end
of this Privacy Policy for information on how to contact
us.
HomeLoanCenter.com
is a division of LendingTree, LLC. LendingTree, LLC
engages in real estate and real estate brokerage activities
through other divisions or subsidiaries (including
RealEstate.com and iNest Realty Inc.), and maintains several
lending-related websites (including RealEstate.com, iNest.com,
and Domania.com). The privacy practices and
policies relating to LendingTree, LLC's real estate related
activities are described in a separate document.
For information about LendingTree, LLC's real estate
privacy policies and practices, click
here.
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
HomeLoanCenter.com
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 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 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 LendingTree Loans, information about your lock-fee
payment method (valid credit card number, type, expiration
date or other financial information).
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Information from other sources. We
may also periodically obtain both personal and non-personal information about
you from other LendingTree 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,
HomeLoanCenter.com does not pull a credit
bureau report on loan customers without express permission.
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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, other
LendingTree companies, advertising companies, and ad networks, to display
advertisements on our site. HomeLoanCenter.com
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 HomeLoanCenter.com
website. Our website does not
provide any personal information to these third parties.
This information allows
HomeLoanCenter.com
and these companies to deliver targeted advertisements and gauge their
effectiveness. Some of these
third-party advertising companies may be advertising networks that are members
of the Network Advertising Initiative, which offers a single location to opt
out of ad targeting from member companies (www.networkadvertising.org).
For a list of other third-party
advertising companies we typically use, click
here.
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 LendingTree 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
LendingTree 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 other LendingTree 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.
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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.
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Other lenders or investors.
If you submit a completed HomeLoanCenter.com Qualification Form ("QF"), we may share your personal information
with lenders on the LendingTree network with whom you are or may be matched, or
if you are matched with LendingTree Loans, third party investors to whom we
intend to transfer your loan after closing. N
o credit check will be performed by HomeLoanCenter.com 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
HomeLoanCenter.com shares your information) will be disclosed to you, and
HomeLoanCenter.com will not share information with other lenders not disclosed
to you. Because the lenders on
the HomeLoanCenter.com 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.
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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 LendingTree 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 HomeLoanCenter.com qualification form to us, you can update
your personal information by contacting our Customer Care Department at
1-800-756-0789 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 HomeLoanCenter.com .
-
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 HomeLoanCenter.com database.
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You 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. You may also click
here
to be taken off of our email list.
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Under our Do Not Call policy you may instruct us not to call you for marketing
purposes by calling our Customer Care Department at 1-800-756-0789 .
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.
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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 clicking
here.
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 LendingTree 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:
1.
the categories of information we disclosed to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during
the preceding calendar year
2.
the names and addresses of the third parties that received that information; and
3.
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@homeloancenter.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 Officer
HomeLoanCenter.com
163 Technology Drive
Irvine, CA 92618
privacy@homeloancenter.com
©2008 Home Loan Center, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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