Privacy Policy

Lendingstudios.com
Privacy Policy 

Last Updated and Effective: May 20, 2020

I.       Introduction

You are visiting a website owned and operated by Lending Studios. Lending Studios and its subsidiaries (collectively, “us”, “we”, or “our”) are committed to maintaining your confidence and trust as it relates to the privacy and usage of your information. Please read below and learn how we collect, protect, share, and use your information as part of our technology platforms, and all of our products and services.

This privacy policy (“Policy”) applies to www.lendingstudios.com and all websites owned and operated by us or our affiliates on which this Policy is displayed (such websites referred to hereafter as the “Website(s)” or “Site(s)”, whether individually or collectively).

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this Policy, supplemented by the Privacy Notice for California Residents.

This Policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you use the Website and our related services (the “Services”) and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information.

This Policy applies to information we collect:

• On this Website.
• In email, text, and other electronic messages between you and this Website and between you and us.
• When you interact with our advertising and applications on third-party websites and services, if those applications or advertising include links to this Policy.
• When you interact directly with us offline or through other means.

This Policy does not apply to information collected by any third party, including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from or on the Website or through any communication that you may have with one of our partners, such as a financial service provider.

Please read this Policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO AGREE TO OUR POLICIES AND PRACTICES, DO NOT USE OUR WEBSITE OR ANY OF OUR SERVICES. By accessing or using this Website or any of our Services, you agree to this Policy. This Policy may change from time to time (see ‘Changes to Privacy Policy’ section below). Your continued use of this Website or any of our Services after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the Policy frequently for updates.

 Please note: Our Website and Services are intended to be accessed and used only by adults and are not offered or directed to minors. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information by anyone under the age of 18, and you should not provide us with any information regarding an individual under the age of 18.

II.        Information Collection

We will collect and use personal information about you to respond to your request for products and services offered through the Website. We will also collect information in order to notify you about products, services, and other opportunities we think will be of interest to you. The information we collect may be from the following sources:

• Information provided by you in connection with obtaining quotes for home purchase loans, home refinance loans, or home equity loans. For example, you will be asked to provide your full name, address, telephone number, Social Security Number, and other financial information depending upon your request.
• Information provided by you in connection with obtaining a credit card. For example, you may be asked to submit your full name and home address. In some cases, you may also be asked to submit additional personal information once you are linked to the credit card issuer’s website.
• Information provided by you in connection with obtaining quotes for other products or services such as long distance service, internet access, and insurance.
• Information provided by you in connection with obtaining a certain product or service offered by one our business partners.
• Information you provide us when you register to receive communications from us (such as your email address).
• Information you provide us when you enter promotions or sweepstakes offered by the Website (such as your full name, physical address and email address).
• Information you provide us through telephone and web based surveys, customer service correspondence, and general feedback.
• Information you provide us when you apply for a job with 
• Records and copies of your correspondence, if you contact us.
• Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes.
• Details of transactions you carry out through our Website or any of our Services.
• Your search queries on the Website.

We also collect demographic information. Demographic information is all other information such as gender, zip code, or any information that is not tied to your personal information. In addition, we might receive information about you from other online or offline sources and may add that information to your existing account.

III.        Information Sharing and Disclosure

We share your personal information with other companies, as further outlined below, so that they can market their products or services to you. If you do not want us to share your personal information with these companies, contact us at the email address listed in the “Contact Us” section below.

We share personal information about you under the following circumstances:

Loan Products or Service Requests – If you submit a request for quotes for a loan product or service offered through the Website, we will share the personal information contained in your request form (such as your full name, address, telephone number, property location, self-assessed value) with unaffiliated third parties, which include but are not limited to banks, mortgage lenders and brokers, and lead aggregators (collectively, “Lender” or “Lenders”) in our client network to process and fulfill your request. In some circumstances, we may obtain additional information about you and/or share that information with Lenders in our network.

We are required to comply with federal and state privacy regulations. By submitting your request to us, you understand that Lenders may contact you by telephone (on a recorded line), automated calling, email, or regular mail based on the information you provided to us in order to process and fulfill your request, even if you have opted into the National Do Not Call List administered by the Federal Trade Commission, any state equivalent Do Not Call List, or the Do Not Call List of an internal company. If one of the Lenders contacts you and you wish not to be contacted again by that Lender with respect to your inquiry, then you should specifically make a request to that Lender not to contact you again. Please note that the Lenders may maintain the information you provided whether you elect to use their services

Vendors – We sometimes disclose personal information we collect to our vendors that operate various services for us such as marketing distribution, advertising, processing resumes, or certain product functionalities. These vendors only have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, and may not share it with others or use it for any other purpose.

 Subsidiaries, Parent or Sister Companies – We may share personal and demographic information about you with our subsidiaries, parent company, sister companies or other affiliated companies to give you more options to address your needs and provide you better service. If you do not want your information shared in this manner, please email us at the email address listed in the “Contact Us” section below.

 Aggregate, Non-Personal, or De-identified 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, de-identified, or anonymous information we collect with third parties, including affiliates, to develop and deliver targeted advertising on our Webite and on the websites of third parties. If you would prefer that we do not utilize cookies with your website experience, or would prefer to restrict the use of cookies with network advertising partners, please see the “Online Tracking Opt-Out Guide” section below.

 As Permitted by Law – We may be required to share your personal information with law enforcement or government agencies in response to subpoenas, court orders, federal/state audits or similar legal process. We believe it is necessary to share information in such instances in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, or as otherwise required by law.

 Advertisements and Third Party Ad Servers

We partner with a third party to either display advertising on our Website or to manage our advertising on other sites. For instance, when visiting a third party website, you may receive a banner advertisement or a “pop up” window advertising the Website. Please note that such advertisements are served by the third party websites that you have visited and are not controlled by us. In addition, such advertisements may be placed by third party ad servers or ad networks such as DoubleClick. Our third party partner may use technologies such as cookies and action tags to gather information about your activities on the Website and other sites in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests. Please note this does not opt you out of being served ads. You will continue to receive generic ads.

IV.        Tracking Technologies

Technologies such as: cookies, beacons, tags and scripts are used by us and our marketing partners, display advertising network partners, affiliates, and other campaign performance tracking and analytics service providers. These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the Website, tracking users’ movements around the site and gathering demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis.

We generally use cookies to reduce the time it takes for pages to load on your computer, to assist with customer tracking, to store the traffic source or marketing campaign that explains how you reached our site and to deliver targeted advertising on the Website or websites of third parties. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited.

As is true of most web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. The information we track may include such information as browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, IP address and number of clicks. We may combine information that we obtain through the use of cookies with Personal Information, other aggregate or anonymous data, including a unique ID We may assign you.

How We Respond to “Do Not Track” Signals

Some web browsers provide a “Do Not Track” feature that sends a signal to websites you visit that you do not want to have your online activity tracked. We do not respond to web browser “Do Not Track” signals at this time and we do not participate in any frameworks that responds to “Do Not Track” signals.

Online Tracking Opt-Out Guide

Like many companies online, we use services provided by Google, Facebook and other companies that use tracking technology. These services rely on tracking technologies – such as cookies and web beacons – to collect directly from your device information about your browsing activities, your interactions with websites, and the device you are using to connect to the Internet. There are a number of ways to opt out of having your online activity and device data collected through these services, which we have summarized below:

Blocking cookies in your browser.  Most browsers let you remove or reject cookies, including cookies used for interest-based advertising.  To do this, follow the instructions in your browser settings.  Many browsers accept cookies by default until you change your settings.  For more information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set on your device and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

Blocking advertising ID use in your mobile settings.  Your mobile device settings may provide functionality to limit use of the advertising ID associated with your mobile device for interest-based advertising purposes.

Using privacy plug-ins or browsers.  You can block our Website from setting cookies used for interest-based ads by using a browser with privacy features, like Brave, or installing browser plugins like Privacy Badger, Ghostery or uBlock Origin, and configuring them to block third party cookies/trackers.

Platform opt-outs.  The following advertising partners offer opt-out features that let you opt-out of use of your information for interest-based advertising:

Google: https://adssettings.google.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/about/ads

Twitter: https://twitter.com/personalization

Advertising industry opt-out tools.  You can also use these opt-out options to limit use of your information for interest-based advertising by participating companies:

Digital Advertising Alliance:  http://optout.aboutads.info

Network Advertising Initiative: http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1

Note that because these opt-out mechanisms are specific to the device or browser on which they are exercised, you will need to opt out on every browser and device that you use.

V.        Other Privacy Policy Terms

Marketing Email Options – You may register to receive communications from us directly on our website or through a third party. Upon registering, we will periodically send you e-mails with offers and promotions. If you no longer wish to receive these communications, please let us know by sending an email to the email address listed in the “Contact Us” section below (You may also opt-out by clicking on the unsubscribe link in our emails). 

Third Party Advertisers – Please note that we can only control our own mailing list and policies. Third party advertisers that maintain their own mailing lists may send communications that advertise our services, and you may need to contact these parties directly in order to stop receiving their email communications.

Confidentiality and Security

The security of your personal information is very important to us and we take a number of steps to safeguard it. For example, we limit access to personal information to those employees or agents who assist us in providing requested products and services to you and maintain administrative, technical, and physical safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard personal information about you.

When you enter sensitive information (such as a Social Security number) on our order forms, we encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).

We follow generally accepted standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our Website, you can contact us at the email listed in the “Contact Us” section below.

Surveys

We may provide you the opportunity to participate in surveys on our site. If you participate, we will request certain personal information from you. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code). We use this information for market research purposes and to improve our services. We will occasionally provide anonymized aggregated statistics about our users in reports to third parties. These reports will not identify individual users.

We may use a third party service provider to conduct these surveys; such service providers will be prohibited from using our users’ personal information for any other purpose.

Third Party Links

This Policy applies to all information that you provide to us. However, when you visit websites to which the Website links, keep in mind you will be interacting with a third party that operates under its own privacy and security policy. If you choose to obtain certain services through a third party site, the data collected by the third party is governed by that third party′s privacy policy. A third party site will also have its own policy regarding the use of cookies and clear gifs. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any other service provider from whom you request services.

Social Media Features

Our Web site includes social media features, such as the Facebook Like button. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing the relevant feature or widget.

Framing

In some cases, we may use third parties to operate portions of the Website. Although the particular section of the Website may have a similar appearance as the the Website, information submitted through these outside third parties are subject to such third party′s privacy policy unless otherwise stated.

Changes to Privacy Policy

This Policy may be updated by us at any time. When we do update this Policy, we will revise the date at the top of this page. We encourage you to frequently check this page for any changes to stay informed about how we are helping to protect the information we collect. You acknowledge and agree that it is your responsibility to review this Policy periodically and become aware of modifications.

Your continued use of our Website will signify your acceptance of the any changes to this Policy.

Visiting our Websites From Outside the United States

The Website is governed by the laws of the United States and is intended for the enjoyment of individuals connected to the internet from a physical location within the United States only. We make no representation that the Website is governed by or operated in accordance with the laws of any other nation.

Contact Us

Please direct any questions regarding this Policy or opt-out requests to: customercare@homemortgageassessors.com

NOTICE TO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

We are required by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) to provide to California residents an explanation of how we collect, use and share their personal Information, and of the rights and choices we offer California residents regarding our handling of their personal information (the “Notice”).

CCPA Scope and Exclusions

The description in this Notice of our Privacy Practices and your CCPA Privacy Rights apply only to California residents whose interactions with us are limited to:

• Visiting our consumer websites,
• Signing up for email alerts,
• Commenting on or contributing to our blogs,
• Establishing an account that does not include financial products or services, or
• Applying for our job openings on our websites (however, note that the CCPA does not extend Privacy Rights to job applicants).

The description in this Notice of our Privacy Practices and CCPA Privacy Rights do not apply to the personal information we collect, use or disclose about:

• Consumers who initiate or complete the process of applying for financial products or services. This is because this information is subject to the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (“GLBA”) and implementing regulations, or the California Financial Information Privacy Act (“FIPA”), or
• Representatives of businesses that seek to obtain our products or services, or to provide products or services to us.

Privacy Practices

We do not sell personal information.  Per our Privacy Policy, we use cookies and other tracking technologies to analyze website traffic and facilitate advertising. If you would like to learn how you may opt out of our (and our third party advertising partners’) use of cookies and other tracking technologies, please review the instructions provided in the Online Tracking Opt-Out Guide.

Through our services – for example, by opening an account or initiating an application for financial products or services – you direct us to disclose your information to companies that provide the services in which you are interested.

How you interact with us	Personal information collection	CCPA-defined categories	Sources of personal information	Purposes for which we may collect and use the personal information	Sharing
Sign up for email alerts Interact with our blogs Establish an account	Name or alias Email address	Identifiers Online Identifiers	You	Operations Communications Research and development Marketing	Shared with service providers Made public at your direction
Visit our websites Receive and respond to marketing emails	Device data Online activity data Information derived from device data and online activity data	Identifiers Inferences Internet or Network Information Online Identifiers	Automatic collection	Operations Communications Marketing Advertising Research and development	Collected directly by or shared with our service providers Collected directly by advertising partners
Apply for our open positions on our website	Contact information Professional credentials and skills Educational and work history Other resume data you provide Diversity information you voluntarily provide Disability information where necessary	Identifiers Online identifiers Educational information Professional or employment information Protected classification characteristics	You References Background check and/or drug testing companies Employment agencies or recruiters	Facilitate recruitment activities Process employment applications Monitoring recruitment statistics	Shared with service providers Collected directly by or shared with background check and drug testing companies

Please note that we may also disclose all personal information (a) to comply with federal, state, or local laws; (b) to comply with a civil, criminal, or regulatory inquiry, investigation, subpoena, or summons by federal, state, or local authorities; (c) to cooperate with law enforcement agencies concerning conduct or activity that we believe may violate federal, state, or local law, (d) when we sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including your personal information, in connection with a business transaction (or potential business transaction), or (e) to professional advisors, such as lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us.

Privacy Rights

The CCPA grants individuals the following rights:

Information. You can request information about how we have collected, used and shared your Personal Information during the past 12 months.

Access. You can request a copy of the personal information that we maintain about you.

Deletion. You can ask us to delete the personal information that we collected or maintain about you.

Please note that the CCPA limits these rights by, for example, prohibiting us from providing certain sensitive information in response to an access request and limiting the circumstances in which we must comply with a deletion request. We will also respond to requests for information and access only to the extent we are able to associate with a reasonable effort the information we maintain with the identifying details you provide in your request. If we deny your request, we will communicate our decision to you.

You are entitled to exercise the rights described above free from discrimination.

How to Submit a Request

To request access to or deletion of personal information, send an email to: Info@homemortgageassessors.com

Identity verification. The CCPA requires us to verify the identity of the individual submitting a request to access or delete personal information before providing a substantive response to the request.  We will ask you to verify your identity when you submit a request.

Authorized agents. California residents can empower an “authorized agent” to submit requests on their behalf.  We will require the authorized agent to have a written authorization confirming that authority.