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Vista Financial, Inc. Privacy Promise

At Vista Financial, Inc. (VFI), we place the highest importance on respecting and protecting the privacy of our customers. Our most important asset is our relationship with you. We want you to feel comfortable and confident when using our web site. Therefore, in this Privacy Promise, we would like to share with you the following principles that govern our collection of information practices and other privacy aspects of our web site. This Privacy Promise applies to the vfiloans.com web site. Throughout this Privacy Promise, we refer to information that personally identifies you as "personal information."


We Protect Your Personal Information

We work to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, or unauthorized alteration by using industry-recognized security safeguards. We use both internal and external resources to review our security procedures. Our employees are trained and required to safeguard your personal information. Tell me more


We Tell You How We Use Your Personal Information

When we ask you for personal information, we will tell you—or it will be clear to you—what we need to know to fulfill your request and how the personal information you provide to us will be used. For example, if you ask us to contact you, we will ask you for your name and your contact information, such as, an e-mail address or a phone number. We do not collect e-mail address except when you supply it. In addition to responding to your request, we may use your contact information to tell you about products or services we think might interest you or to invite you to participate in a product or service-related survey. Because of the financial nature of our business, our web site is not designed to appeal to children under the age of 13. We do not request any information from children and if children under the age of 13 send us information they do so in violation of our terms of service. If we come to know that a child under the age of 13 has been using our web site then we take steps to deny the child access.


We Tell You about Our Relationships with Third Parties

We sometimes share our customers' personal information with third parties that perform services for us or provide products that we don't.

Service Providers

From time to time, we use third parties as service providers to perform services for us such as preparing or mailing letters, requesting telephone directory assistance, providing data processing services, or software programming. We also use third parties service providers to help us market our own products. When we use these third party service providers, we give them only the customer personal information needed to perform the service.

Before we disclose any customer personal information to these companies, we require them to sign legal agreements to keep this customer personal information confidential and to use it only as authorized. They are not permitted to use this customer personal information for their own purposes or to provide this customer personal information to any other party. Tell me more

Joint Marketers

In order to offer you financial products that we currently don't offer, we sometimes enter into marketing agreements with other financial institutions that specialize in these financial products. We select the financial institutions we work with very carefully.

Generally, we provide these financial institutions with only customer contact information. For some products we might also provide them limited account information, such as the amount of a loan or monthly payment amount. We never give these financial institutions your account numbers. They are permitted to use the customer personal information we give them only for the specific products being offered under our contract with them.

VFI doesn't share customer personal information with non-financial companies to enable these companies to market their products and services to our customers. We do occasionally use customer personal information ourselves to offer third-party products or services that we think you may want or need.


We Give You Choice and Control

We may use your contact information to tell you about products we think might interest you. However, if you don't want us to contact you for promotional purposes, you can contact us and specify your contact preferences. Your contact preferences only apply to marketing contacts. We may need to communicate with you regarding your requested services, about your loans, or loan consolidation, or with critical messages such as service messages, critical notices, or legally mandated notices. In order to contact you we may use U.S. Postal Service (mail), e-mail, or telephone calls.

We also give you control over how you want us to contact you. If you want us to not contact you by phone, e-mail, or using the mail, or have a contact preference of one method over another, please contact us at the address below and make your contact preferences known. We will record your preferences in our files so all VFI employees and agents know what they are your contact preferences.

You can update or correct your contact information or your contact preferences relating to your VFI account by contacting us or updating this information on the vfiloans.com web site.


You Can Contact Us

If you have privacy-related questions that are not addressed here, please contact the Privacy Team by U.S. Postal Mail, e-mail, or telephone at:

Customer Privacy
Vista Financial, Inc.
333 N. Canyons Parkway, Suite 201
Livermore, CA 94551
866 849 8691
Hours of operation: Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. PST
E-Mail: privacy@vfiloans.com

VFI is a wholly owned subsidiary of DCS Holdings, Inc.


Effective Date

The effective date of this Privacy Promise is April 15, 2005. It replaces all prior online information privacy policies issued by VFI. We reserve the right to change our Privacy Promise or web site contents at any time without sending you a separate notification. Any changes to our Privacy Promise will be reflected in the updated version displayed on our web site and when we do we will update the effective date. If we change our Privacy Promised then the new policy will only apply to information gathered after the effective date of the new Privacy Promise. You have the right to opt-out of the new privacy policies by contacting VFI at the address above.


More about How We Protect Your Personal Information

We protect the confidentiality and security of your personal information by using industry-recognized security safeguards such as firewalls, coupled with carefully developed security procedures to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, or unauthorized alteration. Whenever we ask for sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, we encrypt it as it is transmitted to us.

Our employees and agents are trained and required to safeguard your personal information. Additionally, using physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards, we restrict access to customer personal information to those employees and agents for business purposes only. We also use both internal and external resources to review the adequacy of our security procedures.

At VFI, safeguarding your personal information is a top priority. Part of that commitment is making you aware of popular identity theft and fraud scams and providing you with information to protect yourself.

Tip on Hoax E-Mails

Although they may be difficult to identify, you may receive hoax e-mails (e.g., "phishing" e-mails) that look authentic and appear to have been sent by a company you recognize. These e-mails ask you to provide or confirm your sensitive personal information by clicking on links. To entice you, they often claim an urgent or threatening condition concerning your account or offer you a prize.

You should not reply or click on any links in the e-mail or provide any personal information without first verifying that the source of the e-mail is legitimate through some other existing communications channel that you already know.

VFI does not solicit sensitive customer personal information via e-mail. If you do receive an e-mail message that appears to come from VFI that requests such personal information, please forward it immediately to Privacy@vfiloans.com so that we can respond quickly to mitigate potential damage.

Tip on Pre-Approved Offers of Credit

Consumers have expressed a wish to reduce the number of "pre-approved offers of credit" that they receive. The personal information you provide to VFI will not be used to send you any pre-approved offer of credit. You can request to have your name removed from pre-approved credit solicitation lists maintained by the various credit bureaus by the automated credit reporting industry telephone system to opt-out of pre-approved offers for credit by calling (888) 567-8688.

Membership in The Direct Marketing Association

VFI is a member of The Direct Marketing Association (The DMA), and as such, follows their guidelines and recommendations for privacy policies. The DMA maintains Mail, Telephone and E-Mail Preferences lists which they share with their members. If you wish to reduce the number of direct market referrals you receive, we encourage you go to The DMA web site at http://www.dmaconsumers.org/privacy.html. The DMA will report your preferences to its members.

If you feel that VFI's web site is not following its stated information policy as stated in this Privacy Promise, you may contact us at the address or telephone number given above, or you may contact The DMA's Committee on Ethical Business Practices at mgoldberger@the-dma.org, or the Federal Trade Commission by telephone at 202.FTC-HELP (202) 382-4357 or by e-mail at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/complaint.htm.

Access to your Personal Information

VFI will provide you with access to all your personal information, including financial and unique identifying information that we maintain about you, upon request. Most of your personal information is available though the web site, but as a service you can contact us at the address above, including your name, address, and phone number. We will contact you and then send you a copy of your personal information. We will correct any mistakes found in your personal information. Most changes can be made though the web site, but as a service to you can contact us at the address above and we will correct any data that incorrect.


More about Web Technologies

We use a variety of web technologies on our web site:

Web Site Activity

When we track activity on VFI web site, we collect information such as Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, domain name, browser types and versions, and pages viewed. We also keep track of how people get to our web site and any links they click on to leave our web site. WE DO NOT TRACK URLS THAT YOU TYPE INTO YOUR BROWSER, NOR DO WE TRACK YOU ACROSS THE INTERNET ONCE YOU LEAVE OUR WEB SITE. We also do not trace e-mail address as part of tracking web site activity. We track web site activity to assist you by reducing the need to have you re-enter your data, to help us resolve technical support issues, and to improve the overall quality of your web experience on the VFI web site. We may also use this information to offer a personalized web experience, and to tailor our offerings to the public. The information we collect to track web site activity is used internally, though we may share summarized information that does not contact any personal information. Remember, you control whether you receive VFI promotional materials.

Web Advertising

VFI may place advertising on our web site. Advertising networks that serve ads on our web site may assign different cookies to you. THE INFORMATION COLLECTED IS ANONYMOUS AND IS NOT LINKED TO YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION. These cookies may be used to select which ads you see, to keep you from repeatedly seeing the same ad, and to determine the effectiveness of this advertising. You may choose to decline cookies from third-party ad servers, which VFI does not control To learn more about which ad server VFI is using, please contact VFI at the address above. If you would like to know more about ad servers and your choices about not having this information used by third-party ad servers please click here.

Encryption of Private Information

VFI uses industry standard 128-bin encryption on all communications between you and VFI that contain personal information. This provides you the security to know that no one can eavesdrop on the communication and read you personal information when you sent it to VFI. VFI also uses industry standards to protect your Personal Information that is stored at VFI in ensure that it is saved, protected from loss, and not misused or altered.


More about Our Relationships with Third Parties

Sometimes, we enter into contracts with third parties who assist us in servicing you (for example, printing letters or loan verification). The contracts between VFI and third party service providers outline the appropriate use and handling of your personal information and prohibit these third party service providers from using any of your personal information for purposes unrelated to the product or service for which they've been contracted. Third party service providers are required to maintain the confidentiality of the customer personal information we provide to them.

We may disclose or report customer personal information in limited circumstances, where we believe in good faith that disclosure is required under the law. For example, we may be required to disclose customer personal information to cooperate with regulators or law enforcement authorities, to comply with a legal process such as a court order, subpoena, search warrant, or a law enforcement request.

We have business partners that provide services, some of which may be co-branded. Co-branded sites share corporate brand and logo information to present a more familiar web page. When on a VFI web site the co-branded business partner services and web sites are clearly identified. When you request any of these products or services, you are permitting us to provide your personal information to the co-branded business partner to fulfill your request. The VFI web site may provide links to third-party web sites that are not co-branded, such as those of our business partners and online advertisers Because VFI does not control the information policies or practices of any third party web sites, you should review their privacy policies to learn more about how they collect and use your personal information.

Should VFI sell, merge, or transfer any part of our business, part of the sale may include your personal information. If so, you will have the opportunity to ask that you will not receive promotional information following any change of control.

We may use sources outside of VFI to supplement the personal information you give us. For example, we may validate your address using an outside source, or by using the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) to gather information about your student loans. We use this data to help us maintain accuracy of your personal information and provide you with better service.

As discussed above, we share personal information about you within VFI, and with companies outside of VFI which have contracts containing confidentially agreements. The personal information we share includes: (i) your name and address, (ii) other identification information, (iii) information about our experiences or transactions with you or your account, (iv) information you give us such as income, assets, liabilities, or marital status and (v) information we receive from third parties such as employment status and loan information from the NSLDS database.

You have the right to tell us not to share any personal information you give us, or that we receive from others about you, to unrelated third parties. We respect your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal information and we will honor your wish to not share your personal information. However, this may restrict VFI's ability to continue to provide you with service or products. VFI may continue, however, to share other information about you, including your name and address and your account transactions and experiences with third party service providers.

OTHER APPLICABLE LAWS: The practices described above are in accordance with Federal law. We also follow privacy requirements under applicable state laws to the extent these state laws apply to us. For example, for Vermont and California residents, we will not disclose non-public personal financial information about you to unrelated third parties, other than as permitted by law, unless you authorize us to make that disclosure. Your authorization must be in writing or, if you agree, in electronic form. If you wish to authorize us to disclose your non-public personal information to unrelated third parties, you may notify us at the address listed above.



 

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VFI (Vista Financial Inc.) is a subsidiary of Performant Financial Corporation.
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