HomeGain Privacy Policy |
HomeGain is committed to protecting the privacy of its users. When you register for HomeGain's online services, the information you provide to us is used to provide the services you have registered for, to deliver email notifications to you, and from time to time, to validate your identity. Our data collection policies with regard to current and future services allow you to choose how much information you provide to us, and to control how we use that information. Read below to find out more.
Our Commitment to You
HomeGain is committed to making your HomeGain experience satisfying and safe. Our data collection policies allow you to choose how much information you provide to us, and what HomeGain does with the information you supply. HomeGain will keep your information within HomeGain unless you consent to our supplying all or a portion of your information to third parties as a part of one of the HomeGain service offerings. However, if you tell HomeGain not to send you further emails, this instruction may be communicated to third parties who send email on HomeGain's behalf solely to allow us to comply with your instructions. HomeGain collects information online to allow you to use our services. Depending on the service you are accessing, you could be asked at various times to provide information such as your name, email address, street address, contact phone number or other information related to of the property you are seeking to buy or sell, and/or what type of customer you are seeking to attract. On other occasions such as when we require payment for HomeGain services, we may request your credit card number to conclude the transaction. We request this information to deliver on the services you are requesting, and to allow us to provide our strongest value to you - a personalized online experience. Information collected online is often defined as being either anonymous or personally identifiable:
1. Anonymous Information refers to information that cannot be tied back to a specific individual. For instance, we may know that thousands of people have visited this HomeGain Privacy Policy webpage, but we do not necessarily know their names, where they live, or their date of birth. What we collect from visits such as this constitutes anonymous information. Many of the individuals who access our services decline to use the personalization features that are available to them, and therefore those individuals are anonymous to us and the only data we collect about them is anonymous information.
2. Personally Identifiable Information refers to information that tells us specifically who you are, such as your name, email address or phone number. In many cases we need this information to provide the personalized or enhanced service that you have requested. We hope that, like many of our customers, you will find it beneficial to provide Personally Identifiable Information to HomeGain so that we may provide valuable services to you. Registering with HomeGain will also cause a HomeGain cookie to be issued; this cookie allows HomeGain to "recognize" you when you are on HomeGain's site to allow us to personalize our service for you.
Third Party Advertisers.
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies serve their ads from their own web sites, independently of HomeGain. As such, they may use cookies or request personal information from you, or they may share anonymous information about your visit with third parties.
Third Party Cookies
In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertiser may place or recognize a unique "cookie" on your browser. Some of our business partners (e.g., advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies. This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by HomeGain only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
Web Beacons
Our Web pages contain electronic images known as Web beacons (sometimes called single-pixel gifs) and are used along with cookies to compile aggregated statistics to analyze how our site is used and may be used in some of our emails to let us know which emails and links have been opened by recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of our customer communications and marketing campaigns.
Links to Third Party Web Sites
As a service to our users we provide links to various unrelated third party web sites. We are neither responsible for the content on nor for the information collection practices of such web sites, nor do we control the privacy policies of such web sites. Their policies may be substantially different in this regard from HomeGain. Accordingly, we recommend that you review their privacy and information collection policies before providing any information to such third parties.
What Personally Identifiable Information of yours is collected by HomeGain
When you register for HomeGain online services, the information you provide to us is used to provide the service for which you have registered. Depending on the services you have chosen to use, some or all of your Personally Identifiable Information may be used by HomeGain to provide such services. Personally Identifiable Information may also be provided to intermediaries and third parties who assist HomeGain in providing you with the service you request. For example, if you register to use our Find a REALTOR® service and agree to its terms, some of your information may be shown to real estate agents (e.g., characteristics of the home you wish to sell), but not all of your information if you are a seller (e.g., your email, since this service protects your anonymity). As another example, when you request assistance in estimating the value of your home, we may provide some of your Personally Identifiable Information and general information regarding your home to one of our partners who may in turn share your information with a local real estate agent familiar with your market to assist you. Once you have been contacted by a real estate agent, we recommend that you contact them directly for information about their specific privacy policies. When registering for HomeGain services, you provide HomeGain with your email address. We will use your email address to deliver these HomeGain services, such as notifying you of new agent proposals if you registered for our Find a REALTOR® service. We and our partners may also send you information about other services if you have opted in to receiving such notifications.
Agents: We use a credit card processing company to bill you for goods and services. This company does not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any other purposes.
If you post to a blog on this web site, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit here can be read, collected or used by other users of this site, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit to this site. We obtain prior consent to display a user’s personally identifiable information when they submit a testimonial for display on our web site.
What about cookies
A cookie is a small text file that is stored by your computer that contains information related to a web site. Each web site you visit may store a cookie on your computer that contains information assigned by that web site. Each such cookie can only be read by the web site that created the cookie. We use this cookie to keep track of your visit to HomeGain so that we can deliver our services to you. This cookie only contains randomly generated anonymous information. Examples of the information we may collect and analyze using the cookie include the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; your computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform; the full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) clickstream to, through, and from our web site, including date and time; and products you viewed or searched for. During some visits we may use software tools such as JavaScript to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page. This cookie information is not shared with or used by any third party. We do not link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information you submit while on our site.
Information Distribution
If you are providing us Personally Identifiable Information, it will be used within HomeGain's site to deliver our services. Depending on the service and your preferences provided to HomeGain when registering for these services, your Personally Identifiable Information may also be provided to intermediaries and third parties who assist HomeGain in providing the services you request. Except as otherwise provided in this Privacy Policy, however, HomeGain will not share, rent or sell your information to third parties without your permission or in ways other than as disclosed in this privacy statement. HomeGain may be required by law enforcement or judicial authorities to provide Personally Identifiable Information to the appropriate governmental authorities. If requested by law enforcement or judicial authorities, we will provide this information upon receipt of the appropriate documentation. HomeGain expressly reserves the right to release any Personally Identifiable Information or other information you provide to third parties under the following circumstances: (a) when required by law or legal process, (b) to investigate and/or take action against illegal activity, suspected abuse or unauthorized use of the web site, (c) to protect the property or safety of our users or others, and (d) to enforce our Terms of Service.
EMAIL: What choices are available to you regarding collection, use, and distribution of the information
HomeGain offers you the ability to control the email communications we make to you. It is our intention to give you as much control over our relationship as possible. Registering for a HomeGain service requires that you consent to receive emails about that service from HomeGain. However, HomeGain gives you the opportunity to unsubscribe to general email communication from us - clear directions for doing so will appear in the email messages we send to you. Alternatively, you may log in to our web site and click on the "Update Member Info" link to update your Personal Profile. On that web page, you may change your e-mail preferences to unsubscribe from HomeGain and third party emails. At times, HomeGain may enter into co branding arrangements with other companies, and if so, an opt-in or opt out question may be present to allow email contact from these company's as well. Their opt-in/out features are specific to each organization, but you should not receive email from these organizations unless you have indicated that it is acceptable. Before consenting to receive email from third parties, you should read their privacy policy and terms of use, if applicable, to make sure you are comfortable dealing with that company. As you can understand, HomeGain can not make commitments on behalf of other companies. All email from HomeGain partners who gain your permission to send you commercial email, will include an opportunity to opt out of future communications. HomeGain reserves the right to send a one-time registration confirmation email, and Service Alert messages to its customers to inform them of service changes or issues with the Terms of Use.
What kind of security procedures are in place to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of information under the company's control
HomeGain operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary, and only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our customers. Any particularly sensitive information, such as a customer's credit card number collected for a commerce transaction, is encrypted prior to transmission. You the consumer are ultimately responsible for the security of your HomeGain Member Name and password. Please take care to store your HomeGain Member Name separately from your account password, or better yet, choose a password that you don't need to write down at all.
The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number) on our registration or order forms, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). To learn more about SSL, follow this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security. Please keep in mind that despite these measures, HomeGain cannot guarantee or warrant 100 percent security of its servers and databases. Moreover, HomeGain cannot guarantee that Personally Identifiable Information that you submit through the web site will not be intercepted or otherwise disclosed.
How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information
HomeGain believes strongly in providing you with the ability to access and edit the personal information that you have provided to us. To update the information retained about you, please visit our My HomeGain control center area.
Agents click www.homegain.com/agent/agentProfile1
Consumers click www.homegain.com/client/user_info
Data Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
Standard corporate transfers of information
Information about the users of our web site, including personally identifiable information, may also be disclosed in connection with certain standard business transaction such as any debt financing, acquisition or merger, sale of assets as well as in the event of a bankruptcy, assignment for benefit of creditors or receivership in which personally identifiable information could be sold or transferred to third parties as an asset. Please see our “Changes in this Privacy Statement” section below for how we will notify users of such an occurrence.
Your Privacy Rights Regarding Third Party Sharing
To help service your requests, such as a request to Find A REALTOR® or to receive a home valuation, we may provide certain Personally Identifiable Information to third parties who may use this information for their own purposes, including sending advertising to you. If you would prefer to opt out of this usage of your Personally Identifiable Information, you may do so by updating your Personal Profile and opting out of such usage. To access your Personal Profile, you must first log in to www.homegain.com. However, we will still use and provide to third parties your Personally Identifiable Information to fulfill your request. Additionally, we may have entered into agreements with various third party providers that result in the display of a co-branded web page which is hosted by the third party provider. In such instances, we are neither responsible for the content on nor for the information collection practices of such web sites, nor do we control the privacy policies of such web sites. Their policies may be substantially different in this regard from HomeGain. Accordingly, we recommend that you review their privacy and information collection policies before providing any information to such third parties.
Share This (Blog)
If you choose to use our service to forward a blog posting from our site to a friend, we will ask you for your name and email address and for your friend’s email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email with the information you requested be sent. HomeGain does not store any of the information you have provided.
We provide users' on the Site the capacity to share information from the Site using a third party widget that allows for the transfer of information to third party sites of your selection, by acting as a bridge between both Sites. While information is transferred through widgets on the Site, none of your personal information is stored within or used for any other purposes. Users' also have the capacity to import contacts on this platform - this third party personal information is only imported with your explicit consent and specifically for those contacts you select - we do not share, or use any of this collected information for promotional services. This third party personal information is stored in a users' account and used specifically to service communication requests where they have been made.
Changes in this Privacy Statement
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the home page, and other pages we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email or by means of a notice on our home page.
Privacy questions
If you have any questions about our privacy policy, please contact us at [email protected]. Our office address is 1820 Bonanza Street, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
