Consumer Data Use & Protection FAQs

A: To perform services on your behalf, primarily to our customers, we will process your personal  data, business information, or usage information:

• • to process and track the actions you take using the service;
• • to verify your identity;
• • to provide the service;
• • to provide customer support, including to resolve disputes, and troubleshoot problems;
• • to contact you with regard to your use of the service and, at our discretion, changes to the service and/or service’s policies; and
• • to enable you to participate in a variety of the service’s features.

Further, as it is in our legitimate interest to be responsive to you, to ensure the proper functioning of our service, and provide you with a user–friendly service, we will use your personal data, business information, and/or usage information to:

• • provide you with information such as to send you electronic correspondence or to provide you with promotional and marketing materials on behalf of us or third parties, including to let you know about new products or services;
• • manage risk, or to detect, prevent, and/or remediate fraud or other potentially prohibited or illegal activities;
• • manage and protect our information technology infrastructure;
• • improve the service, marketing endeavors, or our service offerings;
• • customize your experience on the service or to serve you specific content or ads that we deem are relevant to you;
• • identify your service preferences so that you can be informed of new or additional opportunities, products, services, and promotions;
• • improve the overall experience of the service;
• • comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
• • conduct internal business purposes; and
• • conduct purposes disclosed at the time you provide your information or as otherwise set forth in our Privacy Policy.

A: INFORMATION WE COLLECT

• Information Collected When You Visit or Use CastleBranch Sites: We collect a variety of information about you from numerous sources, including from you (generally referred to as “Usage Information“). Some of the information that we collect about you may not identify you (such as information collected through cookies as a result of your visit to our website). Other information that we may collect from you or about you, whether individually or in combination with other information, may contain Personal Data about you. For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, “Personal Data” is information about you, such as your first and last name, username and password, credit card and/or banking information, date of birth, social security or other government generated identification number, gender, home address, work address, education, work history, telephone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses, medical record numbers, health plan beneficiary number, education history, employment, certificate/license number, vehicle identification number, device identifiers or serial numbers, Internet Protocol (IP) address, finger or voice prints, photographic images, information bearing on your creditworthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general reputation, personal characteristics, Personal Data, any online identifiers or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity, or any other characteristic that would uniquely identify the individual. CastleBranch Entities generally do not request, and thus do not use or retain, “sensitive data” which we perceive as data regarding health conditions, racial or ethnic status, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, or sexual orientation and activity.
• Collection of Information Through Tracking Technologies: We use various methods and technologies to store or collect Usage Information (“Tracking Technologies“). A few of the Tracking Technologies used with the Service, include, without limitation, cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, browser fingerprinting, entity tags, UTM codes (i.e. a code that you can attach to a custom URL in order to track a source, medium, and campaign name), and recognition technologies that make assumptions about users and devices. We use Tracking Technologies for a variety of purposes, including:
  • • Strictly Necessary: We use Tracking Technologies that we consider are strictly necessary to allow you to use and access our Service, including cookies required to prevent fraudulent activity, improve security or allow you and a Customer to make use of Service functionality.
  • • Performance Related: We use Tracking Technologies that are useful in order to assess the performance of the Service, including as part of our analytic practices or otherwise to improve the content, ads, products or services offered through the Service.
  • • Functionality Related: We use Tracking Technologies that are required to offer you enhanced functionality when accessing the Service, including identifying you when you use our Service or keeping track of your specified preferences.
  • • Targeting Related: We use Tracking Technologies to deliver content, which may include ads, including those promoted by our Customers, that we deem relevant to your interests on our Service and third–party services based on how you interact with our advertisements and/or content. This includes using Tracking Technologies to understand the usefulness to you of the content and ads that have been delivered to you.
  • • Analytics: We use Google Analytics, which is a web analytics tool that helps us understand how users engage with our Service. Like many services, Google Analytics uses first–party cookies to track user interactions, as in our case, where they are used to collect information about how users use our Service. This information is used to compile reports and to help us improve our Service. The reports disclose website trends without identifying individual visitors. You can opt out of Google Analytics without affecting how you visit our Service—for more information on opting out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites you use, visit this Google page: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Further, third–parties may use Tracking Technologies in connection with our Service, which may include the collection of information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or online services as well as across your Devices. We do not control those Tracking Technologies and we are not responsible for them. However, you accept that you will encounter third–party Tracking Technologies in connection with use of our Service and accept that our statements under this Privacy Policy do not apply to the Tracking Technologies or practices of such third–parties.
• In connection with our use of Tracking Technologies, CastleBranch also uses cookies to collect and store Personal Data and non–Personal Data about you. “Cookies” are commonly used pieces of information in the form of small files that are placed on your computer hard drive to enable you to more easily communicate and interact with websites. A cookie file can contain information such as the URL, computer IP address, domain type, browser type, the country, state, and telephone area code where your server is located, the pages of the website viewed, and any search terms entered on the website. These cookies also allow CastleBranch to customize the website content to your preferences, profile, or demographic information. You may configure your browser to accept or reject all or some cookies or notify you when a cookie is set. If you reject cookies, you may still use our website, but your ability to use some features or areas of our website may be limited or impossible. Please note that CastleBranch may allow third party advertisers to access cookies on your computer. Use of cookies by advertisers is subject to the privacy policies of those third–party advertisers, not this Privacy Policy. We may work with third parties to display advertising on our website or to manage our advertising services. Those third parties may use cookies to gather information about your activities on this website and other websites in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities.
• Information Collected From You When You Do More than Visit: If you create an account with CastleBranch, place an order for services, or otherwise use certain features or functions on our website or system, we may collect information from you to help us identify you and to ensure that we have the information needed to provide the services, products, or access to the website features which you may have purchased or ordered, and to otherwise perform our business operations. The information collected from you may include Personal Data. CastleBranch also may collect, record, or transcribe written transcripts, descriptions, summaries, or video or audio recordings of you when you contact CastleBranch, which may include Personal Data about you (an example is a recording of a telephone conversation between a CastleBranch customer service representative and you). You also may provide to us through the website certain documents, records, or other data, such as photographs, immunization records, CPR, OSHA, HIPAA, and other training certifications, and other information which we will store and use as provided for in this Privacy Policy and in our Terms of Use.
• Information Collected From Other Sources: We may collect information about you, including Personal Data, from our Customers who place orders with us for a consumer report, investigative consumer report, or other product or service about you. The information collected from our Customers may include, but is not limited to, your name, date of birth, social security number, email address(es), home address, mailing address, phone number(s), student identification number, education history, licensure, and employment history. We also may collect information about you, including Personal Data, from other sources, such as, but not limited to, third party databases; the department of motor vehicles; county, state, and federal courts; state repositories; federal repositories; state and regional prisons; local police stations; federal bankruptcy courts; federal civil courts; state medical boards; drug testing facilities or specimen collection sites; professional licensing organizations; and other private, local, state, and federal organizations and agencies.
• Information Collected and Stored When We Send You a Text Message: After you sign up for our Service (subject to your consent where required by applicable law), we and/or our Customers may send you text messages that provide marketing, promotional, and/or other information. We and our third–party service providers use a variety of technologies that automatically (or passively) store or collect certain information whenever you, we, and/or our Customers send you a text message. This information will be stored or accessed using a variety of technologies that will be downloaded to your mobile device whenever you receive a text message.
• Information Third–Parties Provide About You: We will, from time to time, supplement the information we collect directly from you on our Service with information from third–parties for various purposes, including to enhance our ability to serve you, to tailor our content to you and to offer you opportunities that may be of interest to you. To the extent we receive Personal Data from those sources we will apply this Privacy Policy.
• Interactions with Third–Party Services: The Service includes functionality that allows certain kinds of interactions, direct and indirect, between the Service and a third–party web site or application, including those hosted or controlled by a Customer. The use of this functionality involves the third–party operator providing certain information, including Personal Data, to us. For example, we may provide you third–party sites’ interfaces or links on the Service to facilitate your sending a communication from the Service to, for example, a Customer, or we use third–parties to facilitate emails, tweets or Facebook postings. These third–parties retain any information used or provided in any such communications or other activities and these third–parties’ practices are not subject to our Privacy Policy. We do not control or have access to your communications through these third-parties. Further, when you use third–party sites or services, you are using their services and not our services and they, not we, are responsible for their practices. You should review the applicable third–party privacy policies before using such third–party tools on our Service.
• Information Collected from Other Social Media Sites: CastleBranch also conducts and/or collects social media data about individual users, including you, for itself, its Customers, or other third parties that either you make available or is made available to CastleBranch and others directly by social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+ and others through APIs or social media monitoring technology (“Third Party Sites“). This data includes names, user IDs, social media handles, gender, and other information that individuals choose to make publicly available on social media sites. In connection with the Service, CastleBranch may also monitor the public activities of individuals on social media sites, including posts, blogs, tweets, and profile information, including such social media messages directed at you and other users. This Privacy Notice does not govern the collection of content by Third Party Sites that is not published or generated through the Service, except to the extent that we act as a processor with respect to such content. Our customers are required to abide by the applicable policies and requirements of such Third Party Sites used in connection with the Services and when using information from Third Party Sites.

For more information on what type of data we collect, please review our full privacy policy.

A: Please contact us at privacy@castlebranch.com, and we will review and respond to your request as quickly as possible. A confirmation of receipt of your query will be sent within 48–72 business hours of receipt by CastleBranch.