PRIVACY POLICY
Effective Date: May 7, 2017
Freedom Debt Network is a new kind of company taking a radical approach to helping relieve the burden of student loan debt. From unprecedented expertise, personnel and tools to faster service and open conversations, we’re all about helping our Clients get ahead and achieve success. Whether you’re just exploring options or engaging us for immediate help, our organization works to help our Clients to accomplish the goals.
This Privacy Policy is meant to help you understand how we and our affiliates collect, secure, use, and disclose your personal information in connection with our services. This Privacy Policy applies to personal information we collect from you and from third parties. If you are a current Freedom Debt Network customer, you can also use our Privacy Notice as a guide to the ways we use your personal information, as well to understand your choices to limit our use and sharing of your information.
Your use of Freedom Debt Network websites, or otherwise providing us with personal information, you agree to the terms and conditions of this privacy policy and any updates we make. Our Terms of Use take precedent over any provision conflicting with our privacy policy. This is our complete privacy policy, and supersedes all earlier versions.
This Privacy Policy is written to apply to Freedom Debt Network, Inc. and its affiliates.
Changes to Our Privacy Policy
We update our Privacy Policy regularly—this version is effective as of the date indicated above. We will notify you of material changes to the Privacy Policy on our website.
1.1. Information you provide us
1.1.1. Personal Information
We collect personal information from you to help you use our services. When we say “personal information,” we mean information that specifically identifies you.
We collect this information in a number of ways. You are asked to provide personal information to us while discussing your application with us, or providing feedback to us. Examples of personal information include:
- Your Name
- Your Address
- Telephone Number
- Email Address
- Student Loan Account Numbers
- Social Security Number
- Employment Information
- Salary Information
We may supplement the personal information you submit to us with information from third-party sources. For example, in an effort to protect the integrity of your account and if permitted under applicable law, we may supplement your registration Information with address standardization data to verify the address you have entered is valid and to protect you against identity theft.
Finally, we never intend to collect personal information from children under 18 years of age. If we learn or are notified that we have collected this information from a child under the age of 18, we will promptly remove the data from our system.
1.2. Information we collect about you
1.2.1 Aggregate Information
Aggregate information, which is data we collect about your use of our or third party websites or services, from which personal information has been removed. Aggregate data is used to help us understand consumer trends, needs, interests, and preferences so we can improve our products and services.
Freedom Debt Network also collects demographic information, which is anonymous, and may include:
- Age
- Date of Birth
- Income
- Geographic Area
1.2.2. Credit Reports
Freedom Debt Network is not a lender and does not pull credit reports on its Clients when providing its core services. As a company engaged in providing paid services, Freedom Debt Network transmits data to credit reporting agencies, but only if a Client of the company has not fulfilled the terms of payment included in the Client Fee Agreement.
1.2.3. Website Use and Logging Data
Freedom Debt Network also collects information about your computer or mobile device to improve and evaluate your use of our website and our services. We may gather data such as your browser type, operating system, loading or exiting of web pages, and the Internet Protocol (IP) address of your computer or device.
Please note that any information, photos, contact information, email addresses, videos, and other content you post to your profile on Freedom Debt Network blog is available to everyone using that service. The information you share is available to everyone accessing that service, and may be read, collected or used by others for any purpose, including sending you unsolicited messages.
1.2.4. Information We Get from Others
Like other advertisers, we contract with third parties to place advertisements for our services on websites that are not our own. We place these ads where we think they are likely to be most relevant. These advertisements on third-party websites allow us to track responses to our ads. We and our affiliates use this information to track the performance of our advertising and marketing campaigns by using tools like cookies and other technologies. We use these tools to collect and store information about your visits, page visits and duration, and the specific ad or link that the user clicked on to visit the site. We don’t gather Personally Identifiable Information during this process.
1.2.5 Cookies
As of the date of this Privacy Policy update, Freedom Debt Network does not use “cookies” and similar tools to track your use of the Website when you use our services. In the future we plan to collect information such as the types of service used, and number of users we receive daily. Our web servers will automatically log information about your computer, but we don’t use this information to identify you personally.
Cookies are designed to transfer a small amount of data to your browser by servers within a domain. That data is only read by designated servers within that domain. It functions as your computer’s identification card and will enable Freedom Debt Network to improve your experience by securely maintaining your authenticated session and preferences.
Most Internet browsers are set up to accept cookies automatically. You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, allowing you to decide whether or not to accept it.
1.2.6 Contacting us by Telephone
If you communicate with us by telephone, we will monitor or record the call. This is done for reasons such as maintaining the integrity of your account, providing effective and timely service, and the improvement of Freedom Debt Network services. Freedom Debt Network
2. USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We may in the future use personal information to facilitate your use and our operation of our website, and to improve our services.
Here are some examples of ways in which we use your personal information:
- Contacting you regarding issues with your account
- Allowing our partners to process the repayment program you have selected with the U.S. Department of Education
- Sending you information about new services you have contracted Freedom Debt Network to provide
Sharing your personal information
We don’t sell or rent your personal information to anyone. Freedom Debt Network only shares your personal information with unaffiliated third parties as permitted or required by law. When Freedom Debt Network shares your personal information with partners who perform functions on our behalf, we require the security and confidentiality of your information, as well as limiting their use of the information to reasonably and necessarily to carry out their work with us and comply with applicable laws and regulations and to provide the service you have specifically contracted Freedom Debt Network to provide. Third parties we share your information with may include, but are not limited to:
- Our loan servicing companies who provide your statements, process your payments, and service your loan
- U.S. Department of Education
- Credit reporting agencies (only if the payment terms of your Client Fee Agreement have not been fulfilled)
- Auditors and examiners
Finally, personal information may be disclosed or transferred as part of, or during negotiations of, a merger, consolidation, sale of our assets, as well as equity financing, acquisition, strategic alliance or in any other situation where personal information may be transferred as one of the business assets of Freedom Debt Network
3. PROTECTING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
3.1. What we do to protect your personal information
Freedom Debt Network takes the privacy and security of its members personal information seriously. We maintain administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect your information’s security, confidentiality and integrity.
We protect personal information you provide in connection with your services. Access to your own personal information is only available to Freedom Debt Network personnel that require access to fulfill your services. To protect the security of your personal information, never share your password to anyone. Please notify us immediately if you believe your password has been compromised.
Whenever we save your personal information, it’s stored on servers, and those of our partners and in facilities that only selected Freedom Debt Network personnel and our contractors have access to. We encrypt all data that you submit through Freedom Debt Network website during transmission using Transport Layer Security (TLS) in order to prevent unauthorized parties from viewing such information.
3.2. Steps you can take to help us keep your information safe
There are many steps you can take to help us keep your information safe. First and foremost, choose complex, independent passwords for each website and service you maintain an account with. This helps keep any breach of any of your accounts isolated to one service. Also, don’t use anything related to your birthday, address, phone number, PIN number or any other easily guessable information in your password.
Freedom Debt Network urges your caution when using a public computers or networks, like at a coffee shop or library. To best protect your personal information and login information, don’t use such computers to access your sensitive accounts, and if you must do, ensure that you logout of your account entirely.
In recent years, individuals, businesses and even governments have seen a rise in “phishing” attacks. Phishing occurs when someone attempts to obtain your password or other sensitive information. Scammers often do this by impersonating a trusted user, or offering a compelling reason to open a malicious email attachment, click on a link or give over information. We never ask for your sensitive personal information, such as password, over email or other unsecure methods or through any site not under the Freedom Debt Network domain. Please notify us at [email protected] if you ever receive suspicious correspondence from us.
| Reasons we share your information | Does Freedom Debt Network share? | Can you limit this sharing? |
| For our everyday business purposes—such as to process your transactions, maintain your account(s) | Yes | No |
| For our marketing purposes—to offer our products and services to you | Yes | No |
| For joint marketing with other financial companies | No | We don’t share |
| For our affiliates’ everyday business purposes—information about your federal student loan history | Yes | No |
| For our affiliates’ everyday business purposes—information about your creditworthiness | No | We don’t pull credit reports because we are not a lender. |
| For our affiliates to market to you | Yes | Yes |
| For non-affiliates to market to you | No | We don’t share |
4. YOUR CHOICES REGARDING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We want you to be aware of the choices you have in limiting the sharing of your personal information. Please refer to the below table to review your options in sharing with us:
Your Rights As a California Resident
Residents of the state of California have the right to request certain information from us with respect to the types of personal information we share with third parties for their direct marketing purposes, as well as the identities of the third parties we have shared such information with during the immediately preceding calendar year.
If you are a new customer, we can begin sharing your information 45 days from the date we sent you the privacy notice. When you are no longer our customer, we may continue to share your information as described in this policy. However, you can contact us at any time to limit our sharing and to restrict online marketing and direct mail. Please contact at this number if you want to restrict the use of your information (Freedom Debt Network Customer Service: 8449147237)
When you post information to our blog within the Freedom Debt Network website, you should also be aware that anything you post on our blog can be used, read, or collected by other users of the online community services and could be used to send you unsolicited messages.
Our website contains links to other sites that may collect your personal information. For example, Freedom Debt Network has relationships with various service providers whose services are available to you from our website, from other websites that are linked to our website, or in connection with our services. These partners offer services we think our customers may find useful or will improve our services. Those providers may require you to provide personal information to use their services. Personal information collected on other websites is not covered by this Privacy Policy. Unless stated otherwise, the policies of those partners will govern the collection, use, disclosure and security of your personal information.
We don’t respond to “do not track” signals or similar mechanisms – where a visitor to Freedom Debt Network website requests that we disable the collection of information about the visitor’s online activities, including navigation around our website and the service. We may also permit third parties to collect aggregate usage information on our website, and they may also not respond to “do not track” signals.
4.1. Changing and Updating Your Personal Information
We want to provide you with the resources you need to keep your information with us correct and up-to-date. You can access and maintain your personal and personally identifiable information by contacting your Freedom Debt Network team.
5. COMPLAINTS & CONCERNS
Freedom Debt Network takes your privacy seriously, and maintains a process to respond to your concerns regarding violations of this Policy. If you believe that we haven’t complied with this policy in regards to you personal information or have questions regarding your privacy with us, please contact us at [email protected]. If you are reporting non-compliance with this Privacy Policy, please describe the issue in as much detail as possible without disclosing any sensitive information about you or third parties. We will respond to your request by email within 15 business days.