FREEandCLEAR Privacy Policy

Our privacy policy is pretty simple: while we may collect some information from you through the course of delivering services on FREEandCLEAR, we will not collect personally identifiable information without your permission and we will not sell this information to third parties without your permission.

Personally identifiable information

FREEandCLEAR is an online mortgage resource. Over the course of delivering our service to our users we may collect information from you. A user is anyone who uses the FREEandCLEAR web site for any purpose. Many of our features do not require users to provide any personal information including the FREEandCLEAR Mortgage Calculators, FREEandCLEAR Home Purchase Mortgage Guide, FREEandCLEAR Refinance Guide, FREEandCLEAR Mortgage Programs, FREEandCLEAR Mortgage Resources and FREEandCLEAR Mortgage Acceleration Strategy. We do not store any of the information you submit when you use our FREEandCLEAR Mortgage Calculators. We may request your email address if you use our FREEandCLEAR Mortgage Encyclopedia, ASK AN EXPERT, FEEDBACK, MORTGAGE Q&A and BLOG features. If you use our SHARE feature we may collect your email address as well as the email address of the individual with whom you would like to share our content or tools. We will not sell any email addresses that we collect. We will ask permission to use your email address to send you updates from FREEandCLEAR. We will not spam you with emails from third parties. Any user information we collect will be stored in a secure and private manner. If you use the CONTACT LENDERS feature your zip code and email address may be requested by a third party. If you use the CONTACT LENDERS feature you may receive email and promotional messages from third parties that you have given permission to contact you. Please note that the CONTACT LENDERS service is provided by a third party and not FREEandCLEAR and this third party may have a privacy policy that is different than FREEandCLEAR’s. Our objective is to be transparent about the information our users provide to us so if you have any questions about how your information is collected, used or stored please contact us using the FEEDBACK button on our web site.

Non-personally identifiable information

Now and in the future we may use technologies like session and persistent cookies, web beacons, log data, and third-party analytics services to collect and analyze information about all users. This includes things like users' search preferences, interaction with our web site, and location. We collect this user information anonymously. We may deploy technologies that enable our servers automatically record information ("log data") created by your use of our services. Log data may include information such as your IP address, browser type, operating system, the referring web page, pages visited, location, your mobile carrier, device, search terms, and cookie information. If we use these technologies we receive log data when you interact with our web site offerings.

Cookies are small data files that we transfer to your computer. We may deploy third party technologies or services that use "session" cookies to keep you logged in while you use our services, to better understand how you interact with our web site, and to monitor aggregate usage and web traffic information on our web site. We may deploy third party technologies or services that use "persistent" cookies to recognize you each time you return to our web site.

Most Internet browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can change your settings or use third-party tools to refuse cookies or prompt you before accepting cookies from the websites you visit. You can also use your browser settings or other tools to delete cookies you already have.

If you use our web site through a mobile device or app (if we develop one in the future), we will collect location data directly from your device automatically if your device allows us to do so. In some circumstances, you may have to opt into sharing your location data with us. Additionally, your mobile device may provide you with choices about how and whether location data is shared with us.

We may use and store information about your location to provide localized features, to analyze our services with the help of third-party analytics technologies and service providers, to provide you with relevant advertising and marketing materials, and otherwise to improve FREEandCLEAR.

In order to provide and improve our web site offerings and to share relevant ads with you, we may use and disclose to our advertising and analytics partners non-personally identifiable information that we collect, including cookie data, log data, and mobile data. We will never re-identify non-personally identifiable information by combining it with personally identifiable information.

When you use our SHARE feature to share our tools and content (e.g., sharing on Facebook, Google + or emailing a web site link to a friend), your sharing activity will be processed through a third party's site or service. These third parties' privacy policies, not ours, govern the collection and use of the information collected on those sites.

If you use our user-generated content offerings such as our FREEandCLEAR Mortgage Encyclopedia, Blog, ASK AN EXPERT, FEEDBACK and MORTGAGE Q&A offerings, you should be aware that any content you submit may be posted on our web site in a totally anonymous fashion. We will not disclose any personally identifiable information you provide (such as your email address) when you use these offerings; however, we may make the content of your submission available in a generic manner for other FREEandCLEAR users to review. For example, if you submit a question using our ASK AN EXPERT feature, your question and the answer to your question may be posted to the FREEandCLEAR Mortgage Q&A section although all personally identifiable information will be removed when the question and answer are published on FREEandCLEAR.

We may post user content, including testimonials and reviews, on our website. Some of these may contain personally identifiable information. We will obtain our users’ consent via email prior to posting any testimonials or reviews that include our users’ names.

Protecting Ourselves and Our Users: We may release personal information when we believe that doing so is appropriate to comply with a legitimate law, regulation, or legal request; to enforce or apply our policies; to initiate, render, bill, and collect for amounts owed to us; to protect our rights or property; to protect the safety of our users; to address fraud, security, or technical issues; or if we reasonably believe that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure of communications or justifies disclosure of records without delay.

Website Third-Party Ad Services: We may use third-party ad services to deliver ads to you on FREEandCLEAR. These third-party ad servers may collect and use non-personally identifiable information about your visits to FREEandCLEAR in order to present advertisements that may be of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice or to opt out of having this information used by third-party ad servers to provide targeted ads on our site, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp.

Mobile Ad Networks and Analytics: For our mobile products, in the future we may use third-party service providers for the limited purpose of helping us analyze your mobile log data and location data, so that we can improve and localize our services, show you relevant advertisements, and study the way our mobile users interact with our site and offerings.

Other Privacy Topics

Right now we do not email our users but we may decide to do so in the future, only with the permission of our users. You can control whether you receive emails from us by following the instructions at the end of each email we send (if we ever decide to send emails).

FREEandCLEAR does not knowingly collect or store any personal information about persons under the age of 13. If you believe a child is using this service without parental consent, please contact us using the FEEDBACK feature on our web site. While we want to encourage financial literacy among children, they typically cannot afford mortgages, as most parents are quick to point out.

Third-Party Websites: Our Site may contain links to other websites. When you click on one of these links, you are navigating to another website. We do not accept liability for misuse of any information by any website controller to which we may link. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of these sites, which may differ from ours. We use commercially reasonable security measures to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. However, we cannot absolutely guarantee the protection of any information shared with us.

We may update this privacy policy to reflect changes to our business or our information and privacy practices. If we make any change in how we use your personal information by means of a notice on this site prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices. Congratulations! Because you read to the end of this privacy notice you will receive a prize.