Your Privacy is Important to Us
At Affinity Credit Union we are committed to protecting your privacy
and safeguarding your personal and financial information. While the Internet
is revolutionizing the way that we do business - providing convenient access
to financial services from your home or office - we recognize that it also brings
concerns about Privacy and Security.
This Privacy Statement describes how your personal information is collected,
used and disclosed within our MemberDirect® Internet banking site.
The MemberDirect® site is the area of our website that requires
you to use your Account Number and Personal Access Code (PAC) to enter. By accessing
the MemberDirect® site, you agree to the collection, use and disclosure
of your personal information for the purposes described out in this Privacy
Statement.
For more information on all of our Privacy Policies and Practices please contact
your credit union.
Controlled Access to your Information
To ensure that you are the only person who accesses your personal information,
we restrict access to the MemberDirect® site by requiring you to
enter your Account Number and PAC to login. Only you know your PAC. Our employees
do not have access to your PAC, and they will not ask you to reveal it. If someone
does ask you to provide your PAC to them, you should refuse to do so and contact
us immediately.
You are responsible to ensure that your Account Number and PAC are not disclosed
to any other person. If you disclose your Account Number or PAC to any other
person or become aware of any unauthorized access, you are responsible to advise
us immediately by contacting us via facsimile.
Transactional Services
By design, our Internet banking site has many transactional functions
such as transfers between accounts and bill payment functions. These transactions
are all logged to ensure that your accounts are debited or credited appropriately,
and that a history of each transaction is available to verify your account.
We store and use your transactional information in the same fashion as if you
had performed the transaction at a branch or any other service channel.
We may also use transactional information for servicing your account - for example,
we may bill you for the particular transactions that you perform, or for the
services that you use.
Creating a Secure Channel
To create a secure channel between your browser and our server, we
use 128-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption, the highest level available.
To learn more about 128-bit SSL encryption, and our security policies, please
review our security information.
Website Usage Statistics
We may collect information about how our account holders are using
it. These usage statistics are only viewed in the aggregate - and are never
tied to an individual.
We use this information for purposes such as improving the pages where our account
holders are having difficulties, and to ensure that we have the appropriate
infrastructure in place to service future needs.
The information collected may include your IP address, your browser type and
your operating system, as well as data that is passively generated as you browse
our site, such as the number and types of pages visited, and the length of time
spent per page and on our site overall.
Our use of Cookies
We also use a key web technology called cookies. A cookie is a small
information token that sits on your computer. As you use the MemberDirect®
site, cookies are passed back and forth between our server and your browser.
While cookies can be used for a variety of reasons, we only use cookies where
they are of benefit to our account holders.
Specifically, we use two kinds of cookies - session cookies and persistent cookies.
A session cookie exists only for the length of your browsing session and is
deleted when you close your browser. A persistent cookie is a cookie that stays
on your computer after you close your browser. A persistent cookie may or may
not expire on a given date.
We use a session cookie to maintain the integrity of your Internet banking session.
With each page that you visit, the cookie is passed back and forth between our
server and your browser. We use the cookie to distinguish your session from
the many others that may be happening at the same time. Our session cookies
never store any personal information, such as your name, or date of birth, or
financial information, such as your accounts and balances.
Most recent browser versions allow the user to set some level of control over
which cookies are accepted and how your browser uses them. Many browsers will
allow you to accept cookies from only known, reliable sites that you select,
such as the MemberDirect® site. If you are concerned about cookies,
we encourage you to upgrade your browser to a recent version and review the
Help section of your browser to learn more about its specific control features.
Memorized Accounts Feature
We use a persistent cookie to store information to help you personalize
the MemberDirect® site and to make it easier to use. For example,
we allow you to make the MemberDirect® login easier by remembering
your Account Number and Branch within our Memorized Accounts feature. Since
the Memorized Accounts feature is optional, this cookie only contains information
that you have entered into it.
Logout Button
To ensure that someone cannot access your personal information, always
exit the MemberDirect® site using the logout button located at
the top of every page. When you exit using the logout button, we delete your
session cookie so that your session cannot be resumed unless your Account Number
and PAC are re-entered.
Enhanced Security Feature
On the login screen, our Enhanced Security feature provides you even
greater control over your privacy.
When you click on the Enhanced Security checkbox, the MemberDirect®
site will prevent your browser from caching (storing in the computer's memory)
those pages that you have viewed. Should you click on the "Back" button
to view a previous page during a session, the page will be recalled directly
from our server. Therefore, when you logout, no one will be able to view your
information by clicking on the Back button, or by viewing the browser's History.
We recommend that you use this function if you are accessing your accounts from
a publicly available computer such as in a library or airport. You may also
want to consider using the feature if you are using a computer at work, or a
friend's computer, to access your accounts.
Once again, it is important to remember to always logout of the MemberDirect®
site using the logout button.
Automatic Session Time-outs
In the event that you leave your computer without logging out, the
MemberDirect® site has been designed to end your session automatically
if our system detects that you have not provided any instructions or used the
browser buttons to navigate for several minutes. To restart the session, you
will need to provide your PAC again.
Email
General email is not secure since it passes through many points on
its route from you to us. If you are using general email to communicate with
us, we strongly recommend that you do not include personal financial information
(such as account numbers) within the email as we cannot guarantee its confidentiality
on route to us.
When you email us your comments, questions or instructions, you provide us your
email address and we use it to correspond with you. We then store your email
and our replies to you so that we can refer to them in future. By sending us
information or material, you grant to us an unconditional, irrevocable license
to use those materials or information and you acknowledge that we may use any
ideas, concepts or techniques that you send to us for any purpose, without compensation
to you.
We will not provide your email address to any third party without your consent.
We may use your email address to send you information about financial products
or services that we think may be of interest to you. If you do not want us to
contact you with product information by email, you may tell us so at any time
and we will discontinue the practice.
If you have asked us to provide you with information on a regular basis, or
if we email you information about our products or services, you may ask us to
remove you from the list at any time. We intend to include instructions to unsubscribe
from the list in every mailing, and on the site where you originally subscribed
to the list.
Service Partners
In providing our complete Internet banking service, we often use external
service partners and suppliers to assist us. In performing their duties, these
service partners may handle components of your personal information on our behalf.
We ensure through our contracts with these partners that they handle your information
with the same standard of care that you have come to expect from us. Our suppliers,
like our employees, are bound to maintain your confidentiality and may not use
the information for unauthorized purposes.
Some of our partners require that you first register with their service to permit
us to tie their functionality into the MemberDirect® site. Registration
for these external services will always be at your discretion. We may append
personally identifiable data to this registration for the Partner to use to
compare and validate the registration. You will always be notified of such an
action during the registration process.
Links to Other Sites
The MemberDirect® site may also contain links to other
websites or Internet resources. As an example, from time-to-time we may provide
links to Microsoft or Netscape to assist you in upgrading your Internet browser.
However, Affinity Credit Union has no responsibility or liability for or control
over these other websites or Internet resources or their collection, use and
disclosure of your personal information. Always review the privacy statements
of the sites that you are viewing.
Contact Us
Please contact your credit union if you have any questions or concerns
about our MemberDirect® Privacy Statement, or the practices of
this site.
Protecting Your Privacy-We're in it together
This Privacy Statement is effective September 1, 2003. As we continue to expand
our online banking service to serve you better, and as new Internet technologies
become available, we will need to review and revise this Privacy Statement.
In the event of an amendment, an appropriate notice will be provided to you.
Please check this Privacy Statement on our website regularly for changes. Changes
to this Privacy Statement will apply to information and data collected from
the date of posting and will not be applied to existing information held by
us without your consent.