(last updated: March 2005)
We, Realty Direct Franchise Corporation, have created
this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our
firm commitment to privacy. This privacy statement
discloses the information collection and disclosure
practices for our Web sites (the "Sites").
By accessing the Sites, you consent to the collection
and use of information as described herein. We reserve
the right to change this privacy statement at any
time. If we make any material changes to our privacy
statement, we will post a new statement on the Sites
and update the effective date set forth above.
Therefore, we encourage you to check the date of our
privacy statement whenever you visit the Sites to
see if it has been updated since your last visit.
INFORMATION WE COLLECT
Personal Information. Our Sites provide you with various
services related to home selling and home buying (e.g.,
estimates of current market value of homes, moving
costs, mortgage or finance costs, current home listings,
neighborhood information, etc.). In order to provide
these services, we collect information from you through
our Sites and forward it to one or more third party
service providers that use the information to provide
you with the services you requested. If you are a
homeowner or potential homeowner, we collect personally
identifying information from you through our Sites,
including but not limited to your name, address, phone
number, e-mail address, and information about your
home and moving plans. We also collect your e-mail
address if you register to receive our newsletter,
Home Owner Tips, as well as the email addresses of
others that you voluntarily provide to us as part
of our "Tell A Friend" service (which we
use to send an email inviting the recipient to use
our services). If you are a service provider interested
in preparing market evaluations, estimated selling
price ranges, home listing information, etc. for Realty
Direct Franchise Corporation, we collect your contact
and professional information, including but not limited
to your name, company, address, phone number and e-mail
address.
Aggregate Information. Aggregate information is data
we collect about a group or category of products,
services or users, from which individual user identities
have been removed. We collect aggregate information
about you and your use of our services and combine
it with information about how others use the same
service. Such aggregate information includes, without
limitation, site traffic, page views, and impressions.
This information may be correlated to you for our
internal use only. However, we may collect, compile,
store, publish, promote, sell, or otherwise disclose
or use any and all aggregate information (i.e., information
that does not personally identify you).
USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We use personal information internally to serve our
users and to enhance and extend our relationship with
our users. For example, by understanding how you use
the Sites from your computer, we are able to customize
and personalize your experience. More specifically,
we use personal information for the purposes for which
it was collected (such as to provide you with services
you have requested), to anticipate and resolve problems
with our Sites, to respond to customer support inquiries,
and to send you periodic e-mail newsletters (provided
you register to receive our newsletter), and for our
own internal operations (including internal analysis
as described below). You should review the following
section to understand when we disclose personal information
to third parties.
DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Except as set forth in this privacy statement, we
do not disclose, sell, rent, loan, trade or lease
any personally identifying information collected at
our Sites to any third party. We will disclose personal
information in the following circumstances:
Internal Analysis and Operations. We will use and
disclose information about you for our own internal
statistical, design or operational purposes, such
as to estimate our audience size, measure aggregate
traffic patterns, and understand demographic, user
interest, purchasing and other trends among our users.
We may outsource these tasks and disclose personal
information about you to third parties, provided the
use and disclosure of your personal information by
these third parties is restricted to performance of
such tasks. We may also share personal information
with third-party vendors who assist us in performing
internal functions necessary to operate our business.
We require our third party vendors to keep such information
confidential and to only use the information for the
purpose it was provided.
Transaction Processing. We will disclose personal
information to third parties as necessary to complete
transactions you have requested and to perform services
for you on our behalf. As stated above, your personal
information is forwarded to one or more third party
service providers (such as real estate agents, brokers,
lenders and other real estate professionals) in order
to provide you with the services you request. If a
particular service provider is unable to fulfill your
request within a reasonable time, we may forward your
information to an alternate service provider to ensure
that your request is fulfilled. Service providers
may contact you to complete the transactions you have
requested by any methods available to him or her including
via e-mail, telephone, regular mail, in person visits
or other means. We do not regulate how these third
party service providers use or disclose your personal
information and are not responsible for removing your
information from any third party lists.
Please contact the third party service providers
directly to be removed from their lists.
Protection of Realty Direct Franchise Corporation
and Others: We disclose personal information when
we believe it is appropriate to comply with the law
(e.g., a lawful subpoena, warrant or court order);
to enforce or apply this privacy statement or our
other policies or agreements; to initiate, render,
bill, and collect for amounts owed to us; to protect
our or our users' rights, property or safety; or to
protect our users from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful
use of, our Sites; 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.
Business Transfers. In addition, information about
users of our Sites, including personally identifiable
information provided to us by our users, may be disclosed
as part of any merger, acquisition, debt financing,
sale of company assets, as well as in the event of
an insolvency, bankruptcy or receivership in which
personally identifiable information could be transferred
to third parties as one of the business assets of
the company.
LINKS
Please be aware that we may provide links to third
party Web sites from our Sites as a service to our
users and we are not responsible for the content or
information collection practices of those sites. We
have no ability to control the privacy and data collection
practices of such sites and the privacy policies of
such sites may differ from that of Realty Direct Franchise
Corporation. Therefore, we encourage you to review
and understand the privacy policies of such sites
before providing them with any information.
COOKIES AND WEB BEACONS
We may use cookies to identify users and customize
their experience on our site based on information
they give us. Cookies are small pieces of information
or files that are stored on a user's computer by the
Web server through a user's browser for record keeping
purposes. A cookie itself is not designed or intended
to read any information from your computer (other
than the contents of the cookie); rather, it is an
identifier used by the Web site that originally placed
it your hard drive. The actual contents of the cookie
information can be retrieved by the same site's Web
server in order to personalize, monitor, or regulate
the use of the site. We do not use Web beacons, or
similar technology on our Sites. However, we permit
third parties to place Web beacons on our Sites to
monitor the effectiveness of advertising and for other
lawful purposes. A Web beacon, also known as a "Web
bug," is a small, graphic image on a Web page,
Web-based document or in an e-mail message that is
designed to allow the site owner or a third party
to monitor who is visiting a site. Web beacons collect
non-personally identifying information such as the
IP address of the computer that the Web beacon is
sent to, the URL of the page the Web beacon comes
from and the time it was viewed. We do not use (or
permit third parties to use) Web beacons to collect
personally identifying information about you.
SECURITY
We use reasonable security measures to store and maintain
personally identifying information to protect it from
loss, misuse, alternation or destruction by any unauthorized
party while it is under our control.
CHILDREN
We do not intend, and these Sites are not designed,
to collect personal information from children under
the age of 13. If you are under 13 years old, you
should not register for our services or otherwise
provide information on our Sites.
CHOICE AND ACCESS
Realty Direct Franchise Corporation gives users the
following options for accessing, changing and deleting
personal information previously provided, or opting
out of receiving communications from us:
Please Contact Us.
QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS
If you have any questions about this privacy statement,
the practices of our Sites, or your dealings with
our Sites, Please Contact
Us.