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YOU
HAVE A RIGHT TO PRIVACY
We
respect that.
Powder
House Mortgage Company, Inc. will NOT give, sell or distribute your information
to any other parties for marketing purposes. As
a borrower, you should know that mortgage transactions are a matter
of public record and that third parties can obtain information about
your transaction from many other sources for use in their marketing
activities. In some cases, marketers may even use our name, but the
fact remains that these marketing activities are neither condoned nor
abetted by PHMC. When you visit our website, we do not collect any
information about you unless you fill out one of our request forms.
That means we do not use cookies, collect your IP address, or do
anything else to identify you until you give us this information
yourself. You can browse through our web site without being concerned
that we have done anything to infringe upon your privacy.
INFORMATION GATHERING
We gather your information for 3
reasons:
1.
To provide you with a rate quote or pre-approval.
2. To lock in a rate.
3.
To process and fulfill your loan application.
When
you apply for a Quick Quote, we consider you a customer and extend to
you the confidentiality protection required under the law. Because a
Quick Quote is only a good faith estimate, we do not check your
credit, and we do not share your information with any other party.
When
you apply for PRE-APPROVAL or a RATE LOCK the information you are
providing may be shared with other parties involved in the
obtaining of financing for this transaction. This information is used to gather documentation on any
borrower included in the transaction or on the subject property. It
is also used to process, underwrite and provide closing
documentation for your loan application. All such parties are
constrained by confidentiality. Whenever you submit information to us
for a rate lock, you are hereby considered to be giving permission
for us to check your credit and to use this credit information to
evaluate your eligibility for the loan program you have requested. By
requesting this either type of transaction, you hereby certify that
you are requesting a mortgage loan either individually or jointly
and, in the case of a joint transaction, you are certifying that you
have the right to make this representation on behalf of the other
person listed on this application. If this is a joint transaction,
both parties must sign all required documents to complete the
original application at the closing.
In addition to what you provide us
through our website or your loan documentation, we
obtain information about you from other sources, depending on
the type of application you make. These include credit reporting agencies,
employers
(for verification of employment), landlords
(for verification of rent payments), real
estate agents involved in a purchase transaction, and
creditors
holding liens to be paid off in a refinance transaction.
INFORMATION USE
We
use your information to verify incomes, assets, liabilities and
creditworthiness, as well as conformity to underwriting
guidelines. We share this information with:
1. The investor
or investors to whom we are presenting your transaction for
financing
2.
The
underwriting companies the investor has selected to underwrite our applications
3.
The
credit bureaus we use to obtain your credit history
4.
The
appraisers we use to appraise the subject property
5.
The
attorneys or settlement agents we use to close and record the transactions.
The
investors and the underwriters are third parties who are not under
our control and, once the data we have about you has been given to
them, that data falls under their confidentiality guidelines, which
must conform to the same state and federal requirements as ours do.
However, we cannot guarantee that these organizations will not share
this information with third parties. The appraisers and attorneys we
use are our sub-contractors
and are required to conform to our confidentiality requirements.
HOW
TO PREVENT YOUR CREDIT INFORMATION FROM BEING DISTRIBUTED
The
investors to whom we sell your mortgage, and the underwriting
companies they use, are covered by the same regulations as we are.
When we sell your loan to an investor, the investor is under the same
obligations with respect to protecting your privacy as we are. As our sub-contractors,
our appraisers and attorneys operate under our confidentiality
requirements and are bound by the same agreements, which means that
they cannot divulge your confidential information.
The
credit bureaus, however, have a history of reselling customer
information in a manner that is beyond our control. You can prevent
them from marketing your credit information by executing the OPT-OUT
LETTER (click
here for a PDF copy.)
By sending each of the credit bureaus a copy of this fully executed
form, you can prevent them from marketing your data.
HOW
WE PROTECT YOUR DATA
This
web site is hosted on a dedicated file server, which means we are the
only company using that computer to store and retrieve data. The web
site has 128 bit SSL data encryption, which can be verified by
clicking on the Verisign emblem at the
Security
Page. As a consumer using our web site, you should be aware that we
do not use an online database. All of the information is transmitted
to us via email and, while email transmissions are inherently more
secure than database files, you should be aware that email is not
necessarily secure against interception.
PHMC's
online application forms are designed so that you will not have to
put any confidential information online at any time. (We define
confidential information as bank and credit card account numbers,
social security numbers and other identification numbers that can be
used in identity theft.) All confidential information is collected in
hard copy via fax or overnight mail. The sole exception to this
policy is that we must have social security numbers in order to lock
in a rate, but these numbers can be provided via fax, telephone, or
in the comments section of our forms where a data thief would not be
able to find them, or even by a separate email. |
