The MyStockFund Securities, Inc. Privacy Policy was developed as a result of our commitment to providing you with a secure web site that you can trust for your long-term stock investment needs. Our Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how and why we collect, safeguard, and use the personal information you provide us.
We collect personal information in order to open and maintain your MyStockFund accounts, process your orders, comply with securities and tax laws and regulations, administer our business activities, and provide you with member service. We are committed to safeguarding your information on our web site and ask that you help us by:
Log onto the web site using your unique user name and password when you want to access your MyStockFund account (see "Member Login” top right corner of the home page).
Log off the site when you're done using it and its investment tools (see "Account Logout" top right corner of the page).
The following other policies apply:
Personal Information When you open an account with MyStockFund, you will provide us with personal information and an authorization to obtain information from various other sources. For example, you will need to provide us the following personal information: your name, mailing address, home phone, and social security number, along with your bank, credit union or other financial institution account numbers, and your credit card number. You understand and agree that this personal information will be submitted to a third party for verification and accuracy.
In addition, when you make investments with MyStockFund, we will retain personal investment information about those investments and about your brokerage account. If you communicate with us in writing or by e-mail, we will retain the content of your correspondence or email message along with your email address and our response. And, if you close your account, we will retain personal information in an "inactive" status that will not be used except as required by securities and other laws.
Aggregate Information Using our server logs and information from "cookies" (a small piece of software that the MyStockFund web server puts on your browser to recognize when you visit the site) that we use, we will collect information about you and combine it with information we collect from other visitors. This aggregate information may include: the date and time of your visit, the pages viewed, the time spent on our site, and the URL of the web site you came from. This information is collected and used on an aggregate basis.
We will safeguard your personal and investment information with encryption security software, including the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, fire walls, password implementation, as well as other precautions, including secure physical ("bricks and mortar") facilities, fire protection, and data redundancy with backups.
When you come to the MyStockFund website to access your account information, place a buy or sell order, transfer funds by ACH, or use a personal credit card, our secure server software encrypts the information you provide us before it is sent. This information is securely scrambled and not decoded until it reaches our web site.
When using email to communicate with us, you should know that personal and other confidential information such as your account holdings or account number may not be secure. Therefore, unless you know that your email is secure, we ask that you do not email us confidential information.
To prevent others from gaining access to your account and personal and investment information, we recommend that you log off from the MyStockFund web site, using the "Log Off" function, every time you finish using the site and its investment tools.
Personal Information We will use personal information to process your MyStockFund orders, maintain and provide you with information about your MyStockFund account, and provide you member service and support. We will also use this personal information to comply with securities and tax laws and regulations and to administer our business activities.
We will also use personal information to notify you about changes to the MyStockFund web site, new services soon to be released, and special offers being made to MyStockFund members. You will always have the chance to “opt out” and decline information on special offers by sending email to us at [email protected].
Aggregate Information Aggregate information gathered from visits to our web site is used to improve our web site design and arrange our web pages in the most user friendly way. This aggregate information will be used in reports and shared with business partners. To protect your anonymity, this aggregate information will not be associated with you personally, and we will retain all ownership rights to aggregate information.
Disclosure of Personal Information to Service Providers and Joint Marketers We may disclose your personal information to companies that perform marketing or other services on our behalf, such as our clearing broker, our parent corporation, and to other financial institutions, such as your credit union in the event that we have joint marketing arrangements with your credit union. For your protection, we will require that these companies keep this personal information secure and confidential. We will not disclose your MyStockFund account number, investment positions, investment value, or other personal investment information about your MyStockFund account to these companies.
Disclosure of Personal Information to Your Credit Union, and Your Opportunity to "Opt Out" We may disclose personal information such as your account name, tax identification number, and credit union account number to your credit union if they participate in our Channel Partner Programs. For your protection, we will require that your credit union keep this personal information secure and confidential. We will not disclose your MyStockFund account number, investment positions, investment value, or other personal investment information about your MyStockFund account to your credit union; however, if your credit union provides call center services for your account, then its personnel will have "view only" access to your MyStockFund account to allow them to respond to any member service inquiry you may make (of a clerical or ministerial nature only) regarding MyStockFund.
If you prefer that we not share your name and credit union member account number with your credit union, as described above, you may "opt out", that is, you may direct us not to share this information, by sending us an email at [email protected] or send a letter to MyStockFund Securities, Inc., P.O. Box 525, Herndon, Virginia 20172-0525, and provide the removal request.
Other Disclosure of Personal and Aggregate Information We may, if deemed necessary, disclose your personal information and all aggregate information to law enforcement or other government agencies, or to the securities exchanges or other third parties, as required or permitted by securities and other laws, for any lawful purpose, for example, to protect against fraud, respond to a subpoena, or service your account.
We may also disclose aggregate information to our business partners and other third parties, such as industry analysts, the media, securities exchanges and governmental agencies. This aggregate information will not be associated with you personally.
We attempt to maintain all personal information about you as current, accurate, and complete. You need to keep us advised at all times about any change in your personal information, such as change in residence address, email address, telephone numbers, etc. You can do this using the "Manage My Account" section of the web site.
We also ask that you notify us promptly if any of your MyStockFund account or personal investment information is incorrect or incomplete. We will correct any information in our database that is found to be incorrect as soon as is reasonably practical. If the information supplied is from a third party vendor, you must refer to their correct information policies for specific information (see MyStockFund Account Agreement, "Market Data", paragraph 26).
The MyStockFund web site will contain links to other web sites. Third parties operate these web sites, and they may solicit or collect their own personal information or data. We do not control and are not responsible for the privacy policy of other companies' web sites, or what those companies do with any personal information you provide them, or that they collect.
By using the MyStockFund web site, you agree and consent to our collection and use of your personal information and the aggregate information as described in this Privacy Policy. You further understand and agree that this Privacy Policy is a part of our MyStockFund Account Agreement.
We reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy from time to time, by posting any such change on this page. You agree that any such changes will become effective upon our posting, or upon such later date as may be indicated in the change.
Date: August 21, 2004
