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We Respect Your Privacy
Our mission is to provide
you with superior products and services, along with the peace of mind
knowing that your privacy is secure. We understand your concerns about
guarding information about you and your Account. We want to assure you
that we have taken steps, and will continue to take steps, to safeguard
that information.
This Privacy Policy
describes our efforts to meet these objectives. It includes a summary
of the personal information we collect, when it may be shared with
others, how we safeguard the confidentiality and security of
information, and the steps that you may take to limit our sharing of
such information with others. Please read it carefully. We hope our
Privacy Policy will help you understand how we collect and share
information.
1. What Personal
Information Do We Collect?
To serve you better and
manage our business, it is important that we collect and maintain
accurate personal information about you. We obtain this information
from applications and other forms you submit to us, from your dealings
with us and others, from consumer reporting agencies, and from other
sources, such as our Web sites. For example:
- We may obtain
information such as your name, address and date of birth from
applications and other forms you submit to us
- We may obtain
information such as Account balances, payment history, your use
of your Account and the types of services you prefer from your
transactions and other dealings with us and others
- We may obtain
information such as the balances of your loans with other lenders
and your payment history with others from consumer reporting
agencies
- We may obtain
information such as your Internet service provider, your domain
name, your computer's operating system and Web browser, your
Web site use and your product and service preferences from your
visits to our Web sites
2. Is Personal
Information Shared with Others?
We limit the sharing of information with others. Many of the offers you
receive for products
and services are provided directly to you from us. For example, a
retailer that accepts the Discover® Card may come to us
with a special offer for Cardmembers, such as a discount certificate or
product upgrade. After careful consideration of the nature of the offer
and the company, we will create a list of Cardmembers who may be
interested in the offer based on certain characteristics. We will send
the offer directly to those Cardmembers on behalf of the retailer by,
for example, an insert in their monthly billing statement or mailing
the offer ourselves. We control the information used to make the offer;
we do not share the list or any information about our Cardmembers with
the retailer. However, please understand that if you do receive this
type of offer from us and choose to take advantage of it, the retailer
may then learn information about you because only Cardmembers with
certain characteristics received the offer.
There are, however,
circumstances in which we may share the information we collect about
you, as described in Section 1, with other companies in order to
provide you with access to products and services and to service your
Account effectively, as detailed below. We require these companies to
adhere to our privacy standards and to use this information only for
the limited purpose for which it was shared. We do not allow them to
disclose it to others without our prior approval.
a. Sharing Personal Information with Our Corporate Family
Our corporate
family offers a wide variety of products and services that can help
you manage your finances. In order to provide you with access to these
products and services, we may share the information we collect about
you, as described in Section 1, with other members of our corporate
family. These companies include financial service providers that offer
mortgage lending services, securities and asset management services,
investment opportunities and mutual funds, and may include
non-financial service providers in the future as our corporate family
continues to grow.
b. Sharing Personal Information with Non-Affiliated Parties for
Marketing Purposes
We may share the information we collect about you, as described in
Section 1, with non-affiliated third parties, including those that
accept the Discover Card, in order to provide you with access to
products and services offered directly by these companies that may be
of value to you. These companies include financial service providers,
such as insurance companies, and non-financial companies, such
as retailers.
c. Sharing Personal Information with Others
We may share the information we collect about you, as described in
Section 1, with companies that perform support or marketing services
on our behalf, such as mailing, market research and data processing;
other financial institutions with which we have joint marketing
agreements; or companies that are our partners for cobrand credit card
programs or reward programs. We may also share such information as
permitted by law.
3. How Do We Protect the Confidentiality, Security and Integrity of
Information About You?
We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to
protect the information we collect about you. Access to such information
is restricted to individuals who need it in order to service your
Account or provide products and services to you, and who are trained
in the proper handling of such information. Employees who violate
these confidentiality requirements are subject to our disciplinary
process. Where third parties provide support services, we require them
to conform to our privacy standards.
It is important that the information we maintain about you is accurate
and complete. If you see information in your monthly billing
statements or elsewhere which suggests that our information is
incomplete or inaccurate, please write to us at Discover Card, P.O.
Box 30943, Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0943 so that we can update this
information.
4. How Can You Limit Sharing of Information About You?
We respect your privacy and offer you choices as to whether we may
share information about you with others. If you prefer that we not
share the information we collect about you, as described in Section
1, with non-affiliated third parties or if you prefer that we not
share that information with companies in our corporate family, you
may opt out, that is, you may direct us not to share that
information. If you indicate a preference that we do not share that
information, please understand that you will not receive offers for
products and services provided by other companies that could help you
lower your costs, maximize your financial resources and manage your
finances.
To indicate your preferences, call us at 1-800-225-5202 or write to
us at Discover Card, P.O. Box 30961, Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0961. If
you have previously notified us about your privacy preferences, it is
not necessary to do so again unless you decide to change your
preferences. Your written request should include your name,
address, telephone number and Account number(s) and should not be
sent with any other correspondence. In order to process your request,
we require that the request be provided by you directly and not through
a third party. You will need to provide us with your preferences for
each credit card account you have with us.
You may notify us about your preferences at any time. If you have
previously notified us, it is not necessary to do so again unless you
decide to change your preferences. Your request will remain in effect
until you notify us otherwise. We will honor your request and not
share the information we collect about you, except as permitted by
law. For example, federal law permits us to share information about you
with consumer reporting agencies, service providers and marketing
partners. It also permits us to share information about our
experiences and transactions with you, such as your Account balance
and payment history, with other members of our corporate family. If
you are a new Cardmember, we will not share any information about you,
except as permitted by law, for thirty days after we provide this
Policy to you in order to give you a reasonable opportunity to inform
us about your preferences. If you are an existing Cardmember, please
understand that you may continue to receive marketing offers directly
from other companies that were already in production prior to the
processing of your request.
This Privacy Policy is provided to the primary Cardmember listed
on the Account. However, any joint Cardmember has the right to notify
us about preferences and we will treat that request as applying to the
entire Account. We do not share information about former customers,
except as permitted by law.
We are required by federal law to provide you with a copy of our
Privacy Policy each year. This Privacy Policy is provided to you by
Discover Bank and its subsidiaries, which currently include GTC
Insurance Agency, Inc. It applies to the Discover Platinum, Discover
Gold and Discover Classic Cards,
and the products and services offered in connection with those cards,
including The Register® card registration service (with
the exception of any information registered in connection with the
service, which will not be shared) and the Discover®
Exchange payment service. It is part of your Cardmember Agreement and
provides a further explanation of how we collect and share
information. You may have other rights under state laws that apply to
this information. Please note that you will also receive privacy
notices for other credit card accounts you have with us, as well as
other financial products and services provided to you by us and our
affiliates. You will need to indicate your preferences for each
of these separately as disclosed in the notice.
Important Notice for Vermont Residents
The State of Vermont recently adopted new privacy regulations that require
financial institutions to obtain your consent prior to sharing information
about you with others. In order to comply with this new law, we will not
share information we collect about you with non-affiliated third parties
or companies in our corporate family, as described in Section 4 of our
Privacy Policy, unless you call and tell us to do so. |
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