Balance Homes Website Privacy Policy

Effective Date: March 21, 2022

Balance Homes, Inc. (together with our related, affiliated, and subsidiary companies, “Balance,” “Balance Homes,” “we,” “us” or “our”) recognizes the importance of protecting the privacy of our online visitors. As part of our commitment to use the information you share with us responsibly, we want you to be familiar with how we collect, use, and disclose information that relates to you, your computer, or your device and that enables your identification (“Personal Information”). The following privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) describes the way we handle Personal Information learned about you from your visits to our website available at https://www.balancehomes.com/ and all other websites and mobile applications operated by Balance that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Site”).

This Privacy Policy does NOT apply to Personal Information collected:

• other than directly through or from the Site, such as from telephone, facsimile, postal mail, personal delivery, or other or additional offline means or media, including during the application process to receive our products and/or services or during the provision of our products and/or services; or

• by any third party, including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from (or on) the Site.

If you apply for or obtain a product or service from us, we may collect additional information about you, and we may also process your Personal Information as described in any agreement you enter into with Balance and as described in our customer privacy notices available here: Summary of Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and U.S. Consumer Privacy Notice. If there are conflicts between the terms of this Privacy Policy and the terms of these customer privacy notices, the terms of the customer privacy notices will control. 

PLEASE REVIEW THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY. When you submit information to or through the Site, you consent to the collection and processing of your Personal Information as described in this Privacy Policy. By using the Site, you accept the terms of this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use, confirm that you are not located outside the United States, and consent to our collection, use, disclosure and retention of your Personal Information as described in this Privacy Policy. We currently only accept business and Site visitors within the United States. 

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1. Personal Information 

Balance collects Personal Information from you, which may include your name, email address, address, phone number, any information you provide to us when you schedule a call with us and any information you may provide to us to receive a proposal, such as an estimate of your mortgage pay-off amount, the status of your mortgage, and the type of property you reside in. This information is collected and stored electronically when you schedule a call with us or request to receive a proposal. 

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2. Information Collected Automatically 

In addition, through your use of the Site, we may also automatically gather information about your use of the Site that does not identify you directly but may identify your computer or device, as more fully described in Section 5 of this Privacy Policy (Cookies and Other Information Collection Tools) and Section 6 (Interest Based Advertising). This information may include: your IP address, browser type, browser version, access times, unique device identifiers and other technical information such as protocol status and substatus, bytes sent and received, and server information. 

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If you access the Site via a mobile device, we may collect the type of mobile device you use, your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of your mobile device, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser you use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

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We may also collect information about how you interact with the Site. This information is used by us for our business purposes, including for the operation and improvement of the Site, for technical troubleshooting, to maintain quality of the Site, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Site. 

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3. How Information is Used 

We may use the Personal Information we collect for any of the following purposes:

• to provide the Site to you and to improve the Site;
• to operate, improve, and personalize the products and services we offer, and to give each user a more consistent and personalized experience when interacting with us;
• to provide you with information about products and services we may provide and which we think may be of interest to you;
• for customer service, security, to detect fraud or illegal activities, and for archival and backup purposes in connection with the provision of the Site;
• to fulfil your requests, such as those related to providing a proposal; 
• to communicate with you;
• for internal business purposes, including without limitation, to help us evaluate the quality of the Site; to develop new products, services, and features; to better understand those individuals that utilize the Site; to verify your identity; to determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns; and to generally manage our operations; and
• as we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you, or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

We may use non-personal information or aggregate information that does not identify an individual without restriction, and we may share such information with third parties.  For example, we may use non-personal information to conduct research and analyses to support our mission. 

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4. Sharing of Information 

We may share your Personal Information as described below and as described at the point of collection:

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• With Third Party Service Providers Performing Services on Our Behalf. We share your personal information with our service providers to perform the functions for which we engage them. For example, we may use third parties to host the Site or assist us in providing functionality on the Site, provide analytics services for the Site, send out email updates about the Site and our products and services, and process payments (e.g., Stripe, PayPal and Braintree).
• For Legal Purposes. We may also share information that we collect from users as needed to enforce our rights, protect our property or protect the rights, property or safety of others, or as needed to support auditing, compliance and corporate governance functions. We will disclose personal information as we deem necessary to respond to a subpoena, regulation, binding order of a data protection agency, legal process, governmental request or other legal or regulatory process. We may also share personal information as required to pursue available remedies or limit damages we may sustain.
• Changes of Control. We may transfer or assign information, including your personal information, in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, liquidation, change in control or other sale by or of us or any affiliated entity (in each case whether in whole or in part). 

Balance does not share your Personal Information with third parties for those third parties’ direct marketing purposes.

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5. Cookies and Other Information Collection Tools 

Like many organizations, our Site may use “cookies” and technologies similar to cookies (like web beacons and server logs) to help make sure the Site is meeting the needs of our users and to help us make improvements and to personalize your experience on the Site.

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What are cookies? A cookie is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website or use an online service. When you visit the website or use the service again, the cookie allows that website or online service to recognize your browser or device. Cookies may store unique identifiers, user preferences and other information. 

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Duration of Cookies. We may use “session cookies” or “persistent cookies.” Session cookies are temporary and expire once you close your browser or once your session ends. Persistent cookies remain on your device for much longer or until you or your browser erase them. Persistent cookies have varying durations that are dependent on their expiration date. 

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What types of cookies do we use? Balance uses: 

• Necessary Cookies. These cookies are necessary for you to browse the Site and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the Site. Without these cookies, certain aspects of the Site may not be available to you.
• Notice Acceptance Cookies. These cookies identify whether Site visitors have accepted the use of cookies on the Site. 
• Functionality Cookies. These cookies collect information about how you have used the Site in the past and allow the Site to remember the choices you have made. These cookies allow us to improve how the Site works for you and tailor the Site to your preferences.
• Tracking and Performance Cookies. These cookies are used to track information about traffic to the Site and how users use the Site. The information gathered via these cookies may directly or indirectly identify you as an individual visitor. This is because the information collected is typically linked to a pseudonymous identifier associated with the device you use to access the Site. We may also use these cookies to test new pages, features or new functionality of the Site to see how our users react to them.

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How do I control cookies? Web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to manage and delete cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org. Some web browsers provide settings that allow a user to reject cookies or to alert a user when a cookie is placed on the user’s computer, tablet or mobile device. Most mobile devices also offer settings to reject mobile device identifiers. Although users are not required to accept cookies or mobile device identifiers, blocking or rejecting them may prevent access to some features available through the Site.

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Certain features of our Site may use local stored objects (or Flash Cookies), and are not managed by the same browser settings as those used for other cookies. For more information on how you can delete Flash Cookies, please read "Where can I change the settings for disabling, or deleting local shared objects?" available here.

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Use of Google Analytics / Firebase Analytics. We use Google Analytics for Firebase or Firebase Analytics to collect information about how visitors use the Site, including how long you spend on each page of our Site, and how you got to the Site. Identifiers such as cookies and app instance IDs are used by Google Analytics / Firebase Analytics to measure user interactions with the Site and IP addresses are used to provide and protect the security of the Site and to give us a sense of where in the world our users come from. We do not use data collected by cookies or similar tracking technologies to identify who you are, but we do use certain demographic information such as your age range (e.g., 18-24 years old) and gender to better understand the users of the Site. 

You can visit Safeguarding your data - Analytics Help (google.com) to learn more about Google Analytics’ use of cookies. You can visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout for information on how to opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

Google Analytics for Firebase collects mobile device identifiers (for example, Android Advertising ID and Advertising Identifier for iOS). You can disable this in the privacy settings on your device.

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Social Media Plug-ins. We use social media plug-ins from social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter, which are labeled on our Site with the well-known symbols of the respective social network. If you interact with these plug-ins, your activity on the Site may also be made available to those social networks. In order to understand how those social media networks use and disclose your Personal Information, please review the privacy policies available on the websites of those social media networks.

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6. Interest Based Advertising

We may collect information about your online activities on our Site to provide you with advertising about products and services tailored to your individual interests. We also may obtain information for this purpose from third-party websites on which our ads are served. This section of our Privacy Policy provides details and explains how to exercise your choices.

You may see certain ads on other websites because we work with advertising partners (including advertising networks) to engage in remarketing and retargeting activities. Our advertising partners allow us to target our messaging to users through demographic, interest-based and contextual means. These partners track your online activities over time and across websites, including our Site, by collecting information through automated means, including through the use of third-party cookies, web server logs, and web beacons. They use this information to show you advertisements that may be tailored to your individual interests. The information our advertising partners may collect includes data about your visits to websites that participate in the relevant advertising networks, such as the pages or advertisements you view and the actions you take on the websites. This data collection takes place both on our Site and on third-party websites that participate in the ad networks. This process also helps us track the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. For example, we utilize certain of our ad partners’ targeted advertising services to show you our ads on other websites based on your prior visits to our Site and other online activity.

Provided that a company participates in industry-developed programs designed to provide consumers choices about whether to receive targeted advertising, you may opt out of ad network interest-based advertising generally through the Network Advertising Initiative website or by visiting http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ (web-based advertising) or http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices (for mobile advertising). To learn more, please visit the websites operated by the Network Advertising Initiative and Digital Advertising Alliance at www.networkadvertising.org/choices. Opting-out does not mean that you will stop receiving ads from us.  It means that you still stop receiving ads from us that have been targeted to you based on your visits and browsing activity across websites over time.

We use Google Ads (AdWords) remarketing service is provided by Google Inc. You can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize the Google Display Network ads by visiting the Google Ads Settings page: http://www.google.com/settings/ads.

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7. Links to External Websites

Our Site may contain links to third-party websites. Any access to and use of such third-party websites is not governed by this Privacy Policy, but is instead governed by the privacy policies of those third-party websites, and we are not responsible for the information practices of such third-party websites.

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8. Security Used & Retention of Personal Information 

Balance uses reasonable security measures designed to prevent unauthorized intrusion to the Site and the alteration, acquisition or misuse of Personal Information, however, we will not be responsible for loss, corruption or unauthorized acquisition or misuse of Personal Information that you provide through the Site that is stored by us, or for any damages resulting from such loss, corruption or unauthorized acquisition or misuse.  

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9. Do Not Track

Our Site does not currently take any action when it receives a Do Not Track request. Do Not Track is a privacy preference that you can set in your web browser to indicate that you do not want certain information about your webpage visits collected across websites when you have not interacted with that service on the page. For details, including how to turn on Do Not Track, visit www.donottrack.us.

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10. Children 

We do not knowingly collect or maintain personal information from any person under the age of thirteen. No parts of our Site are directed to or designed to attract anyone under the age of thirteen. 

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11. Questions / Contact Us

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact us.

• By email: legal@balancehomes.com
• By phone number: +1-844-520-1234

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12. Notification of Changes

Any changes to our Privacy Policy will be posted to this page so users are always aware of the information we collect and how we use it. Accordingly, please refer back to this Privacy Policy frequently as it may change.

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