AgCredit of South Texas ACA Privacy Practices

Introduction

Thank you for visiting our Web site and reviewing our Privacy Practices Policy.  Our Privacy Practices Policy is clear: We will collect no personal information about you when you visit our Web site unless you choose to provide that information to us.

Is My Information Kept Confidential by You?

Yes. Business owners often share their financial and private information with outside professionals to gain assistance or credit for their businesses. When doing so, business owners have the right to expect that appropriate steps will be taken to keep their information confidential. We respect your right to confidentiality and take steps we believe will afford your information the confidentiality you expect.

For example, computer access is given only to employees involved in the process of administering or monitoring account information. Staff must adhere to standards of conduct that prohibit unauthorized use of your information. We do not sell customer information to third parties. Unless required by law, legal process or required government disclosures, or under other very limited circumstances under Farm Credit regulations, your information is not provided to others, including your accountant or attorney, without your authorization.

How Do You Protect My Privacy on the Internet?

Protecting the privacy of your information that can be accessed by you on the Internet is a priority to us. While no system of security is absolutely foolproof, we employ many security measures in our efforts to safeguard your information, including:

• Browser encryption - To use Account Access, you must use an Internet browser that utilizes 128-bit encryption technology. This is an industry standard for secure area browsing when using information of a sensitive nature.

·         Enrollment - Account Access includes an extended enrollment process to assure that only you receive information about your account. After completing and electronically submitting the enrollment form, a Representative approves your enrollment and notifies you. We believe that the additional time required to enroll, relative to other Internet services, is offset by the greater assurance of your privacy.

·         PIN - We’ve made our PIN selection and verification parameters stringent to reduce the potential for security breaches. A PIN must be at least 4 and no more than 10 characters long. Of course, you must protect the confidentiality and use of your PIN. PINs are encrypted.

·         Human review - Once enrolled and active, you can immediately access information about your account such as loan balance, payment amount, interest rate, etc. Loan numbers may be submitted by you electronically, but must be reviewed and verified by an Association representative before you have access to it via the Internet. This usually takes one business day. This step also helps prevent any unauthorized access to your account.

·         Software safeguards - A "time out" feature exists to keep others from viewing your data after you have left your computer. After 5 minutes, the site will lock up and will require you to again sign-on, with re-entry of your PIN. To thwart would-be hackers, a customer’s account will be inaccessible after three unsuccessful sign-on attempts. You can attempt to log in at a later time. All activities are designed to be electronically logged, giving us the ability to review the logs if any suspicious activity occurs.

·         Secure electronic mail - Account Access includes a secure electronic mail system. A secure messaging system such as this is used for passing confidential information. This system is designed in such a way that passing of information outside the secure area is restricted. This allows you to communicate directly with us with the comfort of knowing that your information is protected and secure.

·         Firewall - The only way to get access to customer account information is by coming through the secured section of our website through a "firewall".

How can I protect my information?

Keep your PIN confidential and safe. Do not allow others to use you PINs or otherwise access your account.

Sign off of your Account Access session before walking away from your computer or before visiting other Internet sites.

Use our secure electronic mail, rather than your regular Internet e-mail for communicating with us.

What information do you gather about me?

When you visit our website, we generally automatically recognize your domain name and e-mail address. We collect the e-mail information on what pages and features you access or use. We also collect the information you voluntarily provide us.

The information we collect is used to communicate with you via e-mail where appropriate, improve our web site, personalize the content of our web site for you, and notify you about updates to our website or the service we offer. This information is not retained after initial contact, unless at your request (such as applying for credit or other services), and is destroyed after this purpose has been fulfilled.

From time to time, we may also employ "cookies" for better operation of our website. A "cookie" generally permits websites to recognize whether or not you have visited the site before. It is a piece of data given to a browser by a web server, so that the browser will hand it back to the server on subsequent visits. 

If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the Web site, read pages, or download information, we may, through the use of cookies, gather and store certain information about your visit automatically.  This information does not identify you personally.  In this manner, we may automatically collect and store only the following information about your visit:

1.       Your Internet domain (i.e., “yourcompany.com”) if you use a private Internet access account, and IP address from which you access your site.

2.       The type of browser and operating system used to access our site.

3.       The date and time you access our site.

4.       The pages you visit, and

5.       If you linked to our Web site from another Web site, the address of that web site.

Protecting our children

We do not knowingly solicit data from children, and we do not knowingly market to children. We recognize that protecting children's identities and privacy online is important and that the responsibility to do so rests with both the online industry and with parents.

Security, Intrusion and Detection Language

For Web site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this computer system employs software programs (commonly known as “sniffers”) to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload, change, corrupt information, or to otherwise cause damage (commonly known as “hacking”)

Web Linking

While we do our best to provide you with helpful, trustworthy resources, we cannot endorse, approve or guarantee information, products, services, or recommendations provided at a third party Web site.  Because we may not always know when information in a linked site changes, we are not responsible for content or accuracy of any third party Web sites.  We will not be responsible for any loss or damage of any sort resulting from the use of a link on our web site nor will we be liable for any failure of products or services advertised or provided on these linked sites.

 

We offer links to you on an “as is” basis.  When you visit a third-party Web site by using a link on our web site, our Privacy Policy or security practices will no longer protect you.  The data collection, use and security practices of the linked site may differ from the practices of our site.  You should familiarize yourself with the Privacy Policy and security practices of the linked web site.  Those are the policy and practices that will apply to your use of the linked Web site, NOT our policy and practices. 

Who do I contact if I have questions about confidentiality or privacy?

You can count on us to keep you informed about how we protect your privacy and limit the sharing of information you provide to us - whether it's at an association office, over the phone or through the Internet. If you have questions about confidentiality or privacy, you may email us at Larry.Wade@farmcreditbank.com or, during normal business hours, call (956) 447-5500 and ask for Larry Wade.