Revised 07/31/2023
This Privacy Policy describes the practices of BMG Services, LLC d/b/a CreditSoup (also referred to below as "we" or "our" or "us") regarding the use of information we collect about you from our https://creditsoup.com/ website (the “Site”).
The Site is intended for individuals who are at least 18 years of age and reside in the United States. If you are under 18 years of age or reside outside of the United States, you should not visit the Site or use our Services. Use of the Site or Services, including any provision of personally or non-personally identifiable information, by anyone under 18 years of age is strictly prohibited.
By using the Site, you acknowledge that you have read this Privacy Policy and accept its terms. If you do not agree to the Privacy Policy after your close and careful reading, you should not authorize us to send you email offers. You must be a United States citizen and 18 years or older to use the Site.
We may modify this Privacy Policy at any time by posting a revised version on the Site. Any modification will be effective on the revision date that appears at the bottom of this page. You acknowledge and agree that it is your responsibility to review this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to learn about any modifications.
Section 1: How our Site Works.
Our Site provides online marketplace and information services for personal financial products, including credit cards, personal loans, automobile (auto) loans, insurance and similar products (collectively, “Products”). In doing so, we act as intermediary between consumers who are interested in such Products, and a variety of non-affiliated banks, lenders, and other financial services institutions (“Providers”) who provide opportunities to apply for these Products. Product opportunities are presented as display advertisements on our Site that, when clicked on, take you to the website of a Provider.
Part of our Service is to select Product opportunities that might interest you through our Inquiry process. An “Inquiry” occurs when you choose to submit Information to us through a form on our Site so we can retrieve and show you opportunities for credit cards, loans, or other Products. We are NOT a bank, lender, credit card issuer, or any other type of creditor, and therefore DO NOT make loans or credit decisions in connection with loans or issuing credit cards. We offer marketing and other business services to the Providers who advertise their Product opportunities through our Site. We do not endorse or recommend any particular Provider, or the Products of any such Provider.
Section 2. Information We Collect
Personal Information. We collect and store in our database personal information from you when you voluntarily provide such information, such as when you complete and submit a form on our Site. Personal Information is information that can identify you or your household. The Personal Information we collect and store includes your name, address, email address, birthdate, checking account verification, and your agreement to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
We do not store other common types of Personal Information such as your social security number, driver’s license number, passport number, account names or numbers, or loan or credit card numbers. We may collect this information temporarily in order to forward it to credit reporting companies (TransUnion, Experian, and the like) so that we can obtain your credit score and other information for you. In some circumstances, we may forward this information to Providers to determine whether their Products are available to you. In all circumstances we immediately erase this information. We also do not collect or store Personal Information regarding your gender, marital status, or race, data regarding your personal transactions, biometric data, geolocation data (other than address), or data relating to your education, profession or employment.
Other Personal Details. For some Products, we will collect and store in our database additional information that relates to you but that cannot be used to identify you or your household. This information includes your housing status, time at address, monthly Rent/Mortgage Payment, employment status, annual income (by range), how you are paid, your highest education level and your citizenship status, and other similar information. This information is often helpful in evaluating the suitability of Provider Products.
Information from Third Parties. In the course of providing our Services, information about you may be collected from third party service providers, such as social networks, credit bureaus, and other data vendors who have data on your financial profile or other demographic information. For example, we receive and store your credit score. We store this information in our database, but this information, alone, cannot be used to identify you or your household.
Non-Personal Information. We also collect other non-Personal Information such as
- Type of browser and operating system used
- Device type and ID
- Date and time of your visit to the Site
- Actions you performed or attempted, including clickstream data
- Codes that correspond to the status of your actions
- The geographic location of the computer or mobile device you use to access the Site
All of the information we collect and store is subject to usage and privacy protections under one or more federal laws and interpreting regulations including the Fair Credit Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act. These laws preempt the conflicting requirements of any state laws, including state privacy laws.
Section 3. Our Use of Your Information
Product Selection. We use your Personal Information to enable us to email or otherwise communicate with you and present content, Products and services on financial products we think you might be interested in. We do not sell your Personal Information. However, we do provide your Personal Information to our Providers when you click on one of their advertisements on our Site. Your selection of an advertisement constitutes your consent to deliver this information.
CreditSoup is a digital marketplace. We are NOT a bank, lender, credit card issuer, or any other type of creditor, and therefore we DO NOT make credit decisions in connection with the products and services we might advertise to you. We are paid fees by our advertisers. Your consent to this Privacy Policy constitutes your consent to this compensation arrangement. We do not charge you any fees, but please be advised that if and when you secure a credit card, loan, or obtain any other product by clicking on our advertisements, you may be responsible for paying associated fees to the Product Provider.
Please keep in mind the following when selecting one of our advertisements:
- We do not endorse or recommend the Provider or their Product or service.
- The service and Product Providers are solely responsible for their services and Products. You agree that we will not be liable for any damages or costs arising out of, or in any way connected with, your use of these products or services.
- We are not an agent of either you or the service or Product Providers.
- Please consult with a competent professional financial advisor before making any final decisions, especially if you are unfamiliar with consumer credit and/or inexperienced with personal financial management.
- Our service and Product Providers may obtain and keep the information that you, we, or any third parties have provided to them. You should review the Provider privacy policy on their site for information on what information they collect and how they use it.
- Each service or Product Provider has its own application process and will typically require additional information from you prior to providing a final offer. If you meet their standards at the time your application is submitted to them, the Provider will contact you directly to discuss your application, the specific terms of your offer, and what, if any, additional data or documents they need from you.
Site Analysis. We also use your information for statistical analysis and for editorial or feedback purposes for our advertisers and Product Providers. Information collected by us may be added to our databases and used for future e-mails or postal mailings regarding Site updates, new Products and services, upcoming events, and/or status of orders placed online. We often conduct research using the information provided to us. This research may be compiled and analyzed on an aggregate basis, and we may share this aggregate data with our affiliates, agents, lenders and Product Providers. This aggregate information does not identify you personally. We may also disclose aggregated statistics in order to describe our Site to current and prospective card issuers, lenders and other Product Providers, and to other third parties for other lawful purposes. We also have the right to use your name in connection with the submitted materials and other information as well as in connection with all advertising, marketing and promotional material related thereto.
Section 4. Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties
We do not sell your Personal Information and do not disclose your Personal Information to other third-party digital marketers. We do disclose your information in the following situations:
Disclosure to Product Providers to Evaluate Your Suitability for their Product(s). In some cases, we will contact potential Providers and disclose your Personal Information to them for purposes of determining whether you would qualify for their Product opportunities. We do this to save you time as we present to you only potential Products that have a higher likelihood of fitting your financial profile.
Disclosure to Product Providers You Select. In addition to the aggregate Site analysis discussed above, we also disclose your Personal Information to Providers you select when you click on an advertisement on our Site. These Providers may retain or use your Information whether or not you buy their Products or use their services. You should contact these Providers directly to learn about their own privacy policy and information sharing practices.
Disclosure to Our Service Providers. We may also disclose your Personal Information to companies for the business purpose of providing services to us in connection with our email, texting and browser push advertising programs. Such companies may provide us with one or more of the following services: (1) selection of financial product advertisements and offers, (2) preparation of emails and Product advertisements, and/or (3) mailing or delivering the advertisements.
Legally Required Disclosures. We may disclose your Personal Information where necessary to comply with any applicable law, regulations, subpoena or legal process or to respond to any governmental request and/or cooperate with law enforcement. Examples include our disclosure of your information to:
- Enforce our Terms of Use, including investigating potential violations
- Protect the rights, safety, and security of our Users, our Services or equipment, or any third-party partner or Product Provider
- Detect, prevent, investigate, or otherwise mitigate fraud, security or technical issues related to our services or our Product Providers
- Comply with any applicable law, regulation, subpoena or legal process; respond to any governmental requests; and/or cooperate with law enforcement, if we believe such action is required or permitted by law
Publicly Posted Information or Content. We may provide opportunities on the Site for you to publicly post reviews, comments, or other content, which may include Personal or Member Profile Information, like your name or username. Please carefully consider what you decide to share in these public forums.
Section 5. Notice of Your Opt-Out Rights
CreditSoup Communications. You may opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us by writing to us at the address below, by sending an email requesting removal through our contact form, by selecting the unsubscribe link on any email we send to you, or by entering your e-mail address on our unsubscribe page. You may later request that we resume our emails to you by writing to us at the address below or by sending an email requesting reinstatement through our contact form.
Sale of Personal Information. We do not sell your Personal Information and it is not necessary for you to opt-out of this process. However, if you wish, you may request to be added to our Do Not Sell list by writing to us via postal mail at the address below, by sending an email requesting removal through our contact form, or by completing and submitting our ”Do Not Sell My Personal Information” page.
Request to Delete Personal Information. You may request that we delete your Personal Information by writing to us at the address below or by completing our “Delete My Personal Information” page. Please note that we will be unable to complete any pending transactions if you elect to delete information we or our Product Providers need to process your requests. In addition, once we delete your information, we will not be able to retrieve it. We will delete your information within 45 days of your request unless we are otherwise required to keep the information to comply with federal, state or local laws and regulations. We will also direct any of our third-party service providers who received your Personal Information to delete your Personal Information from their records.
Please understand that under applicable federal law, in most cases, your Personal Information must be kept by us for regulatory and reporting purposes. Moreover, we will not delete Personal Information that we collect, process, store or disclose pursuant to the federal Graham-Leach-Bliley Act. These exceptions will almost always prohibit us from deleting any of your Personal Information, but upon your request, we will check to be sure that these exceptions apply.
Third-Party Advertisers. We may allow third parties in addition to Product Providers to display advertising on the Site. We may share your Information with such third-party advertisers in accordance with this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Those parties may also collect information about you, or about others using your computer, through their own tracking technologies. To understand how such third parties may use the information they collect, you will need to review the particular advertiser’s own privacy policy.
Advertising Networks. Some of our third-party vendors and Product Providers are advertising networks, marketers, publishers, and other entities who conduct analytics and advertise products and services on websites with which we are not affiliated (“Advertising Vendors”). In connection with such services, we or our Advertising Vendors may use cookies, web beacons, tracking Identification codes and other similar technologies to record your preferences, track the use of our Site or other websites, and collect Information in order to perform marketing and other analytics, or to serve you advertisements that are more likely to be of interest ("Interest-Based Advertisements"). In doing so, these third parties may collect non-personally identifiable data including for example the make, model, settings, specifications (e.g., CPU speed, connection speed, browser type, operating system, device identifier) and geographic location of your computer, mobile or other device, as well as date/time stamp, IP address, pages visited, time of visits, content viewed, ads viewed, the site(s), application(s), destination(s), and/or service(s) you arrived from, and other clickstream data. The use of Tracking Technologies by third parties is subject to their own privacy policies, not this Privacy Policy, and we have no responsibility or liability in connection therewith.
How to Opt-Out of Third-Party Tracking Technologies. You may opt out of future advertisements by following the unsubscribe rules in the third-party privacy policies available on their websites. Advertising Vendors may also allow opt out through the Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out program (http://optout.aboutads.info/#!/).
Disclosure Regarding Tracking and Advertising Features. In addition to services from other analytics and advertising vendors, we use Google Analytics and other web-based services to analyze traffic on the Site. Google Analytics collects data including details about your web browser and the computer you use to access our Site, such as the hostname, browser type, referrer, language, and screen resolution. Google Analytics also sets and reads first-party cookies to obtain user session and ad campaign information from your page request.
Google provides users an opportunity to opt-out of Google Analytics Features through Google Ads Settings and their web browser opt-out plugin (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/). For additional information on opting out of interest-based ads by Google, please visit https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en&ref_topic=2941003.
Do Not Track Signals. Our Site does not currently respond to automated signals regarding online tracking, such as “do not track” instructions from your web browser. Please note that blocking cookies or other tracking technologies may affect your browsing experience on the internet and may limit your use of certain parts of our services, including many of the Product opportunity selections and other customized features we provide.
Other Third-Party Content. We may display other third-party content or links to third-party websites or applications on the Site, including links to our Product Providers. Such content could include features that allow you to connect your CreditSoup Member Account with your social media, financial institution, and other third-party accounts. Please be advised that when you leave our Site or interact with a third-party feature, you should read the applicable privacy policies and terms of service of those parties so that you understand their own information collection and sharing practices.
Section 6. Your Rights To Your Personal Information
You have the right to request that we disclose to you what Personal Information we collect and how we use or disclose that information.
By writing to us at the address below or by sending an email requesting information through our contact form, you may request that we provide you with a summary of the categories of Personal Information and specific data retained by us and/or a list of the categories of Personal Information disclosed to third parties during the immediately preceding 12 month period, along with the names and addresses of these third parties. We will take steps that we deem reasonable to verify your identity and generally will only respond to your e-mail address or the postal address we have on file for you. You should receive an acknowledgement of your request from us within 10 days. Our complete response will be provided to you free of charge and within 45 days of our receipt of your request. You may make no more than two such requests in a 12-month period.
Section 7. Member Accounts
Establishing Your Member Account. When you submit your Personal Information to us, you are also requested to create a Member Account with its associated username and password. We use this account as an additional way to identify you when you visit our Site. You can access your Member Account to see much of the Personal Information we have, including your name, address, email address, and other contact information.
Accessing and Updating Your Information in Your Account. The method(s) for accessing and updating your Information, if any, will depend on the services you have used. You may have the ability to access and make changes to certain Information by logging in to your Member Account through our Site and updating your data. You can also update your Information by contacting us using our contact form at or by regular mail at 114 N. Egan Avenue, Madison, SD 57042.
You are responsible for maintaining the accuracy of the information you provide to us, such as your Member Profile information.
Deactivating Your Member Account. If you decide you no longer want to use our Services, you can deactivate your Member Account by contacting us using our contact form or by regular mail at 114 N. Egan Avenue, Madison, SD 57042.
Special Notice. Due to regulatory recordkeeping and information retention requirements, we do not delete your Information when you deactivate your Member Account. We will, however, disable your account and stop sending you communications.
Section 8. How We Protect Your Information
We maintain what we believe to be industry standard technical, physical and administrative security procedures and practices to protect your information against unauthorized access, disclosure, destruction, use, alteration, or disclosure. We use encryption in the transmission of your Information between your system and ours and the Site. We also use firewalls and other intrusion detection and prevention controls to help prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to your Information. We also require our employees to comply with our internal information security policies.
Because no data transmission is completely secure, and no system of physical or electronic security is impenetrable, we cannot guarantee the security of the information sent to us; your communications or other activities on the Site; or the security of our servers, networks or databases, and by using the Site you agree to assume all risk in connection with the information sent to us or collected by us when you access, visit and/or use the Site. We are not responsible for any loss of such information or the consequences thereof.
Moreover, if you elect to store information, such as your personally identifiable information or other user account information, where others may access it, we are not responsible for any loss of such information or the consequences thereof. If you lose a computer, mobile or other device, or it is stolen, that contains your personally identifiable information or other Information, it is up to you to take all the steps necessary to protect yourself.
In the unlikely event that we believe that the security of your information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you. If notification is appropriate, we may notify you via your computer, mobile or other device.
If you are, or believe you have become, a victim of identity theft, or if you become aware that your personal information has been compromised, you may want to contact one of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies identified below to report possible fraudulent activity under your name and learn more about fraud alerts and security freezes that you can place on your credit reports, your right to obtain a free copy of your credit report from each of the credit reporting agencies, and other preventive measures you can take now to help detect and prevent the improper use of your information:
Equifax
1-800-525-6285
P.O. Box 105788, Atlanta, GA 30348
https://www.equifax.com/personal/identity-theft-protection/
Experian
1-888-397-3742
P.O. Box 9554, Allen, TX 75013
https://www.experian.com/help/identity-theft-victim-assistance.html
TransUnion
1-800-680-7289
P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790
https://www.transunion.com/identity-theft
You may also visit the website of the Federal Trade Commission at https://www.identitytheft.gov for free information to help you guard against identity theft and for guidance on the recovery steps you can take if you have been the victim of identity theft, including information on how to file an identity theft complaint.
Section 8. We Do Not Intend To Collect Data From Children
The information provided by us or our Providers is not intended to be viewed by children (under 18 years old). We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose Personal Information from anyone under the age of 18. If we determine that a person is under this age, we will not use or maintain their information without consent from a parent or guardian. If we become aware that we have collected information from a child under the age of 18, we will make reasonable efforts to delete such information from our systems and records. No information collected from children is knowingly used by us for any marketing or promotional purposes whatsoever.
Section 8. Our Right To Contact You
We reserve the right to contact you regarding your information and changes to this Privacy Policy, or any other policies or agreements relevant to you.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or your dealings with us, you can contact us online using our contact form or write to:
CreditSoup
P.O. Box 463
114 N. Egan Avenue
Madison, SD 57042
Effective as of January 1, 2020