The Approval Department (“The Approval Department”) matches small businesses and small business owners with alternative sources of funding (“Funding Providers”) through our website www.theapprovaldepartment.com. This Privacy Policy describes the information The Approval Department. (“The Approval Department,” “we,” “us” or “our”) collects information about you, how we use and share that information, and the privacy choices we offer. This policy applies to information we collect when you register for The Approval Department’s funding matching service, access, or use our website, mobile applications, products, and services (collectively, the “Services”), or when you otherwise interact with us. As used in this Privacy Policy, the term “Site” includes: all websites and all devices or applications operated by The Approval Department that collect personal information from you and that link to this Privacy Policy; pages within each such website, device, or application, any equivalent, mirror, replacement, substitute, or backup website, device, or application; and pages that are associated with each such website, device, or application. The use of the word “including” in this Agreement to refer to specific examples will be construed to mean “including, without limitation” or “including but not limited to” and will not be construed to mean that the examples given are an exclusive list of the topics covered. By accessing the Site and by using the Service, you agree to, and are bound by, the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this privacy policy, you may not access or otherwise use this site or service.

1. Collection of Information
2. Use of Your Information
3. Sharing of Information
4. Security
5. Email Communications
6. Changes to Your Personal Information
7. California Privacy Rights
8. Changes to Privacy Policy

1. Collection of Information. The Approval Department may collect the following categories of personal information about you, including but not limited to the following:

·         Registration Information: When you register for the Service, you will be asked for basic registration information, such as a username and password.

·         Identification Information: You may also be asked to provide identification information to confirm your identity, including your first and last name and certain financial information.

·         Application Information: You may also be asked to provide additional information that will be provided to The Approval Department’s Funding Providers in connection with your applications for funding from such Funding Providers, including certain financial information and other documents required by Funding Providers to complete an application.

·         Third-Party Credentials: You may also enter in certain passwords, usernames, account numbers, and other account information for third-party sites and Internet services (“Third-Party Sites”).

·         Information from Third-Party Sites: In order to display information to you or to fulfill your requests for certain products and services through a Service, we may collect, on your behalf, your account and other personal information from Third-Party Sites that you register under your account via the Service. We may also collect information about you from credit bureaus, mailing list providers, publicly available sources, and other third parties.

·         Information Collected by Cookies and Web Beacons: We use various technologies to collect information, and this may include sending cookies to your computer or mobile device. Cookies are small data files that are stored on your hard drive or in device memory by a website. Among other things, cookies support the integrity of our registration process, retain your preferences, and account settings, and help evaluate and compile aggregated statistics about user activity. We may also collect information using web beacons. Web beacons are electronic images that may be used in our Services or emails. We may use web beacons to deliver cookies, count visits, understand usage, and determine whether an email has been opened and acted upon.

·         Technical and Navigational Information: We may collect your computer browser type, Internet protocol address, pages visited, and average time spent on our Site. This information may be used, for example, to alert you to software compatibility issues, or it may be analyzed to improve our web design and functionality.

2. Use of Your Information. We may use the information you provide about yourself and about your Third-Party Sites to fulfill your requests for our Services, to respond to your inquiries about our Services, and to offer you other products, programs, or services that we believe may be of interest to you. We may use your information to complete transactions you request, to verify the existence and condition of your accounts, or to assist with a transaction. For example, we may use the account information you provide or that we collect from Third-Party Sites to confirm your accounts are valid. We may use your information to improve and personalize the Services and any related services, including future products and services. For example, we may use your information to pre-fill form fields on the Sites for your convenience.

3. Sharing of Information. We may share personal information about you as follows:

·         With your consent and approval, to third-party credit reporting services when we request a credit report on your behalf or to Funding Providers in connection with your application for funding.

·         With third parties to provide, maintain, and improve our Services.

·         In connection with, or during the negotiation of, any merger, sale of company stock or assets, financing, acquisition, divestiture, or dissolution of all or a portion of our business.

·         To respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process.

·         To investigate, prevent, defend against, or take other action regarding violations of our Terms of Service, illegal activities, suspected fraud, or situations involving potential threats to the legal rights or physical safety of any person or the security of our network, Sites or Services.

·         Non-personalized, anonymous data may be aggregated with data from other users and other data sources may be collected and shared with partners or for marketing purposes.

·         To respond to claims that any posting or other content violates the rights of third parties.

·         In an emergency, to protect the health and safety of our Sites’ users or the public; or

·         As otherwise required by law.

4. Security. We take reasonable measures, including firewall barriers, SSL encryption techniques, and authentication procedures, to help protect personal information from loss, theft, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. You acknowledge, however, that no system is perfectly secure and that, despite The Approval Department’s efforts to protect your personal information, The Approval Department cannot guarantee that personal information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed through a breach of our administrative, managerial, and technical safeguards. Accordingly, we urge you to take adequate precautions to protect your personal information such as refusing to share your The Approval Department password and log-in credentials with anyone.

5. Email Communications. We may provide our registered customers with email alerts and summaries of their activity on the Service. We may also allow users to subscribe to email newsletters and from time to time may transmit emails promoting The Approval Department or third-party goods or services. Registered customers have the ability to opt out of receiving our promotional emails and to terminate their newsletter subscriptions by following the instructions in the emails. Opting out in this manner will not end transmission of service-related emails, such as email alerts.

6. Changes to Your Personal Information. If you wish to access personal information that you have submitted to us or to request the correction of any inaccurate information you have submitted to us, you may correct certain information via your user account. Alternatively, you can contact us at admin@theapprovaldepartment.com to request any corrections to your personal information. You may also email us if you wish to deregister, but even after you deregister, we may retain archived copies of information about you for a period that is consistent with applicable law.

7. California Privacy Rights. California Civil Code Section 1798.83, also known as the “Shine the Light” law, permits our customers who are California residents to request and obtain from us once a year, free of charge, information about the personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes in the preceding calendar year. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please submit your request to admin@theapprovaldepartment.com. In your request, please attest to the fact that you are a California resident and provide a current California address for our response. Please be aware that not all information sharing is covered by the California Privacy Rights requirements and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response.

8. Changes to Privacy Policy. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time, so please review it frequently. You may review updates to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy at any time via links on https://theapprovaldepartment.com/. Consistent with our Terms of Service, you agree to accept electronic communications and/or postings of revised versions of this Privacy Policy on https://theapprovaldepartment.com/ and agree that such electronic communications or postings constitute notice to you of the revised version of this Privacy Policy. Changes take effect immediately upon posting