Effective June 10, 2005
Granite Real Estate is
committed to protecting the privacy of its users. When you register for
Granite Real Estate's online services, the information you provide to us is
used to provide the services you have registered for, to deliver email
notifications to you (or people you designate as your recipients), and from
time to time, to validate your identity. Our data collection policies with
regard to current and future services allow you to choose how much information
you provide to us, and to control how we use that information. Read below to
find out more.
Our Commitment to You
Granite Real Estate is committed to making your
Granite Real Estate experience satisfying and safe. Our data collection
policies allow you to choose how much information you provide to us, and what
Granite Real Estate does with the information you supply. Granite Real Estate
will keep your information within Granite Real Estate unless you consent to
our supplying all or a portion of your information to third parties as a part
of one of the Granite Real Estate service offerings. However, if you tell
Granite Real Estate not to send you further emails, this instruction may be
communicated to third parties who send email on Granite Real Estate's behalf
solely to allow us to comply with your instructions. Granite Real Estate
collects information online to allow you to use our services. Depending on the
service you are accessing, you could be asked at various times to provide
information such as your name, email address, street address, contact phone
number or other information related to of the property you are seeking to buy
or sell, and/or what type of customer you are seeking to attract. On other
occasions such as when we require payment for Granite Real Estate services, we
may request your credit card number to conclude the transaction. We request
this information to deliver on the services you are requesting, and to allow
us to provide our strongest value to you - a personalized online experience.
Information collected online is often defined as being either anonymous or
personally identifiable:
1. Anonymous Information
refers to information that cannot be tied back to a
specific individual. For instance, we may know that thousands of people have
visited this Granite Real Estate Privacy Policy webpage, but we do not
necessarily know their names, where they live, or their date of birth. What we
collect from visits such as this constitutes anonymous information. Many of
the individuals who access our services decline to use the personalization
features that are available to them, and therefore those individuals are
anonymous to us and the only data we collect about them is anonymous
information.
2. Personally Identifiable Information
refers to information that tells us specifically who
you are, such as your name, email address or phone number. In many cases we
need this information to provide the personalized or enhanced service that you
have requested. We hope that, like many of our customers, you will find it
beneficial to provide Personally Identifiable Information to Granite Real
Estate so that we may provide valuable services to you. Registering with
Granite Real Estate will also cause a Granite Real Estate cookie to be issued;
this cookie allows Granite Real Estate to "recognize" you when you are on
Granite Real Estate's site to allow us to personalize our service for you.
Third Party Advertisers.
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads
when you visit our Web site. These companies serve their ads from their own
web sites, independently of Granite Real Estate. As such, they may use cookies
or request personal information from you, or they may share anonymous
information about your visit with third parties.
Third Party Cookies
In the course of serving advertisements to this site,
our third-party advertiser may place or recognize a unique "cookie" on your
browser.
Links to Third Party Web Sites
As a service to our users we provide links to various
unrelated third party web sites. We are neither responsible for the content on
nor for the information collection practices of such web sites, nor do we
control the privacy policies of such web sites. Their policies may be
substantially different in this regard from Granite Real Estate. Accordingly,
we recommend that you review their privacy and information collection policies
before providing any information to such third parties.
What Personally Identifiable Information of yours
is collected by Granite Real Estate
When you register for Granite Real Estate online
services, the information you provide to us is used to provide the service for
which you have registered. Depending on the services you have chosen to use,
some or all of your Personally Identifiable Information may be used by Granite
Real Estate to provide such services. Personally Identifiable Information may
also be provided to intermediaries and third parties who assist Granite Real
Estate in providing you with the service you request. For example, if you
register to use our Find a REALTOR® service and agree to its terms, some of
your information may be shown to real estate agents (e.g., characteristics of
the home you wish to sell), but not all of your information if you are a
seller (e.g., your email, since this service protects your anonymity). As
another example, when you request assistance in estimating the value of your
home, we may provide some of your Personally Identifiable Information and
general information regarding your home to one of our partners who may in turn
share your information with a local real estate agent familiar with your
market to assist you. Once you have been contacted by a real estate agent, we
recommend that you contact them directly for information about their specific
privacy policies. When registering for Granite Real Estate services, you
provide Granite Real Estate with your email address. We will use your email
address to deliver these Granite Real Estate services, such as notifying you
of new agent proposals if you registered for our Find a REALTOR® service. We
and our partners may also send you information about other services if you
have opted in to receiving such notifications.
What about cookies
A cookie is a small text file that is stored by your
computer that contains information related to a web site. Each web site you
visit may store a cookie on your computer that contains information assigned
by that web site. Each such cookie can only be read by the web site that
created the cookie. We use this cookie to keep track of your visit to Granite
Real Estate so that we can deliver our services to you. This cookie only
contains randomly generated anonymous information. Examples of the information
we may collect and analyze using the cookie include the Internet protocol (IP)
address used to connect your computer to the Internet; your computer and
connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and
platform; the full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) clickstream to, through, and
from our web site, including date and time; and products you viewed or
searched for. During some visits we may use software tools such as JavaScript
to measure and collect session information, including page response times,
download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction
information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to
browse away from the page. This cookie information is not shared with or used
by any third party.
Information Distribution
If you are providing us Personally Identifiable
Information, it will be used within Granite Real Estate's site to deliver our
services. Depending on the service and your preferences provided to Granite
Real Estate when registering for these services, your Personally Identifiable
Information may also be provided to intermediaries and third parties who
assist Granite Real Estate in providing the services you request. Except as
otherwise provided in this Privacy Policy, however, Granite Real Estate will
not share, rent or sell your information to third parties without your
permission. Granite Real Estate may be required by law enforcement or judicial
authorities to provide Personally Identifiable Information to the appropriate
governmental authorities. If requested by law enforcement or judicial
authorities, we will provide this information upon receipt of the appropriate
documentation.
EMAIL: What choices are available to you regarding collection, use,
and distribution of the information
Granite Real Estate offers you the ability to control
the email communications we make to you. It is our intention to give you as
much control over our relationship as possible. Registering for a Granite Real
Estate service requires that you consent to receive emails about that service
from Granite Real Estate. However, Granite Real Estate gives you the
opportunity to unsubscribe to general email communication from us - clear
directions for doing so will appear in the email messages we send to you. At
times, Granite Real Estate may enter into co branding arrangements with other
companies, and if so, an opt-in or opt out question may be present to allow
email contact from these company's as well. Their opt-in/out features are
specific to each organization, but you should not receive email from these
organizations unless you have indicated that it is acceptable. Before
consenting to receive email from third parties, you should read their privacy
policy and terms of use, if applicable, to make sure you are comfortable
dealing with that company. As you can understand, Granite Real Estate can not
make commitments on behalf of other companies. All email from Granite Real
Estate partners who gain your permission to send you commercial email, will
include an opportunity to opt out of future communications. Granite Real
Estate reserves the right to send a one-time registration confirmation email,
and Service Alert messages to its customers to inform them of service changes
or issues with the Terms of Use.
What kind of security procedures are in place to
protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of information under the
company's control
Granite Real Estate operates secure data networks
protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our
security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as
necessary, and only authorized individuals have access to the information
provided by our customers. Any particularly sensitive information, such as a
customer's credit card number collected for a commerce transaction, is
encrypted prior to transmission. You the consumer are ultimately responsible
for the security of your Granite Real Estate Member Name and password. Please
take care to store your Granite Real Estate Member Name separately from your
account password, or better yet, choose a password that you don't need to
write down at all.
How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information
Granite Real Estate believes strongly in providing
you with the ability to access and edit the personal information that you have
provided to us. To update the information retained about you, please visit our
My Granite Real Estate Control Center area.
Standard corporate transfers of information
Information about the users of our web site,
including personally identifiable information, may also be disclosed in
connection with certain standard business transaction such as any debt
financing, acquisition or merger, sale of assets as well as in the event of a
bankruptcy, assignment for benefit of creditors or receivership in which
personally identifiable information could be sold or transferred to third
parties as an asset.
Your Privacy Rights Regarding Third Party Sharing
To help service your requests, we may provide certain
Personally Identifiable Information to third parties who may use this
information for their own purposes, including sending advertising to you. If
you would prefer to opt out of this usage of your Personally Identifiable
Information, you may do so by updating your Personal Profile and opting out of
such usage.
Privacy questions
If you have any questions about our privacy policy,
please contact us at privacy@granitebuyshouses.com.
