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Consumer Privacy and Security Policy

We know that protecting your privacy is of the utmost importance. At Consumer Debt Counselors, we take the privilege of assisting you and handling your personal information very seriously. This consumer privacy and security policy tells you what information we collect, with whom we may share it, and how we protect it.

This policy applies to personal information that is processed by or on behalf of Consumer Debt Counselors, Inc.

From time to time, we may update or make changes to our privacy policy. We encourage you to review it frequently. If we are making significant changes, we will post a prominent notice on our homepage and send an email notice to our opt-in mailing list and account holders, so long as we have current information.

What Information Do We Collect?

The phrase Personally Identifiable Information (PII) refers to information that personally identifies you, such as your name, address, telephone number, email address, personal financial information, and more.

In the course of working with you to resolve debt- and credit-related issues, we may collect, store, and use many types of PII, including:

Data Category

Examples

Contact Information / Personal Data
Your name, your address, your date of birth, identification numbers (such as your social security number and your driver's license number or state ID number), and your contact information, including your email address and telephone number(s).
Financial Data
Your financial wellbeing; details of your financial accounts (including your account numbers); and details of your income, expenditures, assets, and liabilities.
Demographic Information
Information about your profession, nationality, gender, level of education, race, veteran status, and other details that may help identify socioeconomic trends so that we can better serve our community. You may choose to waive the provision of this data, should you desire, with no impact to you or the service we provide you.
Service Details
Information about the products and services that we provide to you.
Usage Data
Information about how you interact with our products and services, including your behavior on our website, the location(s) from which you access our website via the Internet, and the devices and software that you use to connect to us.
Voluntary Disclosures
Information that you choose to share with us during the course of business communications, including letters, emails, texts, phone calls, meetings, etc.
Open Data / Public Records
Documents and records that you choose to share with us, such as copies of identification documents, bank statements, tax returns, loan data, and account statements, as well as agreements that you make with us and consents given to us, such as service agreements, limited powers of attorney, payment authorization, and permission to text you.
Information that is publicly available about you from any source, including the Internet.
Consensually Shared Private Records

How Is Information Collected?

Most of the information that we collect is collected directly from you via our website; surveys; telephone, email, or chat conversations; messages sent to us via social media assets; or meetings, seminars, or other events.

In some cases, we may request information about you at your specific request, such as from a credit reporting bureau, or on your behalf from creditors, loan servicers, or bill collectors during service fulfillment.

We also may access publicly available information.

How Do We Use the Information We Collect?

We may use the information we obtain about you to:

  • Contact you via telephone or email, should you either directly request that we do so, opt into our mailing list, or enter into a contract with us for a product or service;

  • Contact you via text message, should you expressly consent to that additional privilege;

  • Manage your participation in Consumer Debt Counselors events, should you choose to sign up for one;

  • Provide information, products, or services at your request;

  • Validate, charge, and update methods of payment as contracted;

  • Register you within our software systems and maintain your account, should you have one;

  • Obtain concessions from creditors or loan holders, or otherwise resolve accounts, should the product or service that you contract specifically require us to do so;

  • Operate, evaluate, and improve our business and the products and services we offer;

  • Analyze and enhance our marketing communications strategies (including by identifying when emails we have sent to you have been received and read);

  • Analyze trends and statistics regarding visitors’ use of our website, mobile applications and social media assets;

  • Protect against and prevent fraud, unauthorized transactions, claims, and other liabilities, and manage risk exposure, including by identifying potential hackers and other unauthorized users;

  • Acquire grant funding;

  • Enforce our Website Terms and Conditions; and

  • Comply with applicable legal and regulatory requirements and industry standards.

We also use non-personally identifiable information and specific technical information about your computer and how you access our website (including your IP address) to operate, maintain, and manage our website.

If we seek to use the information that we obtain from or about you in other ways, we will provide specific notice and request your consent at the time of collection.

Do We Share Collected Information?

We do not sell our clients’ data to anyone, for any reason, ever.

If you provide personal information through our online financial education and bankruptcy education courses, which are provided by the American Center for Credit Education, or Student Debt Solutions, which is a product of Consumer Debt Counselors will only share the information required for product fulfillment with these third-party companies (or otherwise if required by law).

Consumer Debt Counselors is not responsible for what these companies do with your personal information. While we carefully screen our business partners, we strongly recommend that you take the time to review these third parties' privacy policies yourself:

If we contract any other service providers to assist with the delivery of products and services, we will link these additional privacy policies here for your convenience.

Consumer Debt Counselors may also disclose specific user information when such disclosure is required to meet audit and regulatory requirements, to maintain our accreditation, to comply with the law (as determined by a valid subpoena), to seek assistance from law enforcement, to prevent a crime or protect national security (as determined by a valid subpoena), or to protect the interests or safety of Consumer Debt Counselors or other users of our website.

An Additional Note About Links to Other Websites:

Our website may contain links to other websites for your convenience and information, including websites not owned or managed by Consumer Debt Counselors. These other sites may have separate privacy policies, which we strongly suggest that you review if and when you visit those websites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of any sites not owned by Consumer Debt Counselors.

How Do We Protect the Information We Collect?

Consumer Debt Counselors maintains administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect the data that we collect against accidental, unlawful, or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure or use.

Our website and our debt management software (DMS) are all built on industry-leading cloud technology, 100% created, developed, and hosted in the United States on multiple redundant servers in secure, geo-diverse co-located facilities. In technical parlance, our applications are OWASP-compliant and hold to NIST 800.53 information security standards. All data is both encrypted and encoded both at rest and in transit. Additionally, our DMS system routinely undergoes penetration testing by a neutral third-party to ensure that there are no weaknesses in our application code.

No matter how hard we try, we can never fully guarantee that the security measures we have in place to safeguard your personal information will never be defeated or fail. Therefore, the burden of responsibility for your use of our website and services, the Internet in general, any documents that you share, and your conduct lies ultimately with you.

To further protect yourself, you should safeguard any account usernames and passwords and not share that information with anyone. You should also sign off your account and close your browser window when you have finished your visit to our, or any, websites.

Please note that we will never ask for your Consumer Debt Counselors account username or password via email.

How to Contact Us:

If you have questions about our privacy policy, please contact us via our website or email us at info [at] consumerdebtcounselors [dot] com. You can also mail us a letter to Consumer Debt Counselors at 831 West Morse Blvd., Winter Park, FL 32789. Please include your name and appropriate contact information on any correspondence with us.

This privacy policy was last updated on January 1, 2019.