Privacy Information
In order to better serve your needs now and in the future, we may ask you to provide
us with certain information. We understand that you may be concerned about what
we will do with such information - particularly any personal or financial information.
We agree that you have a right to know how we will utilize the personal information
you provide to us. Therefore, together with our subsidiaries we have adopted this
Privacy Policy to govern the use and handling of your personal information.
This Privacy Policy governs our use of the information that you provide to us. It
does not govern the manner in which we may use information we have obtained from
any other source, such as information obtained from a public record or from another
person or entity. First American has also adopted broader guidelines that govern
our use of personal information regardless of its source. First American calls these
guidelines its Fair Information Values.
Depending upon which of our services you are utilizing, the types of nonpublic personal
information that we may collect include:
Information we receive from you on applications,
forms and in other communications to us, whether in writing, in person, by telephone
or any other means;
Information about your transactions with us, our
affiliated companies, or others; and
Information we receive from a consumer reporting
agency.
We request information from you for our own legitimate business purposes and not
for the benefit of any nonaffiliated party. Therefore, we will not release your
information to nonaffiliated parties except: (1) as necessary for us to provide
the product or service you have requested of us; or (2) as permitted by law. We
may, however, store such information indefinitely, including the period after which
any customer relationship has ceased. Such information may be used for any internal
purpose, such as quality control efforts or customer analysis. We may also provide
all of the types of nonpublic personal information listed above to one or more of
our affiliated companies. Such affiliated companies include financial service providers,
such as title insurers, property and casualty insurers, and trust and investment
advisory companies, or companies involved in real estate services, such as appraisal
companies, home warranty companies and escrow companies.
Furthermore, we may also provide all the information we collect, as described above,
to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf, on behalf of our affiliated
companies or to other financial institutions with whom we or our affiliated companies
have joint marketing agreements.
Even if you are no longer our customer, our Privacy Policy will continue to apply
to you.
We will use our best efforts to ensure that no unauthorized parties have access
to any of your information. We restrict access to nonpublic personal information
about you to those individuals and entities who need to know that information to
provide products or services to you. We will use our best efforts to train and oversee
our employees and agents to ensure that your information will be handled responsibly
and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and First American's Fair Information
Values. We currently maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that
comply with federal regulations to guard your nonpublic personal information.
First American Financial Corporation is sensitive to privacy issues on the Internet.
We believe it is important you know how we treat the information about you we receive
on the Internet.
In general, you can visit First American or its affiliates Web sites on the World
Wide Web without telling us who you are or revealing any information about yourself.
Our Web servers collect the domain names, not the e-mail addresses, of visitors.
This information is aggregated to measure the number of visits, average time spent
on the site, pages viewed and similar information. First American uses this information
to measure the use of our site and to develop ideas to improve the content of our
site.
There are times, however, when we may need information from you, such as your name
and email address. When information is needed, we will use our best efforts to let
you know at the time of collection how we will use the personal information. Usually,
the personal information we collect is used only by us to respond to your inquiry,
process an order or allow you to access specific account/profile information. If
you choose to share any personal information with us, we will only use it in accordance
with the policies outlined above.
First American Financial Corporation's site and its affiliates' sites may contain
links to other Web sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high
standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the
privacy practices employed by other sites.
Some of First American's Web sites may make use of "cookie" technology to measure
site activity and to customize information to your personal tastes. A cookie is
an element of data that a Web site can send to your browser, which may then store
the cookie on your hard drive.
FirstAm.com uses stored cookies. The goal of this technology is to better serve
you when visiting our site, save you time when you are here and to provide you with
a more meaningful and productive Web site experience.
We consider consumer expectations about their
privacy in all our businesses. We only offer products and services that assure a
favorable balance between consumer benefits and consumer privacy.
We believe that an open public record
creates significant value for society, enhances consumer choice and creates consumer
opportunity. We actively support an open public record and emphasize its importance
and contribution to our economy.
We believe we should behave responsibly when we
use information about a consumer in our business. We will obey the laws governing
the collection, use and dissemination of data.
We will take reasonable steps to help assure
the accuracy of the data we collect, use and disseminate. Where possible, we will
take reasonable steps to correct inaccurate information. When, as with the public
record, we cannot correct inaccurate information, we will take all reasonable steps
to assist consumers in identifying the source of the erroneous data so that the
consumer can secure the required corrections.
We endeavor to educate the users of our products
and services, our employees and others in our industry about the importance of consumer
privacy. We will instruct our employees on our fair information values and on the
responsible collection and use of data. We will encourage others in our industry
to collect and use information in a responsible manner.
We will maintain appropriate facilities and
systems to protect against unauthorized access to and corruption of the data we
maintain.