Effective Date: November 21, 2017

Your privacy and the protection of your sensitive personal information are important to LiftForward, Inc. and we integrate the importance of this responsibility into our culture. Because we collect and/or store certain types of information from and about you, it is necessary to explain our policy and the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information.

This privacy policy applies to www.liftforward.com owned and operated by LiftForward, Inc. This privacy policy describes how LiftForward, Inc. (“LiftForward”, “site”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) collects and uses the personal information you provide on our web site: www.liftforward.com. It also describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information and how you can access and update this information.

If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact our U.S.-based third party dispute resolution provider (free of charge) at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request.  

Information We Collect From You and About You

We collect personal information from you while you use the site, and most of this collection occurs during registration. This information includes but is not limited to your name, email address, phone number, address, and business tax ID, business address, and banking information.

Certain personal information must be supplied during the member and customer registration processes, as indicated below, in order to (a) enable registered users to login to the site, (b) determine customers’ eligibility for funding through our proprietary credit scoring process, (c) verify customers’ and investors’ identities, (d) establish customers’ ability to request funding and investors' ability to invest by verifying that they are at least 18 years of age, and (e) guard against potential fraud.

When you register as a customer, we may use this information to pull a credit report from a credit bureau or you will be directed to a partner website to order your credit report and have it sent to us to determine your creditworthiness. We will also use your required and optional information to facilitate activities and transactions that need to occur during the funding process.

In addition, we gather names and email addresses of people who contact us through our web site with questions about our company or lending/borrowing operations. We collect this information for the sole purpose of responding to such inquiries and may store the contact information.

Finally, we collect information about your computer and your visits to our web site, such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit, operation system, date/time stamp, clickstream data and page views through the use of log files. We use this aggregated information in the administration of our web site to improve its usability and to evaluate the success of particular marketing/advertising campaigns, search engine optimization strategies and other marketing activities. We use non-identifying and aggregated information to help optimize our web site based on the needs of our users. We do not link this automatically collected data to other information we collect about you.

Access and Choice

Upon request LiftForward, Inc. will provide you with information about whether we hold any of your personal information. If your personal information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may correct, update, amend, delete/remove it by emailing us at [email protected] or by contacting us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed below. We will respond to your request to access within 30 days.

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

Communications from Our Site

When you register on our site you will receive emails that confirm specific actions you requested. You will receive notifications confirming your registration, the successful verification of email addresses and bank accounts, and confirmation of successful submissions of funding requests and portfolios. You will also receive progress updates on the status of funding requests and submitted portfolios. These are transactional notifications that you cannot opt out of receiving, as they are in place to protect the security of your account and your personal information. We may also send you responses to emails you send us, if appropriate or applicable. From time to time, we will also send user surveys, requests for user feedback regarding user experience and site operations or marketing offers from us or from us on behalf of our marketing partners. The completion of these surveys or requests for feedback or acceptance of any offer is strictly voluntary. If you participate, we will request certain personal information from you. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code and type of business). If you do not wish to receive these offers, surveys or user feedback emails, please opt out in any offer email you receive from us by following the unsubscribe instructions included in these emails.

LiftForward will send you email notifications from time to time, and these are required elements of your transactions on our web site, such as confirmations of particular actions you have taken. These required notices are sent typically to notify you of a change in status such as when you are confirmed as a customer or investor, or for legal or security purposes. For example, certain notifications are sent for your own protection to ensure that no one can make a change to your account without your knowledge, such as confirming the addition of a new email address or linked external bank account. These notifications are sent to you so that you can be assured that no one is making changes to your account without your knowledge. In other cases, these notifications involve changes to various legal agreements or site policies. Generally you may not opt out of these service related emails.

Links to Third Party Websites

LiftForward is not responsible for the information practices employed by sites linked to or from our website. In most cases, links to non-LiftForward websites are provided solely as an access point to obtain information on products and topics that may be useful to the users of the LiftForward website. We may also offer links to partners’ sites. We make the decision to provide links to these sites based on the quality of information provided at the time the links are enabled or to facilitate our customers' more effective use of our platform, and we make every effort to monitor the continuing quality of content provided on these sites. Third party websites may have different privacy policies and/or security standards governing their sites. Please consult the privacy policies on these sites before you provide them with any of your personal information.

How and When Your Information Is Shared With Other Parties

We will share your personal information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this privacy policy. We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

LiftForward works with a number of trusted partners that perform vital functions as part of our operations, including credit bureaus, collection agencies, electronic payment service providers, underwriting service companies and customer support call centers. Information is shared with these third parties only to the extent necessary for us to process the transactions you initiate or perform other specific services, like collections. Our partners are legally required to keep your information private and secure.

Some of our pages utilize framing techniques to serve content to from our partners while preserving the look and feel of our site. Please be aware that you are providing your personal information to these third parties and not to www.liftforward.com.

We may also disclose your personal information:

• as required by law, such as to comply with a subpoena, or similar legal process when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request,
• if LiftForward is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our Web site of any change in ownership or uses of your personal information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information,
• to any other third party with your prior consent to do so

Tracking Technologies Cookies

Technologies such as: cookies, beacons, tags and scripts are used by LiftForward, Inc. and our partners, affiliates, or analytics or service providers. These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis.

We use cookies for website authentication and tracking user behavior on our site. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited.

Behavioral Targeting / Re-Targeting

We partner with a third party to either display advertising on our Web site or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third party partner may use technologies such as cookies to gather information about your activities on this site and other sites in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests. If you wish to not have this information used for the purpose of serving you interest-based ads, you may opt-out by clicking here. Please note this does not opt you out of being served ads. You will continue to receive generic ads.

Local Storage Objects (HTML 5)

We and our third party partners use Local Storage Objects (LSOs) such as HTML5 to store authentication data and data related to site operations. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs.

SOCIAL MEDIA WIDGETS

Our Web site includes Social Media Features, such as the Facebook and Twitter button. These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. Social Media Features and Widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it. The presence of social media buttons (such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn) or other hosted mini-applets on your site requires the accompanying disclosure.

Security

• Session time-outs

We also employ session time-outs to protect your account. You will be logged out of the site automatically after a specified period of inactivity. This time-out feature reduces the risk of others being able to access your account if you leave your computer unattended.

• Protection of account numbers

  When we contact you about your account to confirm a funds transfer, we only reference the last four digits of your bank account number; this is done for your protection so that you will recognize the source or destination account as one which you own. Further, we employ strict access standards ensuring that only the senior-most employees or partner representatives have access to your account numbers and other sensitive information. This access is only granted in order to complete transactions which you request or to provide regular ongoing service to your account.

• Passwords

  At a minimum, we require the use of both numbers and letters in your password. We have also instituted secure steps by which you can regain access to your account should you forget your password, including the use of a security question. Your password is not known to any employee or third party with whom we may partner, and we will never ask for your password as a means of identifying yourself. You should never share your password with anyone, and if you ever receive an email purporting to come from LiftForward that asks for your password, you should immediately report this development.

• Encryption

  The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as a business tax ID) on our order forms, we encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). We follow generally accepted standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can contact us at [email protected].

Changes to This Policy

As technologies, laws and user needs change, our site and its features will also change. This policy will be updated from time to time as such needs dictate, and we will always communicate these changes to you by posting them on this web site and/or by notifying you via email in the event of any substantive or material changes prior to the change becoming effective.

You may contact us at [email protected] or on the address below.

LiftForward, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane, 10th Floor
New York, NY 10038
888-514-6539