FREE SUBSCRIPTION Includes: The Advisor Daily eBlast + Exclusive Content + Professional Network Membership: JOIN NOW LOGIN
Skip Navigation LinksHome / Privacy Policy

Privacy Statement

Equipment Finance Advisor, Inc. (hereafter referred to as “we" or "us") is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Privacy Statement sets out our privacy policy and explains how we use/treat personal information we collect from you. Please read this statement to gain a full understanding policies and practices regarding personal information and how they may affect you. This statement discloses our current privacy practices; material changes to these policies will be announced.

What we gather about you:

Equipment Finance Advisor collects information about our readers so that we can provide a more interesting and useful service. . We ask for your name, email address, and other personal information when you register to use certain features of our Web site, or if you sign up for special or personalized services, such as our discussion boards or email newsletters. We also may ask for this information at other times, such as when you enter contests or other promotions sponsored by Equipment Finance Advisor and/or our partners. We sometimes conduct surveys as well, although you do not have to respond to them.

If you email one of our articles to a friend, you will need to provide us with your friend's email address and your email address as a return address. We will automatically send this person a one-time email, with the recommended article attached, as well as invite your friend to visit and register with our site. We will not use these email addresses for any other purpose.

We collect IP addresses for site security and to help us understand how people use our sites so that we can improve our sites and our users' respective experiences. For similar quality reasons, we use a feature known as a "cookie." Cookies contain bits of information that websites transfer to your computer's hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies can make the Web more convenient by storing information about your preferences on a site. Although we may assign your browser a cookie, the cookie does not tell us who you are. Only you can tell us that.

We may also collect your email address when you submit content to our sites (submittal of any type of content). Unless we get your approval, we will not display your address with your submission.

Besides cookies, we may also use tiny electronic images (called "single-pixel GIFs" or "Web beacons"), which allow us to count users who have visited specific pages or access certain cookies. We may use single-pixel GIFs in the following ways:

  • To count and recognize users.
  • To conduct research on behalf of some partners on their websites, and for auditing purposes.
  • To determine aggregate information about users, including demographic and usage information.
  • To determine which email messages were opened and/or acted upon when we send HTML-formatted email messages (messages resembling Web pages that include graphics).

Advertising networks that serve ads on our site may also use single-pixel GIFs in their advertisements. In general, any electronic image viewed as part of a Web page, including an ad banner, can act as a Web beacon.

How we may use your personal information:

Equipment Finance Advisor collects personal information to provide you, the user, with the best and most personalized experience possible, and to provide our advertisers with an efficient way to reach the right audience.

We conduct research on our users' demographics, interests, and behavior based upon the information you provide us when you register or participate in contests or other promotions on our site, or based upon the information on our server log files. This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregated basis. We may also notify you of products, services, or areas of our site that we think may interest you based on the information we've received. If you would prefer us not to contact you for these purposes, go to our opt-out page and let us know.

We will also send you occasional discount alerts and notices about products and services that we think may interest you. If you would prefer us not to send you those notices, again, simply use our opt-out page to let us know.



How we may use "IP Addresses" and "Cookies":

IP Addresses

Your Web browser or email application automatically provides your Internet Protocol address ("IP address") to other computers with which you communicate over the Internet, so that they know where to send you information.

We receive an IP address each time you view one of our Web pages, because the browser automatically reports it to us. We also may store the IP address when you register with Equipment Finance Advisor, post a message, or buy something from us.

We may use IP addresses for various purposes, including:

  • Diagnosing service or technology problems.
  • Assessing and maintaining system security.
  • Displaying the most appropriate advertising or content.
  • Studying how people use our site and how we can improve it.
  • Reporting to advertisers about aggregate, but not individual, information derived from IP addresses.

Cookies

Cookies are used on our sites in the following ways:

  • We use cookies to access your stored account information automatically when you log on to our site, in order to deliver a better and more personalized service.
  • We use cookies to estimate our audience size and usage patterns. The unique cookie that is given to each browser accessing Equipment Finance Advisor is then used to determine usage patterns and help us target content and ads based upon user interests.
  • We use cookies to allow you to access your account information automatically, as well as make changes to your personal information.
  • Our search engines may use cookies to expedite your search for content or products.
  • In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our Web advertising partner, DoubleClick, may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more on how to opt-out of these cookies, please see below.
  • Some of our advertisers use third-party networks to serve their advertisements on our sites and in our HTML-formatted newsletters. Often, these third-party advertising companies use cookies, Web beacons, and similar technologies to measure advertisement effectiveness. We do not control, nor do we have access to, their cookies or the information they obtain. Use of their tracking technology is subject to their own privacy policies.

Our policy on disclosing your personal information:

Equipment Finance Advisor will not disclose any personally identifiable information about individual users, except as described in this Privacy Statement. We do not give, rent, lend, or sell individual information to our advertisers, although we do provide aggregate information. We may also use this aggregated information to help the advertisers reach the kind of audience they want. We may also disclose aggregate information in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes.

Equipment Finance Advisor may disclose individually identifiable information under the following circumstances:

  • We may disclose information to others when we have your consent.
  • If you sign up for a service that relies upon third parties for important elements, we will provide your personal information to the third parties so that they can provide you with their services, and those companies will treat the data under their own policies. We will tell you about these service providers at the time you sign up for the service.
  • We may disclose information to selected partners, under nondisclosure agreements, only for the purpose of marketing Equipment Finance Advisor co-branded offerings (such as The Advisor Daily eBlast).
  • If you use our service to email one of our articles to a friend, Equipment Finance Advisor will automatically send this person a one-time email, with the recommended article attached. The email address you give us will appear on the "From" line of the email, thereby disclosing this information to whoever opens and reads the email. Similarly, if you send email from our site, by using "Reply to Author" or "Email this Post," your address may appear as the return address of that email.
  • We may disclose your personal information as required by applicable law, or in response to legal process, to protect the rights or property of Equipment Finance Advisor.
  • We may sometimes conduct mailings to other people's lists. To make it easier for us to comply with the Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, we may share our email list of people who have requested not to receive promotional communications from us with the list providers (or contractors) so that we can avoid sending emails to people who have asked not to receive them.. We provide these lists only to list providers or contractors that we consider to be reputable, and only under strict nondisclosure/nonuse agreements.
  • We may employ contractors or other third parties to help with our operations. We may give them access to databases of user information, so that they can perform their services for us, including performing system maintenance, displaying personalized content (such as portfolios), performing list analysis or management, or sending mailings for us from our advertisers. These parties are all subject to confidentiality agreements that restrict their use and disclosure of information they obtain through their relationship with The Motley Fool.
  • Information about your visits to equipmentfa.com, such as the number of times you have viewed an ad (but not your name, address, or other personal information), is used to serve ads to you.

Security measures we utilize to protect your information from disclosure or accidental loss:

Equipment Finance Advisor is committed to protecting your personal information. We store information you provide us on our secure servers. Further, the information you provide when making a purchase is encrypted with SSL technology.

Personalized areas of our site are password-protected. Only you have access to these password-protected areas. Do not share your passwords with anyone. Equipment Finance Advisor will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or email. If you are using a computer to which others have access, such as one in a computer lab, Internet cafe, or public library, always remember to log out and close your browser window when leaving our site.

Other:

When you post information on our web site, that information, along with your screen name, is visible to the public. Please remember that whenever you disclose personal information publicly that information can be collected and used by others. If you do not want strangers to have your email address, you should not post your email address.

While we do our best to protect your personal information, Equipment Finance Advisor cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any password and/or account information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you are online, especially when using a computer that other people can use also.

Many of our advertisers or partners link from our site to their own sites where they sell their own products and services. If you follow links from our site to others, you are doing business with those other sites, which have their own privacy and data collection practices. Equipment Finance Advisor has no responsibility or liability for these other sites.

Last Updated: October 16, 2011