Last Updated August 2023
© Association of American Consumer Credit Professionals.
Your privacy is important to the Association of American Consumer Credit Professionals (The terms “AACCP, “we”, “us” and “our” throughout this document mean Association of American Consumer Credit Professionals). Please read our Privacy Policy carefully to understand how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and store your information. By visiting our website or agreeing to content that includes a link to this document (“Online Ads”), you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. (Specific state privacy protections are listed in Section 13 of this Privacy Policy).
1. Our Collection and Use of Personal Information
Personal Information includes information you provide us that can be used to uniquely identify or contact a single person, such as your name, address, email address, phone numbers and Social Security Number.
You may be asked to provide Personal Information when you interact with us, Online Ads, or one of our related companies, such as in connection with a completed or abandoned transaction or a request for information from us. AACCP and its related companies and service providers may share your Personal Information with each other and use it consistent with this Privacy Policy.
We may supplement the Personal Information you provide with Personal Information available from other sources, such as credit bureaus, public databases, data aggregators, and other commercially-available sources.
2. Examples of Personal Information We Collect and How We Use It
You may provide us a variety of Personal Information, including your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, payment information, and Social Security Number.
The Personal Information we collect allows us to verify your identity, deliver requested products, services and information to you, to stay in contact with you, and to manage our relationship with you. By providing us with Personal Information, you consent to our transfer and storage of that information.
We also may use your Personal Information for research, development, and analysis, and for advertising, marketing, product and service offerings, security, fraud prevention, and other business activities.
For example, we may use your email address to:
- Confirm your identity;
- Send you information on the status of your account or transaction;
- Contact you if we need your assistance to complete a transaction; and
- Send you newsletters, and other customer related material as permitted by law.
We have a zero tolerance policy for email abuse. If you receive unsolicited emails from us please report it to us. We are not responsible for communications you may receive from non-affiliated third parties.
We will never ask you to provide Personal Information in an email. DO NOT RESPOND to an email that appears to be from us requesting Personal information. Contact us immediately at 202.261.2380.
3. Our Collection and Use of Non-Personal Information
Non-Personal Information is information in a form that does not allow for direct association with a specific person. This information is compiled and analyzed on both a personal and an aggregated basis. We may collect, use, monitor, analyze, transfer, and disclose Non-Personal Information for any purpose.
4. Examples of Non-Personal Information We Collect and How We Use It
We may collect and aggregate information regarding user access, activity and behavior on our website, such as when you visit the website and what content is of interest or seems to be most useful to you. If we combine Non-Personal Information with Personal Information, the combined information is treated as Personal Information for purposes of this Privacy Policy.
Non-Personal Information includes:
Device Information – We may collect specific information for the device you use to access our website. For example, we may collect device model, operating system version, application software, and fonts.
Cookies and Other Technologies – We use a variety of technologies to collect and store information when you visit our website. This technology may involve sending web beacons and cookies or anonymous identifiers to your device. We use Cookies and Other Technologies to analyze your behavior when accessing our website and to deliver ads to you that we believe relate to your interests.
Log Information – When you visit our website, we collect certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes IP address, browser version, ISP data, referring and exit pages, operating system version, date / time stamps, cookie data, and clickstream data. We use Log Information to administer the website, analyze trends, maintain site security, learn about user behavior, and improve the overall quality and availability of the site.
Click-Through URLs – In some email messages, we use a Click-Through URL to link to content on our website. When you click one of these URLs, you pass through a separate web server before reaching our site. We use Click-Through URLs to help us determine interest in a particular topic and to measure the effectiveness of our email communications.
Anonymized Information – If we separate Non-Personal Information from Personal Information, the resulting Anonymized Information is treated as Non-Personal Information for purposes of this Privacy Policy.
5. Our Sharing of Information with Others
Personal Information
We do not share Personal Information with businesses or individuals outside of AACCP, except under the follow circumstances:
Consent – We will share your Personal Information with others when we have your consent to do so.
Service Providers – We provide Personal Information to related companies and other trusted businesses or persons who use, analyze, or process it on our behalf, based on our instructions and in compliance with appropriate confidentiality and security measures. For example, we may use others to:
- deliver, evaluate the effectiveness of, and assist in improving our products and services;
- conduct consumer research and satisfaction surveys;
- assist us in analyzing and understanding consumers and how to reach them more effectively;
- assist us in fraud prevention, with our security measures, and to provide us technical support;
- provide customer support;
- manage customer data, and to ensure data integrity and accuracy;
- process financial transactions and perform accounting functions; and
- advertise, market, or make product or service offerings.
Legal Reasons – We will share Personal Information with others if we have a good-faith belief that disclosure is necessary or appropriate to:
- comply with applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request;
- protect our operations or customers
- detect, investigate, or address fraud, security, or technical problems; or
- investigate potential violations of and enforce applicable terms of service.
In the event of a reorganization, merger, or sale we may transfer any and all personal information we collect to the relevant third party.
Non-Personal Information
We may share Non-Personal Information publicly and with our strategic partners. For example, we may share Non-Personal Information to describe the size and success of our company.
6. Transparency and Choice
We may use third-party display advertising companies, including web platforms, to serve our ads on its behalf on sites across the Internet. Our display advertisers and we use cookies to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on your past visits to our website.
You may find additional information, opt-out of, or otherwise customize display advertising from web platforms by visiting the web platform’s ads preference manager.
You may find additional information and opt-out of other participating third-party display advertising by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.
We may use third-party analytics companies, such as Google Analytics, Adobe, and Omniture to analyze and understand user behavior when visiting our website.
You may find additional information and opt-out of Google Analytics by visiting the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
You may find additional information and opt-out of Adobe analytics by visiting the Adobe opt-out page.
You also may disable cookies within your browser. Please note, however, that certain features of the AACCP website will not function properly or be available once cookies are disabled.
7. Social Media Plug-ins
Plug-ins for social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google (among others), are integrated on AACCP’s website.
By interacting with us through a social media plug-in, certain information will be transmitted to the related social network, and you permit us to have on-going access to information from your social network profile.
If you do not want the social network to collect information about you, or to share it with AACCP and other third parties, please review the privacy policy of the relevant social network and/or log out of the relevant social network before you visit our site.
8. Information Security and Retention
We take precautions to safeguard your Personal Information from loss, theft, and misuse, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. These precautions include technical, physical, and administrative procedures.
Because email and instant messaging are not recognized as secure communications, we request that you not send private information to us by email or instant messaging services.
We regularly review our compliance with our Privacy Policy and enforce internal safeguards.
We are committed to working with appropriate regulatory authorities to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of Personal Information that we cannot resolve with you directly.
We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on all pages where Personal Information is collected. This protects the confidentiality of your Personal Information while it is transmitted over the Internet.
For your own protection, you should exercise care with the information you share over the Internet. You should always use a secure browser and exercise good judgment in using passwords, such as using a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters, and you should avoid using the same or similar passwords across multiple sites. We recommend using a password between 12 and 16 characters long.
You may access your Personal Information by logging into your account. We make good-faith efforts to give you ways to update or to delete your Personal Information quickly, unless we need to keep that information for a legitimate business or legal purpose. Some changes require personal contact with an assigned AACCP representative.
We retain Personal Information and Non-Personal Information for the time necessary and reasonable to fulfill the purposes outlined in the Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law or ethical duties, including our duty to preserve case files for a reasonable time and relevant information necessary to preserve a legal claim or defense. Our data retention for such information is seven (7) years.
We may reject requests to change or delete information that are unreasonably repetitive, require disproportionate technical effort (for example, requiring the development of new systems or fundamental changes to existing systems), risk the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (such as information stored on backups).
We work to protect data from accidental or malicious destruction. Accordingly, we may not immediately delete or change residual copies and we may not delete or change information from our backup systems. Unless a disproportionate effort is required, we will provide information access and correction without charge.
9. Third Party Privacy Policies
This Privacy Policy only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that we do not own or control or to people that we do not employ or manage. We do not control the privacy policies of third parties, and you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties where applicable. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others. For more information about each such third party, please refer to the third party’s privacy policy.
If you provided your information on the website of an entity not related to AACCP, and that entity shared your information with us, the privacy policy of that website governs the non-related entity’s use of your information, which may be different from this policy.
10. Children
We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected the personal information of a child under 13, we will take steps to delete the Personal Information as soon as possible.
11. Privacy Policy Changes and Questions
We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes to this Privacy Policy will be posted on our website, with a corresponding revision date. Please check the website and Online Ads each time you use them for the most current information and to ensure that you are aware of any updates.
12. Request for Information
If you have any questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy, please contact us: hello@AACCP.org
Should you no longer wish to receive our emails, you may click on the unsubscribe link located in the footer of each email received or at email-preferences.
13. State Privacy Protections
California Residents
You have the right to know we will be collecting and maintaining personal information including credit report data to assist you with credit repair and maintenance services. We collect this information from you, credit bureaus, public databases, data aggregators, and other commercially available sources. The categories of this personal information include:
- Personal identifiers to authenticate your identity and obtain credit reports you have requested;
- Credit report data to assist with identifying and challenging unfair, unsubstantiated, and inaccurate items;
- Internet/Network activity to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on your past visits to our website (see, infra section 6. Transparency and Choice for additional information); and
- Audio and electronic information (to record your agreements and authorizations given over the phone or through our web pages).
We do not sell, and will not sell, any of your personal information without obtaining your specific consent, including personal information of minors under age 16. Because we do not sell PI without your express consent, we are not obligated to include the “Do not sell my personal information” link on our site’s homepage.
We will share your personal information with our service providers when it is necessary to process your requests, maintain your account or case, or report to credit bureaus or your creditors. You have the right to request the following up to two times in a 12-month period:
- The categories of personal information we have collected about you in the past 12 months;
- The categories of sources from which we collect personal information;
- The business purpose for collecting or selling personal information;
- The categories of third parties with whom we share personal information;
- The specific personal information we have collected about you in the past 12 months;
- The categories of personal information that we sold about you and the categories of third parties to whom the personal information was sold in the past 12 months, or verification that no personal information was sold;
- The categories of personal information we disclosed about you for a business purpose in the past 12 months, or verification that no personal information was disclosed.
To exercise any of these rights, contact directly the applicable business partner or subsidiary you have worked with as follows:
- by calling 202-908-4331
- by email to hello@aaccp.org, which should include the following information:
- whether the request is being submitted for yourself or on behalf of another person;
- whether you are requesting information, data deletion, data categories, or do not sell;
- your first name, last name, email address, mailing address, last four digits of your SSN, phone number, and date of birth;
- any additional request details.
You may authorize an agent to make a request under these rights on your behalf by completing a notarized Agent Authorization Form and submitting it with your California Data Request email or mailing it to us at AACCP, 1800 M St. NW, Suite 400S, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Nevada Residents
We are providing you this notice under Nevada state law. You may be placed on our internal Do Not Call List by contacting the applicable business partner or subsidiary you have worked with as follows:
AACCP: 202-908-4331, hello@aaccp.org
Nevada law requires we provide the following contact information:
Bureau of Consumer Protection, Office of the Nevada Attorney General, 555 E. Washington St., Suite 3900, Las Vegas, NV 89101; Phone number: 702-486-3132; email: aginfo@ag.nv.gov or
AACCP, 1800 M ST. NW, Suite 400S, Washington, D.C. 20036, Phone number: 202-908-4331