Evolution Finance

Privacy Policy

Date Last Revised: November 25, 2015

BY ACCESSING AND USING ANY OF EVOLUTION FINANCE’S PRODUCTS OR SERVICES, INCLUDING WALLETHUB.COM AND CARDHUB.COM, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THIS PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO BE BOUND BY ALL OF THE TERMS IN THIS POLICY, PLEASE EXIT THE SITES, MOBILE APPLICATIONS OR OTHER SERVICES IMMEDIATELY AND DO NOT USE THEM IN ANY WAY.

Introduction

At Evolution Finance, Inc., ("Evolution Finance," "we," "us," or "our"), our relationship with you is our most valuable asset. We understand and appreciate that you are entrusting us with your information, and as such, we are committed to being transparent about how collect, use and display it.

This Privacy Policy applies to all of the products, services, mobile applications and websites (e.g. CardHub.com and WalletHub.com) offered by Evolution Finance or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies (collectively, the "Site"). This policy describes the information Evolution Finance collects when you register for, use, access or otherwise interact with any of our websites, applications, products or services (collectively, the “Services”).

By using any of the Services provided by Evolution Finance, you consent to this Policy, including your consent to our use and disclosure of information about you as required under current federal, state, and/or local law, as well as in the manner described below in this Policy.

In addition, please review our Terms of Service, which governs your use of our Services and includes provisions on arbitration, limitation of damages and choice of law.

Statement of Coverage

“Personal information” is information that you provide to us that personally identifies you, such as your name, email address, Social Security number, billing information, or other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Evolution Finance.

This Privacy Policy covers how Evolution Finance uses the information we collect and receive, including personal information and information associated with your past and current use of our products and services.

Personal information is your personally identifiable information that is not otherwise publicly available, such as your home phone number or personal email address. It is important to note that if you are using Evolution Finance’s Services to represent a Business, certain information that is considered “personal” for non-business users will not be considered as such in your case. For example, if your Business’s contact information (e.g. phone number, address and email address) is the same as your personal contact information, we reserve the right to display it.

This Privacy Policy neither applies to the practices of companies not owned or controlled by Evolution Finance nor to people not employed or managed by Evolution Finance.

This Privacy Policy is intended to cover collection of information on our websites from residents of the United States. The Services and websites provided by Evolution Finance are intended for U.S. citizens and residents. If you are visiting our websites from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored and processed in the United States where our servers are located and our central database is operated. The data protection and other laws of the United States might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using our Services or websites, you understand that your information may be transferred to our facilities and those third parties with whom we share it as described in this Privacy Policy.

When you use Evolution Finance’s Services, you consent to our collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Information Collection & Use

General: Evolution Finance may collect and store information about you when you register with Evolution Finance, when you use Evolution Finance Services, when you visit Evolution Finance pages or the pages of Evolution Finance properties (e.g. CardHub.com and WalletHub.com) or the pages of certain Evolution Finance partners, and when you enter promotions or sweepstakes conducted, endorsed, or advertised by Evolution Finance. Evolution Finance may combine the information we have about you with information obtained from business partners, other companies, and other users.

Evolution Finance uses information for the following general purposes: providing, maintaining, optimizing, and improving our services, developing new services, enhancing the user experience, customizing the advertising, offers and content you see, fulfilling your product and service requests, conducting research, managing your customer relationship with us, providing you customer support, contacting you, and providing reports for our internal and external clients and partners. We do not store your Personal Information in cookies or log files on your device, but identifiers in such cookies or log files may be tied to your Personal Information in our systems.

Registration: Upon registering with Evolution Finance, information such as your full name, email address, birth date, gender, or ZIP code may be requested. Certain products and services may ask you for additional information, such as your address, phone number, income, Social Security number, details about the financial products you use, driver’s license number or information about your assets. Some of the Personal Information we collect when you register, like your Social Security number, is required by the credit bureau to verify your identity so we can fulfill your request for a free credit score and credit report. When requesting your credit report and score on your behalf, we do not do a hard inquiry; rather, we do a soft inquiry of your credit report. We may also collect Personal Information or other information directly from you through various other forms and places throughout the Services, including “Contact Us” forms, or when you otherwise interact with us to provide or enhance our Services. You are not anonymous to us when you register with Evolution Finance and sign in to our Services.

Updating Your Personal Information & Communication Preferences: You can at any time correct or update the personal information that you provided and that we maintain on you by logging into wallethub.com and going to the “Settings” page. You can also change your communication preferences on this page. Evolution Finance is not responsible for and cannot amend the information in your credit report, which is produced by one or more credit reporting agencies. If you believe that some of the information in your credit report is inaccurate, you must contact the applicable credit reporting agency directly. Information on how to contact the credit reporting agency is contained on the “Credit Report” page for each account.

Transactions: Evolution Finance collects information about your transactions with our company and some of our partners. This includes billing and payment information and information about your use of our products and service offerings. This information will only be shared with third parties who perform tasks required to complete purchase transactions (such as fulfilling orders and processing credit card payments). When you submit credit card numbers, we encrypt that information using industry standard technology.

Special Offers and Updates: We use information we collect in providing the Services, including Personal Information, to match you with offers for financial products and services. Generally, we will display these offers when you access our web or mobile Services, but we will occasionally send you information on products, services, special deals, or promotions, by email or other electronic messaging. Out of respect for your privacy, we present the option not to receive these types of email or electronic messaging communications within your account or by following the unsubscribe link included in each email.

Site Access & Activity: Evolution Finance automatically collects and records certain information from the computer, mobile phone, or other device you use to access the Site, including your Evolution Finance cookie information, device type, IP address, browser type, browser language, the Web pages you request, location information, and the date and time of your request. Our third-party service providers may also collect such information.

We receive data about you whenever you interact with the Site, such as when you look at another person's profile, send someone a message, search for a topic, person, product, or page, or click on an ad. When you post things like photos or videos on the Site, we may also receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date, and place you took the photo or video.

Public Content: Your reviews, comments, questions and answers, posts, followers, groups, financial products in your Wallet, businesses and professionals that you have done business with, topics and users you follow, profile information (including your name), and any other information that you post to the Site are meant for public consumption. We may display this content on the Site, collect and store it, and further distribute it to a wider audience through third party sites and services. Please also keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily make other personal information (e.g. your home address) available online for viewing by third parties by posting it on the Site, that information is public and can be seen, collected and used by others besides us. We cannot be responsible for any unauthorized third party use of such information.

Other Users: We receive information about you from other users through their use of the Site, such as when they follow you, comment on your posts, ask you questions, mention you, or send you messages.

Location: We may collect and store information about your location if you enable your computer or mobile device to send us location information. Evolution Finance will not collect your specific location information without your consent. However, we may ask your consent to using location-enabled services on your Device so that we can collect, share and process information about your specific location to enhance our Services and provide better offers to you, using things like GPS or Wi-Fi access point information. You may be able to change the settings on your computer or mobile device to prevent it from providing us with such information. We may also use information like your IP address or other Device Identifiers for approximate location information, like your city or state.

Contacts: When you invite your friends to join the Site by providing their contact information or allowing us to use your address book from your computer, mobile device, or other sites, we may use and store your friends' contact information long enough to process your requests.

Messages: If you exchange messages with others through the Site, we may store these messages in order to deliver them and allow you to manage them. If you send information from the Site to your phone via SMS text message, we may log your phone number, phone carrier, and the date and time that the message was processed. Carriers may charge recipients for texts that they receive. When you send email or other communications to Evolution Finance, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services. As part of our credit monitoring service, you may also receive SMS text messages, push alerts on your phone, and emails when there is a credit or savings alert. These alert messages will also be logged.

Please also note that the messages you send or receive using the Site are only private to the extent that you and the sender/recipient keep them private. For example, we do not have any control over whether a recipient of one of your personal messages publicly posts it or its contents.

Mobile Application: Some of our Services may be provided through an application on your mobile, tablet computer, or similar device ("Mobile Application"). Our Mobile Application may collect the same types of information described above, including Personal Information or other information that you provide (e.g. name, age, gender, address), or Usage Information that is automatically collected and stored. We may also collect and use technical data and related information, including but not limited to, preferred language, phone number or other unique Device Identifiers assigned to your mobile device, technical information about your mobile device, system and application software, and peripherals, that is gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, product support and other services to you (if any) related to such Mobile Applications. We may associate your unique Device Identifier or Mobile Application Usage Information with any Personal Information you provide.

Other Sites: We offer some of our services on or through other web sites. Personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent to Evolution Finance in order to deliver the service. We process such information under this Privacy Policy.

The Site includes links to other web sites and provides access to products and services (for example, widgets and applications) offered by third parties, whose privacy policies we do not control. When you access another web site or purchase third party products or services through the Site, use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site you are visiting or the provider of such products or services. The privacy policy of our provider partners may differ from ours. We do not exercise control over these third party sites and they may place their own cookies or other files on your Device, collect data, web site usage information and your Device Identifier, or solicit Personal Information from you. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of any third party. We encourage you to note when you leave our Services and to read the privacy policies and terms of service of all third party web sites or applications before submitting any Personal Information to third parties.

You can also connect your Evolution Finance account to your accounts on third party services like Facebook or Twitter, in which case we may collect and store information identifying your account with the third party service as well as other information from these third party services that you have given us permission to access (e.g. name, date of birth, profile picture and friends birthdays). 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 the feature. We use the information to help you connect and share public content with your friends and followers. You can always disconnect your accounts on these third party services from your Evolution Finance account by visiting those services directly.

Information Provided by Third Parties about You: Evolution Finance may supplement the information we collect about you with information from third parties in order to enhance our ability to serve you, to tailor our content to you and to offer you opportunities to consider financial products or services that we believe may be of interest to you. This includes, for example, the free credit report and free credit score we may obtain on your behalf when you register for the Service. We may combine the information we receive from outside sources with information we collect through our Services. We treat all information about you, whether received from you or from a third party, in accordance with this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service.

Information Provided to Third Parties about You: Evolution Finance may provide our partners with your credit data and other relevant information provided by you while using the Services as a way to match you with offers for financial products and services from those partners. Generally, we will display these offers when you access our web or mobile Services, but we will occasionally send you information on products, services, special deals, or promotions, by email or other electronic messaging. It is always your choice whether or not to apply for an offered product or service and we will never submit an application for a financial product or service on your behalf without your express consent.

Information You Provide about a Third Party: If you choose to use our referral program to tell a friend about our Services, we will ask you for your friend's name and email address. We will send your friend an email inviting him or her to visit the site. Evolution Finance stores the information you provide for the sole purpose of sending this email and tracking the success of our referral program. The information you provide will not be used for any other marketing purpose unless your friend signs up for an account or we otherwise obtain consent from that person. Please be aware that when you use any referral functionality through our Services, your name and email address may be included in the communication sent to your friend.

Service-Related Announcements: We may send you service-related announcements. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send you an email. Generally, you may not opt-out of these non-promotional communications. If you do not wish to receive them, you have the option to terminate your account.

Push Notifications: If you use our Mobile Applications, we may send you push notifications from time-to-time via our Mobile Application in order to provide or alert you to service-related announcements or information on products, services, special deals, or promotions. If you do not wish to receive these types of communications, you may turn them off in your mobile Device settings.

Customer Service: When you first register for the Services, we may send you an introductory email welcoming you to WalletHub. We may also communicate with you via email or other means in response to your inquiries and to manage your account. As described above in “Information You Provide about a Third Party,” we may also use information you provide about others to send invitation emails as part of our referral program.

Children: At Evolution Finance we are committed to protecting the privacy of children. Our Services are not intended for anyone under the age of 18. We will not knowingly or intentionally collect any Personal Information online from children under the age of 13. If a child under the age of 13 has provided us with Personal Information, please let us know by filling out our contact form. Once received, we will remove that information from our site.

Security of Your Personal Information

Evolution Finance takes precautions to secure your personal information. If and when we ask you to provide your personal information, we do so through a connection that uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. This protocol provides security for your information by encrypting it as it travels from your computer to our computer. For security purposes, we then move all of the personal information that we collect or obtain about you to a secure environment on our proprietary network that has controls in place to limit access to and secure the data maintained within it.

Disclosure & Sharing of Information

Evolution Finance does not rent or sell your personal information to other people or non-affiliated companies. We may share information you have provided during use of our Services to match you with products or services from our partners, or under the following circumstances:

Safeguarding Communications

Evolution Finance may through its Services send you email, text messages or mobile device push notifications from time to time. These communications may contain sensitive credit information, such as your credit score, creditor names, personalized savings offers, or other information about your credit. Safeguarding the information contained in any communications sent to you by Evolution Finance is solely your responsibility. Evolution Finance is not responsible for safeguarding the communications once sent to you. You may change your notification preferences on the settings page at any time.

Advertisements

Evolution Finance displays targeted advertisements, which are based upon personal information. Although Evolution Finance does not provide any personal information to advertisers when our visitors or clients view or interact with a targeted ad, by viewing or interacting with an ad, you are tacitly agreeing that the advertiser might possibly assume that you meet the targeting criteria used for ad-display purposes. We may allow others to "sponsor" some of your account activities, such as reviews, recommendations, status updates, and posts regarding “deals,” in order to increase the likelihood that others see them. For example, if you apply for a new credit card, the respective credit card company may want to make sure that people who follow you see it so they can apply for it too. If content is sponsored, it will appear accompanied by the word "Sponsored” or something similar. Only people that could originally see the information can see the sponsored post, and no personal information about you (or your friends) is shared with the sponsor.

We may work with third-party advertising networks, marketing partners, publishers and other entities ("Advertising Service Providers") to perform analytics and advertise our products and services on websites not affiliated with us. In connection with these advertising services, we or our Advertising Service Providers, like Google Analytics, may use cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to collect behavioral information about how you use our site or other websites in order to perform tracking and marketing analytics or serve advertisements that are more likely to be of interest to you ("Interest-Based Advertisements"). Our Advertising Service Providers may permit you to opt-out of all or some Interest-Based Advertisements on designated websites. For example, many of our Advertising Service Providers participate in the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out program or Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out program.

In addition to services from other Advertising Service Providers, we utilize the following Google Analytics Advertising Features as part of our marketing analytics and advertising: Remarketing with Google Analytics, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, DoubleClick Platform integrations and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting and may from time to time use other services provided by Google Analytics. Google provides users an opportunity to opt-out of the Google Analytics Features through Google’s Ads Settings and their web browser opt-out plugin. For additional information on opting out of interest-based ads by Google, visit Google’s site.

Cookies

Evolution Finance may set and access Evolution Finance cookies on your computer. Evolution Finance may also log information about how you interact with our Services through the use of Flash cookies, web beacons or embedded scripts. We automatically collect non-personally identifiable information from your browser when you visit our website. This information includes, but is not necessarily limited to, your IP address, your browser type and language, access times, the content of any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us and the referring website address.

Advertisers and other companies do not have access to Evolution Finance's cookies. Evolution Finance lets other companies that show advertisements on some of our pages set and access their own cookies and action tags (also known as single pixel gifs or web beacons) on your computer. Their cookies may collect information about where you saw or clicked on the advertisements they delivered, and possibly associate this information with your subsequent visits to the advertised websites. They may also combine this information with personal information they collect directly from you. Other companies' use of their cookies is subject to their own privacy policies, not this one.

At this time, Evolution Finance does not respond to automated signals regarding tracking mechanisms, including “do not track” instructions from your browser. However, you may change the privacy preferences in your browser to prevent or limit the use of cookies or similar technologies. Be aware that Flash cookies operate differently than other browser cookies and various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing Flash cookies. To manage Flash cookies, please click here. Please note that blocking cookies, Flash cookies or similar technologies may affect your browsing experience on many sites and may prevent your ability to use certain Evolution Finance Services, including many of the personalized features we provide for our members.

Evolution Finance uses web beacons to access Evolution Finance cookies inside and outside our network of web sites and in connection with Evolution Finance products and services.

Editing Your Information

At any time, you can edit your Evolution Finance Account Information. This includes your marketing preferences.

New categories of marketing communications might be added to the Marketing Preferences page from time to time. Users who visit this page can opt-out of receiving future marketing communications from these new categories, or they can unsubscribe by following the instructions contained in the messages they receive.

We reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to the services of Evolution Finance that are considered part of your Evolution Finance account without offering you the opportunity to opt-out of receiving them, including such items as service announcements, administrative messages, credit monitoring and savings alerts, and newsletters.

Other users may be able to identify you, or associate you with your user account if you include personal information in content that you post on the Site.

You are responsible for maintaining the accuracy of the information you submit to us, such as your contact information provided as part of registration. You can access and make changes to some of the Personal Information you submit at any time by logging in with your registered email address and password and making the change on the site.

When you use Evolution Finance services, we make good faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete such data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. We ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes), or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case where we provide information access and correction, we perform this service free of charge, except if doing so would require a disproportionate effort. Because of the way we maintain certain services, after you delete your information, residual copies may take a period of time before they are deleted from our active servers and may remain in our backup systems.

Confidentiality & Security

Evolution Finance takes your privacy and security very seriously, and we follow generally accepted industry standards to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data, both during transmission and once we receive it. In particular, we:

However, no data transmission over the Internet, mobile device or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

If you believe your Evolution Finance account has been compromised, please report the incident using our contact form.

If you have been contacted by someone about your Evolution Finance account asking for a password, birth date or other personal information, please do NOT respond and forward the email to fraud@EvolutionFinance.com.

In the event that you believe that your personal safety is at risk or if you believe that you may be the victim of identity theft or other illegal conduct, please contact the appropriate federal, state or local law enforcement agencies directly.

Data Retention

The information we obtain from or about you may be processed and stored in the United States of America. We may keep it as long as is permitted or required under the law. If you terminate your account, we may retain your data for a period of five years (or longer if required by law) in our active systems in order to ensure our ability to satisfy the authorized uses under this Privacy Policy. For example, we may use retained data to prevent, investigate, or identify possible wrongdoing in connection with the Site or to comply with legal obligations. Please note that information may exist in backup storage even after it has been removed from our active databases. You can request that your account be terminated here. Once your account is terminated, we will disable your account, which will be inactive and not accessible to anyone other than Evolution Finance authorized personnel. Moreover, once your account is terminated, you will not receive any further product or service related communications from Evolution Finance.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Evolution Finance may update this policy at any time without notice to you. Changes or additions to this Privacy Policy will be available in this section of the website. You can always come to this section to learn what information we gather, how we might use that information and whether we will disclose it to anyone. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.

Questions & Suggestions

Because we want to demonstrate our commitment to your privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices. If you have questions or suggestions, please complete a feedback form. You may also contact us by sending postal mail to:

Evolution Finance, Inc.
Attn: Customer Care - Privacy
818 18th Street, NW, Suite 420
Washington, DC 20006