Our Commitment to Your Privacy
We could hit you with a twenty paragraph Privacy Policy that would take a magnifying glass to read and a legal education to understand. But, we won't. At BiggerPockets, we sort of figure we're all adults here and, as adults, we understand there are certain rules we all have to abide by. That means us as well as you!
This policy is intended to help you understand how BiggerPockets, Inc., its subsidiaries and affiliates ("BiggerPockets.com," "we," or "us") collect, use and safeguard the information you provide on our website.
BiggerPockets.com has become a valuable tool for countless thousands to help educate themselves and others about real estate and real estate investing. Our social networking function, forums, and other features, are designed to further facilitate that by allowing members to share personal information, insights, and comments. Members can even get and receive references that can be used for a variety of professional purposes; we trust, mainly for real estate investing . . . but that's your business. Like we said, we're all adults here.
BiggerPockets is well aware that privacy concerns are--or should be--of paramount importance to our members; they are to us. So, this is where we tell you what we will and won't be doing with the personal information on the site; and, where we tell you the rules we expect our members to adhere to. Nothing weird or harsh; pretty much common sense. So, here goes:
BiggerPockets -- let's just refer to it as BP for short -- collects information submitted by its users--names, email addresses, etc. This information is used by us to help authenticate users and to send members notices and other important information. Of course, as part of the social networking aspect of BP, other information you volunteer is also collected: what you do for a living, your education level, whether you're a male or female and how old you are. This aggregate information (demographic data) is collected and is used to help us understand who our members are, and may be shared with third parties in describing our membership, however, it is never linked to any personal accounts. Basically, we collect a lot of demographi info from our membership, but strip out all personal information for our members' privacy.
Keep in mind that some user profile information--pictures, names...that sort of stuff--will be displayed to other members to better facilitate user interaction of BP's social networking. We do, however have privacy functions available that enable you to hide all of your profile information to people you are not affiliated with.
BP also logs things such as IP addresses and browser types from both users and visitors and this is used by BP to help manage the website and improve it as well. And, yes, IP addresses are also kept track of for security and/or monitoring purposes.
BP, of course, has links to other sites. In fairness...and as a matter of law, BP can't be responsible for the privacy policies or content of those other sites. That means, if privacy is a concern for you, and it should be, you should read the other site's privacy policy to make sure you are comfortable with it. What you are reading here and now, only applies to BP.
Word of warning: If you post public information to any public forum, all that information can be gotten by the public and used to send you all sorts of unsolicited communications.
Of course, BP users can alter or even remove any of their personal information anytime they feel like it.
For the protection of our members, BP accounts use member-created passwords and BP will do all it can reasonably do to make sure that information is kept strictly private. However, the fact of cyberlife is, we can't--and no one can--give you a 100 percent guarantee that some devious individual or individuals may gain unauthorized entry. Additionally, we protect financial transactions incurred between our users and the site by SSL encription for transmission to our payment processors or directly by utilizing third party protected payment services. We do take precautions in all data on the site and we'd be happy to discuss that with you further if you contact us.
BP is not going to disclose the personal information of our members to any third parties--but, there are some notable exceptions you ought to know about and understand: BP will respond to legal subpoenas, search warrants and other legal process if we conclude that this disclosure is absolutely necessary. For example, such disclosure could be to protect the safety of our membership.
If your personal information changes, we do ask that you update it as soon as possible.
This site uses cookies for site administration purposes. If for any reason you wish to not take advantage of cookies, you may have your browser not accept them, although this may disable or render unusable many of the features of the BP website.
In addition, we use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
In the event that BP is acquired by someone else -- another company buys us, for example -- BP reserves the right to give the personal information we have collected to the successor owner or part owner.
Nothing here is set in stone. From time to time, BP may change parts of or all of our privacy policy. If this happens, it will not be done in secret. We will post the changes or planned changes on BP to make all concerned aware of what is going on.
Any questions? No problem. Feel free to contact us at:
BiggerPockets, Inc.
webmaster@biggerpockets.com
877-831-4704
Updated 3/16/09