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ClearScore Privacy Policy

Effective from: 03/07/2022 19 min read

Privacy Policy

ClearScore Canada Limited will be the data controller for the data that you provide us or we collect in relation to the provision of our services to you. We respect your privacy and protecting your information is paramount. We want you to be informed and empowered with respect to your privacy when you use our services. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully before using our website or apps or registering to use our services. Together with our Terms and Cookies Policy, this Privacy Policy sets out our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we collect, process and treat it.

By visiting www.clearscore.com/ca and using our apps and services you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this Privacy Notice.

References in this Privacy Policy and on our website to \"we\", \"our\" or \"us\" are references to ClearScore Canada Limited. References to \"you\" and \"your\" means each natural or legal person who uses our website or the associated services.

References to our website below include references to our apps.

Privacy Policy

  • The information we collect

  • How we use the information

  • Who we may share your data with

  • What is the legal basis for us using this information?

  • Direct marketing and how you can change your preference

  • How we protect your information

  • How long we keep your information for

  • Links to and from third party websites

  • Automated Decision Making

  • Your rights

  • Changes we make to our Privacy Policy

  • Contact us

Cookies Policy

  • Overview of our Cookie Policy

  • What are cookies?

  • More about the cookies we use

  • Specific cookies we use

  • Turning cookies off

  • Contact us

  • Further reading

We collect and process information which:

  • you give to us when you register with us, such as your name and contact details

  • we obtain from Credit Reporting Agencies on your behalf

  • we obtain from our Cybercheck Partners on your behalf

  • we collect about you based on your use of our website or from your mobile device if you are using our app

  • we receive from other sources, such as third parties who give us information about you

  • is collected from cookies.

We may collect and process the following data about you:

Information you give us. You may give us information about you when you use our services or by communicating with us. This includes information you provide when you participate in discussion boards, answer specific questions on our website, provide us with feedback, participate in surveys, and when you report a problem.

The information you give us may include:

  • Title

  • Name

  • Income

  • Email address

  • Date of birth

  • Phone number

  • Monthly expenditure

  • Residential details

  • Employment details

  • Address history

  • Bank

  • Property value

  • Deposit

  • Monthly rental income

  • Mortgage details

  • Driver's license details

  • Energy and gas charge details

  • Lifestyle information

Reporting Agencies on your behalf. If you register to use our services, we will obtain your credit score and credit report from one or more Credit Reporting Agencies on your behalf.

Information we collect from our Cybercheck Partners on your behalf. All our registered customers benefit from our ClearScore Protect service. To provide you with this service, we share the email address connected with your ClearScore account with our Cybercheck Partners (see more here), who use this information to identify whether the account details associated with your email account may have been compromised. The Cybercheck Partners will not use your email address for any other purpose (including marketing) and will only keep it for the time necessary to conduct the check after which it will be deleted.

If you activate the Protect service, we may also receive information about you from our Cybercheck Partners such as:

  • Name

  • Addresses

  • Social profiles

  • Email addresses

  • Phone numbers

  • Usernames

  • Date of birth

  • Education and professional history

Information we collect about you based on your use of our website or apps. Each time you visit our website or use our app we may automatically collect the following information:

  • technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, operating system and platform

  • information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our website (including date and time); products you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call our customer service number

Information we receive from other sources. We may receive information about you if you use any of the websites we operate or the other services we provide. We also work closely with third parties and may receive information from them as follows:

  • We may receive information from our business partners, such as the lenders and credit providers to whom we introduce you as part of the services whether or not you have taken out a product with them, what other products you may have used, and other such details

  • With your consent we will collect your credit report or credit score from credit reporting agencies on your behalf as described in our Terms whether or not you have taken out a product with them, what other products you may have used, and other such details.

Information collected from cookies. We and our service providers collect information about your use of our website from cookies. For more on how we use cookies and how to decline them or turn them off please read our Cookies Policy.

Information collected from two-factor authentication. If you opt to enable two-factor authentication for your ClearScore account, we will collect your phone number and use it to provide you with a code via SMS which you can use to enter your account.

Recording telephone calls and other communications. We may monitor or record telephone conversations or other communications between you and us.

We use information we hold about you to provide our services to you and improve those services, administer your account and communicate with you and to use information on an anonymous basis for research, profiling and analytical purposes.

Information you give to us or we collect from Credit Reporting Agencies , Cybercheck Partners or other third parties on your behalf as part of our services. We will use this information to:

  • administer your account and relationship with us and to, communicate with you by telephone, mail, email, text (SMS) message, push notification or other electronic means

  • verify your identity as part of our identity authentication process

  • provide you with information, products and services

  • where you have provided your consent for us to market to you, provide you with information about other products and services we feel may interest you or be best for you

  • notify you about changes to our services

  • ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and your device

  • aggregate it on an anonymous basis with other data for data analytical and reporting purposes

  • undertake analysis and profiling of your credit information in order to identify and inform you of credit products that we consider are likely to interest you or be suited to your credit circumstances or to enhance our services.

Information we collect about you based on your use of our website. We will use this information:

  • to administer our website and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes

  • to improve the service we offer you such as understanding the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you

  • as part of our efforts to keep our website safe and secure and to prevent fraud

  • to make recommendations about products or services that may be of interest

Information we receive from other sources. We may combine this information with information you give to us and use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above.

Recording telephone calls and other communications. We will use telephone recordings or transcripts of communications to check your instructions to us, analyse, assess and improve our services, for training and quality purposes and for the purposes of investigating any complaint you may make, or as evidence in any dispute between you and us.

We may share your data with other members of our group and with other third parties, such as our service providers, advertisers, Credit Reporting Agencies, and Fraud Prevention Agencies and Cybercheck Partners.

We may need to disclose your data to others to ensure the smooth provision to you of the products, services and information you request. Your data may be disclosed to the other entities as described below.

The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with fraud prevention agencies who will use it to prevent fraud and money-laundering and to verify your identity. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance or employment.

Subprocessors. Our subprocessors act on our behalf in respect of information that we share with them. We may share your information with the following subprocessors:

Entity

Type

Amazon Web Services, Inc.

Cloud Service Provider

Blueshift, Inc.

Customer Relationship Management Provider

Segment.io, Inc.

Data Segregation Tool Provider

Spycloud, Inc.

Data Provider

Superlative Enterprises Pty Ltd.

Data Provider

Teleperformance Global Services Private Limited

Customer Support Provider

Zendesk, Inc.

Customer Support Provider

Trans Union of Canada, Inc.

Credit Reference Agency

Group company. We may share your personal information with any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, for the purposes of providing our services as described in these Terms.

Selected third parties. We may also share your information with selected third parties including:

  • Credit Reporting Agencies, to obtain your credit score and credit report on your behalf and to provide our services to you (please see \"Credit Reporting Agencies\" below for more detail)

  • Fraud prevention agencies, to prevent crime and trace those responsible (please see \"Fraud Prevention Agencies\" below for more detail)

  • Product providers, such as our business partners who offer you credit cards, loans, car finance, mortgages, insurance, pensions, investments and other related products, to:

    • assess if you are an existing customer and for fraud prevention purposes

    • conduct analysis to provide you with better products and services in the future, and for segmentation purposes

    • pre-fill an application form with the product provider

    • assess your probability of being accepted for a product

The product provider does not have permission to use this data for any other purpose including marketing

  • service providers we use (such as comparison sites and aggregators) for analysis and profiling of your credit information (and any other data provided by you or on your behalf) to identify and inform you of credit products that are likely to be suited to your credit circumstances through targeted advertising. When you click to search for credit offers on our website or our apps, these service providers will record a \'soft credit search\' on your credit file, but this record will be invisible to other lenders, so by itself it will not affect their lending decision and it will not affect your credit score. You can opt out of this if you want to in your \"My Account\" section, however, if you do opt out of this, we will not be able to show you ads that are specifically targeted to you and will only be able to show you generic ads, which may not be suited to your credit circumstances

  • advertisers that require data, to perform services on our behalf, including selecting and serving relevant adverts

  • analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our service

  • if we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets (or the buyer or seller's advisers)

  • if we or part or all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets

  • if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of ClearScore Canada Limited, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Credit Reporting Agencies. If you register to use our services we will obtain on your behalf, in accordance with our Terms, copies of your credit report and credit score from designated Credit Reporting Agencies. In order to provide these services to you, we will share your information with such Credit Reference Agencies and their Subcontractor, to allow them to perform the services, for fraud prevention purposes and to allow Subcontractors to provide third parties with product and services.

The information which we provide to the CRA may be supplied by them to other organizations such as Fraud Prevention Agencies and used by those organisations for the purposes of checking identity, preventing fraud, tracing and collection of debt. The CRA may also use the data to undertake statistical analysis.

If you choose to apply for a product, the lender will undertake a full credit check and provide you with further privacy information for that product.

Fraud Prevention Agencies. We will share your personal information with fraud prevention agencies. If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified, details of this fraud will be passed to these agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information. We and other organizations may access and use from other countries the information recorded by fraud prevention agencies.

We make sure we have appropriate legal bases on which to collect, use and share data about you. If you have any questions about the lawful bases upon which we collect and use your personal data, you can contact our Privacy Officer.

Consent. We will always seek your consent to process your personal data, except where otherwise permitted or required by law. Your consent may be express or implied, or obtained via an opt-out mechanism. You have the right to withdraw or decline your consent at any time, subject to contractual and legal restrictions.

We offer you the opportunity to receive marketing information from us. You can opt out easily from receiving marketing from us at any time.

We will normally send direct marketing by email if we have your email address, but may choose to contact you via other methods, such as push notifications to your devices.

You may receive the following types of communications from us:

  • Product recommendations - we'll get in touch with personalized, timely product recommendations that can help you improve your financial situation. We'll also send you content such as tips, research, features and news, coaching program on how to keep on top of your money and other related content. You can unsubscribe from these at any time and we will never spam your inbox.

  • Core communications - we will send you your credit report every month, alerts whenever there is a change to your credit report, security alerts pertaining to your ClearScore account, quarterly reports detailing the findings of our ClearScore Protect service, significant changes which may impact our service and other such related content. These communications are an intrinsic part of owning a ClearScore account and cannot be opted-out of unless you delete your ClearScore account.

If you would like us to stop sending direct marketing to you, we offer simple ways to do this. Whenever you receive direct marketing you will be given an option to unsubscribe. You may also update your preferences here.

You can also tell us that you do not wish to receive any more marketing communications at any time by writing, with your full name, address and other contact details (to enable us to find your records), to:

Privacy Officer
ClearScore Canada Limited
privacy@clearscore.ca

We take the security of your data very seriously and use strict procedures to protect it.

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers and will be accessible by authorized employees, sub-processors and contractors who require access for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

We do our best to protect your personal data, but we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access, loss or damage.

We or our service providers may transfer and process personal data outside of Canada, including in the US, India, UK or EEA. We always require that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect the information when it is processed. Despite these safeguards, applicable laws in Canada and outside of Canada may allow government and national security agencies to access personal data in certain circumstances.

While your account remains active, we keep your information for no longer than is necessary depending on the purpose for which we are using it.

How long we keep your information will depend on the purpose for which we use it. While you are a customer of ours, we will only retain your information for as long as is necessary for those purposes. We will retain your credit score and credit reports for as long as you hold an account with ClearScore.

After termination of your account, we may continue to use anonymized data (which does not identify individual users) which is aggregated with anonymized data of other users. We use this aggregated anonymized data for data analysis, profiling and research purposes, for example to gain insights about our users. We may also keep your email address for a reasonable period of time to ensure that you no longer receive any communications from us as well as your name, date of birth and latest address for fraud prevention purposes and for the exercise or defence of a legal claim.

If you follow a link to or from our website to a third party website, please be aware that these websites have their own privacy policies.

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.

We use an automated decision making system to make automated decisions based on personal information we have about you. This helps us to make sure our decisions are quick and fair, based on what we know.

Identity verification. We use an automated decision making system to verify the details you provide against those held by third party providers. If you do not pass the check using the automated system, we cannot provide our services to you without being able to verify your identity.

Tailored products and services. We may use your information to predict the probability that you may be accepted for a product, or to determine the best order or manner in which to display products to you.

Tailored communications. We want to make sure we're only sending you emails that are relevant to you, and so we will use your personal information to determine which content you may be more interested in receiving.

You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling. We understand that not everyone is comfortable with decisions being left entirely up to machines. If you have any questions about automated decision making, please contact us via privacy@clearscore.ca.

You can exercise specific rights with regards to the data that we hold about you.

We will provide you with the necessary tools and contact details to be able to exercise your statutory rights regarding the information that we hold about you. Subject to exceptions provided for by law, you have the right to:

  • Correct your data: you will usually be able to amend any information that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete through the settings in your account.

  • Request access to your data: you can ask for access to the personal data that we hold about

  • Erase your data: you can ask us to fully or partially delete your personal data where there is no compelling reason for us to keep using it, although we may not be able to continue to provide our services. We may keep your email address to make sure your e-mail marketing choices are respected in future. We also have the right to continue using your information if such usage is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations.

  • Download your data or send it to another controller: you can obtain a copy of the data you provided us in a machine-readable format. In addition, where certain conditions apply, you have the right to have such information transferred directly to a third party.

  • Right to withdraw consent: You have the right to withdraw your consent to our collection, use or disclosure of your personal data at any time, subject to contractual and legal restrictions. This can be done by contacting our Privacy Officer.

For the exercise of any of your rights, you can also contact us at privacy@clearscore.ca.

Any changes we may make to our Privacy Policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where we decide it is appropriate, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our Privacy Notice.

You can address any questions, comments, complaints or requests regarding this Privacy Policy to the Data Protection Officer at privacy@clearscore.ca.

OVERVIEW OF OUR COOKIE POLICY

Clear Score uses cookies for a variety of purposes, including ensuring that our website functions as expected, remembering your preferences and gathering data on the users of our website and our services.

By using our website (through any device) you agree that this Cookies Policy, together with our Privacy Policy and Terms, applies to that use. References to our website below include references to our apps.

We are committed to protecting you and any information (anonymous or otherwise) that we collect about you online. This section tells you about how and why we use cookies, and how this allows us to improve our service.

If you wish to use our website, but would like us not to set cookies in your browser, you can disable or remove the cookies. Details on how to do this are set out below. Please note that disabling or removing the cookies we or our third party service providers set may impact the functionality and security of our website and our ability to provide our services to you.

We reserve the right to make changes to our Cookies Policy. Any changes we may make to our Cookies Policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our Cookies Policy. Your continued use of our website is taken as your agreement to any such changes.

WHAT ARE COOKIES?

Cookies are files containing small amounts of information downloaded to your device. We and our third party service providers use both session cookies and persistent cookies. We use cookies for a range of purposes, including to remember any preferences you've set and to improve usability of the website for you and other users.

Cookies are files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to the device you use when you visit a website. Your web browser (such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari) then sends these cookies back to our website or application on each subsequent visit.

We and our third party service providers use the information we obtain about you through the use of cookies for the following purposes:

  • to recognize your device(s) when you visit our website and to remember if you've set any preferences on our website. This enables us to personalize our content for you and greet you by name

  • to temporarily store data as part of, for example, customer surveys

  • to test new content and evaluate its effectiveness

  • to remember if you've been informed of our Cookies Policy, Privacy Policy and other Terms before

  • to recognize and count the number of visitors to our website and see how you navigate our website when you are visiting it (including tracking page usage and paths used by visitors through our website; and tracking use of our Internet banner advertisements and other links from our marketing partners' websites to our website)

  • to improve our website's usability and keep our services easy to use and up to date

  • to allow you to share pages with social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter / to support social media components, like Facebook or Twitter (where our website uses a plugin from these third party platforms)

  • to ensure you don't miss information that is relevant to you (including targeting our website content, targeting our marketing campaigns and direct marketing emails, targeting our Internet banner advertisements on our website and on other websites)

  • to analyze use of our website (including for performance and statistical analysis, sales and marketing research). To stop us setting these cookies you will need to set up your browser to reject all cookies (see further below)

We may also combine this web usage data with other information we have collected about you. We store this information so that we have a better and more specific understanding of the way users are using our website, and their preferences and interests, for the purposes set out above.

Cookies may be either \"persistent\" cookies or \"session\" cookies, depending on how long they are used.

  • Persistent cookies remain on your device after you have closed your browser, and allow a website to remember your actions and preferences. They are activated each time you visit the website where the cookie was generated. Sometimes persistent cookies are used by websites to provide targeted advertising based on the browsing history of the device. They are stored by the browser and remain valid until their set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date).

  • Session cookies only last for the duration of your visit and are deleted when you close your browser. They facilitate tasks such as allowing a website to identify that a user of a particular device is navigating from page to page, supporting website security or basic functionality.

Many of the cookies we use are session cookies. For example, they help us to ensure the security of your session, and can also keep you signed in to your ClearScore account while you move between pages.

MORE ABOUT THE COOKIES WE USE

This section describes more about the different types of cookies we use. The cookies are both cookies that we set (first party cookies) and cookies that are managed for us by third parties.

Whether a cookie is a first or third party cookie depends on which website the cookie comes from.

  • First party cookies are those set by or on behalf of the website visited. All other cookies are third party cookies.

  • Third party cookies: In some cases, some of these cookies are managed for us by third parties, but we don't allow the third party to use the cookies for any purpose other than those listed above.

  • Web analytics services: In order to keep our products and services easy to use and up-to-date, we also use web analytics services to help us understand how people use our website. For example, we can see which parts of our services are most popular, identify when errors occur and test different versions of a page or feature to see which one works best. These web analytics services may be designed and operated by other companies on our behalf. They do this using small invisible images known as \"web beacons\" or \"tracking pixels\" that may be included in the digital products and services on our website.

These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose. We use retargeting and online behavioural advertising to market ClearScore which employs targeting cookies to deliver you more targeted advertising.

You can read more about the cookies we and our trusted service providers use below.

By using our website, you agree that we can place both first party and third party cookies and web analytic services on your device.

Below is a full list of the cookies we use together with a description of what they are used for, and whether they are \'first\' or \'third\' party. Where a cookie is a third party cookie, please visit the providers' website for more information.

Third Party cookies - These are third party cookies used to track visitors, collect information about how visitors use our site and improve site performance. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited.

You can reject cookies within your browser, but please note that certain parts of our website may no longer function as expected.

In all modern browsers you may elect to reject cookies and/or enable do not track features, and we provide instructions on how to do this below. Please note however that by doing so parts of our website may no longer function as expected. For example, if you delete cookies any preferences they record will be lost. This includes for example where you have opted out from cookies, as this requires an opt-out cookie to be set.

If your concerns are based around third party cookies, then we recommend you just reject those cookies, rather than all cookies so that we can still provide you with the functionality you expect.

You can select to stop your browser from accepting cookies.

If you have any questions about our cookies or this Cookies Policy, please contact us on privacy@clearscore.ca.

If you would like to know more about cookies, you can find out more at the links below.

Useful information about cookies can be found at: http://www.allaboutcookies.org\ Please also see the website of the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada here: https://youradchoices.ca