At 1st Financial Services LLC we respect and protect the privacy of those who visit or use our Web sites. When we collect information from you, we want you to know how it is used. To demonstrate our commitment to fair information practices, we have adopted leading industry privacy guidelines.

This privacy statement defines privacy aspects specific to the 1st Financial Services LLC Web site. Because of the financial nature of our business, our Web sites are not designed to appeal to children under the age of 13. Therefore, we don't knowingly attempt to solicit or receive any information from children.

Our Philosophy and Practices

At 1st Financial Services LLC, we want you to be comfortable and confident when using our Web site. Therefore, we would like to share with you the following principles that govern our information practices and other privacy aspects of our Web site:

We provide you notice of our Web site information practices.
We tell you how and why we use Web technologies.
We give you choices about how the personally identifiable information that you provide to us may be used.
We let you update or correct your personally identifiable information.
We work to protect personally identifiable information from loss, misuse, or unauthorized alteration.
We provide various ways for you to contact us about our information practices and other aspects of privacy.

WE PROVIDE YOU NOTICE OF OUR WEB SITE INFORMATION PRACTICES.

To maximize the value of our services, we may request information from you when you visit our Web sites. In this Privacy Statement, we tell you what is being collected, how it is collected, by whom it is being collected, why it is being collected and to whom it may be disclosed.

Here is how and why we collect and use information from you:
Tools, Applications and Registration. We provide a number of ways for you to explore your options for mortgages and loans, so you can determine which options may be the most desirable for you. You can engage a number of tools, planners, calculators and other interactive advisors, such as the online interviews, without providing us your identity. We will not ask you for personally identifiable information to use these features, and do not attribute the information that you provide to you as an individual.

However, if you want to exercise one or more of the loan options presented, we will ask you to supply other identifying and supporting information needed to process your application. We use your contact information to provide you with alerts and updates regarding your loan status. 1st Financial Services LLC does not share your information with outside companies for their promotional use. We may, however, use it to send you communications and promotional materials for 1st Financial Services LLC loans and for products or services of 1st Financial Services LLC or those of our partners. If you do not want to receive this information you may opt-out during registration or by sending an e-mail to optout@1st Financial Services LLC.

We may also supply the information you provide, on a confidential basis, to service providers, such as credit reporting services, who assist us in qualifying, processing, closing and servicing your loan Consumer Report. 1st Financial Services LLC, Inc., which originates loans through the 1st Financial Services LLC Web site. By submitting a loan application or a request to be pre-qualified to us, you authorize us to share your consumer report with our parent, affiliates and subsidiaries only to process your loan application.

Newsletters. We provide you the opportunity to subscribe to e-mail newsletters and other e-mail communications. You may unsubscribe by following the instructions provided in each e-mail newsletter.

Interactive Help. You may initiate an online interactive discussion with a 1st Financial Services LLC support professional to facilitate the completion of your loan application. We do not ask for any personally identifiable information to use this service; if you volunteer personally identifiable information, it will only be used to respond to your request.

Message Boards. We may provide you the opportunity to engage other members and our select special guests in dialogue about finances and related topics through our message boards. These dialogues occur in a public forum, so any information that you provide is considered public, non-confidential and non-proprietary. We offer you the ability to create nicknames which you may use on the message boards. Unless you disclose it, only you and 1st Financial Services LLC will know the linkage between your nicknames and your member name.

More on our general information practices

Contests and Surveys. From time to time, we may offer you the option to participate in contests or surveys. If you would like to participate, we may ask you for contact information, preferences or other information. This information may be used to conduct research, improve our offerings or award prizes. Our contests may have separate rules and we will identify how the information that you supply will be used in each case.

Mandatory and Optional Information. We also identify the information that is necessary to fulfill your request. Whenever we ask for additional or optional information, we identify those fields appropriately so that you know what is required to provide the requested service. If you chose not to provide mandatory information, we will not be able to provide you the service you are requesting.

E-mail Message Formatting. When sending you e-mail we may use an image called a single-pixel GIF, that allows us to (1) format messages that best align with your computer's capabilities, and (2) determine whether you've opened an HTML e-mail. When you click on a link within an e-mail message, you will first pass through our server, then are redirected onto the Internet. We use this data on an aggregate level to evaluate response rates to our e-mail messages and to determine which links are most useful to our customer base.

1st Financial Services LLC and its Subsidiaries. 1st Financial Services LLC and its subsidiaries may exchange customer information with each other to fulfill your requests or to provide you with information about other products or services.

Service Providers. In some cases, we will employ or use service providers such as consultants, temporary workers, third party software developers, or outsourcers, to complete a business process or provide a service on our behalf. For example, we may use service providers to deliver products, to offer online software applications, or to send e-mails. When we employ service providers, we may need to share your personally identifiable information. Service providers are strictly prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for purposes other than to act on our behalf.

Service Alerts and Critical Notices. Although we respect and honor the privacy preferences you have expressed, we may nevertheless contact you to inform you of specific changes that may impact your ability to use this service or for other critical non-marketing purposes, such as bug alerts. We may also contact you to respond to your specific requests or to clarify the order information you provided to us.

Change of Control. Your personally identifiable information may be transferred in connection with a sale, merger, transfer, exchange or other disposition (whether of assets, stock or otherwise) of all or a portion of a business of 1st Financial Services LLC and/or its subsidiaries. You will have the opportunity to opt out of further secondary use of your information following any change of control.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy. If we plan to make significant changes to any of our privacy policies or practices with respect to how we use personally identifiable information, we'll post those changes to 1st Financial Services LLC site 30 days before they take effect.

Legal Disclosures. In some cases we may disclose certain information to comply with a legal process, such as a court order, subpoena, search warrant, or law enforcement request.

WE TELL YOU HOW AND WHY WE USE WEB TECHNOLOGIES.

Here is how and why we use some common Web technologies to help manage our Web sites:
Cookies. A "cookie" is a small piece of information that our Web site may provide to your browser while you are at our sites. The 1st Financial Services LLC Web site supplies your browser with cookies that contain a unique identifier used to better understand Web site usage in the aggregate so we know what areas of our site users prefer (e.g., based on the number of visits to those areas).

If you are a registered member on the 1st Financial Services LLC Web site, you will receive a cookie when you login. This cookie is maintained by your browser and contains your identifier. This cookie is also used to authenticate your identity and provide you with access to areas of our Web site that are limited to registered members, such as those that allow you to view and manage your personal profile.

If you simply want to browse, you do not have to accept cookies from our site. Should you decide, however, that you would like to register and sign in to special areas of the Web site and you have modified your browser settings not to accept cookies, you will need to re-set your browser to accept the cookies that we send. Otherwise, you won't be able to participate in certain areas of the Web site. Most browsers are defaulted to accept and maintain cookies.

Advertising networks that serve ads on this Web site may assign different cookies to you. Those cookies may be used to track your involvement with the advertising on our site. You may choose not to accept these cookies. You should review their privacy policies to learn more about what, why and how they collect and use private information. If you have questions about our ad serving networks, please contact us at http://1st Financial Services LLC.

Web Site Usage Data. With or without cookies, our Web site keeps track of usage data, such as the source address that a page request is coming from, your IP address or domain name, the date and time of the page request, the referring Web site (if any) and other parameters in the URL. We use this data to better understand Web site usage in the aggregate so that we know what areas of our Web site users prefer. This information is stored in log files and is used for aggregated and statistical reporting. This log information is not linked to personally identifiable information gathered elsewhere on the site.

If we plan to make significant changes to any of our privacy policies or practices with respect to how we use personally identifiable information, we'll post those changes to this privacy statement 30 days before they take effect.

WE GIVE YOU CHOICES ABOUT HOW THE PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION THAT YOU PROVIDE TO US MAY BE USED.

We give you the opportunity to control the use of your personal information for purposes other than to fulfill your request or as is required to process, close and subsequently service your loan. We will provide you the opportunity to opt-out of secondary uses of personally identifiable information you provide us, whenever we gather it. Simply notify us when you register or you may call (417) 888-0050 or send an e-mail to optout@1stservices.com.

WE LET YOU UPDATE OR CORRECT YOUR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION.

We provide you the opportunity to update or correct the contact and loan application information that you have provided to us. You may review and update information stored in your application online until you submit your application. Once you have submitted your application, you may only change the information by directly contacting our mortgage hotline at (417) 888-0050 orr e-mailing us at support@1stservices.com.

WE WORK TO PROTECT PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION FROM LOSS, MISUSE, OR UNAUTHORIZED ALTERATION.

We employ industry recognized security safeguards to help protect the personally identifiable information that you have provided to us from loss, misuse, or unauthorized alteration. All data sent to 1st Financial Services LLC is protected with technology that enables encryption of your data. We use:

Secure Socket Layer (SSL)The 1st Financial Services LLC Web server supports the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) transaction protocol originally developed by Netscape and now largely accepted as an industry standard. The purpose of this encryption protocol is to keep confidential the information passed back and forth between a Web server and its users.
128-Bit Domestic Grade Strong Encryption: 1st Financial Services LLC uses 128-Bit Domestic Grade Strong Encryption, the most powerful encryption commercially available for internet products. (However, be aware that if you are using a 40-bit browser, your encryption level, while secure, is not the highest level available. United States and Canadian citizens can download free 128-bit browsers from Netscape or Microsoft.)

We work to protect personally identifiable information stored on the site's servers from unauthorized access using industry standard computer security products, such as firewalls, as well as carefully developed security procedures and practices. All employees must review and sign a written statement of these practices which include limiting access to sensitive information to only those employees who require the information and enforcing strict password protocols for all employees. In addition, a username, member ID name and password are required for you to use, view or change application or interview information. We use both internal and external resources to review the adequacy of our security measures on a regular basis.

WE PROVIDE VARIOUS WAYS FOR YOU TO CONTACT US ABOUT OUR INFORMATION PRACTICES AND OTHER ASPECTS OF PRIVACY.

Questions regarding the 1st Financial Services LLC Web site's privacy statement, our online privacy policy, our information practices or other aspects of privacy on our Web sites, should be directed to us at privacy@1stservices.com. Or you may call our mortgage hotline at 417-888-0050.

Last Updated: 11/04/2002