Because Bedford Investment Partners LLC wants to demonstrate our commitment to your privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices. This web site has agreed to notify you of:
- What personally identifiable information of yours is collected from you through the web site
- The organization collecting the information
- How the information is used
- With whom the information may be shared
- What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of the information
- The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under Bedford’s direct control
- How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information
If you feel that we are not abiding by our posted privacy policy, you should first contact Bedford Investments Partners Compliance Department.
As part of the normal operation of our services, we collect information about you. This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect about you and what may happen to that information. Although this policy may seem long, we have prepared a detailed policy because we believe you should know as much as possible about Bedford Investment Partners LLC practices in order to make informed decisions. As described below, some of your personally identifiable information is used by us, and in certain cases, third parties.
INFORMATION COLLECTION AND USE
Bedford Investment Partners LLC is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. Our primary goal in collecting this information from you is to provide you with an efficient and pleasant trading experience while using our services.
When establishing an account with Bedford Investment Partners LLC., or ordering from our company, you will be required to provide us with your contact information and other personal information. If you are opening an account with us and/or ordering from our representatives’, we require that you provide your name, address, phone number, credit card number, and social security number or FEIN (if applicable), so that we may verify your identity, offer an individualized trading allowance, and process your order accurately.
Bedford Investment Partners LLC. collects information from our users at several different points on our website. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others.
TRANSACTIONS
We request information from the user requesting a Product or Cash Draw. Here a user must provide contact information such as addresses and financial information such as banking or credit card information. This information is used for billing or payment purposes and to fill customer’s orders. If we have trouble processing an order, this contact information is used to get in touch with the user.
COOKIES
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s hard drive containing information about the user. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site. Once the user closes their browser, the cookie simply terminates. For instance, by setting a cookie on our site, the user would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. If a user rejects the cookie, they may still use our site. The only drawback to this is that the user will be limited in some areas of our site. Cookies can also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site.
LOG FILES
We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.
SHARING
We will share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person. We use an outside shipping company to ship orders, and a credit card processing company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes. We partner with another party to provide specific services. When the user signs up for these services, we will share names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these services. (For example: storage facilities, banks, courier services) These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services.
LINKS
This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Bedford Investment Partners LLC is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site.
NEWSLETTER
If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address.
SURVEY & CONTESTS
From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code, age level). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site.
TELL-A-FRIEND
If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about our site, we ask them for the friend’s name and email address. Bedford Investment Partners LLC. will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to visit the site. Bedford Investment Partners LLC stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email. The friend may contact Bedford Investment Partners LLC Compliance Dept. to request the removal of this information from their database.
SECURITY
This website takes every precaution to protect our users’ information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line. When our registration/order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as Social Security Numbers and Credit Card numbers), that information is transferred using industry standard SSL encryption. While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just surfing’. To learn more about SSL, select the Verisign logo on this page. While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use password-protected screen-savers when they leave their desk. When they return, they must re-enter their password to re-gain access to your information. Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Every quarter, as well as any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers’ information is protected. Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment, behind a locked cage.
SUPPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION
In order for this website to properly fulfill its obligation to our customers, it is necessary for us to supplement the information we receive with information from 3rd party sources. For example, if a customer requests a higher trading allowance, we may use their name and social security number (if applicable) to request a credit report. The report is kept in a secured environment with limited and controlled access. Only authorized employees have access to this information.
SPECIAL OFFERS
We send all new members a welcoming email to verify user id, contact name and email address. Established members will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, and a newsletter. Out of respect for the privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see our choice and opt-out below.
SITE AND SERVICE UPDATES
We also send the user site and service announcement updates. Members are not able to un-subscribe from service announcements, which contain important information about the service. We communicate with the user to provide requested services and in regards to issues relating to their account via email or phone.
CORRECTION/UPDATING PERSONAL INFORMATION
If a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as your zip code), or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update or remove that user’s personal data provided to us. You may edit most of your personal information in the My Profile section of your account. If this feature does not accommodate your needs, please feel free to contact our Compliance Dept.
CHOICE/OPT-OUT
Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials from Bullion Direct may opt-out of receiving these communications by contacting our Compliance Dept. Users of our site are always notified when their information is being collected by any outside parties. We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with services that require an outside party, or not.
Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our Homepage so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by way of an email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.