Online Security And
Information About Cookies
Protecting Online Information
When you apply online for accounts or services, you provide the necessary personal information for your application. To ensure this information remains confidential, your information is encrypted (scrambled so it cannot be read except by the recipient) during its transmission over the Internet using your browser's standard 40-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection. For online banking and brokerage transactions, the encryption level is increased to 128-bit for additional security.
E-mail Correspondence
When we receive your e-mail address when you apply for a product or service or contact us online, we will retain that address to facilitate communication, provide you with information about your account, complete a service you have requested, inform you of other services, and better serve you. We will not send particularly sensitive information such as account numbers or social security numbers in an e-mail. When you give us your e-mail address we may allow you to choose not to receive e-mail from us that primarily contain marketing messages on our products or we may provide a way for you to tell us to stop sending such e-mail in any e-mail messages we send. The contents of your messages to Compass Bank will be retained for quality assurance and to meet regulatory and legal requirements. Please refer to our Consumer Privacy Disclosure for information about how we maintain and use information about you, including your e-mail address.
We do not sell or share your e-mail address with third parties to use to independently market you for their products. We may share your e-mail address with service providers to allow them to send you information, gifts, or products that you have requested, such as on-line gift certificates to a merchant. Our agreements with these service providers prevent them from sending their own marketing messages to your e-mail address unless you request that information from them.
E-mail Security
Please note that e-mail, in general, is not a secure means of communication. Compass Bank's online applications include data encryption for the protection of your personal information. However, typical e-mail programs currently in use do not include such built-in encryption. If the information you need to convey to Compass Bank is of a sensitive nature (account numbers, Social Security Number, passwords or PINs), please contact us by phone, U.S. mail, or visit your local banking center.
Planning Calculators
A number of calculators and planning tools have been provided for your use on our site. These are intended to serve you and help in your decision-making process. We do not track or retain the personal information you provide through these tools. The calculators are intended to provide illustrative examples based on the inputs supplied by you and certain built-in assumptions. We do not guarantee the accuracy of the calculators, the applicability of any calculator to your circumstances, or that all relevant variables are available for input by you. We recommend that you seek personal advice from qualified professionals before making any financial or business decision.
Security and Online Services
In the operation of our online banking, brokerage, and other online services, Compass and the third-party service providers we have contracted with store and have access to your personal and account information in order to provide you those services. All web site access to sensitive information is protected by 40- or 128-bit SSL encryption. In addition, we require a logon ID (or nickname) and password (or PIN number) to access your accounts and services.
You can help maintain the security of your information by not sharing your logon ID, nickname, password or PIN with anyone. You should also consider changing your password or PIN regularly. Finally, be sure to "log out" or close your web browser after accessing your online accounts.
About browser "cookies"
In order to provide better service, our web site may use a software "cookie." A cookie is a small piece of information which a web site stores in the web browser of your PC and can later retrieve. A cookie cannot be read by a web site other than the one that set the cookie. Many cookies only last through a single session or visit. You can set up your web browser to inform you when cookies are set or to prevent cookies from being set. We use cookies for a number of administrative purposes; for example, to store your preferences for certain kinds of information. No cookie will contain any information that would enable anyone to contact you via telephone, e-mail, or U.S. mail.
- Cookies used to facilitate on-line transactions. These types of cookies are called session cookies. Session cookies are necessary if you want to use certain services such as on-line banking. In addition, these cookies may prevent you from having to enter information twice. These cookies allow us to show you web site pages that are most useful to you by tracking which pages you have visited during your session. Session cookies are not active after you log off of the services that require them and are deleted when you completely close your Web browser windows after a session.
- Cookies used for personalizing your visit. We may create some cookies that allow us to present information that is useful to you when you later return to our site. These cookies remember you preferences when you visited our site earlier and customize our web site pages when you return. (As noted above, we do not store any personally identifying information on any cookies.) These cookies stay on your computer unless you delete them.
- Cookies used to evaluate our web site. These cookies track how visitors use our site, including the pathways to certain pages and the number of visitors to a page. This allows us to improve navigability of our web site and to decide to delete or improve pages. (As noted above, we do not store any personally identifying information on any cookies.) These cookies stay on your computer unless you delete them.
- Cookies used to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising placed elsewhere on the internet. We use these types of cookies and other technology related to cookies to track responses to our on-line advertisements and the ranking of our internet address in search engines. These cookies are placed on your machine when you view an ad at another web site or on our own web site. This type of cookie identifies which ads led to your visit to our web site. (As noted above, we do not store any personally identifying information on any cookies.) These cookies stay on your computer unless you delete them.
Third-Party Vendors
Compass works with a number of third-party vendors to provide you with special offers and services. We typically offer access to these offers and services through a link to the vendor's site or a shared, "co-branded" site (where you will see the Compass Bank logo alongside the service provider's logo). We do not own these third-party vendors and do not have direct control over their handling and use of information you may provide to them. Therefore, please refer to the specific online privacy and security policies of third-party vendors when accessing their sites.
Third-Party Service Providers
Compass also may use third-parties who are technology providers to design and evaluate on-line advertising and the use of our site. We do not provide these vendors with any personally identifiable information about you, such as your name, mailing address, or account number. (See information on how we use your e-mail address, above.)
Off-Site Links
As a reference and service to you, Compass Bank does provide links to other web sites on the Internet. These links are provided for your convenience and do not constitute an endorsement. You also should also refer to that specific site's privacy and security policies when accessing other sites.
Children's On-Line Privacy.
We do not knowingly collect, maintain, or use personal information from our web sites about children under the age of 13.
