Online Security

How We Protect the Privacy of Your Online Information

The information you provide to us for online access to accounts or services is protected by electronic, physical, and procedural safeguards according to applicable law.

To ensure this information remains confidential, your information is encrypted or scrambled so it cannot be read except by the recipient during its transmission over the Internet using your browser's standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection. This information includes your name, address, telephone, fax, and account numbers.

We encourage you to learn more about how we protect your information when you are interacting online with BBVA Compass by reading the information below.

E-mail Correspondence

What We Do:

• We receive your e-mail address when you apply for a product or service or contact us online. We 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
  • to better serve you.
• We will either allow you to choose not to receive e-mail that contains primarily marketing messages on our products, or provide a way for you to communicate that you no longer wish to receive these marketing messages.
• We may share your e-mail address with service providers to allow them to send you information, gifts, or products that you have requested. Our agreements with these service providers prevent them from subsequently sending their own marketing messages to your e-mail address unless you request it.
• The contents of your messages to BBVA Compass 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.

What We Do Not Do:

• We will not send particularly sensitive information such as account numbers, Social Security numbers or Tax ID numbers in an e-mail.
• We do not sell or share your e-mail address with third parties to use to independently market their products to you.

E-mail Security Limitations

In general, email is not a secure means of communication. BBVA Compass's online applications include data encryption for the protection of your personal information. However, typical e-mail programs do not include such built-in encryption. If the information you need to convey is of a sensitive nature, including account numbers, Social Security number, passwords or PINs, please contact us by phone, U.S. mail, or visit your local banking center.

Planning Calculators

For our consumer products, a number of calculators and planning tools are located on our site to 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 you supply combined with 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 banking, brokerage, and other online services, BBVA Compass and the third-party service providers we have contracted with, store and must access your personal, business and account information. All web site access to sensitive information is protected by 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.

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. Please note, 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 and are necessary in order to access certain services such as Online Banking and Compass e-Access. These cookies may also 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 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 your preferences from an earlier visit in order to customize our web site pages when you return. 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. 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 related technology 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. These cookies identify the ads which led to your visit to our web site. These cookies stay on your computer unless you delete them.

Again, we do not store any information on cookies that would enable anyone to contact you via telephone, e-mail, or U.S. mail.

Third-Party Vendors

BBVA Compass works with a number of third-party vendors to provide you with services and special offers. We typically provide access to these services and offers through a link to the vendor's site or a shared, "co-branded" site (where you will see the BBVA Compass 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

BBVA Compass also may use third-parties 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, BBVA Compass does provide links to other web sites on the Internet. These links are provided for your convenience and do not constitute an endorsement. You 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.