Filipino Visa Privacy Statement
We have created this Privacy Policy to demonstrate our commitment to help our users/members understand what information we collect about them and what may happen to that data/information.
- Overview:
- As part of the normal operation of our services we collect, and in some cases, may disclose information about you.
- This Privacy Policy describes the information/data we collect about you, and what may happen with that data/information.
- By accepting this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service, you expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information in the manner prescribed under this Privacy Policy.
- This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and is subject to our Terms of Service.
- On Minors: Minors (those below 18 years of age) are prohibited from using our services unless they are dependent on the petitioner or beneficiary (as their parent/guardian) who is filing an immigration application/using our service(s) on the minor’s behalf.
- Collection of Data/Information:
- Our primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide you with a smooth, efficient, and customized experience.
- We may collect information from you, including but not limited to your date of birth, copies of your birth certificate, passport, social security number, employment records, and financial records, for you or your family’s immigration application.
- This information for your immigration application may also include sensitive information such as (but not limited to) your criminal records, your sexual orientation, ethnicity, racial information, information on your previous marriages, religion, national origin, ethnicity, and immigration status.
- Please note that personally identifiable information will be stored and processed on our computers/servers in the United States and/or other countries.
- The laws on holding personal data in the United States may differ from the laws in Europe, but your data/information will be held and transmitted in a safe, confidential, and secure manner.
- We automatically track certain information/data based on your behavior on our website using cookies and other devices.
- We use this information for internal research on our members’ demographics, interests, and behavior to better understand and serve you, and our community.
- This information may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on our website or not), which URL (whether this URL is on our website or not) you next go to, what browser you are using, and your IP address.
- We use data collection devices such as “cookies” on certain pages of our website. “Cookies” are small files placed on your hard drive that assist us in providing customized services. For instance, "cookies" allow you to log in one time and then use the site as a logged-in member for a while without logging in again.
- We also offer certain other features that are only available through the use of cookies. Cookies also help us and advertisers we may partner with to provide information that is targeted to your interests.
- You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, but we can't promise our website will work well if you do.
- We sometimes use a third-party advertising company, to serve ads on our behalf across the internet. This third party may also collect anonymous information/data about your visits to our website. This is primarily done through the use of a technology device, commonly known as a ‘web beacon’ or an ‘action tag’, which we place on various web pages within our website or in an HTML email that allows advertising partners to collect anonymous information/data.
- Google as a third-party vendor, also uses cookies to service ads on our website.
- Google’s use of DART cookies enables it to service ads to our users based on their visit to our website and other sites on the internet
- Users may opt out of using DART cookies by visiting Google’s ad and content network privacy policy.
- Use of your data/information:
- We use your information/data in our files and other information/data we obtain from your current and past activities on our websites to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, and enforce.
- We may also use your information to verify your identity, prevent fraud, enforce our Terms of Service, or improve our quality of service(s), to detect, investigate, and prevent malicious, fraudulent, or illegal activities that violate our policies, or any applicable law.
- We may also use your government receipt number to check the status of your application from time to time so that we can provide you with the status of your case/or the next steps on your immigration application.
- You agree that we may use personally identifiable information about you to improve our marketing efforts, analyze site usage, improve our content and product offerings, and customize our website’s content, layout, and services. These improve our website and better tailor it to meet your needs.
- You agree that we may use your information to contact you and deliver information to you that, in some cases, is targeted to your interests, such as targeted banner advertisements, administrative notices, product offerings, and communications relevant to your use on our website.
- By accepting this Privacy Policy, you expressly agree to receive this information from us.
- Disclosure of your data/information:
- Due to the existing regulatory framework, we may be forced to disclose your information/data to the government, law enforcement agencies, or third parties depending on the applicable law.
- Currently, we do not sell or rent any of your personally identifiable information to any third party. However, under the following circumstances, some of your personally identifiable information may be disclosed:
- Financial Information:
- Under some circumstances, we may require some additional information, such as, but not limited to credit card details. We use this financial information, which includes your name, address, and other information, as well to bill you for the use of our services.
- We use your financial information to check your financial information to bill you for services and/or products, to enable you to participate in our discount, rebate, or similar programs in which you may elect to participate.
- By making a purchase, or engaging in any other activity or transaction that uses your financial information on our website, you consent to let us provide you adequate, relevant, and reasonably necessary financial information to our service providers, and such third parties as we deem appropriate to support and process your activities and transactions on our website.
- These third parties may include credit companies and banking institutions used to process and support the transaction or activity.
- By purchasing, registering, or making reservations for products or services of third parties offered on our website, or by participating in programs offered on our website that are administered by third parties, and that require you to submit financial information to use them; you consent to us providing your adequate, relevant and reasonably necessary financial information to those third parties.
- Any of these third parties may be authorized to use your financial information under our contractual agreements with third parties and by their privacy policies, over which we have no control. You agree that we will not be held liable or responsible for any of their actions or omissions.
- You also agree that we may use and disclose all such information that you submit to us to such third parties in the same manner in which we are entitled to use and disclose other information that you provide to us.
- Advertisers:
- We aggregate personally identifiable information and disclose such information in a non-personally identifiable manner to advertisers and other third parties for other marketing and promotional purposes.
- However, in these situations, we do not disclose to these entities any information that could be used to identify you personally.
- Certain information such as your name, email address, password, credit card number, and bank account number are never disclosed to marketing companies or advertisers.
- We may use third-party advertising companies to serve ads on our behalf. These companies may employ cookies and action tags (known as single-pixel gifs or web beacons) to measure advertising effectiveness.
- We do not share your mobile number with third parties or their affiliates for marketing, advertising, or promotional purposes.
- Any information that these third parties collect via cookies is completely anonymous.
- External Service Providers:
- There may be several services offered by external service providers that help you use our website(s). If you choose to use these optional services, and in the course of doing so, disclose information to the external service providers, and/or permit them to collect information about you, then their use of your information is governed by their privacy policies.
- Data Sharing:
- In the course of business, some data that you store with us may be shared with other people or providers. This includes credit card processors who process and store credit card information, name, and address. This may also include images that can be accessed by other people and search engines or web crawlers.
- Your data may also be shared with third parties, search engines, and web crawlers. This data would include names, addresses, and phone numbers, which we use in the course of corresponding with or calling you via third-party services.
- Your data may also be used when we back up our systems which would include all data submitted by you.
- By using our service, you consent to any data sharing such as (but not limited to) the examples mentioned above, and release us from liability for any inadvertent storage or release of your data by any third party.
- However, your mobile phone number will not be shared with third parties for marketing or promotional purposes.
- Other Corporate Entities:
- We share most (if not all) of our data, including your personally identifiable information, with our parent and/or subsidiaries that are committed to serving your online needs and related services, throughout the world.
- To the extent that these entities have access to your information, they will treat it at least as protectively as they treat information they obtain from their other members.
- Our parent and/or subsidiaries will follow privacy practices no less protective of all members than our practices described under this Privacy Policy, and to the extent applicable by law.
- It is possible that in the future, we and/or parent/subsidiaries merge with, or get acquired by, or any combination thereof by another business entity. Should such a combination occur, you should expect that we will share some or all of your information to continue to provide you with service(s). You will receive notice of such an event (to the extent it occurs) and we will require that the new combined entity follow the practices disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
- Legal Requests:
- We cooperate with law enforcement agencies for any inquiries they might have, as well as other third parties to enforce laws (that include, but are not limited to intellectual property rights).
- We can (and you authorize us to) disclose any information about you, to law enforcement agencies, and government officials as we, at our discretion, believe necessary under law, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringements, or other unlawful activity that may expose us or you to legal liability.
- Accessing, Reviewing, and Changing your Profile/Personal Information:
- We will retain in our files the information you have requested to remove for certain circumstances, such as to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, and enforce our Terms of Service.
- You also have the right to obtain a copy of your data/information stored with us in an accessible format.
- You also have the right to opt out of our using your personal information for targeted advertising, or profiling by contacting us.
- Furthermore, such prior information may never be completely removed from our database backups due to technical and legal constraints, including our stored ‘backup’ systems.
- Therefore, you should not expect that all of your personally identifiable information will be completely removed from our databases in response to your requests.
- You can also opt-in to receive text messages/Short Service Messages (SMS) from us or third parties for marketing or advertising purposes by contacting us here.
- We will not share your opt-in to an SMS campaign with any third party for purposes unrelated to providing you with the services of that campaign. We may share your Personal Data, including your SMS opt-in or consent status, with third parties that help us provide our messaging services, including but not limited to platform providers, phone companies, and any other vendors who assist us in the delivery of text messages.
- All the above categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.
- Other Information Collectors:
- Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this policy only addresses the use and disclosure of data/information we collect from you.
- To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties, whether they are on our website(s) or other sites throughout the internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them.
- We only disclose your personal information to third parties that is adequate, relevant, and reasonably necessary concerning providing such marketing/advertising services.
- To the extent that we use third-party advertisers, they adhere to their privacy policies.
- Since we do not control the privacy policies of third parties, you will have to review their respective privacy policies before disclosing your personal information to these third parties.
- Security:
- We use industry-standard practices to safeguard the confidentiality of your personally identifiable information, including ‘firewalls’ and Secure Socket Layer.
- We treat data as an asset that must be protected against loss and unauthorized access.
- We employ many different security techniques to protect such data from unauthorized access by members both inside and outside the company.
- You can use our secure document upload portal to share your documents with us. This will directly be uploaded to our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
- Contractors, agents, or employees delete any client file or information that they download. This deletion occurs within 24 hours, but the CRM copies are kept as needed until your paperwork is complete.
- However, no data transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure.
- Universal Opt-Out Method (UOOM):
- You can also universally opt out of your data being shared with any third parties except those reasonably necessary to provide your services (such as, but not limited to, third-party credit card processing companies) under our website by contacting us here.
- However, if you choose to opt out of your information being shared with any third parties, then we will not be able to provide you with services under our website.
- Notice:
- We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time based on your feedback, applicable laws, and our need to accurately reflect our data collection and disclosure practices.
- All changes to this Privacy Policy are effective after we provide you with 30 days' notice of changes being made by email.
- We provide 30 days' notice to allow you the opportunity to notify us to terminate your account if you do not agree to such changes.
- Dispute Resolution:
- In the event of a dispute arising related to the terms of this Privacy Policy, the dispute shall be resolved by binding virtual arbitration.
- The laws of New Hampshire, United States of America shall govern the arbitration.
- The arbitrator shall be mutually appointed by the parties, and paid for by the disputing party.
- If the parties cannot agree on an arbitrator, an arbitrator shall be chosen at random from https://www.nhmediators.org/.
- The rules of arbitration shall be the Non-Administered Arbitration Rules listed under the CPR’s website as the most current at the time of the dispute.
- Any ambiguity between the arbitration rules and this Privacy Policy and/or Terms of Service shall be resolved in favor of this Privacy Policy and/or the Terms of Service.
- The arbitration shall be conducted in English.