1. Privacy Philosophy

Bloomkey^® (“Bloomkey^®”) has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to the privacy and confidentiality of your personal information. As a licensed real estate company, Bloomkey^® adheres strictly to state and federal laws regarding privacy, as well as the National Association of REALTORS® Code of Ethics. Additionally, most states, in their laws governing real estate licensees, impose specific requirements that licensees keep most or all personal information of clients in confidence. As a licensed real estate brokerage company, we comply with those laws. We have taken further measures to enhance the protection of your privacy as outlined in this Privacy Statement. Whether you choose to list your property with Bloomkey^®, or are simply visiting our web site, you can be assured that we take our commitment to your privacy seriously. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this web site, www.ihsrealty.com

2. Information Collection and Use

Bloomkey^® is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement.

Personal Information

Bloomkey^® does not collect personally identifiable information from users without their consent. As described in greater detail below, we collect and process personal information for three primary reasons: (1) to assist users in the purchase and sale of real estate products and services, (2) to facilitate registration on our sites for the purposes of allowing access to restricted access areas, and (3) to improve security and provide customer support.

What Personal Information About Customers Does Bloomkey^® Gather?

The information we learn from customers helps us personalize and continually improve your shopping experience at Bloomkey^®. The company may store information collected through cookies, or log files to create a “profile” of user preferences. The company ties user’s personally identifiable information to information in their profile, in order to provide tailored promotions and marketing offers and improve the content of the site for user.

The company does not share user profiles with other third parties until users have allowed the company to do so by authorizing each of the third parties company allow to see their information.

Here are the types of information we gather.

• Information You Give Us: We receive and store any information you enter on our Web site or give us in any other way. You can choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, customizing future shopping for you, improving our stores, and communicating with you.
• Automatic Information: We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many Web sites, we use "cookies," and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses Bloomkey^®. A number of companies offer utilities designed to help you visit Web sites anonymously. Although we will not be able to provide you with a personalized experience at Bloomkey^® if we cannot recognize you, we want you to be aware that these tools exist.
• E-mail Communications: To help us make e-mails more useful and interesting, we often receive a confirmation when you open e-mail from Bloomkey^® if your computer supports such capabilities. We also compare our customer list to lists received from other companies, in an effort to avoid sending unnecessary messages to our customers. If you do not want to receive e-mail or other mail from us, please click here and let us know.
• Information from Other Sources: We might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information. Other sources include Property Tax Records or other information sources specific to you or your property.
• Testimonials: We post customer testimonials on our web site which may contain personally identifiable information such as the customer's name. We do obtain the customer's consent prior to to posting the testimonial to post their name along with their testimonial

Web Site Trend Measurement

Bloomkey^® uses a third-party provider to track information about the usage of this site. The data gathered simply reports on web server activity. It includes a count of visitors, which networks (e.g., AOL) are being used, which browsers are being used, as well as which sites refer visitors to us. All of those parameters are part of the main HTTP protocol and are passed to the server by all standard browsers. No personal data or any details about individual users is gathered by the third-party tools. Visitors are tracked via IP address.

3. Security

Payment Security

Bloomkey^® currently employs encrypted secure server technology for online payments through Authorize.net®, an online payment solution service. Payment information is encrypted using the latest 128-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) 3.0 technology. The process is completed usually within three seconds.

As an alternative, customers with at PayPal® account may choose to use PayPal® (an EBay® company). Payments made through PayPal®'s secure online payment system. PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information in transit from your computer to theirs using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available).

Workplace Security

We also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. Our employees are subject to a strict employment policy regarding confidentiality. Each employee is kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices: every quarter, as well as any time new policies are added, our employees are reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers’information is protected. All of our users’information is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our listing management coordinators or licensed real estate professionals) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must lock their computer or 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.

4. Sharing of Information

Supplementation of Information for Real Estate Professionals

In order to provide more accurate prospects to user, the company may on occasion supplement the personal information user submitted to company with information from third party sources.

Enhancement of Profile Information

The company purchases marketing data from third parties and adds it to the company existing user database, to better target the company advertising and to provide pertinent offers in which company think user would be interested. To enrich profiles of individual customers, the company ties this information to the personally identifiable information users have provided.

We may share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. This aggregated demographic information is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person. Bloomkey^®, with your permission, may also share information with mortgage lenders and settlement service companies and other service providers to facilitate the real estate transaction process.

Legal Disclaimer

The company reserves the right to disclose users personally identifiable information as required by law and when company believe that disclosure is necessary to protect the company rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on the company.

Phone and Fax Order Processing

For phone orders, we use a credit card processing company to bill users for our products and services. This company does not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

Web Development and Software Providers

We have partners who assist us in our web site development and who provide software that supplies the functionality and tools available to users on the web site. Those partners have access to our data, passwords and systems in order to maintain and improve our web site. Each of these partners is subject to confidentiality and non-disclosure provisions that prohibit them from misusing or sharing any confidential information with third parties.

Multiple Listing Service

When a user contracts to list their property with Bloomkey^®, the user agrees that most of the information gathered during the listing process will be transferred to the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS). In fact, listing the property in the MLS is one of the key services provided by Bloomkey^®. If a user chooses not to have their property listed in the MLS, the user may notify Bloomkey^® at the time of the listing so that the listing contract can be altered to provide that the property information will not be transferred to the MLS.

5. Correcting and Updating Personal Information

Bloomkey^® delivers advertisements, promotions and offers by e-mail and through the Site to its members and subscribers who have opted-in to receive such messages, either directly through Bloomkey^®, or through one of our partners or affiliates (the “Service”).

By using the Site and/or the Service, or by providing the information requested by the Site and/or Service, you agree to accept the terms of our Privacy Policy and Bloomkey^® ’s use of the information it collects.  If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy, you may not use the Site or participate in the Service.

If a user’s personally identifiable information changes, if a user sees that their information on our web site is incorrect, or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavor to provide a way to update, correct or remove that user’s personal data provided to us. This can usually be done by logging into the Member's Only area and "Updating Your Profile" or by contacting Bloomkey^®. You can do so at any time and as often as necessary. However, because Bloomkey^® and/or its brokers hold real estate licenses, most states require us to keep information and specific documentation on our relationship and dealings with you. Therefore, we are unable to remove all information about you from our business records.

6. Choice and Opt-out

Our users are given the opportunity to “opt-out”of having their information used for contact purposes. Users who no longer wish to receive our communications or promotional materials from our partners may opt-out of receiving these communications by logging in to the Member's Only area and selecting "Update Profile" and "Newsletter Settings" or by using our Contact Form and including the words "Opt-Out" in the body of the message.

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 or not they should proceed with services that require an outside party.

Newsletters

When users register on the company site users will also automatically subscribe to the company newsletter. The company will use their name and email address in this newsletter and once again out of the company respect for their privacy, the company present users the option to not receive this newsletter. Please see the opt-out section below.

Service-related Announcements

The company will send users strictly service-related announcements on rare occasions when it is necessary to do so. For instance, if the company service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, the company might send users an email.

Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, which are not promotional in nature. In order to opt-out of these communications, users would have to opt-out to the company website as a whole. Please see the opt out instructions above.

7. Links to Other Sites

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Bloomkey^® is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. You should make yourself aware of the point at which you leave our site and enter another web site. You should read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to the Bloomkey^® web site.

8. Notification of Changes

Bloomkey^® has developed our Privacy Statement with an emphasis on our strong commitment to our users’privacy and based upon our current operations and practices. We recognize, however, that Internet technology and the real estate industry, and hence, our business model, are rapidly evolving. Accordingly, our practices are subject to change in order to facilitate our ability to provide users with the best service and product for their money while ultimately protecting consumer privacy. If we decide to change our Privacy Statement, we will post those changes on this page of our web site so users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the Privacy Statement in effect at the time of the usage.

9. Comments and Suggestions

Bloomkey^® is interested in your opinions on our privacy protections and welcomes any comments or suggestions that you may have. Click here to send any comments or suggestions.

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