Sunday, May 11, 2008 | 9:04 PM CST
FINANCIAL PRIVACY RIGHTS

Protecting your personal financial information is as important to Citizens Savings Bank as taking deposits or making loans. At Citizens, our customer's confidentiality has been and will continue to be an important part of our relationship with you. Our goal is to protect your personal information in every way that we interact with you, whether it's on the telephone, in our lobby, at one of our ATM's, or on the internet.

Any individual who obtains or has obtained a financial product or service from our institution is considered a consumer. A consumer forms a customer relationship with the bank when a continuing relationship, such as a loan or deposit account, is established.

This brochure will explain how your personal banking information, as it pertains to your loan(s) and/or deposit account(s), is affected by the Financial Privacy Act. This regulation is designed to protect your nonpublic personal information which is defined as information collected by us in order to provide you with financial services and products. We think it is important for you to be informed of the policies, procedures, and security measures we have in place to safeguard your personal and confidential information. We have developed this policy to help you to understand the steps we take to protect your personal information.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT
We collect nonpublic personal information about you from the following sources:

  • Information this institution receives from you on applications, emails, or other forms such as your name, address, telephone number and social security number
  • Information about your transactions with us, or others, such as your account balance, payment history, parties to transactions
  • Information we receive from a consumer reporting agency such as your creditworthiness and credit history
  • Information that is generated electronically when you visit our website or use our Internet Banking services.

We may disclose all of the information we collect, as described above, to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf or to other financial institutions with whom we have joint marketing agreements

WHAT INFORMATION WE DISCLOSE
We are permitted under law to disclose nonpublic personal information about you to non-affiliated third parties in certain circumstances. For example, we may disclose nonpublic information about you to third parties to assist us is servicing your account(s) with us, to government entities in response to subpoenas, and to credit reporting agencies. We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about you to anyone, except as permitted by law. We must provide certain customer account information to service providers, such as FundsXpress, so that we may process your Internet banking transactions.

If you decide to close your account(s) or become an inactive customer, we will continue to adhere to the privacy policies and practices described in this notice.

THE SECURITY OF YOUR NONPUBLIC INFORMATION
Citizens restricts access of your nonpublic personal information to authorized employees in order to process your personal transactions. This institution maintains physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard your nonpublic personal information. We offer secure email through our Internet Banking service. You should always use the secure mail service anytime you send us sensitive personal information.

Our Internet Banking service provider, FundsXpress, has also developed security policies and procedures to protect the customer information that they must collect and maintain to help us process your banking transactions over the Internet. They have developed a security system to insure your customer information is protected on the Internet and within the FundsXpress environment. For more information on the FundsXpress security measures, please visit their website at www.fundsxpress.com.

PRIVACY FOR INTERNET USERS
Our commitment to safeguard your privacy also extends to the Internet. If you are just browsing through our website, we do not request any personally identifiable information, nor do we collect unique identifying information about you unless you voluntarily and knowingly provide us that information, such as when you send us an email or complete an application online. If you provide us this information, it is only used internally and in furtherance of the purpose for which it was provided.

Our Internet financial services provider, FundsXpress Financial Network, Inc (FundsXpress) may collect general information on our website visitors simply to help us provide banking and other financial services to you online. They collect certain information on our behalf for security and statistical purposes. The information collected for these purposes may include:

  • The Internet address (referral site) which brought you to our website;
  • The date and time you access our site;
  • The name and version of your web browser;
  • The Internet service provider you used when you accessed our site;
  • Your Internet Protocol (IP) address; and the pages visited in our website

Additional information about IP address and cookies are provided below.

INTERNET PROTOCOL (IP) ADDRESS
An IP address is a number that's automatically assigned to our computer whenever you're on the Internet. Web servers, the computers that serve up Web pages, automatically identify your computer by its IP address. When collecting information for us, FundsXpress does not link IP addresses to anything peronsally identifiable, which means that a user's session will be logged, but the user remains anonymous.

WHAT IS A COOKIE?
A cookie is a very small text file sent by a web server and stored on your hard disk or in your browser so that it can be read back later. Cookies cannot read information about you from your computer or be used to steal information about you, nor do they carry viruses. Cookies are a basic way for a server to identify you (most cookies identify the computer you happen to be using at the time, not you personally). Cookies help sites recognize return visitors and they perform a very important function when you engage in secure Internet banking. For your security, we do not store any of your personal information in our cookies. The cookies used in our Internet banking system are further described below.

INTERNET BANKING COOKIES
FundsXpress uses encrypted cookies that do not pass to your computers hard drive. Instead, the cookie is stored in your computer's memory, identifying only your computer while you are logged on. Only FundsXpress can read the information in these cookies. This Internet banking cookie allows FundsXpress to process multiple transactions during your session without requiring you to reenter your pass code for each individual transaction. The cookies for Internet banking simply provide another level of security for our Internet banking product.

When you log off, or close your browser, the cookie is destroyed. A new cookie is used for each session. That way, no one can use the prior cookie to access your account. For additional security, the cookie expires after 10 minutes of inactivity. It must then be renewed by reentering your pass code. FundsXpress does not (and cannot) use this cookie to collect or obtain new personal information about you. You must allow your browser to accept this cookie so you can use the Internet banking system.

EXTERNAL 3RD PARTY LINKS
Our website has links to other 3rd party sites. These links are offered as a courtesy and a convenience to our customers.

CITIZENS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRIVACY PRACTICES OR THE CONTENT OF SUCH 3RD PARTY WEBSITES. AS A GENERAL RULE, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS LOOK FOR AND REVIEW A WEBSITE'S PRIVACY POLICY BEFORE GIVING OUT ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION.

PRIVACY OF CHILDREN
Citizens respects the privacy of children. We do not knowingly collect names or any other personally identifiable information from children. We do not allow children to open accounts online without parental consent.

QUESTIONS
If you would like to know what information we have collected in connection with your use of our products and services, please contact us at (985)-735-6555.

In addition, if you believe any information that Citizens or FundsXpress has collected about you has been used for an improper purpose, please contact us at the above number so that we may take appropriate action.

You may contact any of our offices for additional information on this regulation.

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