Thank you for visiting our Web site and reviewing our Privacy Policy. We strive to follow privacy practices that ensure that any information about our customers, our employees, or our vendors, or members of the general public that is collected in the course of our business operations is used only in accordance with the principles and guidelines described below and is appropriately protected. This Privacy statement applies to information received in the course of our normal business operations.
How We Collect or Receive This Information
We will collect and use your personal information that you voluntarily provide using an inter-active form or e-mail on our websites or the websites of one of our third party service providers, or using a mobile application. If you contact us by e-mail, we preserve the content of your e-mail, your e-mail address, and our response so that we can more efficiently handle any follow-up questions you may have and to meet legal and regulatory requirements.
Is My Information Kept Confidential by You?
Yes. Business owners often share their financial and private information with outside professionals to gain assistance or credit for their businesses. When doing so, business owners have the right to expect that appropriate steps will be taken to keep their information confidential. We respect your right to confidentiality and take steps we believe will afford your information the confidentiality you expect.
For example, computer access is given only to employees involved in the process of administering or monitoring account information. Staff must adhere to standards of conduct that prohibit unauthorized use of your information. “Further, our staff undergoes periodic privacy and cybersecurity training to better protect your information.”
Federal or State law or regulations may require us to disclose confidential personal information in certain situations, such as, a request or subpoena from law enforcement agencies or in criminal or civil legal proceedings. We reserve the right to disclose any information when legally required to do so. If we receive a subpoena or similar legal process demanding release of any information about you, we will attempt to notify you (unless we believe we are prohibited from doing so).
Except as described above, and to the extent necessary to conduct our business operations, except for our third party services providers (primarily the Farm Credit Bank of Texas), we do not share confidential personal information with other parties, including government agencies, your accountant or attorney, without your authorization.
AgTexas does not share your information with third party marketers offering their products and services.
AgTexas does use third party contractors, service providers, and vendors, to support our business, who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and to use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
How Do You Protect My Privacy on the Internet?
Our websites use Transport Layer Security (TLS) technology. TLS encrypts your information using commonly accepted, industry recognized standards as additional protection against the decoding of that information by anyone other than us. However, despite all reasonable security precautions and processes, such as password protection, encryption technology, and use of firewall technology, no data transmission over the Internet is guaranteed to be 100% secure. While we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to or from our sites, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we will take commercially reasonable precautions to protect its security. We educate our employees at least annually on current privacy risks and trends to ensure that we are doing everything possible to protect your data.
Specific security measures utilized in our efforts to safeguard your information include:
- Browser Encryption – To use Ag Banking Online, you must use an Internet browser that utilizes 128-bit encryption technology. This is an industry standard for secure area browsing when using information of a sensitive nature.
- Enrollment – Ag Banking Online includes an extended enrollment process to assure that only you receive information about your account. After completing and electronically submitting the enrollment form, a Representative approves your enrollment and notifies you. We believe that the additional time required to enroll, relative to other Internet services, is offset by the greater assurance of your privacy.
- Password – We’ve made our password parameters stringent in order to reduce the potential for security breaches. A password must be a minimum of 8 characters and contain an upper case, a number, as well as a special character. Of course, you must protect the confidentiality and use of your password. Passwords are encrypted.
- Human Review – Once enrolled and active, you can immediately access information about your account such as loan balance, payment amount, interest rate, etc. Loan numbers may be submitted by you electronically, but must be reviewed and verified by an Association representative before you have access to it via the Internet. This usually takes one business day. This step also helps prevent any unauthorized access to your account.
- Software Safeguards – A “time out” feature exists to keep others from viewing your data after you have left your computer. After 5 minutes, the site will lock up and will require you to again sign-on, with re-entry of your password. To thwart would-be hackers, a customer’s account will be inaccessible after three unsuccessful sign-on attempts. You can attempt to log in at a later time. All activities are designed to be electronically logged, giving us the ability to review the logs if any suspicious activity occurs.
- Secure Electronic Mail – Ag Banking Online includes a secure electronic mail system. A secure messaging system such as this is used for passing confidential information. This system is designed in such a way that passing of information outside the secure area is restricted. This allows you to communicate directly with us with the comfort of knowing that your information is protected and secure.
- Firewall – The only way to get access to customer account information is by coming through the secured section of our website through a “firewall”.
How Can I Protect My Information?
- Keep your password confidential and safe. Do not allow others to use your passwords or otherwise access your account.
- Sign off of your Ag Banking Online session before walking away from your computer or before visiting other Internet sites.
- Use our secure electronic mail, rather than your regular Internet e-mail for communicating with us.
What Information Do You Gather About Me and Store Automatically?
When you visit our website, we generally automatically recognize your domain name and e-mail address. We collect the e-mail information on what pages and features you access or use. We also collect the information you voluntarily provide us.
The information we collect is used to communicate with you via e-mail where appropriate, improve our web site, personalize the content of our web site for you, and notify you about updates to our website or the service we offer.
From time to time, we may also employ “cookies” for better operation of our website. A “cookie” generally permits websites to recognize whether or not you have visited the site before. It is a piece of data given to a browser by a web server, so that the browser will hand it back to the server on subsequent visits.
If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the Web site, read pages, or download information, we may, through the use of cookies, gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. This information does not identify you personally. In this manner, we may automatically collect and store only the following information about your visit:
- Your Internet domain (i.e., “yourcompany.com”) if you use a private Internet access account, and IP address from which you access your site.
- The type of browser and operating system used to access our site.
- The date and time you access our site.
- The pages you visit, and
- If you linked to our Web site from another Web site, the address of that web site.
Retention and Disposal
Your information is retained for only as long as is required by our records retention policy or for a period specifically required by law or regulation. It is our policy that any personal information that is no longer required to be retained under our records retention policy is disposed of in a secure manner that prevents loss, theft, misuse, or unauthorized access.
Security, Intrusion and Detection Language
For Web site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this computer system employs software programs (commonly known as “sniffers”) to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload, change, corrupt information, or to otherwise cause damage (commonly known as “hacking”).
NOTICE: We will not obtain personally-identifying information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information to us.
Web Linking
We may provide access to information, products or services on websites that are owned by other companies (“Third Party Websites”). We provide this access through the use of hyperlinks that automatically move you from this website to the Third Party Website.
While we do our best to provide you with helpful, trustworthy resources, we do not endorse, approve or guarantee information, products, services or recommendations provided at a Third Party Website. Because we may not always know when information on a linked site changes, we are not responsible for the content or accuracy of any Third Party Website and offer you links to the Third Party Websites on an “As Is” basis. We are not responsible for any loss or damage of any sort resulting from the use of a Third Party Website, or any failure on products or services advertised or provided on a Third Party Website.
When you visit a Third Party Website by using a link on our website, you will no longer be protected by our Privacy Policy or security practices. The data collection, use and protection practices of the Third Party Website may differ from our Privacy Practices. You should familiarize yourself with the privacy policy and security practices of each Third Party Website.
Third-Party Data Collection and Use
Like many organizations, we use third-party platforms to support our communications, which may collect, process, and store your data.
You can subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates about our institution, as well as the resources and services that we offer. You can opt out of these emails at any time by using the "unsubscribe" link in each email. We use Mailchimp (The Rocket Science Group, LLC) as our third party email platform to manage our marketing subscriber lists and send emails to our subscribers. Mailchimp has its own security and privacy policy, which can be found here, Mailchimp Data Security and Privacy and here, Mailchimp’s Privacy Policy.
Mailchimp uses email tracking, which informs us about which subscribers opened an email, and which links they followed. We use this information to improve the content of our messages, and ultimately, to better serve our subscribers.
Protecting Our Children
We do not knowingly solicit data from children, and we do not knowingly market to children. We recognize that protecting children’s identities and privacy online is important and that the responsibility to do so rests with both the online industry and with parents. Therefore, our Website is not intended for children under 16 years of age. No one under the age of 16 may provide any personal information to us on the Website.
Changes to This Policy Statement
AgTexas may change, modify, or add to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy at any time. We will post the revised Privacy Policy on this website.
The revised Privacy Policy will go into effect on the date posted, and will apply to all current and past users of our sites and will replace any prior Privacy Policy statements. This Privacy Policy statement was last modified on October 1, 2020.
Who Do I Contact if I Have Questions About Confidentiality or Privacy?
You may email us at dave.cullins@agtexas.com. Since inquiries sent through our information e-mail are not secure, please do not include confidential information through such e-mails. We will not include confidential account information back to you in our response to such e-mail. We will also not request you to send confidential information via e-mail.
During normal business hours, you can call 844-692-4839 and ask for Dave Cullins, Security Officer.
