How to read your file with your specific pieces of personal information
1. How do I read the file containing my specific pieces of personal information?
The file contains two columns and several rows. The number of rows depends on the number of specific pieces of personal information returned to you. Each row contains a specific piece of personal information. The first column contains the category in which the piece of personal information belongs followed by a colon and the descriptive name of the personal information. For example, if we have your age in our records, the first column would state: “Personal characteristic: Age” and the second column would show the age we have in our records. The way the personal information is presented will vary based on how the personal information is kept in our records. For example, if your full name is James but you provided your name as “Jimmy”, we will return your name as Jimmy.
2. What is included in the file of personal information?
he file contains personal information we located in our records for the companies indicates on your response. Some of your personal information has been redacted or not returned due to risk of fraud, such as your social security number, drivers’ license number, financial account number or account passwords. We will let you know that we have collected that information but will not provide you with the actual personal information in the response. For example, if we have your social security number, we will only let you know that we have it by saying “Yes”, while other personal information could be truncated. The amount of personal information we have in our records about customers is more than the amount of personal information we have for non- customers and increases with the number of relationships you have with us. To protect consumer’s privacy, we only return personal information that we are confident belongs to you. That would mean some data that might belong to an individual with a similar name or address may not be returned to you if we aren’t certain it is yours.
3. Why do I see outdated personal information?
For some record systems, we have provided whatever data was found in that system. Therefore, some of the personal information may be outdated. This is a result of how we store the personal information. Because personal information may have been collected at different points in time, it is possible you may see both current information and outdated personal information, which might appear inaccurate. For example, your marital status could be provided as both “S” (or single) and “MA” (or married) based on either the timing of the collection of the personal information.
4. Why are there multiple lines of similar personal information?
You may see multiple pieces of personal information with the same category description because we are pulling personal information from multiple record systems and multiple areas of our business. For example, you may see two similar addresses in your personal information file if the word “Suite” was entered into one system and it was abbreviated as “Ste.” in another system. The multiple pieces of personal information may also be the result of personal information collected over a number of years. That means it would not be unusual for the personal information file to contain addresses or phone numbers collected recently as well as addresses or telephone numbers collected in prior years.
5. Why does some of the same personal information appear in a different format?
In many cases, there will be slight differences in how the personal information is presented because the personal information is stored in various formats. For example, your marital status could say, “Married”, or “M” or “MA” based on the way the data is kept in our records.
6. Why does some personal information only say "Yes" or "No"?
To help protect your personal information from unauthorized access or misuse, certain sensitive personal information has been redacted or not returned due to risk of fraud, and to comply with certain legal requirements. For example, if we have your social security number, we will only let you know that we have it by saying “Yes”, while other personal information will be truncated.