Northampton Cooperative Bank understands that protecting the personal privacy rights of our customers is essential for a banking relationship to exist. You have chosen to do business with Northampton Cooperative Bank, and we are obligated to honor that relationship with great care, beginning with the information you have chosen to share with us. We believe that your privacy should not be compromised. At the same time, we want to offer you the array of financial products and services you need to accomplish your financial goals. We believe we can do both through the privacy policy outlined below.
Recognition of a Customer's Expectation of Privacy
At Northampton Cooperative Bank, we believe the confidentiality and protection of customer information is one of our fundamental responsibilities. And while information is critical to providing quality service, we recognize that one of our most important assets is customer's trust. Thus, the safekeeping of customer information is a priority for Northampton Cooperative Bank.
Collection and Use of Customer Information
We will limit the use and collection of information about our customers to that which is necessary to administer our business, provide superior service, and offer opportunities that we believe will be of interest to you.
Maintenance of Accurate Information
We continually strive to maintain complete and accurate information about you and your accounts. Should you ever believe that our records contain inaccurate or incomplete information about you, please notify us. We will investigate your concerns and correct any inaccuracies.
Limiting Employee Access to Information
At Northampton Cooperative Bank, employee access to personally identifiable customer information is limited to those with a business reason to know such information. Employees are governed by a code of conduct that includes the responsibility to protect the confidentiality of each customer's personal information.
Protection of Information via Established Security
Northampton Cooperative Bank recognizes that a fundamental element of maintaining effective customer privacy procedures is to provide reasonable protection against the unauthorized access to customer information. Therefore, we have established appropriate security standards and procedures to guard access to customer information.
Restrictions on the Disclosure of Customer Information
Northampton Cooperative Bank places strict limitations on who receives specific information about your accounts or other personally identifiable data. Information will only be disclosed to third parties under the following conditions:
• If the information is provided to help complete a customer initiated transaction.
• If the customer authorized such disclosure in writing.
• If the information is required for legitimate bank use, in accordance with applicable law and standard banking practices. This includes information provided to our employees, service providers, attorneys, collection agencies, and credit reporting agencies for the purposes of collecting debt, verifying the existence and condition of a customer's account(s).
• If the information is required by a bank auditor or examiner for the purpose of completing an official audit or regulatory examination of the bank.
• If the information is required by or allowed by law (for example, a subpoena or court order to produce records regarding the customer's account relationship with the Bank.) In such instances, information provided is limited to that required by the specific law.
Maintaining Customer Privacy in Business Relationships with Third Parties
When we do provide customer information to a third party, we will insist through a written agreement that the third party adhere to privacy principles similar to those which Northampton Cooperative Bank adheres for keeping this information confidential.
Internet Privacy
At Northampton Cooperative Bank, we believe that the confidentiality and protection of our web site visitor's information is one of our fundamental responsibilities. This is why we want you to know how we will handle information we obtain about you when you visit our site.
Web Site Security
Northampton Cooperative Bank utilizes technology to help assure that any sensitive personal information you provide us or any account information you receive on-line is done in a safe and secure manner. Special secure-connection hardware and software (commonly called "firewalls") are in place to help assure the security of online communication of your information.
Additionally, we have implemented procedures to help assure that only authorized bank employees may view the information you share with us. This is accomplished by limiting access to that information (via access capability and password control) to only those employees having a legitimate business purpose for viewing or responding to your information or inquiries.
Web Site Privacy
When any person visits the public areas of our Web Site, we may collect basic information, such as how many people visited our site and what pages were visited. Unlike, the personal information that you provide and view with respect to your personal banking relationship, all of the information we may gather in the public areas of our Web Site is general. We use this general information to determine which parts of our Web site are most popular, how people access our site, how we can improve the content of our Web pages and how we can improve service to our customers.
Also included in Northampton Cooperative Bank's Web site is the capability for you to correspond with us. This correspondence, via e-mail, is not secured and therefore should only be used for the purpose of asking general questions, requesting literature, or responding to bank promotions. These activities may include sharing some personal information about you with our Bank.
Whether or not you are a customer of Northampton Cooperative Bank, we will not obtain personally-identifying information about you when you visit our site unless you choose to provide such information to us.
Providing Privacy Information to Customers and Responding to Inquiries
Northampton Cooperative Bank recognizes and respects the privacy expectations of our customers. We want customers to understand our commitment to privacy in our use of customer information. As a result of our commitment, we have developed these Privacy Principles which are made readily available to our customers. Customers who have questions about these Privacy Principles or have a question about the privacy of their customer information should call Northampton Cooperative Bank at 413-584-4474 or e-mail us at bank@northamptoncoop.com.
Our website brings together a combination of industry-approved security technologies to protect data for the bank and for you, our customer. It features a VeriSign-issued Digital ID for the bank's Internet Service Provider hosting our website, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol for data encryption, and a router and firewall to regulate the inflow and outflow of server traffic.
Secure Data Transfer
Once a server session is established on an https secure page, the user and the server are in a secured environment. Because the server has been certified as a 128-bit secure server by VeriSign, data traveling between the user and the server is encrypted with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. With SSL, data that travels between the bank and customer is encrypted and can only be decrypted with the public and private key pair. In short, the bank's server issues a public key to the end user's browser and creates a temporary private key. These two keys are the only combination possible for that session. When the session is complete, the keys expire and the whole process starts over when a new end user makes a server session.
Router and Firewall
Secure forms must filter through a router and firewall before they are permitted to reach the server. A router, a piece of hardware, works in conjunction with the firewall, a piece of software, to block and direct traffic coming to the server. The configuration begins by disallowing ALL traffic and then opens holes only when necessary to process acceptable data requests, such as retrieving web pages or sending customer requests to the bank.
Using the above technologies, the "Secure" Contact Us Form and Check Reorder Transactions are secure.
