Privacy Statement

As we continue to improve and expand our services and delivery channels, we recognize our clients', prospects' and site visitors' (hereinafter referred to as "Client" or "Clients") need and desire to preserve their privacy and confidentiality.

Safeguarding our Clients' privacy is very important to us. The Thompson Group has adopted standards that help to maintain and preserve the confidentiality of Clients' nonpublic personal information.

The following Statement affirms our continuing efforts to safeguard Client information. This Privacy Statement is also provided to comply with California law AB68, requiring the posting of a privacy policy on web sites that collect information from California residents.

This Privacy Statement will be updated from time to time, and each visitor to this web site is urged to check back for revisions. The Effective Date date of the Privacy Statement as most recently revised is noted below on this page.

Information we collect:
We gather nonpublic personal information about our Clients as may be necessary to conduct business with them. We may collect nonpublic personal information about you from the following sources:

• Information we receive from you on applications or other forms, over the telephone or in face-to-face meetings, and via the Internet. Examples of information we receive from you include your first and last name, your home or other physical address including street name and name of a city or town, your e-mail address, your telephone number, credit history and other financial information.
  

• Information about your transactions with us or others. Examples of information relating to your transactions include payment histories, account balances and account activity.
  

• Information we receive from a business or consumer reporting agency. Examples of information from consumer reporting agencies include your business history, credit score, credit reports and other information relating to your creditworthiness.
  

• From employers and others to verify information you have given to us. Examples of information provided by employers and others include verifications of employment, income or deposits.
  

Information we disclose:
We do not disclose any nonpublic personal or business information about our Clients or former Clients to anyone, except as permitted by law and except as described in the next paragraph, in ADDITIONAL PRIVACY MATTERS and USE OF DATA.

1) We may disclose Client nonpublic personal or business information to independent affiliates of The Thompson Group in the course of their providing services to Clients authorized by our Clients and by us.  We do not disclose any of the information we collect, as described above, to third party service providers and to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf or to other entities with whom we have joint marketing agreements. If this non-disclosure privacy policy should change in the future, no information collected prior to such change shall be disclosed under the new policy.

2) We maintain relationships as an affiliate with certain third-parties we deem offer goods or services our Clients may wish to obtain. Our web site links to such third-party web sites, that may independently require and collect nonpublic personal or business information in the course of your doing business with them. We do not receive any nonpublic personal or business information about you from such third-party web sites. Each such third-party web site - to the best of our knowledge - maintains its own PRIVACY POLICY that you can refer to at the third-party site.

3) We utilize an e-mail communications system with a third-party supplier. When you subscribe to our e-mail list (to subscribe to our newsletter or for other reasons), your e-mail address and other information you provide will be stored in a database maintained by our chosen third-party supplier. We have access to this information, and the third-party supplier of the services represents to us that no other parties have access to the data and that any nonpublic personal or business information you provide will not be made available to any other party, or used to contact you in any way other than for the purposes you have chosen. By subscribing to our e-mail list, you have provided us your permission to contact you using the nonpublic personal or business information you have provided. You may un-subscribe from our e-mail list upon the receipt of any e-mail we send to you by activating the "unsubscribe" function in the e-mail, or replying to us at the e-mail address we show on the message you received.

Additional Privacy matters:
To benefit from all the features of some parts of the site, we may ask you to provide a limited amount of personal information. We will not share this information with any third party marketers and we will only contact you if you ask us to do so.

You may request, unless prohibited by law, that your personal information be removed from our system by contacting us. If you register information on our Web sites, you also have the right, upon reasonable notice, to view that information and correct it if necessary. If you have subscribed to our e-mail list, you may view and update such information by clicking the appropriate link (generally entitled "update profile") at the bottom of each e-mail you receive from us.

Like most Web sites, we use "cookies" to enhance your online experience. Cookies are pieces of data that we temporarily place on your computer's hard drive to help us identify you. For example, if you visit our site and see a particular announcement controlled by a cookie, and return to our site later, that announcement may be programmed to recognize you and not show the same announcement again. The cookies that we place on your hard drive remain active only for a limited time period from the time of placement - generally less than thirty days. They expire automatically at the time we specify. They are not used to collect any personal information.

Our Web server automatically recognizes your domain name, but not your e-mail address. We do not collect personal information from visitors to our site unless you expressly provide it to us. The information we do collect from our Web site (such as domain name, number of hits, pages visited and length of user session) may be combined to analyze how our Web site is used. This information is then used to improve the usefulness of the site.

Use of Data:
The Thompson Group may carry out, for research purposes, analyses on the responses that may be entered from time to time in various survey portions of the Site and the overall results may be published or passed to third parties. No individual people or companies will be identified in any publicly published material without our having obtained their prior written consent.

Protecting Client information:
The Thompson Group maintains physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your nonpublic personal information. We restrict access to nonpublic personal information about you to those employees who need to know that information to provide products or services to you.

We devote considerable resources to the maintenance of secure Internet communications to help ensure that your transactions with us are conducted in a safe environment.

Effective date:
This Privacy Statement is effective as of July 1, 2004, and applies to products or services provided by The Thompson Group that are used primarily for personal and business purposes. We reserve the right to amend (that is, add to, delete or change) the terms of this Privacy Statement from time to time.