Notarize Privacy Policy

Terms

This policy applies to any visitor to our website or user of our applications or services, including (i) casual visitors who do not sign up for an account, and (ii) visitors who have registered for an account or (iii) users who have been sent to us in order to complete a document or witness a signature.

Our Data Protection Officer

Our Data Protection Officer is Gary Weingarden. Mr. Weingarden has over a decade of experience in consumer privacy and information security and is passionate about earning your trust. 

Our Relationship with You

Depending on which kind of visitor you are, we may be working with you directly or by providing a service to another company. We will explain how this impacts your rights and our practices where it is relevant. 

Our Information Collection Practices

Information we collect directly from you and about you 

We collect information about you directly from you, from the other parties involved in transactions  (like a mortgage lender or title company), from third-parties that provide services that we need in order to provide our services (like credential analysis companies that review your photo ID), and from your use of the site.  

Most content is accessible without an account, but to use our services you will usually need to sign up for one. Over the last 12 months we have collected the following categories of information:

• Identifiers like your name, address, social security number, username, email address, social security number, driver’s license number, passport number, credit card number and other information that’s unique to you.
• Things about you that are considered “protected classifications” under state or federal law, like your sex, age, surname, and appearance.
• “Commercial” information, like records of property that you own, and products or services that you have bought.
• Our services usually include audio and video recording, which record “biometric” information like your face, voice, and mannerisms.
• Your interactions with our app or website.
• The location you are at when you use our service.

We get most of this information directly from you, but some of the information is collected by our service as part of how it works or passively as part of the process. We collect this information to provide our services to you, to complete the transactions in which you are participating, to detect fraud,  to prevent crime, and for marketing and analytics.

We share some of the information that we collect with the businesses and other parties that are involved in the transactions for which you use our service.

In most cases we collect the following details from you:

• Name
• Address
• Email address
• Phone number
• Last four digits of your Social Security number if applicable (for identity verification purposes)
• Images (front and back) of government-issued  identification
• Depending upon the transaction, a secondary form of identification document
• Documents that you need to sign (and sometimes additional documents that do not require a signature)
• Names and email addresses (and sometimes additional information) of other parties to the transaction or witnesses
• If you register, a username and password. 
• Sessions often involve an interactive audio and video conversation with a notary, which is recorded

We collect some additional information based on your interactions with our services. This information includes things like: 

• IP address
• Device Identifier
• Type and version of web browser
• Other typical log information

Information you provide to third-parties 

We use a third-party payment processor to accept payments. If you are paying for our services directly, you may be required to provide payment details to this third-party. Your interactions with our payment processor are subject to any the processor’s terms and privacy policy. We do not collect or store your payment information. 

How We Handle Your Information

We use your personal information to:

• Provide the services that you or another party have requested.
• Maintain the availability and security of our Platform 
• Improve the delivery and performance of our Services
• Customize the content and experience, including pre-filling forms and anticipating the details of your transaction
• Introduce you to products and services that we offer, and update you on news about our company
• Comply with contractual, statutory and all other legal obligations
• Respond to legal processes and requests, like subpoenas and warrants
• Investigate or prevent frauds and crimes and violations of our contracts and policies 
• Market our service and perform analytics
• Automate decision-making to improve the efficiency of our services

How we share and store your information

We share your information as follows:

• You and other designated recipients.  Documents, audio/video recordings and other related information will be stored and shared with you and any party with the required consent to access the information. For example, in a real estate transaction, this could include your lender or title agent. You or another party to a transaction may designate others who are permitted to access your information. If you were sent to us by someone else (like a mortgage lender) we may store copies of your documents and audio/video recordings under a contract with them. This may limit our ability to delete documents or audio/video recordings. If you request deletion in these cases, we will do our best to accommodate your request and tell you what we can’t delete and why. 
• ‍The notary. In most cases, the notary’s “journal” (which includes some basic details about the transaction and the audio/video recording) belongs to the notary. We store this information as a service to the notary. The notary has access to this information in our system.
• ‍Verification portal. Our service also includes a verification portal. Using an ID and PIN issued to you after signing, you may give others access to your completed documents by sharing these details with them. ‍
• In some cases, based on public request.  The notary is often required to produce the journal information (which includes the audio/visual recording) to certain interested parties, and sometimes to any member of the public who requests it. We direct requests like this to the notary, who will decide whether sharing is required. ‍
• Support Community Users. If you upload feedback to any public blog, message board system, or review capability that we provide, your user name and any information that you post, including, without limitation, reviews, comments, and text may be available to, and searchable by our users. Messages you send in our support channel will be viewable only by you and us. ‍
• Service Providers. We disclose the information we collect from you to service providers, contractors or agents to provide the services that you request, and to improve our services and marketing efforts.  ‍
• Affiliates. We may disclose the information we collect from you to our affiliates or subsidiaries, including Notarize, LLC in order to provide our services.  ‍
• Mergers, acquisitions, and sales of business. In cases of a proposed or actual merger or acquisition, or a sale of part of our business, or if we are involved in a bankruptcy, we may transfer the information we have collected from you.  ‍
• Legal process or investigation. We might also disclose the information we collect from you in order to comply with the law, a judicial proceeding, court order, or other legal process, such as in response to a court order, subpoena, or regulatory inquiry.‍
• Claims, defenses, and prevention of fraud and crime. We will disclose the information we collect from you where we believe it is necessary to support a claim or defense in litigation, to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, violations of our agreements and policies. 

Sale of Personal Information.  We are not a data broker and do not sell personal information for monetary consideration, but we do share minimal personal information with marketing partners for online advertising purposes, which is considered a “sale” under some privacy laws. We do not have actual knowledge of collecting or sharing data for consumers under 16. Here are the categories of personal information we “sell”:

• Internal Identifiers that help us identify customers
• IP address
• Device Identifier
• Type and version of web browser
• Other typical log information

Here are types of third parties that receive each of these categories of personal information:

• Third party companies that provide online advertising services

We do not sell information that is collected as part of your transaction.