[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Note: Our privacy policy is subject to change at any time. To make sure you are aware of any changes, please review this policy periodically.
ApartmentGurus.com is a Texas Limited Liability Company owned and operated by parent companies, including West End Realty Advisors, LLC and its partners. The rental advertisements and related services posted on ApartmentGurus.com are procured and provided by ApartmentGurus.com and/or its parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates as listed here. Any rights and remedies provided under law regarding this Privacy Policy shall be limited and governed by our Terms of Use.
All references to “ApartmentGurus.com”, “we”, or “us” include ApartmentGurus, LLC, its parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates including West End Realty Advisors, LLC and its parents, subsidiaries, partners, and affiliates.
All references to “Website” shall refer to Apartment Gurus, LLC d/b/a ApartmentGurus.com and its parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates.
All references to “User” shall refer to visitors to the Website, including prospective tenants and site visitors searching for rental property to lease and/or roommates.
All references to “Lessor” shall refer to visitors to the Website, including landlords and property manager or owners, who place an advertisement for rental property, a roommate, or sublet, or any other classified advertisement offered on the Website to Users.
1. Scope.
This privacy policy describes how we handle your personal information for our services available through the Website. By accepting the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use in registration, you expressly consent to our collection, storage, use and disclosure of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance for new users and is otherwise effective five (5) days after “Last Update” date listed below for all other users.
2. Collection of Personally Identifiable Information.
While you can browse some sections of the Website without being a registered user, certain activities (such as searching for properties, viewing property contact information, and registering a property) do require some registration. In most cases, this information will be gathered from the Website but it may also include personal information we gather from private-label, co-branded, and affiliated websites. Once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous to us. Our servers are located in the United States. Therefore, if you choose to provide us with personal information, you consent to the transfer and storage of that information.
We may collect and store the following personal information:
Name, email address, address, telephone number, and (depending on the service used), move-in dates, sometimes financial information such as credit card or bank account numbers; transactional information based on your activities on the Website (such as search information); other transactional information (such as guest card information, lease terms, lease parties); computer sign-on data, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the Website, and ad data; other information, including IP address and standard web log information; and supplemental information from third parties. For Lessors, credit card information or bank account numbers will only be used for billing purposes only. For Users, it may be used by our apartment locating department to assist in completing a lease application or lease.
In some cases, ApartmentGurus.com, we may conduct a credit check by obtaining additional information about you from a credit bureau, as permitted by law. As another example, if the information you provide cannot be verified, we may ask you to send us additional information (such as your driver’s license, credit card statement, and/or a recent utility bill or other information confirming your address) or to answer additional questions online to help verify your identity).
3. Use.
Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. For example, we may use your personal information and share your personal information within our corporate family to: provide the services and customer support you request, including confirming emails related to the Website services, reminders, and transaction; resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems; prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities; customize, measure, and improve our services and the Website’s content and layout; tell you about targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences; compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third parties; do other things for you as described when we collect the information; help promote a safe service; measure consumer interest in our products and services; inform you about online and offline offers, products, services, and updates; customize your experience; detect and protect us against error, fraud and other criminal activity; enforce our agreements, terms, conditions, and policies; and as otherwise described to you at the time of collection.
In our efforts to continually improve our product and service offerings, we collect and analyze demographic and profile data about our users’ activity on our Website. We identify and use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our Website. Your IP address is also used to help identify you and to gather broad demographic information. We will occasionally ask you to complete optional surveys to help improve our services. These surveys may ask you for contact information and demographic information (city, neighborhood, zip code, age, or income level) or to verify information stored in our database. We use this data to customize your experience at our Website, providing you with content that we think you might be interested in, and to display content according to your preferences.
ApartmentGurus.com Users and Lessors:
Our Website requires you to give us your telephone number, email address, and name in order to search the classified advertisements provided on the Website. You may also voluntary provide other information such as your address, move-in date, and other personal information to help refine or help your search of our advertisements. We use this information to create a unique user account, and to send you follow up emails about our locating services, relevant apartment advertisements, free gift/rebate claim reminders, offers for moving-related services, advertisements, new Website features, and other information related to our services and Website. The information we store may be shared with or sold to any successor to or purchaser of part or all of the assets of the business or may be shared with third parties that the website operator believes may offer goods or services of interest to the visitor. Further, when you contact another User or Lessor via the Website, we capture the information you have provided to us and may contact you via telephone or email.
Requests for Apartment Locating Services, Moving Quotes:
You may be offered an opportunity to request a quote for moving, maid, real estate, or other services through our Website. In such case, we will collect your contact information (including name, address, phone number, and email address) as well as information related to your move. By requesting this quote and submitting your information, you are expressly consenting to our using and selling that information to third-party moving companies and authorizing such moving companies to contact you regarding their services. To the extent we use your personal information to market to you, we will provide you the ability to opt-out or unsubscribe of such uses; see the Choice/Opt-Out section below.
4. Cookies.
A “cookie” is a small piece of information stored by a website’s server on a website’s browser so it can be later read back from that browser. Cookies are useful for enabling the browser to remember information specific to a given user. ApartmentGurus.com may place both permanent and temporary cookies in your computer’s hard drive. Our permanent cookies allow us to provide personalized features, such as automatically logging you into your personalized log-in page. In order to use this feature, you must set your browser’s preferences to allow permanent cookies. We also use temporary cookies (a.k.a. “per-session cookies”) to improve the functionality and usability of our Website. These temporary cookies may be permanently erased from your computer as soon as you log out of your ApartmentGurus.com account or link to a different website from your parent browser window. In order to use ApartmentGurus.com, you may have to set your browser’s preferences to allow per-session cookies (most web browsers automatically accept cookies). We may also use what are called session ID cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies may make it easier for you to navigate our Website. A session ID cookie expires when you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. You can remove persistent cookies by following the directions provided in your Internet browser’s “help” file. Persistent cookies may enable us to track and target the interests of our visitors to enhance the experience on our Website. If you reject cookies, you may still use our Website, but your ability to use some areas of our Website may be limited and we may not be able to provide you with the most satisfying experience unless you change your cookie settings in your internet browser settings.
We may use third-party advertising companies to serve ads on our behalf. These companies may employ cookies and action tags (also known as single pixel gifs or web beacons) to measure advertising effectiveness. Any information that these third parties collect via cookies and action tags is completely anonymous.
Log Files and Cookies
We may use a third-party tracking service that uses cookies and log files to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors to our Website. We do not link automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information.
Log Files
We may gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser types, internet service providers (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating systems, date/time stamps and clickstream data.
We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze aggregate trends, to administer the site, to track visitors’ traffic in and around the Website and to gather demographic information about our visitors as a whole.
5. Sharing of information.
We may also disclose personal information if permitted to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process.
We may also share some or all of your personal information with: law enforcement offices, third party rights owners, or others in the good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to: enforce our Terms of Use or Privacy Policy; respond to claims that an advertisement, posting or other content violates the rights of a third party; or protect the rights, property or personal safety of our users or the general public, another business entity should we (or our assets) plan to merge with, or be acquired by that business entity. Should such a transaction occur, that other business entity (or the new combined entity) will be required to follow this Privacy Policy with respect to your personal information; and should the Privacy Policy be updated by any purchaser, successor, or acquisition, you will be given the opportunity to opt-in or opt-out of the new Private Policy.
6. Leads to Lessors.
When a User contacts a Lessor through the Website by clicking emailing or by calling the telephone number of the Lessor, we will collect the Users telephone number and other information related to the communication. If the Lessor communicates with the User by dialing that telephone number or by email, we will collect information related to that communication. If the communication is by telephone, we will collect information related to the call, including its duration, but we will not collect the content of the telephone call. If the communication is by email, we will collect the content of the email in addition to other information related to the email. We may share with Lessors a log of these communications, to allow them to manage their communications with Users. Without limiting any other provisions of this Privacy Policy, you expressly agree that we may use this data (“impression data”) to enforce our rights to collect fees payable by the Lessors to ApartmentGurus.com.
7. Links to Other Sites.
Our website links to other websites that may collect personally identifiable information about you. ApartmentGurus.com is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of those linked websites. We suggest you read the privacy policies on any third party website which hyperlinked from our Website. See our Terms of Use for further information regarding our policy on links.
8. Security Precautions.
Our website has stringent security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. Once your information is in our possession we adhere to strict security guidelines, protecting it against unauthorized access.
Your information is stored on our servers located in the United States. We treat data as an asset that must be protected and use lots of tools (encryption, passwords, physical security, etc.) to protect your personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure. However, as you probably know, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, and other users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the Website. Therefore, although we work very hard to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private. In the event any third party unlawfully obtains access to any personal information or obtains access tour Website in violation of our Terms of Use, all remedies available by law will be limited to those provided in ourTerms of Use.
9. Choice/Opt-Out.
ApartmentGurus.com provides all users with the opportunity to opt-out of receiving non-essential (promotional, marketing-related) communications from us on behalf of our partners, and from us in general, after setting up an account. To remove your contact information from all ApartmentGurus.com lists and newsletters, simply edit your email preferences in your account settings or in the opt-out or unsubscribe feature contained within any emails sent to you by us, our agents, or any third parties.
10. Account Protection.
Your password is the key to your account. Use unique numbers, letters, and special characters and do not disclose your ApartmentGurus.com password to anyone. If you do share your password or your personal information with others, remember that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of your account. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personal information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately notify ApartmentGurus.com and change your password.
11. Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information.
You can see, review and change most of your personal information by logging into the Website. Generally, we will not manually modify your personal information because it is very difficult to verify your identity remotely. You must promptly update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you post a classified or advertisement on the Website, you may not be able to change or remove it. Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable law. We do retain personal information from closed accounts in order to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our Terms of Use, and take other actions otherwise permitted by law.
12. Third Parties
Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. If you disclose your information to others, whether they are Renters, Lessors, Roommates or other sites throughout the Internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Since ApartmentGurus.com does not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others. ApartmentGurus.com makes no warranties of any kind regarding the privacy policies, terms of use, or any policies of third parties you contact which advertise on the Website.
13. General
We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on the Website. All amended terms automatically take effect 5 days after they are initially posted on the Website.
14. Contests or Surveys
We may provide you the opportunity to participate in contests or surveys on or through our Website. If you participate, we will request certain personally identifiable information from you. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose the information requested. The information we typically request includes contact information (name, e-mail, phone number, shipping address) and demographic information (city, neighborhood, zip code).
We may use this information to notify contest winners, award prizes, and improve the Website’s experience for our customers.
We may use third party service providers to conduct these surveys or contests. These companies are prohibited from using our users’ personally identifiable information for any other purpose. These third parties are bound by contract to ApartmentGurus.com to use adequate security measures to protect your personal information.
We will not otherwise share the personally identifiable information you provide through a contest or survey with other third parties unless we give you prior notice and the choice to opt out or unsubscribe, or for one of the other exceptions provided for below.
15. Questions
Questions regarding this statement should be directed to the following address:
Attn: Privacy Guidelines Compliance Officer
ApartmentGurus.com, LLC
448 W. 19th Street, Suite 371
Houston, Texas 77008
Or by email at here
Last updated May 20, 2011[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”30px”][/vc_column][/vc_row]