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Your
Privacy is Important to Us
At Farmers & Merchants Bank, we place a high value on building
an enjoyable, mutually beneficial, and lifelong relationship with
each of our customers. This type of relationship requires mutual
trust and we believe that our pledge to appropriately protect your
privacy is a cornerstone of that trust.
What You
Can Expect of Us Concerning Your Privacy
We know that customers only bank with us because they choose to
and only for so long as we measure up to the expectations they have
of us whether for privacy or any other aspect of our service.
And so, you can expect us to maintain the systems, standards and
training necessary to insure that we appropriately protect your
confidential personal and financial information.
Nonpublic
Personal Information We Collect
We collect nonpublic personal information about you from the following
sources:
- Information
we receive from you on applications or other forms
- Information
about your transactions with us, our affiliates or others
- Information
we receive from a consumer reporting agency
We have established
internal procedures and controls to ensure personal and account
information is accurate, current and complete in accordance with
customary and reasonable business standards. We also have established
procedures to correct any inaccurate information in a timely manner.
If you discover any information we have about you which is incorrect,
please notify us immediately.
Why We
Collect, Retain and Use Customer Information
Our objectives include providing you with a broad array of quality
financial products, services and opportunities and helping you to
achieve and manage the financial success you deserve. We collect,
retain and use information about you only when we reasonably believe
it can help us to accomplish these objectives, add strength and
mutual benefit to our relationship with you, or help us better understand
your financial wants, needs and concerns. And we pledge to do all
of this in a way, which will not violate the trust you have placed
in us.
When We
Access Customer Information
Our policies and procedures are intended to limit access to customer
information to only those who have an appropriate need to access
that information in order to accomplish our above stated purposes
for the collection, retention, and use of customer information.
We do not take
lightly our responsibilities for maintaining the confidentiality
and privacy of your information. Each member of our team is periodically
re-educated about these responsibilities and reminded of our pledge
to take all necessary and appropriate measures to prevent or discipline
any failure to properly carry out these responsibilities.
How We
Maintain the Security of Customer Information
To protect against unauthorized internal access, we limit physical
access to secure areas and utilize software which controls access
to all of our core-processing systems. System security is enhanced
by such controls as "need based" assignment of individual
system user access levels, individual workstation password protection,
and private, individual, auto-expiring, non-reusable, network and
system access passwords.
To protect against
unauthorized external access, we locate all of our operational and
data processing systems and equipment within secure physical environments
which are protected from unauthorized access. All of our data processing,
storage and retrieval systems reside in a secure and professionally
managed network environment. Our networks are jointly operated and
managed by our full-time internal staff and an independent network
management firm.
When and
Why We Share Customer Information
We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about you
to anyone, except as permitted by law. For example, we may disclose
information about you to third parties to assist us in servicing
your loans or accounts with us, to government entities in response
to subpoenas, and to credit bureaus. In addition, we may disclose
the information we collect about you described above to companies
that perform marketing services on our behalf and to financial institutions
for the purpose of jointly offering financial products and services
to you, such as securities brokers/dealers and insurance companies.
If you decide
to close your account(s) or become an inactive customer, we will
adhere to the privacy policies and practices as described in this
notice.
How Our
Outside Vendors Are Required to Protect Your Privacy
We must sometimes provide information about you or your accounts
to a vendor or service company to enable them to help us provide
services to you. For example, when you order printed checks, we
must provide certain information to the vendor that prints the checks.
We require such vendors and service companies to have similar privacy
principles to ours, and which provide for keeping such information
confidential.
Why You
Should Contact Us About Information Privacy and Accuracy
Every member of our team appreciates and desires to protect every
Farmers & Merchants Bank customer relationship. And we truly
do hope that you will never hesitate to contact us with your questions
about our Privacy Statement or about the protection of your confidential
information. And if you should ever believe that your record with
us is not complete, accurate or current, you should certainly let
us know that at the earliest possible opportunity. We will review
your file immediately and pursue every appropriate correction and
update.
How We
Maintain the Privacy of Visitors to Our Website
As a visitor to our website, you remain anonymous unless you voluntarily
provide personal information to us by e-mail or other online forms
or transactions. If you do provide such information, it is used
only by us and only to display and maintain our products and services
for you and is not sold or distributed to other organizations. Our
website may use a "cookie" stored in your computer memory
to recognize that your computer has visited our site before and
to allow for certain of the pages visited within our site to be
logged and customized according to personal preferences. We do use
standard software to collect information about the visits
but not about the visitors to our website. Summary statistics
of that information help us to determine the level of interest in
various information available on our website. The information collected
about the visits includes only non-identifying data such as the
date and time our site was accessed, the web browser used, the IP
address and City, State and Country of the server from which the
visit was connected to our site, etc.
How You
May Contact Us About Privacy Related Matters
You may call and ask for our Compliance Officer directly at 540-896-8941.
You may write
to us at Farmers & Merchants Bank, ATTN: Compliance Officer,
P.O. Box 1111, Timberville, VA, 22853.
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