California Privacy Notice (CCPA)

Introduction and Scope

California residents have a defined set of rights with respect to their personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act and the California Privacy Rights Act (together, the "CCPA"). This notice from lendingscorelab.com tells you what we collect, how we use it, with whom we share it, and how to exercise each of those rights. It is a California-specific supplement to our broader Privacy Policy.

Categories of Personal Information Collected

The categories of personal information that lendingscorelab.com has collected from California consumers during the past twelve months are: (a) identifiers such as IP addresses and email addresses; (b) personal-records information you submit voluntarily (name and message text in our forms); (c) commercial information (newsletter subscription history); (d) internet or other network activity information (browsing on our site, referring URL); (e) geolocation data of coarse precision; and (f) inferences drawn from the foregoing for the purpose of audience analytics. We do not knowingly collect biometric information, sensory data, professional or employment information, or education information.

Sources of Personal Information

We obtain the personal information described above directly from you (when you fill in a form or interact with the site), automatically from your device (when your browser requests pages and sends standard HTTP headers), and from a limited set of service providers that operate lendingscorelab.com on our behalf (such as our hosting provider, edge security provider, and email-delivery vendor). We do not buy personal information from data brokers.

Business and Commercial Purposes

lendingscorelab.com processes personal information for clearly defined business purposes: delivering the content you request; sending newsletter editions you have explicitly opted into; replying to messages submitted through our Contact and other forms; producing aggregated reports of site usage for editorial and advertising operations; securing the service against fraud and abuse; and complying with our legal and regulatory obligations under California and other applicable laws.

Disclosure to Service Providers and Third Parties

We disclose personal information to service providers under written contract for the business purposes outlined above. These currently include: our cloud hosting provider; our content-delivery network and edge security provider; our email-delivery vendor (for newsletter distribution); our web-analytics provider; and our advertising network (where ads are displayed). Each service provider is contractually prohibited from retaining, using, or disclosing the personal information for any purpose other than the specific services it provides to us.

Sale and Sharing of Personal Information

We do not sell or share personal information in the manner described by the CCPA — that is, we do not exchange personal information for monetary or other valuable consideration with third parties, and we do not disclose personal information to third parties for the purpose of cross-context behavioral advertising. This has been true for the entire preceding twelve-month period and remains our standing policy.

Sensitive Personal Information

lendingscorelab.com does not collect sensitive personal information from California consumers other than as incidentally contained in voluntary submissions (for example, a message you choose to send through the Contact form). We do not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you, and you accordingly have no right-to-limit request to make against us. We will, of course, honor any limitation you wish to apply going forward.

Your California Privacy Rights

California consumers have, under the CCPA, the following rights with respect to personal information held by lendingscorelab.com: a right to know (categories collected, sources, purposes, categories of recipients); a right to access specific pieces; a right to correction; a right to deletion; a right to opt out of sale and sharing; a right to limit the use of sensitive personal information; and a right not to be retaliated against for exercising any of these rights.

How to Exercise Your Rights

Verifiable consumer requests under the CCPA can be submitted to lendingscorelab.com through our Contact form or to the email address shown on the Contact page. To prevent fraudulent access requests, we will verify your identity using reasonable means tied to the data we hold — typically by confirming control of the email address tied to a subscription or by matching identifiers you provide against information already in our records. We respond to verified requests within the 45-day window required by the statute, with one 45-day extension where reasonably necessary.

You may also designate an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf. We will require the agent to provide written permission from you (or a power of attorney) and may verify your identity directly to confirm the request. Agents acting on behalf of multiple consumers under a single permission must still meet the verification standards required by the CCPA for each consumer represented.

Consumers Under 16 Years of Age

We do not knowingly collect, sell, or share personal information about California consumers under 16 years of age. Our service is directed to adults. Should we ever change this practice (which we do not anticipate), we would do so only with the express opt-in consent required by the CCPA for consumers aged 13 to 15, or with parental opt-in consent for children under 13. Parents who suspect their child's data has been submitted can contact us for prompt deletion.

Right to Non-Discrimination

Exercising your rights under the CCPA will not result in any adverse treatment by lendingscorelab.com. We will not deny you the service, charge a different price, reduce the quality of the service, or otherwise penalize you for submitting a verifiable consumer request. The free editorial content we publish is available on the same terms to all visitors regardless of whether or how they exercise their CCPA rights.

Retention of Personal Information

We retain each category of personal information only for as long as needed to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected, plus any retention required by applicable law. Specifically: newsletter subscribers' email addresses are retained until you unsubscribe (and then moved to a minimal suppression list); contact-form messages are retained for up to 24 months; server access logs are retained for up to 90 days; aggregated analytics data is retained indefinitely in non-identifying form.

Changes to This Notice and How to Reach Us

lendingscorelab.com may revise this California Privacy Notice when our practices change, when regulators issue new guidance, or when the law requires. The current version is the one published on this page. To raise any question about this notice — or to submit a request under the CCPA — please use the Contact form linked from the footer of every page on the site.