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In Today’s Business, One Thing Is Simple—Our Clients’ Right to Privacy
Hawthorne Securities Corporation is committed to your financial well-being, and protecting the privacy and security of the information you share with us is part of that commitment. You trust us with your personal and financial information, and we’ll honor that trust by using your information carefully and sensibly. This notice will help you understand how we safeguard and use information.
Security standards
We continually update and improve our security standards and procedures to help us protect against anyone gaining unauthorized access to your confidential information, including through the Internet. We’re continually looking for new technology to further enhance the security of this information. Additionally, we build checks and balances into procedures—when opening accounts, for example—so that we can properly identify clients. Only those persons who need to do so as part of their job responsibilities are authorized to have access to your information. We regularly train our employees on privacy and information security, and on their obligations to protect your information.
You can also help safeguard your personal information by taking a few simple precautions:
- Protect your account, your PIN, and your Client Access number.
- Never disclose confidential information to unknown callers.
- When transacting business on the Internet, be sure to use a secure browser and current virus-detection software.
- Never open e-mail from unknown sources.
The information we use to better serve you
As you use your accounts, we gather information about account balances, servicing information and brokerage activity. We use this information to maintain accurate balances and to help us provide efficient client service. If you access your account online (via the Internet), we may collect transaction, site navigation, client contact, and optional survey information. We use this information to personalize our online services—for example, to customize your Web experience by displaying content designed to meet your specific needs.
The information we share with other companies
Like many financial institutions, we outsource some of our process work to specialists at our clearing agent,Clearview Correspondent Services, in order to improve efficiency. That means that sometimes we select service companies to perform business operations for us or work on our behalf to provide services like check ordering and statement printing. We’re highly selective in choosing these companies, and we restrict the information we provide them to only what they need to do their job. We require them to comply with strict standards of security and confidentiality. They are not permitted to release this information, use it for their own purposes, or transfer it to any other party.
To enable them to maintain accurate shareholder records, our clearing agent will report to the companies whose shares you own the fact that you are a shareholder. We/they do not sell client lists or individual client information, nor do we/they make your information available for use by unaffiliated third parties. We do exchange certain information about our clients with selected credit reporting agencies when it’s legally required (such as in response to a subpoena) and to prevent fraud or to comply with a legally permitted inquiry by a government agency or regulator.
Maintaining accurate information
We strive to maintain complete and accurate information about you and your accounts. If you ever believe that our records contain inaccurate or incomplete information about you, please let us know immediately. We’ll correct any inaccuracies as quickly as possible. We can be contacted by phone at 800-828-3399, or by mail at:
500 Franklin Village Drive
Suite 208
Franklin, MA 02038
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