Ensuring the security of your personal information

If you are an Equitable client, you have already received a copy of our consumer privacy notice. True to that privacy notice, we will protect the confidentiality of all of your personally identifiable information in our possession, including any personal information you provide us through our websites.

If you are not an Equitable client and are accessing our website to learn more about our companies and the products and services we offer, please be assured that we will also protect your privacy and the security and confidentiality of any personally identifiable information we acquire about you. We will not sell or rent information about you to anyone or share information with a third party for the purpose of cross-context behavioral advertising. However, we may disclose personal information to our affiliates, third-party service providers or as otherwise required or permitted by law.

 What types of information do we collect on our websites?

We may collect:

•  Information you enter into our website when you request information from us; and

•  Tracking information that tells us how you use our website.

Any information you enter into our website will be treated as personally identifiable information and, therefore, kept private and secure. Personally identifiable information may include your name, address, telephone number and email address as well as information about your investments, investment goals and risk tolerance. We may also gather information such as which pages you view and when, and we may compile information through our web server software and cookies, web beacons and clear GIFs or tracking pixels, as noted below.

Maintaining your privacy despite our use of cookies, web beacons, clear GIFs, tracking pixels and similar mechanisms

Equitable uses cookies, web beacons, clear GIFs, tracking pixels and other mechanisms to track your usage patterns on our websites. None of these things store, record or share your personally identifiable information, and are, therefore, harmless when it comes to your privacy and maintaining the security and confidentiality of your personal information.

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small data file that a website can send to your computer’s browser when you visit
a website. It is not a computer program. A cookie does not extract personally identifiable information about you, such as your name and address, from your computer. It does not read data on your hard drive or instruct your computer to perform any function. A cookie sent to your browser from our websites can only be used by our websites to recognize your computer when you log on to our websites. We also use cookies to track your usage patterns, such as how frequently you log in to a website, which pages you view, when and for how long. Tracking information we may obtain by using a cookie may also be associated with personally identifiable information we may have collected about you, but never exposes you to privacy issues.

You may be able to accept or reject a cookie when you visit a website or use your browser or other software to clear cookies from your hard drive. However, deleting a website’s cookie may mean that our websites will not recognize you as a repeat user. As a result, you may have to re-enter information and reject the website’s cookie when you attempt to access the website again.

We may also utilize third-party internet vendors to collect site traffic data using web beacons and clear GIFs or tracking pixels that can be embedded in our websites. Tracking information we may obtain by using a web beacon may also be associated with personal information we may have collected about you. These vendors provide us with completely anonymous usage data that allows us to improve our websites. This usage data cannot in any way be associated with any personally identifiable information we have about you and, therefore, does not jeopardize your privacy or the security of your personally identifiable information.

Security of information transmissions

When you fill out a form or request information on our websites, your privacy, and the information you give us, is protected using encryption technology called Secure Sockets Layer or SSL, typically indicated by https in the website’s address at the top of the page. This technology scrambles transmissions to ensure the security of your personally identifiable information and make it unreadable to third parties.

Although we will do everything we can to ensure the security and confidentiality of your information, internet transmissions are not always entirely secure. For example, regular email is unencrypted and may not be secure. Cybercrime is becoming more and more frequent. To protect your privacy, please do not use unencrypted email to communicate information that you want kept confidential and always make sure you are on a secure page of our website when transmitting personally identifiable information. Equitable is not liable for the unintended disclosure of information due to errors in your transmission of information to us via email or unauthorized acts of or breaches of the security of your email account by third parties.

Your privacy and links to and from other websites

You may be able to reach Equitable websites through links (hyperlinks) from other websites that are not owned or controlled by us (third-party sites). You may also use hyperlinks from our websites to reach third-party websites. Third-party sites may have different privacy policies controlling the collection and use of your personally identifiable information than ours. A link to or from a third-party site is not an endorsement by us of their site, content, privacy practices or sponsoring organization. We cannot be responsible for the practices, content, security or accuracy of third-party sites.

Security and third parties

We may work with third-party companies to share content between our websites and other company sites or to provide us with analytical services so that we can better understand our visitors. These third parties may use cookies, web beacons and similar mechanisms to collect information when you click on or move your cursor over buttons on a website. We may access this information to identify other websites that you have visited. However, these third parties do not collect personally identifiable information (unless you explicitly provide it to them), and we do not give any personally identifiable information to them. These third parties may collect certain non-personally identifiable information such as what website a visitor came from, your IP address and what type of browser you are using. We do not control the dissemination of third-party cookies, web beacons and similar mechanisms. You should check the relevant third-party websites for their privacy policies as well as information about how to reject cookies or other tracking mechanisms.

Privacy rights for residents of certain states

Some state laws grant additional privacy rights to their residents.

•       California residents should click here to learn more about their privacy rights and how to  exercise them.

Changes to our privacy policy

We may make changes to our privacy notice in the future. If you are a client, we will not make any change that would affect you without first sending you a revised privacy notice describing that change. Similar changes will also be described on our websites.

Contacting us

If you have any questions about our privacy policy or how we ensure your privacy, please call us at (877) 806-4573 or submit a request here.