California Privacy Notice (CCPA)
Introduction and Scope
If you are a resident of California, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (together, "CCPA"), gives you specific rights regarding the personal information that Creditpathworks collects about you. This notice explains those rights in plain language and tells you how to exercise them. It applies in addition to the protections set out in our general Privacy Policy.
Categories of Personal Information Collected
In the past twelve (12) months Creditpathworks may have collected the following categories of personal information from or about California consumers: identifiers (such as IP address and email address when you subscribe); internet or network activity (browsing history on the site, referring URL, time of request); geolocation data at the coarse-grained, city-level resolution derived from IP; commercial information (which newsletters you have subscribed to); inferences drawn from this information (such as aggregated content preferences); and audio or visual information only if you voluntarily submit it (for example, a photo attached to a tip you send through our Contact form).
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 Creditpathworks 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
The personal information described in this notice is used by Creditpathworks to operate, secure, and improve the service; to provide the editorial newsletter to subscribers; to answer messages submitted via our forms; to detect and prevent abuse; to produce aggregate audience reports; and to satisfy our legal obligations. We do not use personal information for any purpose materially different from those for which it was originally collected without notifying you.
Disclosure to Service Providers and Third Parties
Creditpathworks discloses personal information only to a short list of service providers that act on our behalf and only for the business purposes outlined in this notice. These vendors are bound by contract to use the information solely for the contracted service and to delete it when their engagement ends or when it is no longer required to provide the service. We do not disclose personal information to any third party for that party's own marketing or commercial purposes.
Sale and Sharing of Personal Information
In compliance with the CCPA, Creditpathworks confirms that it has not sold or shared the personal information of California consumers (including consumers known to be under 16 years of age) in the past 12 months and does not intend to do so. "Sale" and "sharing" are interpreted as defined by the CCPA; sharing data with operational service providers under contract does not constitute a sale or sharing in that sense.
Sensitive Personal Information
Creditpathworks 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
Under the CCPA, California consumers have the following rights: (1) the right to know what personal information we have collected about you, including the categories of information, the sources, the purposes, and the categories of third parties to which we disclose it; (2) the right to access the specific pieces of personal information we hold; (3) the right to correct inaccurate personal information; (4) the right to request deletion of personal information; (5) the right to opt out of any sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell or share, but the right exists); (6) the right to limit the use of sensitive personal information; and (7) the right to non-discrimination for exercising any of these rights.
How to Exercise Your Rights
Verifiable consumer requests under the CCPA can be submitted to Creditpathworks 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.
California consumers may use an authorized agent to exercise their CCPA rights. To process a request submitted by an agent, Creditpathworks requires the agent to provide signed written permission from the consumer or a power of attorney, plus reasonable verification of the consumer's identity. We may also contact the consumer to confirm that they have indeed authorized the agent to make the request.
Consumers Under 16 Years of Age
Creditpathworks does not sell or share personal information about consumers under the age of 16 and does not have actual knowledge of collecting personal information of children under 13. If we ever decided to sell or share personal information about consumers between the ages of 13 and 16, we would do so only with the affirmative authorization of the consumer (opt-in) as required by the CCPA. Parents and guardians may submit deletion requests on behalf of their children via the Contact form.
Right to Non-Discrimination
Creditpathworks will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. We will not deny you our service, charge you a different price, provide a different level or quality of service, or retaliate against you in any other way because you submitted a request under the CCPA. Because the service is free and the same for all visitors, there is no financial incentive or differential pricing structure for you to opt into or out of.
Retention of Personal Information
Creditpathworks follows a proportional retention policy. Newsletter records remain only while the subscription is active, with a minimal suppression entry kept post-unsubscribe to prevent accidental re-add. Contact-form records are retained for up to 24 months for follow-up and recordkeeping. Server logs are kept no longer than 90 days. Any aggregated analytics dataset that contains no identifiers is retained for long-term editorial planning.
Changes to This Notice and How to Reach Us
Creditpathworks 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.