Privacy Policy

Section 01

Who this policy covers

This policy applies to First Lane Financial LLC, DBA First Lane Credit ("First Lane Credit," "we," "us") and covers information we collect through our website, our forms, our client portal, phone calls, text messages, email, and the course of providing credit repair and credit education services.

Because we provide financial services, we are a financial institution under the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and this policy also serves as our privacy notice under that law. Section 08 contains the required sharing disclosure.

Section 02

What we collect

We collect only what the work requires. Where a field is optional, we say so on the form.

• Identity and contact information. Name, mailing address, email address, phone number, date of birth, and previous addresses.
• Government identifiers. Your Social Security number and a copy of your government-issued photo identification, required by the credit reporting agencies to process a dispute.
• Credit file information. Your reports from the three nationwide credit reporting agencies, including tradelines, balances, payment history, collections, public records, inquiries, and scores.
• Documents you send us. Proof of address, correspondence from bureaus and furnishers, billing statements, police reports or identity theft affidavits, and anything else you choose to provide as documentation.
• Payment information. Card or bank details, collected and stored by our payment processor. We do not store full card numbers on our own systems.
• Your questionnaire answers. Your goal, timeline, state of residence, and what you believe is on your report.
• Communications. Emails, text messages, portal messages, and notes from calls, including call recordings where we tell you a call is recorded.
• Technical information. IP address, browser and device type, referring page, pages viewed, timestamps, and the marketing source that brought you to the site.

We do not ask for and do not want information about your health, your religion, your politics, your race, your immigration status, your union membership, or your biometrics. If you send us a document containing something like that, we will redact or delete it.

Section 03

Your Social Security number and credit reports

These deserve their own section because they are the most sensitive things we hold and the most abused in this industry.

Section 04

How we use it

• To do the work. Review your reports, prepare and send dispute correspondence, handle responses, and produce your written Blueprint and progress reports.
• To verify who you are. Credit reporting agencies reject disputes without identity verification.
• To communicate with you. Status updates, questions about your file, appointment scheduling, and responses to your requests.
• To bill you. Charging your monthly fee once that month's round of disputes has been sent out, and keeping records of what you paid.
• To meet legal obligations. Recordkeeping required by the Credit Repair Organizations Act and state credit services law, responding to lawful requests, and defending or asserting legal claims.
• To secure and improve our service. Detecting fraud and abuse, keeping systems working, and understanding which pages and questions confuse people. This uses technical and aggregate data, not your credit file.
• To send you marketing, only if you agreed. Educational emails and occasional offers, using your name, contact details, and general interest — never your credit data. You can stop these at any time without affecting your service.

Section 05

What we will never do

People come to us after being marketed to relentlessly, often because someone sold their information. We will not be part of that.

• We will not sell your personal information — for money or for anything else of value.
• We will not share it with lead buyers or data brokers, or with other lenders, insurers, or service companies so they can pitch you.
• We will not put you on a third party's list as part of a "special offer," a joint venture, or a partner promotion.
• We will not use your credit report data for advertising, or upload any of it to an advertising or social media platform.
• We will not treat your visit as an "inquiry" or "application" in order to argue we may telemarket you despite the Do Not Call registry.

Section 06

Who ever sees your information

A short and specific list. Everyone below is either doing the work you hired us for, or legally compelled.

• Credit reporting agencies and furnishers. Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, specialty agencies, and the creditors or collection agencies reporting the items you asked us to dispute. This is the point of the service, and it happens on your written authorization.
• Service providers who work under contract for us. Our client relationship and messaging platform, our credit-report analysis software, our secure document storage, our payment processor, and our mail and delivery vendors. Each is bound to use your information only to perform its service for us, to keep it confidential, and to secure it. None may use it for their own purposes.
• People you tell us to include. Your loan officer, realtor, spouse, attorney, or anyone else — but only on your written authorization, and only what you specify. We will not discuss your file with your spouse or the person who referred you unless you authorize it in writing.
• When the law requires it. In response to a subpoena, court order, or lawful request from a regulator or law enforcement, and to report or investigate suspected fraud. Where we are permitted to tell you, we will.
• If the business is sold. Your information could transfer to a buyer as part of a sale or merger. If that happens, we will notify you, and the buyer remains bound by this policy until you are given notice of any change and a chance to delete your data.

Referral partners and affiliates are told only whether the person they referred became a client, so we can pay them. They never see your reports, your documents, your Social Security number, or the details of your file.

Section 07

If someone referred you

When a loan officer, realtor, or other partner sends you to us, they may have given us your name and contact information, or you may have arrived through their referral link. We use it only to contact you about the review you asked for and to credit the referral.

Being referred does not give that person access to your credit file, your documents, or your progress. If you want them included, tell us in writing and we will include them. If you would rather they know nothing, that is the default.

Section 08

Federal privacy notice

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires financial companies to state plainly what they share and what you can limit. Here is ours.

To limit our own marketing, email [email protected], call (281) 377-0075, reply STOP to a text, or use the unsubscribe link in any email. Limiting marketing never affects your service.

Section 09

Cookies, analytics, and advertising

• Necessary cookies. Keep the site working, remember your place in the questionnaire, and protect against abuse. These cannot be turned off without breaking the site.
• Analytics. Aggregate measurement of which pages people read and where they stop. We use this to fix confusing pages.
• Advertising. If we run ads, an advertising platform may set a cookie to measure whether an ad led to a form submission. We do not send these platforms your credit report contents, your scores, your Social Security number, or your questionnaire answers about your financial situation.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and we honor the Global Privacy Control signal where your browser sends one. Note that browser-level tracking choices do not affect information you type into our forms and send to us directly.

Section 10

Calls, texts, and email

Our forms include an unchecked box you may tick to consent to calls, texts, and emails. It is unchecked on purpose — we will not assume your consent, and consenting is never required to become a client or to receive any service.

Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any text to opt out, or HELP for help. Mobile carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. Opting out of messages does not cancel your service, and we will still reach you about your own file by your preferred method.

Your mobile number and consent are not shared with any third party for their marketing.

Section 11

How we protect it

We maintain a written information security program with administrative, technical, and physical safeguards, as the federal Safeguards Rule requires of companies like ours.

• Encryption of your information in transit and at rest
• Access limited to personnel who need your file, with individual accounts and multi-factor authentication
• A secure client portal for documents, so sensitive files are not sent as ordinary email attachments
• Written confidentiality and security obligations for every vendor that touches your data
• Secure destruction of paper and electronic records at the end of the retention period

Please use the portal rather than email for identification documents and anything containing your Social Security number. Ordinary email is not a secure channel, and we cannot control it once it leaves us.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and the appropriate authorities as required by Texas law and the law of your state, without unreasonable delay.

Section 12

How long we keep it

• Client files: five years after your file closes. Federal law requires credit repair organizations to keep contracts and records of the services performed. Keeping them also lets us prove what we did on your behalf if a dispute arises later.
• Identification documents: deleted once the disputes they supported are complete, and in no case kept longer than your client file.
• Inquiries that never became clients: 24 months, then deleted. If you ask us to delete sooner, we will.
• Marketing contact records: until you unsubscribe, plus a minimal suppression record so we do not contact you again by mistake.
• Technical logs: 12 months.

At the end of the retention period, records are destroyed by secure deletion or shredding, as required by the Texas data disposal law.

Section 13

Your choices and rights

Some states give residents specific privacy rights. We extend the core ones to everyone, whatever state you live in, because drawing that line by geography would be arbitrary.

• Know and access. Ask what we hold about you and get a copy.
• Correct. Have inaccurate information about you fixed.
• Delete. Have your information deleted, except records we are legally required to keep or that we need for an active file or legal claim. We will tell you what we kept and why.
• Opt out of marketing. At any time, without affecting your service.
• Opt out of sale or targeted advertising. There is nothing to opt out of — we do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
• No retaliation. We will not deny service, charge you more, or give you worse service for exercising any of these rights.

A note on scope. Most information we hold about clients is regulated by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which set their own rules and are carved out of most state privacy statutes. Where that is the case, the federal rules govern and we apply the practices described in this policy. Nothing here limits any right you have under the FCRA, including your right to dispute inaccurate information directly with a credit reporting agency at no cost.

Section 14

Children, other sites, and location

• Children. Our services are for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and we delete it if we learn we have. If your minor child is a victim of identity theft, contact us and we will explain how a parent or guardian can handle that dispute directly.
• Other sites. Links to other websites, including our social media pages and our enrollment provider, are governed by their own privacy policies, not this one.
• Where your data lives. We store and process information in the United States. We do not offer services outside the United States.

Section 15

Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when our practices change. The effective date and version at the top always reflect the current version.

If we ever make a material change — particularly anything that would broaden how we share your information — we will notify current clients by email before it takes effect, and we will not apply it retroactively to information already collected without your consent.

See also our Terms and Conditions and your Consumer Credit File Rights.