Privacy Policy

Bell, Boyd & Jameson, PLLC ("the Firm") is committed to protecting the privacy and security of visitors to its websites. The Firm does not collect personally identifiable information when you visit its website unless you choose to provide that information. Likewise, the Firm does not give, sell, or transfer any personally identifiable information to a third party except as might be required by law or as described in this Privacy Policy. Unless stated otherwise on a particular webpage, this Privacy Policy applies to all Firm websites and online services. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information the Firm collects by other means (including offline) or from other sources.

Personally Identifiable Information

Personally identifiable information is “any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, or biometric records; and (2) any other information that is linked or linkable to an individual, such as medical, educational, financial, and employment information.” Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. Spec. Publ. 800-122, at ES-1 (Apr. 2010).

Types of Information Collected

The Firm collects several types of information, although never for commercial marketing by third parties:

Information collected and stored automatically;
Information collected for measurement and customization (cookies); and
Personally identifiable information.

The Firm has safeguards in place to protect all this information, including only allowing access by designated staff when it is required to perform their duties.

Information Collected and Stored Automatically

The Firm strives to provide the best online experience for visitors to its website. The Firm automatically collects and stores the following non-personally identifiable information from anyone who reads, browses, or downloads information from its websites:

The name of the domain from which you accessed the Internet;
The Internet address of the website from which you linked directly to the Firm's website;
The Internet protocol (IP) address (a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you are using the Internet) of your Internet provider’s gateways, or in some cases, your computer;
The date and time you accessed the Firm's website;
The country and state from which you accessed the Firm's website;
Characteristics of your computer system, including type of browser and operating system, used to access the Firm's website;
The URL of the pages you visited, the information you requested, and the files you downloaded while at the Firm's website;
Search terms used to get to the Firm's website from an external search engine and terms used on the Firm's website using the Firm's search engine (in aggregate only); and
Items clicked on a page while at the Firm's website.

This information does not identify you personally and is not used for associating search terms or patterns of website navigation with individual users. This information allows the Firm to improve website design, presentation and system performance. The information collected is part of a systems log file and is only used internally for website management purposes. The Firm periodically deletes its weblogs. On occasion, the Firm may provide this information to third-party entities it contracts with for the purposes of research analysis.

Information Collected for Measurement and Customization

To help provide its website visitors with the best experience possible, the Firm uses software to report and analyze aggregated web metrics data. The data is generally retained indefinitely to help improve website performance. The Firm's website uses these types of tools: session cookies, persistent cookies, pixel tags or Web beacons, and other customization tools.

“Cookies” are small text files containing strings of alphanumeric characters that websites transfer to visitors’ computers to allow the website to remember specific information about a visitor’s session. Your computer will only share the information in the cookie with the website that provided it, and no other website can request it. Session cookies are temporary (disappearing after you close your browser window) and do not contain personally identifiable information. The Firm uses session cookies for technical purposes, such as to enable you to more easily navigate throughout the website. Session cookies only collect non-personally identifiable data.

Persistent cookies store information on your computers for longer periods of time and across multiple visits. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive after you close your browser and may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to the website. The Firm uses persistent cookies to improve web metrics by distinguishing between new and returning visitors, to anonymously aggregate data on how visitors use the Firm's website, and to remember your voluntarily-provided preferences to create a smoother browsing experience. The Firm does not use persistent cookies to collect personally identifiable information about visitors. Persistent cookies can be removed by following your web browser’s directions.

The Firm may also employ a software technology known as a pixel tag or Web beacon. These help the Firm better manage content on its sites by informing it what content is effective. You may not disable Web beacons.

Customization tools allow you to voluntarily provide information to personalize and improve your online experience. Information from customization tools is saved on the Firm's (or its agents') servers.

You can set your web browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. If you do not wish to have session or persistent cookies stored on your machine, you can turn them off in your browser. However, this may affect the functioning of some portions of the Firm's website. Without cookies, most of the Firm's website will continue to display normally, but certain features may not work as well or may be unavailable.

Providing Information to the Firm

Personally identifiable information may be required to use certain features of the Firm's website, such as submitting a deposit or paying your bill, submitting a request to the Firm, or responding to a feedback form or survey. The Firm's main goal in collecting information is to improve its website, products, and services to provide you with the best possible experience. The Firm may use your personally identifiable information to:

Enable you to participate in online transactions;
Make the Firm's products, services, and website better;
Compile, analyze and research the Firm's user demographics and behavior;
Detect, investigate and prevent activities that may violate the Firm's policies or be illegal; and
Use location data only to provide and improve the Firm's service.

The Firm always informs you what information is required and only uses that information for its stated purpose. If you provide the information requested, then you consent to the Firm using the information for the stated purpose. If you do not provide the information, then some website features may be unavailable.

You do not have to provide personally identifiable information to visit the Firm's website. If you choose to provide personally identifiable information, such as by paying a deposit or a bill, sending an e-mail, submitting a form, or filling out a questionnaire or guestbook, the Firm will use the information you provide to respond to you. In addition, the Firm may use this personally identifiable information in various ways to further customer protection and to provide better service. This may be to correct broken links that you have identified or provide additional information that you have requested.

The Firm may retain any messages you send through the Firm's website or social media pages. In addition, you may provide the Firm information in user content you post to any of its websites, social media pages, or accounts. NOTE: Do not send the Firm sensitive information, such as your credit card or social security numbers, via e-mail. It is possible that during transmission of your e-mail this information may be intercepted by a third party. The Firm cannot guarantee its safety while in transit.

Providing Information to Third Parties

The Firm will not rent or sell your personally identifiable information to others. Occasionally, the Firm works with third parties to provide a better user experience, such as for fulfilling online orders, emailing updates, or collecting voluntarily provided feedback. These third-party websites will either follow the Firm's Privacy Policy or prominently display their own. The Firm may store personally identifiable information obtained from its website, social media pages or accounts in locations outside the direct control of the Firm (for instance, on servers or databases co-located with hosting providers).

The Firm will not disclose any of your personally identifiable information except when it has your permission or under special circumstances, such as when the Firms believes in good faith that the law requires it or under the circumstances described below.

Ways that your information may be disclosed:

To a bank or United States Department of the Treasury account, which must receive payment for a transaction that you initiated;
To a person or company that has contracted with the Firm to assist it with specific services, including but not limited to electronic commerce, which agrees not to sell or use personally identifiable information for other purposes;
To legal authorities if the Firm suspects that you are attempting to change or otherwise damage its website, or you are using it in violation of Federal, state, or local laws; or
In response to a subpoena.

Except as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy, the Firm will not disclose personally identifiable information to any third party unless required to do so by law, subpoena, or court order or if the Firm believes that such action is necessary to: conform to the law and comply with legal process served on us; investigate, prevent, or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities; enforce this policy; take precautions against liability; investigate and defend against any third-party claims or allegations; assist government enforcement agencies; protect the security or integrity of the Firm's website, and exercise or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of the Firm, its website, its users or others.

Other than as stated in this policy, the Firm does not provide personally identifiable information to outside organizations without first obtaining your consent. In addition, the Firm will make all appropriate redactions before sharing personally identifiable information to a third party.

How the Firm Protects Your Information

The Firm cares about the integrity and security of your personally identifiable information. The Firm cannot, however, ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to the Firm via its website or social media pages or guarantee that your information on the service may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of the Firm’s physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. Your privacy settings may also be affected by changes to the functionality of third-party providers, such as social networks. The Firm is not responsible for the functionality or security measures of any third party.

To protect your privacy and security, the Firm takes reasonable steps (such as requesting a unique password) to verify your identity before granting you access to your account. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your unique password and account information and for controlling access to your email communications from the Firm, at all times.

Compromise of Personally Identifiable Information

In the event that personally identifiable information is compromised as a result of a breach of security, the Firm will promptly notify those persons whose personally identifiable information has been compromised, in accordance with the notification procedures set forth in this Privacy Policy, or as otherwise required by applicable law.

Your Choices About Your Information

You may, of course, decline to submit personally identifiable information through the Firm's website, in which case the Firm may not be able to provide certain services to you.

Third-Party Services

The Firm uses certain third-party services to improve its website and to provide a better user experience. Third-party services are web-based technologies that are not exclusively operated or controlled by a government entity or that involve significant participation of a non-government entity. The Firm uses third-party services to assist it in communicating or interacting with the public. These services may be separate websites or may be applications embedded within the Firm's website. Some third parties provide these services to the Firm under contract, while others, such as social media websites, do not. Where practicable, the Firm will provide clear notice before you are directed to a third-party service from the Firm's website.

The Firm may employ over time various different advertising or remarketing services that serve targeted advertisements to make your online experience more focused to your interests. These tools and technologies collect and analyze certain types of information, including cookies, IP addresses, device and software identifiers, referring and exit URLs, onsite behavior and usage information, feature use metrics and statistics, usage and purchase history, MAC Address, mobile unique device ID, and other similar information. The Firm will not run interest-based advertising campaigns that collect personally identifiable information, including, but not limited to, email addresses, telephone numbers and credit card numbers.

The Firm uses the following third-party services:

Google AdWords/Doubleclick and Analytics: Google’s remarketing and similar audiences AdWords features permit the Firm to reach people who previously visited its website. Google’s interest categories, interest-based advertising, and demographic and location targeting features are similarly used to reach people who are likely to have interest in the Firm's advertising based on previous web searches. Google and its vendors display the Firm's advertising across the Internet to IP addresses that have visited the Firm's website. Google’s DoubleClick service uses the Firm's ads to collect analytical data for planning purposes. The service does not collect personally identifiable information. Google and its vendors use cookies to serve ads based on past visits to the Firm's website. Information about how you can opt out of Google's use of cookies is available at Google's Ads Settings. Alternatively, you can opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page or, to opt out of only DoubleClick’s use of cookies, by visiting the DoubleClick opt-out page. The Firm does not share any personally identifiable information with Google through its remarketing tags or any product data feeds which might be associated with its ads, nor does it send Google precise location information without obtaining your consent. The Firm does not use or associate personally identifiable information with remarketing lists, cookies, data feeds, or other anonymous identifiers. Furthermore, the Firm does not use or associate targeting information, such as demographics or location, with any personally identifiable information collected from ads or their landing pages.

Google Analytics uses cookies to track visitor interactions, which allows the collection of information, such as what time the current visit occurred, whether the visitor has been to the site before, and what site referred the visitor to the web page. Browsers do not share cookies across domains. The Firm does not collect personally identifiable information from these third-party tools nor does it provide them with additional personally identifiable information. The Firm uses IP masking in order to share only a portion of the IP address for geolocation. In addition, Google provides an Opt-out Browser Add-on to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics. The Firm does not endorse and makes no representation about the effectiveness of the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. In addition to complying with the terms above, AGFC complies with Google’s policy requirements.

Facebook Conversion Tracking and Custom Audiences: Facebook provides certain features and tools, such as pixels, SDKs and APIs (“Facebook Tools”) that can be added to the Firm’s website or apps to allow the Firm to send data to Facebook, including about actions that people take on the Firm's website or the Firm apps (“Event Data”). Facebook will use Event Data received to provide the Firm with the Facebook services it chooses to use, such as providing insights about the effectiveness of ads or the use of websites/apps or creating a custom audience for advertising, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Policy. Event Data will also enable both Facebook and the Firm to better target ads and to optimize theirs systems. In connection with such targeting and optimization, Facebook will: (i) use Event Data collected from the Firm’s website or mobile app for ads optimization only after such Event Data has been aggregated with other data collected from other advertisers or third parties or otherwise collected on Facebook and (ii) not allow other advertisers or third parties to target advertising solely on the basis of Event Data collected from the Firm’s website or mobile app. Event Data will not be disclosed to other advertisers or to third parties, unless Facebook has your permission or is required to do so by law. Facebook will maintain the confidentiality and security of Event Data, including by maintaining technical and physical safeguards that are designed to (a) protect the security and integrity of data while it is within Facebook's systems and (b) guard against the accidental or unauthorized access, use, alteration or disclosure of data within Facebook's systems. For more information about Facebook Conversion Tracking and Audiences, please visit Facebook.

YouTube: Some of the Firm's video presentations are provided by YouTube.com. According to the YouTube privacy policy, YouTube "may record information about your usage of the website, such as the channels, groups and favorites you subscribe to, which other users you communicate with, the videos you watch, the frequency and size of data transfers, and information you display about yourself as well as information you click on in YouTube (including UI elements, settings). If you are logged in, we may associate that information with your YouTube Account." More is available on YouTube's privacy policy page.

Email: The Firm may use a third-party software company to distribute weekly newsletters and important emails to people who sign up for them through the website. The Firm also occasionally sends out emails to people who have been a Firm customer within the last 12 months and who have not already opted-out of such emails. These emails typically refer readers to the Firm's website. In addition, individuals may sign up for the Firm's newsletters and other important emails via the Firm's website by submitting their contact information via a form. The Firm does not send newsletters or emails to users of its websites unless requested to do so by a particular individual. For information about how to opt out of the collection and use of information for ad targeting, please visit the Digital Advertising Alliance webpage.

Social Networking Platforms and Social Media

The Firm’s website may permit you to use third-party social networking platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google+. This may include the use of social media login information to create or access your account at the Firm’s website and plugins such as Facebook “Like”, Tweet, Pinterest “Pin,” Google “+1” buttons, etc. Occasionally, you can use the Firm’s website to interact with your social media accounts, such as Facebook or Twitter. In addition to using your third-party account credentials to sign in to portions of the Firm’s website, you can access posting and sharing tools, including a “share” button that allows you to post information to your social networks. Please note that these tools may be operated by third parties.

By using these tools, you acknowledge that some of your social media account information may be transmitted the Firm and that the social media account information transmitted to the Firm is covered by this Privacy Policy. Additionally, when you use one of these sharing tools, the third party that operates the tool may be collecting information about your browser or online activity through its own tracking technologies and subject to its own privacy policy. Lastly, when you use these tools, some of your information from the Firm’s website may be shared with the third party and others. Therefore, the Firm encourages you to read the privacy policies and other policies of the social networks you use.

In addition, the Firm participates on open forums offered by third-party commercial social media sites in order to increase government transparency, provide information, and promote public participation and collaboration with the Firm. Please note that while the Firm encourages candid conversation and frank exchanges of ideas, the Firm does not control or endorse the comments or opinions provided by visitors to these social media sites and cannot attest to the accuracy of the information provided by these sites.

The essential information shared on these third-party websites is available on www.bell-boyd.net, which is the official source of information from the Firm. If you use a website outside the Firm, you are subject to the privacy and security policies of that website.

Please visit www.bell-boyd.net for a directory of the Firm social media presences, such as those on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and AddThis. the Firm uses these social media sites as dynamic information sharing tools to access real-time information, for external relations, and to encourage public dialogue. the Firm posts videos, images, and news events on these sites to provide alternative opportunities to disseminate information and content to the public. Policies related to content, such as videos, images, and audio are posted separately.

The Firm does not actively seek personally identifiable information and will only collect the information necessary for the proper performance of official the Firm functions or to accomplish a purpose required by statute, executive order, or regulation.

In addition to the Firm’s primary social media channels, each of which has its own privacy policy (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Flickr), the Firm uses the bit.ly URL shortener in Twitter and other postings. Bit.ly is “built in” to the Twitterfeed tool, in that it automatically shortens long URLs in Twitter posts. According to its privacy policy, bit.ly uses cookies (see Cookies above). Those cookies are invoked only if the shortened bit.ly URL is clicked.

Links to Other Websites

the Firm is not responsible for the practices employed by websites linked to or from the Firm’s website or social media page nor the information or content contained therein.

This Privacy Policy applies to the Firm websites and social media pages or accounts only. the Firm websites include links to other websites. If you submit personally identifiable information to any of those websites, your information is subject to their privacy statements. the Firm encourages you to carefully read the privacy statement of any website you visit.

Website Security

Providing security for the personally identifiable information you submit via the Firm’s website is a priority for the Firm. the Firm maintains administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect your personally identifiable information. When the Firm (or its agent) collects or transmits sensitive information such as a credit or debit card number, the Firm (and its agent) uses industry standard methods to protect that information. However, no e-commerce solution, website, database or system is completely secure or “hacker proof.” You are also responsible for taking reasonable steps to protect your personally identifiable information against unauthorized disclosure or misuse.

For website security and to ensure this service remains available to all users, this government computer system employs software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information or otherwise cause damage. Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this website are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act. the Firm uses virus protection measures on its computer systems and regularly updates the software. These are computer security measures that, in addition to maintaining the Firm’s computer systems, also ensure that all files that the Firm develops and/or posts on its web servers are virus-free. When you request a file for download from the Firm’s website, it is possible, though unlikely, that the data may contract a virus and become corrupted before it reaches your computer. the Firm is not responsible for files that may become corrupted as the data travels the Internet.

Children's Privacy

The Firm recognizes the particular importance of protecting privacy where children are involved. For that reason, the Firm does not knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register for the Firm website accounts. No one under age 13 is allowed to provide any personally identifiable information to or on the Firm’s website.

If you are under 13, please do not send any information about yourself to the Firm, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. Instead, have an adult send the message. Have your parents, teachers or school librarian contact the Firm if you need further assistance.

In the event that the Firm learns that it has collected personally identifiable information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, the Firm will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you are a parent or guardian and believe that your child under the age of 13 has provided the Firm with personally identifiable information online, please contact the Firm.

Notification Procedures

It is the Firm’s policy to provide notifications, whether such notifications are required by law or are for marketing or other business-related purposes, to you via email notice, written or hard copy notice, or through conspicuous posting of such notice on its website, as determined by the Firm in its sole discretion. the Firm reserves the right to determine the form and means of providing notifications to you, provided that you may opt out of certain means of notification as described in this Privacy Policy.

Changes to the Firm’s Privacy Policy

This Privacy Notice may be revised periodically, and this will be reflected by the “effective date” below. If the Firm changes this Privacy Policy, the Firm will post those changes on its website to keep you aware of what information it collects, how it uses that information and under what circumstances the Firm may disclose it. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page. Your continued use of the Firm’s website constitutes your agreement to this Privacy Notice and any future revisions.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on June 24, 2022.

Questions or Concerns

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this website, or your dealings with this website, please contact the Firm via email at jmckendree@bell-boyd.net or send mail to:

Bell, Boyd & Jameson, PLLC

100 North Court Square

P.O. Box 841

Magnolia, AR 71754-0841