Privacy Policy

Just as you have confidence that Sound Mind Investing is providing you with unbiased and objective investment information, you can be confident that we also are safeguarding your privacy. SoundMindInvesting.com does collect some personal information from readers. This Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with that information.

Your continued use of the SoundMindInvesting.com website indicates your acceptance of the terms of this privacy policy.

Our Guarantee

SMI will not give or sell your information to any outside party. All information collected will be used only by the SMI newsletter and its affiliated company, SMI Advisory Services.

What Information is Collected?

We collect personal information during registration that includes your name, address, email address, and telephone number. In the future, we may ask for demographic information such as age, income level, profession, and investing habits. Answering these demographic questions is optional. Credit card information is collected when you sign up for an SMI membership or when you purchase a product through the SMI website.

Security

SMI secures your personally identifiable financial and demographic data by encrypting it when it's sent over the Internet and by storing it in an encrypted format when kept on our server. This means that your data is protected from unauthorized access both while it is being transmitted and when it is stored. We use a minimum of 128-bit AES encryption — the same level of security employed by major financial institutions. SMI does not store your credit card information, which may occasionally require you to re-enter it. This is done for your protection.

Uses of Personal Information

We use your name, address, and email address to contact you about SoundMindInvesting.com, to mail the print edition of the SMI newsletter, and to send you information about Sound Mind Investing products. Registration information also enables us to process and verify subscriptions.

SMI Advisory Services may also use your information so that their Stewardship Advisors may contact you, or mail (or email) you materials about the SMI Funds or other SMI Advisory Services products/services.

Cookie Technology

Cookies are small nuggets of information stored locally on your computer for record-keeping purposes. Their use is an industry standard and many websites use them to help deliver useful features to their customers. When you subscribe to SoundMindInvesting.com, we use cookie technology to store your username and password on your hard drive to eliminate the time-consuming login process each time you wish to access locked content.

SMI Member Forum

The SMI Member Forum allows you to engage in lively discussions with other members of the SoundMindInvesting.com community. Please understand that any information you divulge in this area, including your username and/or email address, will become public information. We post usernames to foster intelligent and rewarding conversations, but cannot prevent parties from visiting our site and accessing this information. Including an email address in your profile does open the possibility of receiving unsolicited email. (Having our Member Forum locked and restricted only to SMI members greatly reduces the risk, but it doesn't completely eliminate it. Anyone who signs up for a membership gains access to this area of the website.)

The SMI staff loosely monitors the information posted to the Member Forum. However, we encourage you to be reasonably skeptical about the information posted in this area. Never assume that people posting to a forum are who they say they are or know the facts they claim to know. The Member Forum can be a great source of investing information and ideas but don't rely exclusively on information posted there. Do your own research as well. SMI cannot be responsible for the accuracy of any information posted in the Member Forum, and we will not be responsible for trading or investing decisions made based on such information.

And lastly...

We want to make sure you have a comfortable and safe experience with SoundMindInvesting.com. If you have any questions about our Privacy Guarantee or have any concerns regarding our use of your personal data, please contact us at [email protected]