OUR POLICY ON CONFIDENTIALITY

Sterling Bank recognizes and respects how important personal privacy is to our customers. We have never shared nonpublic personal information except as permitted or required by the law and we will continue to protect your privacy.

Categories of information that we may collect

We collect nonpublic personal information about you from the following sources:

• Information we receive from you on applications or other forms, such as: your name, address, social security number, assets, and income.

• Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others, such as: your account balance, payment history, parties to transactions, and credit card usage.

• Information we receive from a consumer reporting agency, such as: your creditworthiness and credit history.

Categories of information that we disclose

We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our customers or former customers to anyone except as permitted or required by law.

Disclosure as permitted by law

We may disclose all of the information we collect, as described above to nonaffiliated third parties who perform services or functions on our behalf such as:

• Check printing

• Marketing our products and services

• Marketing of financial products or services offered under a joint marketing agreement between us and another financial institution.

Confidentiality and Security of non-public personal information

We restrict access to nonpublic personal information about you to those employees who need to know that information to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard your nonpublic personal information.

If you have questions or concerns about the integrity of your account information, please contact us. 

ONLINE BANKING Security Information

This ONLINE BANKING System brings together a combination of industry-approved security technologies to protect data for the Bank and for you, our customer. State of the art firewall technology is the first line of defense in preventing unauthorized access to any information housed.

Included in this operating system is the capacity to allow only secure connections by end users. Utilizing Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology, all transmissions of web pages and data between the financial institution and its customer are completely encrypted and are unreadable to any person or group trying to "intercept" the transmission. SSL encryption is the industry standard and is commonly used in Internet applications that require security and privacy for sensitive data.

Passwords: Before the users access Sterling Bank Online, they are required to enter their user ID and password. Without proper login, users cannot see or use any web pages within Sterling Bank Online.

Account Number Masking and Account Aliases: For security reasons, user's complete account number(s) never appear on the computer screen. When the account number needs to be displayed it appears as #####6789 instead of 123456789. Sterling Bank Online also uses account "Aliases" which are user-defined titles for the consumer's accounts (i.e., "My Checking"), when displaying account information on the screen.

Secure Connection: When users are accessing the online information, their connection is automatically converted into a secure Internet communications session.

Data Encryption: When users access their account information or any other sensitive data, an encryption system is automatically activated to protect the transmission of information from unauthorized sources.

Regardless of the efforts, the relative infancy of the Internet as a broad-based communication medium when combined with its "open" nature, make it impossible to guarantee absolute confidentiality under all circumstances. However, with the above technologies in place, Sterling Bank feels your online banking transactions are secure.

EMAIL Security Information

Emails sent directly through the Sterling Bank website are not encrypted or communicated over a dedicated line at this time.