Privacy Policy Notice

Protecting your privacy is important to Premier Bank and our employees. We want you to understand what nonpublic personal information about you we collect and how we use it. This policy applies only to our customers who have products or services used primarily for personal, family or household purposes. 

What Information We Collect

Nonpublic personal information is information about you that is not available to the public that we obtain while
providing a financial product or service to you.

We may 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, telephone number, social security number, assets and income;
• Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates or others, such as your account balance and payment history; and
• Information we receive from a consumer-reporting agency, such as your creditworthiness and your payment history.

What Information We May Disclose

We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our customers or former customers to anyone,
except as permitted by law. Under our policy we may disclose your information only as follows:

BankAtEase™ Security

  There are three general categories of Internet security concern that are
  addressed in this white paper. The first is Log-In protection, the requirement that
  each user maintain a strictly private password and Log-In ID to which no one but
  the authorized customer should ever have access. Second is transmission
  security, the need to keep unauthorized agents from intercepting and/or
  deciphering the transmission of customers' encrypted data while it travels
  between the customer's computer and the bank's server. Third, and lastly, is
  information privacy and integrity, the ability to prevent unauthorized agents from
  viewing and/or writing to customers data while it is stored on the bank's server.

  "Customer" will be used to signify an authorized bank customer using software
  for the benevolent purposes it was intended and "agent" will be used to signify a
  person whose goal it is to exploit a software application for some negative end.

1. LOG-IN PROTECTION FOR THE CUSTOMER
   
   Every customer must privately maintain a combination of password and Log-In ID. Because the customer is assigned the original password by the bank's technical representative, BankAtEase™ forces the customer to change the password once logged onto the system and before any transactions can be requested. This forces the customer to establish an absolutely private password. Also, any subsequent changes to the password (say a customer loses or forgets the password) which require back office processing by a representative at the bank will force a change once the customer uses the new password to log on.
   
   Three (3) Strikes And You're Out
   
   If an agent attempts unauthorized entry into a customer's account by trying to guess a password, BankAtEase™ will disable or destroy the password on the third incorrect attempt, thus invalidating the Log-In combination. The disabling and/or destruction of the password keeps an unauthorized agent from running a 'crack' program, an application that can run through millions of possible passwords eliminating the invalid ones until it arrives at a match. To guard against unauthorized use of your log-in ID and password, BankAtEase™ disables the password indefinitely until you call the bank and request your log-in and password to be reset. This will occur if you accidentally activate this security feature by unintentionally mis-keying a password three times. You will need to call the bank to reestablish the password for your account(s). For example, a common mistake made by customers is having the caps-lock on while keying in a password. Since the password is case sensitive and you cannot actually see the characters you are typing, it is easy to think you are typing the password correctly when the caps-lock is engaged.
   
   Suggestions for Passwords
   
   Your password and logon ID provide security against unauthorized entry and access to your accounts. Passwords should not be easy to guess; for example, children's or pets names, birth dates, addresses or other easily recognized identifications for you should be avoided. Combining upper and lower cases within your password as well as combined alpha and numeric characters is a good security precaution in selecting a password (for example: sp3aKer is a good password for "speaker" All passwords should be a minimum of 6 characters.
   
2. Transmission Security
   
   Transmission security begins with the browser. A customer must be using a browser that supports the Netscape-developed encryption technology known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Versions of Netscape 2.0 or beyond and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.02 or beyond come equipped with SSL. SSL's specific function is to manipulate data into an unreadable format as it leaves the customer's PC. The temporary scrambling of data in transit is referred to as 'encryption'. In the unlikely case that an agent should intercept the data in transit, the encryption makes the data unreadable to a human and nearly impossible for a computer to crack. Furthermore, data in transit is split up into packets that travel separately and are not reorganized until they arrive at the bank's web server. So if the encryption code should be solved, the agent is likely to only be in possession of individual packets that would be out of context with the whole data.
   
   As you would expect, the converse of encryption, decryption, must take place before the data is rearranged back into a useful format. The relationship between which computer encrypts data and which computer has the subsequent ability to decrypt that data is determined by an extension of SSL known as public and private key pair technology. This method consists of two keys, one public and the other private. The public key is published from the bank's server upon request by the customer's web browser (i.e. Netscape or MS Internet Explorer). The private key is held privately at the bank's server. Once received by the customer's browser, the public key is used to encrypt the data as it leaves for the bank's server. The encrypted data can only be decrypted by the private key, based on the mutually exclusive, asynchronous relationship that these two keys share. As Netscape puts it, "Data that is encrypted with the public key can be decrypted only with the private key. Conversely, data encrypted with the private key can be decrypted only with the public key. This asymmetry is the property that makes public key cryptography so useful"

This answers the question that may have occurred to you: "Encryption may make data unreadable to a human, but can another machine intercept the data and unscramble it?" The co-dependency between the public and private key pair ensures that the only computer capable of decrypting data is the one who provides the means by which it is also encrypted. This raises another question: "How can either party, the recipient of a public key and/or the holder of the private key make any guarantee that either are who they say they are?" Indeed, if substitutions of identity can be made, it makes no difference how well encrypted data travels. To address this issue, BankAtEase™ employs the VeriSign Digital ID, authentication technology.

The VeriSign Digital ID (all quotes in this section are taken from VeriSign's white paper at https://www.VeriSign.com  as of 11/13/97.)

The reasoning behind the public/private key pair is similar to that of a safety deposit box that can only be opened by two separate keys that are owned by two different people and must be used simultaneously to work the lock. With a safety deposit box, it is relatively easy to make visual confirmation that the person holding the other key is who you think they are and, indeed, someone with whom you want to be sharing this mutual responsibility. The Internet is faceless, however, and a bank's server is likely to get requests all day long from customers all around the world. How does a bank bind the identity of the computer knocking on its server door with a legitimate, authorized customer? And conversely, how does the browser of a legitimate customer verify that it is communicating with its intended destination at the bank?

BankAtEase™ servers employ technology called the Digital ID to address the issue of identification. The Digital ID, developed by VeriSign, provides a standard of authentication against which claims of identity can be made and guaranteed. VeriSign, in its white paper, writes that "Digital ID's are electronic credentials that establish an individual's or entity's identity. A server secured with a Digital ID ensures visitors of the site's authenticity and allows the session with the client to be encrypted". It is essentially "third party evidence" that customers seeking and receiving data are who the server understands them to be, and vice versa.

Here is a section taken from VeriSign's white paper that describes how it works in conjunction with public/private key pair technology.

A Digital ID provides an electronic means of verifying that the individual or organization with whom you are communicating is who they claim to be. The identity of the Digital ID owner is bound to a pair of electronic keys that can be used to encrypt and sign digital information, assuring that the keys actually belong to the person or organization specified.

A CA (Certification Authority) such as VeriSign attests to an individual's or organization's right to use the keys by digitally signing the Digital ID after verifying the identity information it contains. The assurance provided by the Digital ID depends on the trustworthiness of the CA that issued the Digital ID and the integrity and security of the CA's practices and procedures.

When a connection is established between a client and a secure server, the client software automatically verifies the server by checking the validity of the server's Digital ID. The key pair associated with the server's Digital ID is then used to encrypt and verify a session key that is passed between the client and server. This session key is then used to encrypt the session. A different session key is used for each client-server connection, and the session key automatically expires in 24 hours. Even if a session key is intercepted and decrypted (very unlikely), it cannot be used to eavesdrop on subsequent sessions. SSL is the connection protocol used for this authentication and encryption process.

3. Server Security and Information Privacy/Integrity

Having encrypted the data and verified that the sender and receiver can be appropriately identified by each other, the web server and the information stored on it are protected in the following ways. BankAtEase™ operates off a server that is physically separate from the bank's mainframe and is protected by a firewall.

In addition a router with firewall are installed that sit between the Internet and server. This router, loaded with a firewall as well as an additional firewall are configured to only allow HTTP traffic, from the Internet.