Effective: June 25, 2024

Who we are

This privacy notice is provided by Edward Thomas, EdwardThomas.org, LynchburgNotary.com, and any additional alternate websites (“we,” “us,” or “our“), and describes how and why we might collect, store, use, and/or share (“process“) your information when you use our services (“Services“), such as when you:

  • Visit our website at LynchburgNotary.com or EdwardThomas.org, or any website of ours that links to this privacy notice;
  • Contact us or request an appointment via email, text or phone, or the contact forms on our website(s);
  • Engage with us in other related ways, including any sales, marketing, or events.

Questions or concerns? Reading this privacy notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services.

Privacy Questions

What personal information do we process? When you access our website, certain information is collected about you, your device, your Internet Service Provider (“ISP“) and your interactions with our website. When you contact us in any way, we process this information along with additional data provided directly by you.

Do we process any sensitive personal information? We do not process sensitive personal information.

Do we receive any information from third parties? We may receive information from public databases, social media platforms, and other outside sources.

How do we process your information? We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent. We process your information only when we have a valid legal reason to do so. When necessary, your information may be shared and processed by third parties in order to provide Services to you.

How do we keep your information safe? Whenever possible, we utilize technology to encrypt and store your data as securely as possible. However, due to the nature of providing Services electronically and over the Internet, we must acknowledge that no method of securely collecting and storing data is 100% effective. We cannot provide any guarantee that bad actors will not defeat our security measures and gain access to your personal data.

What are your rights? Depending on where you live, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information. We are based in the United States, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and adhere to the laws of both jurisdictions. We are not a for-profit entity, we do not utilize any advertising or marketing beyond word-of-mouth or business cards, and we do not engage in interstate commerce. Our Services are intended solely for use by residents and visitors in Virginia and the access to our Services should only be from within Virginia. Our system cannot prohibit collecting of background data on users from other states or jurisdictions, but our Services are not designed for out of state visitors and as such it is our position that we cannot necessarily comply with privacy rights requests that fall outside of federal or Virginia law.

How do you exercise your rights? If you feel that you have a legal privacy rights request, please send us a message using our general email form. If it is possible to comply with your request and we agree it has legal merit, we will comply to the best of our ability.

Do you cooperate with law enforcement requests? We fully support law enforcement and their investigations. When presented with a request from law enforcement for any data on visitors or users of our Services, we will comply in most circumstances. We do not necessarily, but may require at our discretion, a search warrant before complying. Visitors and users of our Services should expect that their data may be shared with law enforcement even without a search warrant.

1. Information we collect

Passively collected data

We collect data from you whenever you use our Services. Certain data is collected the moment you access our website and is collected passively without direct disclosure by you. This passive data can include:

  • Your IP address and Internet Service Provider;
  • Your device and browser information;
  • Your geolocation and/or GPS location;
  • The website that you accessed directly before or directly after accessing our Service;
  • Your interaction with our website;
  • Data collected and provided by our server data center;
  • Other intentional and unintentional data.

Actively collected data

When you contact us in any way, either through direct email, using our general email form, or requesting an appointment, the passive data collected may be transmitted and stored in various servers, databases, or email systems. Additional data actively provided by you will also be collected. This data can include:

  • Your first and last name;
  • Your email address;
  • Your phone number(s);
  • Information about documents to be notarized;
  • Appointment request data (day, time, location);
  • Referral information;
  • Other information provided by you.

We do not electronically collect “sensitive data” on you (i.e. date of birth, social security number, financial records, health records, etc.).

Third-party data collected

Information about you may be processed from outside third-party sources. This data is used solely to verify your identity and in order to reduce fraud so that we can continue to provide Services. This data is never stored or processed but is reviewed and then discarded. The sources of this third-party data can include:

  • Public databases;
  • Criminal / Judicial databases;
  • Marketing / Affiliate databases or partners;
  • Social media platforms;
  • Data archives;
  • News outlets;
  • Genealogy databases;
  • Other sources utilized to enhance security for our Services.

In all cases, during appointments, specific and identifying information about the documents being notarized will be recorded in the Journal. Your documents will never be recorded, copied, or processed.

Payment data

During in person appointments, certain payment data may be collected from you. Although we possess the payment terminal device used to collect your payment data, the payment data is never seen, collected, or otherwise stored by us. In the event of “Card Not Present” transactions where your payment data is manually entered into the payment terminal, that information is not processed by us and we have no record of it after the payment has processed. Certain data collected during the payment process is accessibly to us after the transaction by our payment processing provider. This data includes:

  • Your name;
  • Your email address;
  • Your phone number;
  • Transaction data (i.e., confirmation number, date, time, & location of transaction, reference number, etc.).

Specific payment data is visible, if at all, only by our payment processing partner, Square. You may view their privacy policy here: https://squareup.com/us/en/legal/general/privacy.

2. Processing your information

We collect, store, transmit, and process your information in a variety of ways:

  • To provide Services to you;
  • To respond to questions or to provide support to you;
  • To coordinate Service logistics with you;
  • To provide administrative information to you;
  • To request feedback from you;
  • To evaluate or improve our Services;
  • To identify trends or usage statistics regarding our Services;
  • To protect our Services;
  • To comply with legal requirements.

3. Sharing your information

It is our general policy that we do not share your personal information with any outside parties. The exceptions to this policy are:

  • In order to process payment for Services, certain information is provided to our payment provider (noted above);
  • When appropriate to comply with law enforcement requests;
  • When abnormal circumstances arise that require the sharing of your data with a third-party in order to facilitate providing Services to you;
  • When disclosure of customer data is required to comply with standard business practices such as financing, sale of assets, transfer of ownership due to merger or acquisition;
  • When using Google Maps Platform APIs specifically, or other APIs or platform experiences in the future to facilitate verification or providing Services to you;
  • When required by law.

4. Use of cookies and tracking technologies

Our website does use cookies and certain tracking data in order to facilitate required Service functionality and to provide Service usage feedback as disclosed above. We do not engage in any marketing or advertising and cookies or trackers are never used for this purpose. Although some browsers provide for cookie- and tracker-blocking, you consent not to use such options on our website and acknowledge that doing so may prohibit our site from functioning properly.

5. Retention of your data

We keep your data for as long as is necessary to provide Services or the necessary purposes disclosed in this policy, or as is required by law.

Because of the nature of the Services we provide and the fact that a notary could, in theory, be called to testify about notarial acts years or decades after the act was performed, your information may be retained in perpetuity and may continue to exist and be retained even after (1) we no longer provide Services; (2) we are no longer required to do so; (3) the retirement or death of our notary.

In the event of the death or incapacitation of our notary, you acknowledge any successor to the notary’s estate may have access to your data and may, at their discretion, retain that data in perpetuity; a successor or their successor(s) may also, at their discretion, destroy your data including any notarial records or surrender / transfer your data to another appropriate entity including, but not limited to, another Virginia notary, an attorney, a court, or the Secretary of Virginia. By using our Services, you agree that any successor of our notary’s estate, including their successor(s), shall be immune from liability in regard to the retention or disposition of your data.

Once data is no longer required for the purposes outlined in this policy, including but not limited to the closing of our website, your data may continue to exist in an anonymized or de-anonymized stated within an archive. In such an event, we will continue, to the best of our ability, to store your data in as secure a manner as possible using best practices at the time, if appropriate.

6. Keeping your data safe

There is no completely safe way to collect, store, transmit, or process data electronically or over the internet. That being said, we attempt to utilize best practices to ensure your data is protected behind multiple layers of security including complex pass phrases, pass keys, hashing and encryption. However, despite our best intentions, bad actors are usually one step ahead of the security industry. We cannot guarantee that your data will always be or remain secure nor that your data will never be accessed by third-party criminals or hackers. A lot of our use of your data will happen via email. End-to-End encryption requires that both parties use such systems. Because that is not reasonably possible in most cases, you should never assume all of your data is ever encrypted when using our Services and maintain your own safeguards to monitor and protect your personal data and to mitigate the fallout from any potential data breaches, including one originating from a failure of our security processes.

7. Collection of information on minors

Our Services are designed solely for use by residents of and visitors to Virginia who are over the age of 18 or emancipated minors and who are of sound mind. By accessing our site or using our Services, you attest that you are at least 18 years of age or are an emancipated minor or that you are the parent, legal guardian, or court appointed custodian of a minor whom you consent to use our Service.

Our system has no way of detecting whether a visitor to our site is a minor or an adult and it collects passive data on every visitor to our site. It is never our intention to collect or retain any data on or from minors as they are not the intended users of our Services. In exceptionally rare occasions, a minor may use our Service and at that time, appropriate and legally required information will be obtained, recorded, processed, and retained to fulfill Services rendered in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

8. Utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

At present, the use of AI to conduct business or provide Service is limited to the use of AI “personal assistants” for completing administrative tasks including, but not limited to: responding to text messages or emails, providing directions, scheduling, or placing phone calls. When we use AI platforms in this manner, your data may be transmitted to the AI provider and at that time will be governed by their own privacy policies. We do not presently possess any controls over retention of data used by AI providers to complete administrative tasks or any other tasks for which we may utilize the AI platforms. Although we do not currently use AI beyond that, by using our Services you agree that we may, in the future, utilize any data collected or retained on you within the context of this privacy policy for AI learning, integration, processing, or operations.

9. Updates to this policy

From time to time this privacy notice and our policies surrounding the collection and processing of your data may change. We may, but are not required to and may not necessarily, notify you via text or email when we have a change to our privacy policy. When updates are made to this policy, this should be reflected by a change in the “Effective Date” at the top of this page. In some instances, however, human error or failure may prevent the updating of the “Effective Date.” We encourage you to review this policy in its entirety each time you use our Services in order to check for any changes to our policy and ensure you are still in agreement with the policies within.

10. Policy contact information

If you have questions regarding this policy, please contact us by using the general email form found within our website.

11. Your rights to review, update, or delete your information

In some instances, you may have a legally protected right to review, update, or delete the data we have on you. This right is based upon a combination of factors including your locality of residence, the federal laws of the United States, laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and what data we actually have collected from you. If you have questions regarding your rights under this section, please contact us via the general email form on our website.