Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how YieldShield LLC (“YieldShield,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), operator of the YieldShield Vantage tenant-screening service (the “Service”), collects, uses, shares, and protects personal information. By using the Service, you acknowledge the practices described here.

1. Who we are; our role

YieldShield provides a self-serve tenant-screening platform through which a landlord requests a screening of a rental applicant. TransUnion reports are prepared and furnished by TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions, Inc. (“TransUnion”) through its ShareAble service. TransUnion is a consumer reporting agency under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). If you give a written instruction for a bank income report, Plaid Consumer Reporting Agency, Inc., doing business as Plaid Check (“Plaid Check”), is a consumer reporting agency, and Plaid Check prepares and furnishes that report. YieldShield is the technology platform through which a request is transmitted to TransUnion and TransUnion’s response is displayed, and through which a bank income report is displayed to the landlord you identified. YieldShield does not prepare or evaluate consumer reports. The landlord, not YieldShield, makes all rental decisions.

YieldShield LLC and FiTerra Holdings LLC are affiliates under common ownership and control. FiTerra Holdings does not operate the Service, is not a party to your relationship with YieldShield, and does not make or participate in any rental decision. The technical integration through which the Service connects to TransUnion is provided by FiTerra Holdings; that integration carries screening requests and delivery notifications only. FiTerra Holdings does not access, use, or retain the contents of any consumer report, any score, or anything derived from a report.

2. Information we collect

From applicants: contact and application information (name, email, phone, current address); income details you provide; identity-verification information (sensitive): your Social Security number (“SSN”) and date of birth (“DOB”), collected only at the identity-verification step; and payment information, which is collected and processed by our payment processor through its hosted, tokenized payment fields. Full card numbers are not transmitted to or stored on YieldShield systems; we retain only a payment token and the card’s last four digits and brand for transaction and refund purposes. If you give a written instruction for a bank income report, we also receive that report from Plaid Check (Section 3).

From landlords: account and business information (name, entity details, contact); the identity of the individual submitting each screening request and the address of the property it concerns; the name of a property’s owner, where you list or screen for a property on an owner’s behalf; the tenant-selection criteria the landlord applies; and records of the certifications and legal documents the landlord accepted, including version identifiers and acceptance timestamps; and how the landlord first arrived at our website, such as the referring website, the first page visited, any campaign tags in the link followed, and, unless the browser sent a Global Privacy Control signal, any advertising click identifier in that link.

From our listing partners: where a partner emails one of its own agents a link to a page we host, that link identifies the agent to us by name, email address and the partner’s own internal reference. We use this only to show the agent that the page is theirs to claim, to credit the claim to them and record it with the certification they sign, and to keep internal totals of how many agents arrive and claim. It is business contact information about a real-estate professional, supplied by the company they work with. It is not applicant or tenant information, and no consumer report information is involved at any point.

From visitors to listing pages: if you send a question or a tour request from a listing page, we collect your name, your email address, your phone number if you give it, and your message. If you ask to be emailed if applications reopen for a paused listing, we collect your email address only. Neither is an application, and no consumer report information is involved.

From people who request first access to YieldShield Keep: if you request first access to Keep, we collect your name, your email address, the address of the rental property, and whether you are its owner or an agent or property manager, and, if you give them, your phone number and the property’s monthly rent. This is not applicant or tenant information, and no consumer report information is involved.

Automatically: standard technical and usage data (IP address, device/browser type, pages viewed, the website that referred you, and any campaign tags in the link you followed) to operate, secure, and improve the Service and to understand how people find it.

When you arrive from a listing partner’s link, we set a cookie of our own. It holds only a short code that lets us connect a later visit to the link that was opened. It contains no name, no email address and no other personal detail, and it expires after seven days. Signing in to a landlord account sets separate session cookies, which identify your account so that you stay signed in.

When you first visit our website, we keep a small record in your browser of how you arrived: the website that referred you, the first page you visited, and any campaign tags or advertising click identifiers in the link you followed. It contains no name, no email address and no other personal detail, and we stop using it after 30 days and delete it the next time you visit our website. If you create a landlord account during that time, we save it with your account so that we can understand how landlords find YieldShield. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we do not save advertising click identifiers in this record or with your account.

3. Sensitive identifiers and report contents (important)

• SSN and DOB are pass-through only. We transmit them to TransUnion so that TransUnion can check your identity and prepare its reports. If you give a written instruction for a bank income report, we also transmit your date of birth and the last four digits of your SSN, never your full SSN, to Plaid Check so that it can prepare that report. We do not store, log, or retain your SSN, any part of it, or your DOB beyond the request that carries them.
• We do not retain the contents of TransUnion reports. We do not keep a copy of your TransUnion report, a score from it, or any value derived from it. If you give a written instruction for a bank income report, we hold that report, encrypted and exactly as Plaid Check prepared it, so that the landlord you identified can open it. It is deleted automatically 30 days after Plaid Check prepares it, or sooner, and is treated as deleted from that moment. We do not extract any figure or other information from it; after it is deleted we keep only a record that it was delivered, including a checksum that identifies the file. We do record the landlord’s own decision, and the notices sent about it, as a compliance record (Section 7); that record contains no report content. Your TransUnion report is TransUnion’s record, and requests about it go to TransUnion. Your bank income report is Plaid Check’s record, and requests about it go to Plaid Check.
• Landlord account information is stored on an ongoing basis to operate the account.

4. How we use information

To operate the Service (presenting TransUnion’s identity questions and transmitting your answers to TransUnion; transmitting your request to TransUnion; displaying TransUnion’s response to the landlord you identified; if you give a written instruction for a bank income report, transmitting that instruction and your identity details to Plaid Check and displaying Plaid Check’s report to that landlord; and processing payment through our payment processor); to comply with applicable law, to provide landlords with adverse-action tooling, and to tell applicants which agency to contact about the content of a report (TransUnion, or Plaid Check for a bank income report); to secure, maintain, and improve the Service, and to understand how people find and use it; and to communicate about your account and transactions. If you send a question or a tour request from a listing page, we use your details to pass it to the landlord or agent who published the listing and to deliver any reply they send through YieldShield. If you ask to be emailed if a listing reopens, we use your email address only to send that one email. If you request first access to YieldShield Keep, we use your details to contact you about your request and to send you the email updates you agreed to on that form. Apart from the email updates you agree to on the Keep first-access form, marketing communications are sent only with your separate consent (for text messages, see Section 9). We do not use consumer report information for our own purposes, and we do not use screening information for marketing. The $38 fee is charged for screening services; it is not consideration for the sale of your personal data, and we do not sell your personal data.

5. How we share information

• TransUnion (a consumer reporting agency): applicant identity and application information, which we transmit so that TransUnion can prepare TransUnion reports.
• Plaid Check (a consumer reporting agency), if you give a written instruction for a bank income report: your name, email address, phone number, address, date of birth, the last four digits of your SSN, and your instruction, which we transmit so that Plaid Check can prepare that report.
• The requesting landlord: TransUnion furnishes the TransUnion report to the landlord you identified, for that landlord’s permissible purpose of evaluating your rental application, and YieldShield displays it. YieldShield does not prepare or evaluate the report and does not receive its contents for its own purposes. If you give a written instruction for a bank income report, Plaid Check furnishes that report to the same landlord, and YieldShield displays it and does not prepare or evaluate it.
• The landlord or agent who published a listing: if you send a question or a tour request, we give them your name, your email address, your phone number if you gave one, and your message, and they may contact you directly. We do not control any copy they keep. If you ask to be emailed if a listing reopens, we tell them only how many people have asked, never who.
• We share personal information with service providers that perform services for us in operating the Service.
• Legal and safety: as required by law or legal process, or to protect rights, safety, and the Service’s integrity.
• Business transfers: in a merger, acquisition, financing, or asset sale, subject to this Policy.
• We do not sell personal information. We do not share consumer report contents for marketing.

Other companies that provide features on some of our pages may collect information about your online activities over time and across different websites when you use the Service.

6. Mobile information and SMS consent (non-sharing statement)

We do not share your mobile phone number, SMS opt-in, or text-messaging consent with any third parties or affiliates for their own marketing or promotional purposes. We share this information only with the service providers that help us operate our platform (for example, our SMS and telecommunications providers), and only as needed to deliver the messages you requested. A phone number you give when you request first access to YieldShield Keep is not consent to text messages. We keep it, including with service providers that help us operate the Service, so that we can contact you about your request. Mobile opt-in and consent data is never sold, rented, or shared for marketing. Your SMS consent is specific to YieldShield and is not shared with, or inherited from, any other brand.

For verification-code text messages:

• No mobile numbers will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.
• Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties.
• Messages are delivered through AWS Notify. AWS does not share end user phone numbers with third parties for marketing or promotional purposes.

Full text-messaging terms are in our Terms of Service.

7. Data retention

• Full SSN and date of birth: not retained beyond the request that carries them.
• Last four digits of the SSN: not retained.
• Consumer report contents: TransUnion report contents are not retained at all. We do not retain TransUnion report contents, any score, or anything derived from a report. A bank income report, if you give a written instruction for one, is held and then deleted automatically 30 days after Plaid Check prepares it, or sooner (Section 3).
• Compliance records (agreements, authorizations, consents, certifications, acknowledgments, landlord decisions, and the notices we send, including the IP address and browser information recorded with them): retained indefinitely as evidence of compliance.
• Applicant contact and application information (name, email, phone, address, self-reported income): retained for as long as we hold the screening record it belongs to.
• Landlord account and business information: retained while your account is open and after it is closed. If you close your account, your listing pages are taken offline and you have 30 days to sign in and reopen it. After that, your sign-in is removed and your email and text-message permissions are turned off. We keep the account and business information, properties, listings, and screening requests of a closed account, and the record kept with the account of how you first arrived at our website, along with the compliance records described above. We also keep a one-way code made from your account email address, never the address itself, for as long as that is your account email. We use it only so that, if the link in an email about a listing reopening is used to stop all of those emails to that address, we can also turn off marketing emails to your account.
• Payment records: we retain the payment token, the card’s last four digits and brand, and the transaction amount and date for tax and accounting purposes. We hold no full card numbers.
• The arrival record we create when an agent opens a listing partner link: deleted automatically 30 days after the agent first opens the link, and treated as deleted from that moment. A deleted record can remain in our database backups for up to 35 days.
• Questions and tour requests sent from a listing page: your message, the name, email address and phone number you gave with it, and any reply sent through YieldShield are deleted automatically 1 year after your message arrives, and treated as deleted from that moment. We keep a record that you sent it: your email address, whether it was a question or a tour request, the date, the listing, and the IP address and browser information recorded with it, and, if a reply was sent through YieldShield, when it was sent to your address. That record does not include your message, your name, your phone number or the reply, and it is kept for up to 7 years. If the landlord or agent publishes your question with their answer on the listing page, the version they publish is not deleted with your message. It stays on the page until they take it down, and it shows only the question and answer as they publish them, not the name or contact details you gave with it. A deleted message can remain in our database backups for up to 35 days.
• Requests to be emailed if a listing reopens: we delete your email address once we send that email, or automatically 180 days after you asked if we have not sent it, and treat it as deleted from that moment; the automatic deletion itself can take a few more days to complete. A deleted address can remain in our database backups for up to 35 days. We also use one-way codes made from your address, never the address itself, to limit repeated sign-ups and to keep the stop link in the email working for 60 days after we send it. If you use that link to stop all of these emails, we keep the code indefinitely, so that we can recognize your address and refuse it if it is entered again.
• Email delivery records: if an email we send you is permanently undeliverable or is reported as spam, our email provider keeps your address on a do-not-send list so that further email to it is not delivered, and we receive a notice of the bounce or report that includes your address.
• Audit events (records of account and document activity, including the IP address and browser information recorded with them): retained for up to 7 years.
• Technical and usage logs: retained for up to 12 months, then deleted automatically within a few days, except the access logs our hosting provider keeps of requests to this website, which record the address of each page requested and are kept for as long as the website is hosted with that provider.
• Text-messaging consent and opt-out records: retained as compliance records, above, so that we can evidence your consent and honor your opt-out.

8. Security

YieldShield safeguards nonpublic personal information consistent with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and maintains a written information-security program under the FTC Safeguards Rule (16 C.F.R. Part 314), including a designated program coordinator, encryption of sensitive data in transit and at rest, access controls, service-provider oversight, incident response, and the sensitive-identifier minimization described above. We share nonpublic personal information only to process the screening you requested and with the consumer reporting agency that prepares each report, consistent with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Landlord account credentials and certification records are protected under the same program, including access controls limiting internal access to personnel with a business need. No system is perfectly secure. Report suspected breaches to legal@yieldshield.io.

9. SMS/text messages

If you opt in, we offer two separate, optional categories: (1) messages about your account and (2) marketing messages. You may opt into either independently. Consent to marketing texts is not a condition of using the Service. Message frequency varies; message and data rates may apply. Reply HELP for help or STOP to cancel at any time (or opt out by any reasonable method); after STOP we may send one confirmation message. See Section 6 for our non-sharing commitment.

10. Your choices and rights

• Account data: review and update in your account or via legal@yieldshield.io.
• Your report and disputes: TransUnion is a consumer reporting agency and prepares TransUnion reports; copy requests and disputes about the contents of a TransUnion report are handled with TransUnion (contact details appear on our FCRA Disclosures page and on any adverse-action notice). If you gave a written instruction for a bank income report, copy requests and disputes about that report are handled with Plaid Check. Questions about this Privacy Policy or about how the Service works may be directed to screening-compliance@yieldshield.io. Questions about what a report says, and disputes, go to the agency that prepared the report, as listed above.
• Marketing opt-out: unsubscribe link in emails; STOP (or any reasonable method) for texts.
• State privacy rights: Consumer report information is regulated by the FCRA and is handled through the FCRA rights above (report copies and disputes go to the consumer reporting agency that prepared the report). For other personal information we hold (such as account and contact information), to the extent the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act or another applicable state law applies, you may request to confirm, access, correct, delete, or obtain a portable copy of that information, and opt out of any sale, targeted advertising, or profiling. Submit a request by emailing legal@yieldshield.io; we will verify your identity before responding and will respond within the time the applicable law requires. If you appeal a denied request, you may contact the Texas Attorney General.
• If you are a landlord or other end user: You may review and update your account information in your account or by emailing legal@yieldshield.io. Rights under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act and comparable state laws generally run to individuals acting in a personal or household context; a person acting in a commercial context, including operating a rental business through this Service, is generally not a “consumer” under that Act or those laws, so those rights ordinarily do not attach to your account data. If you have also applied as an applicant and we hold your information in that personal capacity, the rights described above apply to that information. Your certifications, tenant-selection criteria, criteria acknowledgments, and records of the legal documents you accepted are retained as compliance records under Section 7, and we cannot delete them on request while a retention obligation applies to them. You can close your account from Settings; Section 7 describes what closing does and does not remove.
• Opt-out preference signals: We recognize and honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal. When your browser sends one, we do not save advertising click identifiers in the record of your first visit kept in your browser or with your account. Our hosting provider’s access logs, described in Section 7, record the address of each page requested, which can include such an identifier whether or not your browser sends one.

11. No waiver of FCRA rights

Nothing in this Policy or our Terms of Service, including any governing-law or dispute-resolution provision, waives, limits, or alters any right or remedy an applicant has under the FCRA or applicable state consumer-reporting law, or modifies the venue or procedures the FCRA provides for consumer claims.

12. International transfers; children; links

Your data is processed in the United States. The Service is intended for adults 18 and older; we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18 and will delete it if discovered. Our site may link to third-party sites whose privacy practices we do not control.

13. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy; material changes will be posted with a new “Last updated” date and, where appropriate, additional notice.

14. Contact us

YieldShield LLC · 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731 · legal@yieldshield.io · Questions about the Service: screening-compliance@yieldshield.io

Questions about, and disputes concerning, the contents of a TransUnion report are handled by TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions, Inc. (TURSS), Attention: Consumer Dispute Team, P.O. Box 800, Woodlyn, PA 19094, (800) 230-9376, https://www.transunion.com/client-support/rental-screening-disputes.