United Bank Online and Mobile Privacy Policy

United Bankshares, Inc. ("United") is strongly committed to protecting your privacy and treating your personal information with respect and responsibility. United collects only data that is necessary for business purposes. This Online and Mobile Privacy Policy explains what information about you we collect, and how we use and protect it in mobile and internet commerce. Our Online and Mobile Privacy Policy practices strictly abide by the terms of our privacy notice, How We Use Your Personal Information, provided in our Privacy Policy.

This Online and Mobile Privacy Policy may be changed or updated from time to time.  This Policy applies to any data we may collect through our websites, including www.bankwithunited.com, our mobile applications, electronic forms, surveys, or social media posts (collectively, “our sites”). By accessing or using one of our sites, you accept the practices described in this Online and Mobile Privacy Policy.

This Policy applies to customer relationships established in the United States. This Policy will also tell you how you can exercise your options regarding personal information use and sharing.

"Personal information" refers to any information about you that is personally identifiable to you.  Your name, address, telephone number, or transaction history may all be examples of information about you that pertains to you specifically.  “Data,” on the other hand, in the context of this Online and Mobile Privacy Policy generally refers to any other information that we collect through your internet or mobile activities, or which third parties may collect on our behalf.  Such data may or may not be personally identifiable to you.  Geolocation data collected from your mobile device, such as when you ask for the location of the nearest ATM, is personally identifiable when obtained through our mobile banking applications.

We collect personal information and/or data about you in the following ways:

• When You Provide Personal Information to Us: United collects personal information online that you provide to us through different means, including, but not limited to when you log into our online banking or mobile banking platforms, when you complete an application, and when you use our products and services. We may also monitor, record and maintain records of your online and offline communications with us, including when you contact us through our website or mobile app or otherwise communicate with us, such as by email, phone, or postal mail. See How We Use Your Personal Information, for more information about what personal information is collected, how, and why.
• When We Obtain Personal Information From Others: United may obtain personal information from third parties, such as credit bureaus and other entities, to tailor your online experience.
• When We Gather Information Online: United uses certain tools (some of which may be hosted or provided by third-party vendors), such as “cookies,” “click stream auditing”, and other methods (described in more detail below), to gather information for internal purposes, such as for web analytics or to personalize our content or advertising.  United may also use such tools to secure and operate United’s website, and/or for fraud prevention or verification purposes.  For example, United and its third-party vendors may use tools that enable recording, reviewing, and analyzing your communications with us by email, phone, text, or chat, or through our website or mobile app, as well as your online and account-related activity, such as online banking transactions and other actions taken within or through your account. United does this to maintain records of account-related activity and transactions, detect, prevent and respond to actual or suspected security incidents, errors, fraud or misuse, and for other quality, training, verification, security and support purposes.
  • Cookies: "Cookies" are small pieces of information that websites store on a visitor's browser to remind the site about the visitor the next time the visitor accesses the site.  United does not store confidential or sensitive personal information in cookies. United uses cookies to enhance its customers’ online banking sessions by making navigation easier and providing important security features. For certain applications, such as online banking, cookies are required because they help protect customers’ privacy during an online session, such as by automatically terminating the session if the customer forgets to log out. Cookies cannot be used to capture your e-mail address, obtain data from your hard drive, or gain confidential or sensitive information about you. Additionally, cookies cannot be read by a website other than the one that sets the cookie. Please note that some websites use cookies to obtain information from your browser. You can set your browser to notify you before accepting a cookie, so that you can accept or reject the cookie. You will need to manage your cookie settings for each device and browser you use. Each browser is different, so check the “Help” or “Privacy” menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preference.
  • Click Stream Auditing: "Click Stream Auditing" allows reviewing information about an online user, such as their IP address, which web pages they have viewed or acted upon, date and time of such access, domain type, and when the user has responded to an advertisement. We may occasionally combine this information on an aggregate level with individual information to determine the effectiveness of our advertising.
  • Action Tags, Other Technologies: "Action Tags" are commonly referred to as GIF tags and are inserted in various places within our website to collect anonymous information about your visits to the site and your interaction with our ads and content. United may use certain other technologies to collect additional information related to the status and condition of your mobile devices. This information may be used to support the security of your transaction with United, determine industry trends, and for other research purposes. United may use information on file with your wireless operator to verify your identity and to protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud or unauthorized use of United’s mobile banking services. You authorize your wireless operator to disclose your mobile number, name, address, email, network status, customer type, customer role, billing type, mobile device identifiers (IMSI and IMEI) and other subscriber details, if available, to our service provider for the duration of the business relationship, solely for identity verification and fraud avoidance purposes. See How We Use Your Personal Information, provided above, for more information about how we treat your data.

Personal information that we collect about you is used to provide you with optimal online and mobile experiences with us. We use it to help determine your financial interests and needs, and to best recommend relevant products and services. We use personal information about you to qualify you for products and services that you request, process your transactions, authenticate your identity, prevent fraud, and keep your information and financial transactions secure.

Please note that United does not sell personal information about its customers.  United may share your personal information within its family of companies (affiliates) and with select third parties in accordance with the terms described in our privacy notice, How We Use Your Personal Information. This notice also provides a toll-free number for you to limit certain sharing. Additional information is provided below, under "Advertising and Tracking" and under "Your Options." We may share personal information when required by law, a subpoena or a court order. We may also share personal information when we suspect fraud or for risk management purposes.

Please note that United’s websites and mobile applications are not directed to children.  United does not knowingly collect information from minors.

United does not maintain a process that allows users to review or request changes to any of their personally identifiable information, including information that is collected through the use of cookies or other tracking devices, on the website, or our online service. If you believe that our customer records contain incorrect information about you, please contact us using the customer service contact information provided on your bank or investment statements, or other communications from us. You may also contact your local branch, relationship manager, or broker.

United retains your personally identifiable information as long as necessary to provide the products and services for which the information was collected, to process and maintain a record of transactions, and as long as necessary for legal purposes or to satisfy government retention requirements. When the retention period expires, United destroys data in a manner that renders it completely unusable and incapable of restoration. 

We use third-party advertising and media companies to serve ads on our behalf and to help manage and optimize our business and communications. Through the use of cookies and/or Action Tags (described above), which are inserted in various places within our sites, such third-party companies may collect anonymous information about your visits to our sites and your interaction with our ads and content. For instance, they may keep track of how many of our ads you have seen on other websites before visiting our site. This information is used to understand your browsing behavior and interests, so that we can identify your financial needs and provide services and advertising that are tailored to you.

The third-party companies we use for online tracking have a network of advertising companies and may share anonymous information about your visits to bankwithunited.com and other websites with us, and may use it in order to provide ads about goods and services of interest and relevance to you, based on your browsing habits on bankwithunited.com. From time to time, we may also share anonymous information with such third-party companies in an aggregate form, for purposes of analysis and improvement of our sites. If you would like more information about the use of third-party cookies and tags, or the process of opting out of such cookies or tags, please go to www.networkadvertising.org.

United does not access location data stored on your mobile device without your permission. Some features will not fully function unless you enable access to your location data. 

United maintains information on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), or LinkedIn. Any information you post on United’s social media pages will be subject to the privacy and security conditions of such social media, as well as to this privacy policy.  Please carefully review the privacy and security policies of any social media site with which you interact, and never post account numbers or other sensitive financial information on such sites.  United’s mobile applications are not socially enabled and do not allow you to connect to and share information with other users, such as Facebook or X, or with the public at large, such as YouTube.