Privacy and Security

Our website brings together a combination of industry-approved security technologies to protect data for the bank and for you, our customer. It features a VeriSign-issued Digital ID for the bank’s Internet Service Provider hosting our website, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol for data encryption, and a router and firewall to regulate the inflow and outflow of server traffic.

Secure Data Transfer

Once a server session is established on an https secure page, the user and the server are in a secured environment. Because the server has been certified as a 128-bit secure server by VeriSign, data traveling between the user and the server is encrypted with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. With SSL, data that travels between the bank and customer is encrypted and can only be decrypted with the public and private key pair. In short, the bank’s server issues a public key to the end user’s browser and creates a temporary private key. These two keys are the only combination possible for that session. When the session is complete, the keys expire and the whole process starts over when a new end user makes a server session.

Router and Firewall

Secure forms must filter through a router and firewall before they are permitted to reach the server. A router, a piece of hardware, works in conjunction with the firewall, a piece of software, to block and direct traffic coming to the server. The configuration begins by disallowing ALL traffic and then opens holes only when necessary to process acceptable data requests, such as retrieving web pages or sending customer requests to the bank.

Using the above technologies, your Internet loan application and check reorder transactions are secure.

When accessing our Website, The Farmers State Bank will learn certain information about you. How we will handle information we learn about you depends upon what you do when visiting our site.

If you visit our site to read or download information on our pages, we collect and store only the following information about you:

1. The name of the domain from which you access the Internet.
2. The date and time you access our site.
3. The Internet address of the website you used to link directly to our site.

If you identify yourself by sending us an e-mail containing personal information, then the information collected will be solely used to respond to your message.

The information collected is for statistical purposes. The Farmers State Bank may use software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing the number of visitors to the different sections of our site, what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, The Farmers State Bank uses software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

The Farmers State Bank will not obtain personally-identifying information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information to us, nor will such information be sold or otherwise transferred to unaffiliated third parties without the approval of the user at the time of collection.