Have you ever been in a situation where having a little more money for a short period of time could make a difference in your life or could be a solution to a financial emergency? Do you find yourself feeling uncomfortable asking your family/ friends for money? Then you know just how useful personal loans can be! With the digital age coming in, it is no less than a magical experience to get a loan at the click of your mouse and avoid the burden of physically visiting the bank branches.

Applying for a personal loan online gives you the option of filling out an application from the comfort of your home, without having to get into a lot of documentation or paperwork. You can upload scan of your documents on the app for KYC and Voila, You are eligible for a loan!

However, all is not rainbows with the online mode of lending and this convenience may come at a cost to the customers i.e. the risk of breach of privacy and data. Today, there are several online loan providers to choose from and the chances of your data getting leaked and misused are higher too! How do you ensure you don’t fall into the trap of fine print text in the privacy policy of loan applications? We have listed down a few tips that you should keep in mind when you’re applying for a loan online

1. A very basic and yet smart way to maintain your data security is by checking whether information related to income and expenses obtained through bank SMS Scraping is visible to the service provider. While this may sound like a gross violation of your privacy, you will be surprised to know how many loan applications can access the most private financial details of your life.

2. You should also check the privacy policy for any mention of your contact list, call history and other related details. At FastALoan, we not only give you instant loans but also don’t gain access to your private data like call history and contact details.

3. A big red flag that you need to watch out for is whether the loan provider shares your information with any third party vendors. You should read the terms carefully to check if a third party entity is involved in your equation with the loan vendor and if yes, what information will be shared. Many companies resort to the sale of personal information as that is a quick way to monetise on the data.

4. A few other details that you must search the agreement for are whether the application is requesting access to other mobile applications installed on your device and details about your mobile phone - IMEI Code, whether it is single or dual sim, mobile network used, applications stored on your device etc

5. One last but equally important check you must do is whether the company is reserving the right to track you, even after you uninstall the application. While the above points may seem scary and a huge invasion of your privacy, you should know that many organisations are also using the latest security measures to ensure your data is intact and safe. At FastALoan, we only gain access to the data that is mandatory for us to be able to provide a loan so you don’t have to worry about your data security with us!