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Privacy Policy
CERTIFIED GOLD EXCHANGE, INC.
Effective Date: January 15, 2004 Last Updated: August 21, 2026
1. INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE
CERTIFIED GOLD EXCHANGE, INC. (“CGE,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) respects the privacy of the investors and visitors who use our services. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, who we disclose it to, how long we keep it, and the rights you have over it.
This Policy applies to personal information collected through:
- Our websites, including certifiedgoldexchange.com and related pages we operate
- Telephone calls and email correspondence with our specialists
- Forms you complete to request pricing, request a quote comparison, or download a consumer guide
- Precious metals purchases, sales, and self-directed IRA transactions you conduct with us
- Our dealer-to-dealer trading activity
This Policy does not apply to companies we do not own or control, including IRA custodians, depositories, and shipping carriers, each of which maintains its own privacy policy.
What we want to state at the outset
We have never sold, traded, rented, or given away information about a client or a registered prospect. We do not do so now. We do not buy leads, and we do not purchase or receive prospect lists from third parties. Every person in our records reached us directly.
We do not make unsolicited sales calls and we do not send text messages. Our business is built on incoming calls from people who contacted us first.
We do not accept credit cards or debit cards. We have never accepted cash, and we do not send cash. We accept payment only by check or wire from the person who opened the account.
We speak by telephone with every person on every transaction. Nothing is executed as an anonymous online order.
If you are a beneficiary named on a client’s account, we may hold personal information about you that we received from that client rather than from you. Section 3.3 explains what we hold and what rights you have.
2. WHO WE ARE AND HOW TO REACH US
CERTIFIED GOLD EXCHANGE, INC. Fort Worth, Texas
Toll-free: 800-300-0715 Email: [email protected]
Use either of these methods to ask a question about this Policy or to exercise the rights described in Sections 10 through 13. When emailing about a privacy right, please put “Privacy Request” in the subject line so it reaches the right person quickly.
3. PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT
The table below lists the categories of personal information we have collected in the preceding twelve months, using the categories defined in California law, along with sources, purposes, and retention.
We collect this information directly from you, automatically from your device when you visit our site, or — in the case of beneficiary information — from the client who named you. We do not obtain personal information from data brokers, lead vendors, or list sellers.
3.1 Categories, sources, purposes, and retention
Category | Examples | Sources | Purposes | Retention |
A. Identifiers | Name, email address, telephone number, IP address, device and browser type. Postal address is collected only if you become a client. | Directly from you; automatically from your device | Responding to your inquiry; delivering the consumer guide you requested; providing quotes and quote comparisons; processing transactions; shipping; fraud prevention | Seven years after the later of your last transaction or last contact, unless law requires longer |
B. Customer records information(Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)) | Name, signature, Social Security number, date of birth, postal address, telephone number, email address, your account number with your existing IRA custodian, and bank account information appearing on a check or wire you send us. We do not collect or store credit card or debit card numbers, because we do not accept them. | Directly from you; from your IRA custodian or prior custodian on a transfer or rollover | Opening and funding self-directed IRA accounts; effecting a transfer or rollover; settling payment; verifying identity; IRS reporting | Five to seven years after the transaction — see Section 14 |
C. Protected classification characteristics | Age, date of birth | Directly from you | Determining eligibility for retirement account transactions, required minimum distributions, and early-distribution rules; confirming you are an adult | Same as Category B |
D. Commercial information | Records of metals purchased, sold, or considered; quantities; weights; transaction dates and amounts; quote history | Directly from you; generated by us during the transaction | Fulfilling and settling transactions; IRS Form 1099-B reporting where applicable; buy-back valuations; account statements | Five to seven years — see Section 14 |
E. Biometric information | We do not collect biometric information | — | — | — |
F. Internet or other electronic network activity | Pages viewed, time on page, referring URL, search terms, computer and browser type, IP address, and — through session replay technology — a recording of interactions with our pages including clicks, scrolling, and mouse movement | Automatically, through cookies, tags, server logs, and session replay software | Operating and securing the website; diagnosing technical problems; understanding which pages and guides visitors find useful; improving layout and navigation | 24 months |
G. Geolocation data | Approximate location derived from IP address. We do not collect precise geolocation. | Automatically | Fraud prevention; determining which state privacy law applies to you | 24 months |
H. Audio, electronic, or visual information | Email correspondence you send us. We do not record telephone calls. We do not send or receive text messages. | Directly from you | Responding to your inquiry; documenting instructions regarding a transaction; dispute resolution | Same as Category A |
I. Professional or employment information | Employer, occupation, employment status | Directly from you, where relevant to a rollover from an employer plan | Determining rollover eligibility from a 401(k), 403(b), TSP, or similar plan | Same as Category B |
J. Non-public education information | We do not collect this category | — | — | — |
Beneficiary information(within categories A, B, C and L) | Name, Social Security number, date of birth, and postal address of each person a client names as a beneficiary | From our client — not from the beneficiary | Recording beneficiary designations with the custodian, as the account application requires | For as long as the designation remains in effect, then five to seven years |
K. Inferences | Preferences drawn from the information above, such as likely interest in a particular metal or account type | Generated by us | Tailoring the information and pricing we present to you; internal analytics | 24 months |
L. Sensitive personal information | See Section 4 | See Section 4 | See Section 4 | See Section 4 |
3.2 Information we do not collect
We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. We do not collect biometric information, genetic data, health information, precise geolocation, information about racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, union membership, sexual orientation, or neural data.
We do not record telephone calls. We do not accept or store credit or debit card numbers. We do not accept cash in any amount.
3.3 If you are a beneficiary
When a client opens a self-directed IRA, the custodian’s application requires the client to name beneficiaries and to provide each beneficiary’s name, Social Security number, date of birth, and address. We collect that information from our client, not from you, and transmit it to the custodian so the designation can be recorded on the account.
If you are named as a beneficiary, you may not know we hold this information. You have the same rights over it as anyone else described in this Policy — you may ask what we hold, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete it. You do not need to be a CGE client to make a request. Contact us using any method in Section 12.
Two practical points. First, we must verify your identity before confirming or acting on anything, and we will not disclose whose account you are named on to someone we have not verified. Second, if you ask us to delete your information we will do so, but the custodian holds the designation as well, and only the account holder can change a designation on the account itself. We will tell you who the custodian is so you can contact them directly.
4. SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION
California law treats certain information as “sensitive personal information.” Our collection of it is narrow and specific.
Social Security number. Required by the custodian to open a self-directed IRA and required for IRS reporting. We collect it for the account holder and, where a client names beneficiaries, for each beneficiary — because the custodian’s account application requires it.
Driver’s license or state identification card number. We collect this only in the uncommon circumstance where a depository or custodian requires it to open or service an account. Clients ordinarily submit identification to the depository or custodian directly; occasionally they ask us to prepare the paperwork on their behalf. This is rare — across the company’s history it has involved a small number of clients. When it happens, we collect the document solely to forward it to the institution that requested it.
What we do not collect. We do not accept credit or debit cards, so we hold no payment card numbers. We do not collect account log-in credentials, passwords, or security codes for any account you hold elsewhere. We do not collect precise geolocation, biometric data, health information, genetic data, or information about racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, union membership, or sexual orientation.
We collect none of this from a visitor who simply requests a consumer guide or asks a question. It is collected only when an account is opened.
How we limit our use
We use and disclose sensitive personal information only to:
- Perform the services you requested, including opening, funding, and settling your account and transactions
- Verify your identity where required
- Detect and prevent security incidents and fraudulent or illegal activity
- Ensure the physical safety of individuals
- Transmit it to the IRA custodian or depository that requires it to open or service your account
- Meet our legal obligations, including tax reporting and applicable recordkeeping rules
We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you. Because our use is confined to purposes permitted under California Civil Code § 1798.121(a) and its implementing regulations, we are not required to offer a “Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information” link, and we do not offer one. If our practices change, we will update this Policy and provide that link.
5. HOW WE USE PERSONAL INFORMATION
Transactional purposes
- Preparing and delivering quotes, including comparisons of a quote you received from another dealer
- Processing purchases, sales, and buy-backs of precious metals
- Coordinating the opening, funding, transfer, and rollover of self-directed IRA accounts with third-party custodians and depositories
- Verifying that a shipping address is the address where the recipient actually resides, before any metal leaves our custody
- Arranging insured shipment and delivery
- Producing account statements, confirmations, and tax forms
Service and communication purposes
- Responding to questions submitted by form, email, or telephone
- Delivering the consumer guides and educational materials you request
- Notifying you about changes to your account, an order, or this Policy
Legal and security purposes
- Verifying identity where required
- Meeting applicable recordkeeping obligations
- Reporting to the Internal Revenue Service where required
- Detecting, investigating, and preventing fraud, security incidents, and unauthorized activity
- Establishing, exercising, or defending legal claims
Improvement purposes
- Understanding which pages and guides visitors find useful
- Diagnosing technical problems and maintaining site security
Marketing purposes
- Sending information about market conditions, products, and services by email, subject to your right to unsubscribe at any time
We do not use your information to make unsolicited sales calls, and we do not send text messages.
6. HOW WE DISCLOSE PERSONAL INFORMATION
6.1 Service providers
We disclose personal information to companies that perform services on our behalf under written contracts prohibiting them from using it for their own purposes, retaining it beyond what the contract permits, or disclosing it further.
Type of recipient | Categories disclosed |
IRA custodians and trust companies | A, B, C, D, I, L, beneficiary information |
Precious metals depositories | A, B, D, L |
Banks, for check deposit and wire settlement | A, B, D |
Shipping and insurance carriers | A, D |
Customer relationship management provider (Less Annoying CRM) | A, B, C, D, H, I, beneficiary information |
Website analytics and session replay providers (Google Analytics, Lucky Orange) | A, F, G |
Website hosting and email providers | A, F, H |
Professional advisors — attorneys, accountants, auditors | As necessary |
6.2 Legal and regulatory disclosures
We disclose personal information when legally required, including to the Internal Revenue Service, law enforcement pursuant to lawful process, and regulators with authority over our business. We also disclose it where necessary to establish or defend legal claims, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of any person.
6.3 Business transfers
If CGE is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will provide notice before your information becomes subject to a materially different privacy policy.
6.4 With your direction
We disclose information to third parties when you direct us to — for example, when you ask us to coordinate with a custodian or depository you selected.
7. SALE AND SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We do not sell your personal information, and we never have. CGE does not rent, trade, or sell client or prospect lists. We do not accept payment from any third party in exchange for your personal information. We have not done so at any point in our history.
California law also uses the term “sharing” to describe disclosing personal information to a third party for cross-context behavioral advertising, whether or not money changes hands. We do not share personal information for that purpose.The analytics and session replay tools described in Section 8 operate as our service providers under written contract. They do not use your information to build advertising profiles or to target you on other websites.
We have not sold or shared personal information in the preceding twelve months.
We do not sell or share the personal information of consumers we know to be under 16 years of age.
8. COOKIES AND TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES
Strictly necessary. Required for the site to function — session management, security, load balancing. These cannot be disabled.
Analytics — Google Analytics. Measures how many people visit, which pages they view, and how they arrived. Collects IP address, computer and browser type, and pages viewed.
Session replay — Lucky Orange. Records interactions with our pages, including clicks, scrolling, and mouse movement, and produces heatmaps showing which parts of a page draw attention. We use this to find navigation problems and improve page layout.
Lucky Orange automatically masks information typed into form fields. Text you enter into a form is replaced in the recording rather than displayed, so the software can measure that you interacted with a field without capturing what you wrote.
Advertising. We do not place advertising cookies that transmit your information to advertising networks for cross-context behavioral advertising.
You can control cookies through your browser settings. Disabling strictly necessary cookies may prevent parts of the site from working.
9. HOW WE PROTECT PERSONAL INFORMATION
Technical and administrative safeguards
- Encryption. Information is encrypted in transit and at rest.
- No public-facing client database. We do not maintain an online database of client information accessible from our website. Client records are held offline and within our secured customer relationship management system.
- Vetted CRM. Client and prospect records are maintained in Less Annoying CRM, a third-party system bound by written contract to process information only on our instructions.
- Role-based access. Only personnel whose role requires access to client information have it, limited to what the role requires.
- Experienced staff. Our specialists average more than fifteen years with the company, and access is limited to that team.
Operational controls that reduce what is at risk in the first place
- No card data. We do not accept credit or debit cards, so there is no cardholder data in our systems to lose.
- No cash. We have never accepted cash and we do not send cash.
- Payment only from the account holder. We accept checks and wires only from the person who opened the account.
- A live conversation on every transaction. We speak by telephone with every person we transact with.
- Address verification. Before shipping, we verify that the delivery address is where the recipient actually resides.
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If you believe your interaction with us is no longer secure, contact us immediately at 800-300-0715.
10. YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS — ALL RESIDENTS
Regardless of where you live, you may:
- Ask what personal information we hold about you
- Ask us to correct information that is inaccurate
- Ask us to delete information, subject to the legal retention obligations in Section 11.3
- Unsubscribe from marketing email using the link in any message, or by contacting us
- Ask to be placed on our internal do-not-call list
11. CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS
If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, gives you the following rights.
If you live in California, you have the right to know what we hold, correct it, and have it deleted. CGE has never sold or traded any information clients in 34 years in business. This section 11 is just a summary that is used to direct you the the full “Your California Privacy Rights” located on the link below.
If you live in California or any other states with updated privacy laws please click the following link to understand your rights.
https://certifiedgoldexchange.com/california-privacy-rights/
or contact us directly at CERTIFIED GOLD EXCHANGE, INC. Fort Worth, Texas 800-300-0715 [email protected] or https://certifiedgoldexchange.com/contact-us/ and please mention privacy requests at the start of your message.
CGE exercise the same rights to visitors to our website across all 50 states,
11.1 Right to know
You may request that we disclose the categories of personal information we collected about you, the categories of sources, the business or commercial purpose for collecting it, the categories of third parties to whom we disclosed it, and the specific pieces of personal information we hold.
Your right to know is not limited to the preceding twelve months. Where we have retained your personal information longer than twelve months, you may request information collected before that period, and we will provide it, except for personal information collected before January 1, 2022. You may specify a date range, or request everything.
11.2 Right to correct
You may request correction of inaccurate personal information. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to correct it, considering the nature of the information and the purpose of processing. We may require documentation where the information is material to a transaction or to a legal obligation.
11.3 Right to delete
You may request deletion of personal information we collected from you. We cannot delete certain records, and California law permits us to retain them, where necessary to:
- Complete a transaction, provide a service you requested, or perform a contract with you
- Comply with a legal obligation. Tax law requires retention of records supporting IRS reporting, and federal recordkeeping rules may require retention of transaction and identity records.
- Detect security incidents or protect against fraudulent or illegal activity
- Exercise or defend legal claims
- Enable solely internal uses reasonably aligned with your expectations given your relationship with us
Where we cannot delete, we will tell you which exception applies and delete everything not covered by it.
If you only requested a consumer guide and never opened an account, none of these exceptions applies and we will delete your information on request.
11.4 Right to opt out of sale or sharing
See Section 7 and Section 12.
11.5 Right to limit use of sensitive personal information
As described in Section 4, we use sensitive personal information only for purposes permitted under California Civil Code § 1798.121(a). This right therefore does not apply to our practices and we do not offer a limitation link.
11.6 Right to non-discrimination
We will not deny you goods or services, charge a different price, provide a different level of quality, or suggest we will do any of these things because you exercised a privacy right. Our metals pricing does not depend on whether you submitted a privacy request.
11.7 Financial incentives
We do not offer financial incentives in exchange for personal information. We do not offer discounts, promotions, gifts, or bonus metal in exchange for your data. The consumer guides on our site are provided at no cost to anyone who requests one, and requesting one does not change the price of anything we sell.
12. HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS
12.1 Submitting a request
Method | Detail |
Toll-free telephone | 800-300-0715 |
[email protected] (subject: “Privacy Request”) |
12.2 Verification
To protect your information, we verify identity before acting on a request to know, correct, or delete. We ask for information matching what we already hold. For requests involving sensitive personal information or specific pieces of personal information, we require a higher degree of certainty and may ask for a signed declaration under penalty of perjury.
We will not require you to create an account to submit a request. Information provided for verification is used only for that purpose and deleted as soon as practicable afterward.
12.3 Authorized agents
You may designate an authorized agent. We require written permission signed by you, and we verify your identity directly. If your agent holds a valid power of attorney under California Probate Code sections 4000 to 4465, additional written permission is not required.
12.4 Timing
We confirm receipt within 10 business days and respond within 45 calendar days. If we need more time we will notify you within the first 45 days and may extend by an additional 45 days.
Opt-out requests are acted on within 15 business days, and we will notify third parties to whom we sold or shared your information in the 90 days before your request. We will confirm to you that we processed it.
12.5 Cost
There is no charge. If a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive we may charge a reasonable fee or decline to act, and we will explain why.
13. RIGHTS UNDER OTHER STATE LAWS
If you live in a state with a comprehensive consumer privacy law — including Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island — you may have rights similar to those in Section 11, including rights to access, correct, delete, and obtain a portable copy of personal data, and to opt out of targeted advertising and the sale of personal data.
Texas residents. CGE is a Texas corporation. We do not sell personal data and we do not process personal data for targeted advertising.
Appeals. If we decline your request you may appeal by emailing [email protected] with “Privacy Appeal” in the subject line. We will respond within 60 days. If we deny the appeal we will give you a method to contact your state attorney general.
Nevada residents. You may direct us not to sell certain personal information. Contact us at the address in Section 12.
14. RETENTION
We keep personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes in this Policy, or as long as the law requires, whichever is longer. Specific periods appear in Section 3.1.
Certain obligations set a floor we cannot go below:
- Tax reporting. Records supporting IRS reporting, including Form 1099-B where applicable, are retained for seven years.
- Anti-money-laundering recordkeeping. Where federal recordkeeping rules applicable to dealers in precious metals apply to a transaction, we retain the associated transaction and identity records for at least five years.
- Retirement account records. Records relating to a self-directed IRA transfer or rollover are retained for seven years to support the account history held by your custodian.
When a retention period expires we delete the information or de-identify it so it can no longer reasonably be linked to you.
15. CHILDREN
Our services are intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has provided us information, contact us at 800-300-0715 and we will delete it.
16. THIRD-PARTY SITES
Our site may link to sites we do not operate, including custodians, depositories, and news sources. We are not responsible for their privacy practices. Review their policies before providing information to them.
17. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY
We review this Policy at least once every twelve months and update it as our practices change. When we make material changes we post the revised Policy with a new effective date. The “Last Updated” date tells you when it last changed.
18. CONTACT US
CERTIFIED GOLD EXCHANGE, INC. Fort Worth, Texas 800-300-0715 [email protected] or https://certifiedgoldexchange.com/contact-us/ and please mention privacy requests at the start of your message.
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