3.5. Zillow Home Loans

Zillow Home Loans’ policies and terms are not central to this investigation. They are simply the next verse, same song.

Source: 🛜 Zillow Home Loans Privacy Policy

Source: 📥 Zillow Home Loans Privacy Policy — Captured Aug. 30, 2026

Source: 🛜 Zillow Home Loans Terms of Use

Source: 📥 Zillow Home Loans Terms of Use — Captured Aug. 30, 2026

Note: 📒 Screenshots 💁🏻‍♀️ in this chapter were captured on Aug. 30, 2026.

Zillow Home Loans Privacy Policy

Information we collect

If you decide to apply for a mortgage, whether for a new home purchase or a refinance, we collect additional information about you on the application forms we ask you to complete. This can include basic information like your name and contact information, but also includes more sensitive information about your job history, education, income, assets, family status, Social Security number, and other data we need to process your loan application. We also collect information about you from third parties like consumer reporting agencies, including the credit bureaus that furnish your credit report.

We may also collect information about your previous interactions and transactions with other Zillow Group businesses, like your home search activity on Zillow and Trulia.

Source: 💁🏻‍♀️ Zillow Home Loans Privacy Policy — Information We Collect

The following sentence would be equally accurate:

We may also collect information about your previous interactions and transactions with other Zillow Group businesses, like Follow Up Boss, Zillow Premier Agent, Zillow New Construction, Zillow Rentals, Zillow Closing, HotPads, Out East, StreetEasy, Trulia, ShowingTime, dotloop, Aryeo, and Bridge Interactive.

Source: Zillow Group Investor Relations — Our Brands — Undated, Captured Aug. 14, 2026 by Archive.org

Zillow Home Loans Terms of Use

User Materials - License

If you transmit, submit, upload or post information, data, images, videos and/or text (“User Materials”) to our Services you automatically grant us and our assigns a irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, fully-paid, royalty-free, exclusive right and license to (i) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, re-produce, edit, modify, format, adapt, publish, prepare derivative works and/or incorporate any or all User Materials in any media whatsoever; and (ii) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

Source: 💁🏻‍♀️ Zillow Home Loans Terms of Use — User Materials

The Zillow Home Loans Play

The Setup — User Materials is any information that a consumer submits to Zillow Home Loans when applying for a loan.

The Bridge — Zillow Home Loans grants itself an irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, fully paid, royalty-free, exclusive right and license.

The Payout — “exclusive right and license to... (ii) sublicense these rights....”

The Smokescreen — “... to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.”

Kitchen Sink Included

Applying for a federally conforming mortgage requires a state-issued photo ID with date of birth, paycheck stubs, W-2s, and income tax returns. Borrowers must also provide bank, brokerage, and credit card statements, credit reports, and any alimony or child support documentation.

A consumer’s employer and occupation are identified in the mortgage loan application and other documents. Local, state, and federal law enforcement officers and agents, for example, apply for mortgage loans.

Included as part of those “User Materials” is the consumer’s Social Security number.

Home loan applications contain the consumer’s phone number and her Social Security number. The phone number rarely changes, and the Social Security number almost never does. That makes them reliable data points that can uniquely identify an individual.

If a consumer’s data in database X has only the phone number and her data in database Y has only the Social Security number, database Z can connect the consumer’s data across all three databases by having both numbers.

Indemnification III

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless ZHL, its affiliates, and their respective directors, officers, employees, and agents from any and all claims and demands made by any third party due to or arising out of: (a) your access to or use of the Services; (b) your breach of these Terms of Use; (c) your violation of any law or the rights of a third party; (d) any dispute or issue between you and any third party; (e) any User Materials you upload to, or otherwise make available through, the Services; and (f) your willful misconduct. ZHL reserves the right, at its own expense, to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, and in that case, you agree to corporate with ZHL’s defense of that claim.

Source: 💁🏻‍♀️ Zillow Home Loans Terms of Use — Indemnification

The Song that Never Ends

I read several more of the myriad of Zillow’s policies and terms. I am bored and exhausted. This is the song that never ends.

Next up: Zillow — A De Facto Phone Company.

Chapter 4: Zillow — A De Facto Phone Company

Chapter 3.4: Zillow Group Website Privacy Notice