Your privacy is important, so we have created the following Privacy and Security Policy to let you know what information we collect when you visit our web site, and how it is used.
Our Web servers automatically collect information about each visitor who requests California Backyard Web pages, including your computer’s internet protocol (IP) address. Your IP address is used to help identify you and your shopping cart, as well as gather broad demographic information. To use our Web site your browser must be set to accept “cookies.” A cookie is a small bit of data (zeros and ones) located in a text file on your computer’s hard drive that helps our servers recognize you when you visit our sites. Cookies are used in e-commerce sites to keep track of a customer’s shopping cart, the items you place in the cart, the pages you visit while in the store, and your specific areas of interest while shopping. You can configure your computer to reject cookies, but it will disable the ability for our Web servers to recognize your cart, your account, and any personalization content. In short, we will be unable to complete your purchase.
Address Information
To facilitate a customer’s order, California Backyard uses an order form to gather contact information about the customer, including, but not limited to name, shipping address, email address, phone numbers and some financial information with respect to account or credit card numbers.
California Backyard uses this information to send orders, and information about the company, as well as to get in touch with the customer as needed. Financial information is used to bill customers for services and purchased items. If a customer does not wish to be included in future mailings, he/she may choose to be removed from the company’s in-house email list. See opt out section below.
Online Surveys Occasionally, we conduct online surveys, for the express purpose of sending the recipient promotional material from California Backyard, or at times, from our partners. Typical contact information requested is an email address, while demographic information is age, income level, and zip code. When this information is to be shared with our partners, it will be disclosed. Users who do not wish to receive future mailings may opt-out. See below for the opt out section. One of the unique things about using an e-commerce site is that the site can be customized to an individual’s interests, based on information provided by the user.
Contests Periodically, California Backyard will run contests wherein we ask for contact information such as email address, and demographic information such as income level, age, and zip code.
This information is used to contact an individual when he/she has won a contest. Additionally, the information is used to send promotional material from California Backyard, as well as from our partners. When partners are to receive this contact information, it will be disclosed. Users not wanting to receive future promotional mailings may opt out by choosing the opt out section below.
Security Measures How secure is my credit card number transmitted over the Internet?
You can enter your credit card number on a secure (https) form and transmit the form over the Internet to a secure server without risk of an intermediary obtaining your credit card information. The security features offered by your web browser technology protects commercial transactions, as well as all other communications, from misappropriation and fraud that could otherwise occur as information passes through Internet computers.
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol has become the universal standard on the Web for authenticating sites and for encrypting communications between users and Web servers. Because SSL is built into all major browsers and Web servers, simply installing a digital certificate or Server ID enables SSL capabilities.
SSL server authentication allows users to confirm a Web server’s identity. SSL-enabled client software, such as a Web browser, can automatically check that a server’s certificate and public ID are valid and have been issued by a certificate authority (CA) — such as VeriSign — listed in the client software’s list of trusted CAs. SSL server authentication is vital for secure e-commerce transactions in which users, for example, are sending credit card numbers over the Web and first want to verify the receiving server’s identity.
An encrypted SSL connection requires all information sent between a client and a server to be encrypted by the sending software and decrypted by the receiving software, protecting private information from interception over the Internet. In addition, all data sent over an encrypted SSL connection is protected with a mechanism for detecting tampering — that is, for automatically determining whether the data has been altered in transit. This means that users can confidently send private data, such as credit card numbers, to a website, trusting that SSL keeps it private and confidential.
You can tell when you have a secure connection by looking at the location (URL) field. If the URL begins with https:// (instead of http://) the document comes from a secure server. To connect to an HTTP server that provides security using the SSL protocol, insert the letter “s” so that the URL begins with https://. You need to use https:// for HTTP URLs with SSL and http:// for HTTP URLs without SSL. You can also verify the security of a document by examining the security icon in the bottom-left corner of the browser window.
