We feel so strongly about privacy rights that EVERYTHING about the design and technology of this site, from the time its first pixel was displayed, has been designed around respecting the rights of our visitors — your rights. But, frankly, just speaking those words does not mean very much, since that’s pretty much what every sleeze-bag company on the Internet will tell you — even those that are currently under Federal indictment for deliberate and repeated privacy violation and abuse. So we have broken it down, detailing our specific conduct, so you can see EXACTLY what WE mean when WE say that we care more about your privacy and security than anything else:
At no time is any purchasing information stored anywhere in non-encrypted form. Strongly encrypted purchase records (which must be retained for state tax reporting) are stored on an isolated backup machine that is not connected to the Internet. There is no way for a malicious hacker to access or acquire these records. And even if a malicious party could gain physical access to this offline backup machine, ever-present strong encryption renders the data completely useless.
During eCommerce transactions, the security-sensitive transfers required when personal credit information is submitted to our server is securely wrapped by an SSL 3.0 (Secure Sockets Layer) 128-bit public-key encryption wrapper. Unlike other sites, WE DO NOT ALLOW the non-encrypted transmission of sensitive customer data. The current estimate on cracking a 128-bit encrypted message is a bit more than twelve thousand years.
Our manage our own email system — We do not subcontract or “farm out” our list management, so there is NO CHANCE that your personal and private Email address will be disclosed to any third party. Moreover, we feel quite strongly about the privacy of Email addresses and NOTHING could induce us to divulge our customer’s Email address to any third party. Some things are NOT for sale — your trust in us is one of them.
This is a “100% Ad Free” Zone — We do not understand why ANY commercial web site would choose to horribly clutter its pages with garish and annoying advertisements jumping around all over the place, trying to distract its visitors and get their attention. It’s not as if being on the web is particularly expensive. It isn’t. So we just can’t understand why advertising has “happened” anywhere on the web except on those “fully sponsored” free web sites for individuals. It appears that many corporations have no taste or sense of style whatsoever. But, independent of that, no force on Earth could make us place a reference to an off-site advertising server on this site. The fact is, advertisements are a HUGE security and privacy risk. You will never find one here. No way.
We take your privacy and safety seriously and we will NEVER fail to put it first. So perhaps you see what we mean by Privacy FIRST. We mean first and forever. If you have any questions or concerns about anything you have seen here, or about anything relating to your privacy conduct, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE to let us know. You may address any Email to us for our immediate attention to via our contact page. Thank you for your interest in these tricky but important issues. Perhaps we can work together to raise the standard of privacy on the Internet. It is certainly worth a try!