Last updated: Jan 10, 2020
We at Hydropolis respect your privacy and want to protect
your personal information. To learn more, please read this Privacy Policy.
This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use and (under
certain conditions) disclose your personal information. This Privacy Policy also
explains the steps we have taken to secure your personal information. Finally,
this Privacy Policy explains your options regarding the collection, use and
disclosure of your personal information. By visiting the Site directly or
through another site, you accept the practices described in this Policy.
This privacy policy applies to the Site. This privacy policy
does not necessarily apply to any offline collection of your personal
information. Please see below for details. We are not responsible for the content
or privacy practices on any web site not operated by Hydropolis to which the
Site links or that links to the Site.
INFORMATION COLLECTION AND USE
1. Information Collection
We collect information from you in several different ways on
this Site. One goal in collecting personal information from you is to provide
an efficient, meaningful, and customized experience. For example, we can use
your personal information to:
help make the Site easier for you to use by not having to
enter information more than once
help you quickly find information, products, and services
help us create content that is most relevant to you
alert you to new information, products, and services that we
offer
(a) Registration and Ordering. Before using certain parts of
the Site or ordering products, you must complete an online registration form.
During registration, you will be prompted to provide to us certain personal
information, including but not limited to your name, shipping and billing
address(es), phone number, email address, and credit card number. We may also
ask you for your country of residence and/or your organization’s country of
operation, so we can comply with applicable laws and regulations. In addition,
we may ask for your gender. These kinds of personal information are used for
billing purposes, to fulfill your orders, to communicate with you about your
order and the Site, and for internal marketing purposes. If we encounter a
problem when processing your order, your personal information may be used to
contact you.
(b) Email Addresses. Several locations of the Site permit
you to enter your email address for purposes including, but not limited to the
following: to register for a contest or sweepstakes; to request us to notify
you of new brands, new product styles, or product sizes; or to sign up for
email newsletters and special offers. Your participation in a contest or
sweepstakes is completely voluntary, so you have a choice whether to
participate and disclose information to us. We use this information to notify contest
and sweepstakes winners and to award prizes. We may post on the Site the names
and cities of contest and sweepstakes winners. By entering a contest or
sweepstakes, you may be opting in to receive our email newsletter and special
offers and this will be disclosed in the official rules governing the contest
or sweepstakes.
(c) Cookies and Other Technology. Like many sites, the Site
employs cookies and web beacons (also known as clear GIF technology or “action
tags”) to speed your navigation of the Site, recognize you and your access
privileges, and track your Site usage.
(i) Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored
as text files by your Internet browser on your computer’s hard drive. Most
Internet browsers are initially set to accept cookies. You can set your browser
to refuse cookies from web sites or to remove cookies from your hard drive, but
if you do, you will not be able to access or use portions of the Site. If you
do this, we keep a record of your browsing activity and purchase. THE SITE’S
COOKIES DO NOT AND CANNOT INFILTRATE A USER’S HARD DRIVE TO GATHER A USER’S
CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. Our cookies are not “spyware.”
(ii) Web beacons assist in delivering cookies and help us
determine whether a web page on the Site has been viewed and, if so, how many
times. For example, any electronic image on the Site, such as an ad banner, can
function as a web beacon. We may also use web beacons or cookies to allow us to
record activity on our Site.
(iii) We may use third-party advertising companies to help
tailor Site content to users or to serve ads on our behalf. These companies may
employ cookies and web beacons to measure advertising effectiveness (such as
which web pages are visited or what products are purchased and in what amount).
(iv) Additionally we may use services on our site that
collect information from you regarding your use of the site, such as pages
visited, links clicked, non-sensitive text entered, and mouse movements, as
well as information more commonly collected such as your IP address, referring
URL, browser, operating system, cookie information, and Internet Service
Provider. This information may in the aggregate identify you, however we will
not identify you as you browse the web if you turn off cookies
(d) Log Files. As is true of most web sites, the Site server
automatically recognizes the Internet URL from which you access the Site. We
may also log your Internet protocol (“IP”) address, Internet service provider,
and date/time stamp for system administration, order verification, internal
marketing, and system troubleshooting purposes. (An IP address may indicate the
location of your computer on the Internet.)
(e) Age. We will never knowingly request or collect personal
information from any person under 13 years of age without prior verifiable
parental consent. If you are under 13 years old please do not provide your
information on our website. If we become aware that an individual is under the
age of 13 and has submitted any information to Hydropolis for any purpose
without prior verifiable parental consent, we will delete his or her
information from our files.
(f) Product Reviews. You may choose to submit a product
review. If you post a review, we will ask for your email address and geographic
location. If you submit a review, your geographic location will be visible to
other users (your email address will be kept private). Also, any personally
identifiable information that you submit as part of the review can be read or
used by other visitors to the Site. We are not responsible for any personally
identifiable information that you choose to submit as part of your review. We
believe you can post a helpful review without disclosing any personal
information.
2. INFORMATION USE AND DISCLOSURE
(a) Internal Use. We use your personal information to
process your order and provide you with customer service. We may internally use
your personal information to improve the Site’s content and layout, to improve
outreach and for our own marketing efforts (including marketing our services
and products to you), and to determine general marketplace information about
visitors to the Site. In order to facilitate such use and the other use
described in this Section 2, we may share your information with affiliates
under Hydropolis control.
(b) Communications with You: We will use your personal
information to communicate with you about the Site and your orders and
deliveries. Also, we may send you a confirmation email when you register with
us. We may send you a service-related announcement on the rare occasions when
it is necessary (for example, if we must temporarily suspend our service for
maintenance.) Also, we may send emails for reasons such as to register for a
contest or sweepstakes; to notify you of new brands, new product styles, or
product sizes; or to sign up for email newsletters and special offers. If you
submit your email address, we use it to deliver the information to you. We
always permit you to unsubscribe or opt out of future emails (see the opt out
section, below, for more details). Because we have to communicate with you
about orders that you choose to place, you cannot opt out of receiving emails
related to your orders.
(c) External Use. We want to provide you with excellent
service and to offer you a great selection. We do not sell, rent, trade,
license or otherwise disclose your specific personal information or financial
information to anyone other than to affiliates under Hydropolis control, except
that:
(i) As do most catalog and Internet retailers, we sometimes
use others to perform specific functions on our behalf. When we disclose
information to these service providers, we disclose information to help them to
perform their service. For example, in order to deliver products to you, we
must share some information. We partner with third parties (such as the U.S.
Postal Service, United Parcel Service, and Federal Express) to ship products,
to ensure delivery, and so that we can obtain feedback, improve the quality of
our service, and measure and improve the quality of the service of the third
party. In the example of shippers, we provide them some personally identifiable
information such as your name, shipping address, email, and phone number.
(ii) Similarly, to help you buy products and provide
customer service to you, we must provide your credit card number to
financial-services corporations such as credit-card processors and issuers.
When we submit your credit card number for authorization, we use
state-of-the-art data encryption to protect your information. (More on this
below in Data Security.)
(iv) We may disclose such information in response to
requests from law enforcement officials conducting investigations; subpoenas; a
court order; or if we are otherwise required to disclose such information by
law. We also will release personal information where disclosure is necessary to
protect our legal rights, enforce our Terms of Use or other agreements, or to
protect ourselves or others. For example, we may share information to reduce
the risk of fraud or if someone uses or attempts to use the Site for illegal
reasons or to commit fraud.
(v) We will not sell (or trade or rent) personally
identifiable information to other companies as part of our regular course of
business. However, it’s possible that we might acquire or merge with or be
acquired by another company or that we might dispose of some or all of our
assets. If that happens, your personal information may be disclosed to another
company, but that disclosure will be subject to the Privacy Policy in effect.
(vi) We may share non-personal information (such as the
number of daily visitors to a particular web page, or the size of an order
placed on a certain date) with third parties such as advertising partners. This
information does not directly personally identify you or any user.
DATA SECURITY
The Site incorporates physical, electronic, and
administrative procedures to safeguard the confidentiality of your personal
information, including Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) for all financial
transactions through the Site. We use SSL encryption to protect your personal
information online, and we also take several steps to protect your personal
information in our facilities. Access to your personal information is
restricted. Only employees who need access to your personal information to
perform a specific job are granted access to your personal information.
Finally, we rely on third-party service providers for the physical security of
some computer hardware. We believe that their security procedures are adequate.
For example, when you visit the Site, you access servers that are kept in a
secure physical environment, behind a locked cage and an electronic firewall.
While we use industry-standard precautions to safeguard your
personal information, we cannot guarantee complete security. 100% complete
security does not presently exist anywhere online or offline.
OFFLINE COLLECTION, USE & DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION
As you might expect from us, the majority of information
that we collect is obtained through the Site, and this Privacy Policy applies
only to that online collection of personal information. We also may collect
information offline, where we also try to protect the privacy of your personal
information. One example involves someone calling us to place an order or to
ask questions. When someone calls, we will ask only for the personal
information we need in order to place the order or to answer the question. When
we need to store information (such as credit card information), we will enter
it into our database through SSL encryption and it will be stored in a database
in an encrypted form. (See the Data Security section above for more
information). There are other ways we could learn of personal information
offline (for example, we suppose someone could send us a letter including some
return address information), and this Policy doesn’t discuss or try to predict
all of those methods or uses. We will try to treat offline collection, uses,
and disclosures consistently with our relevant online practices.