Conditions of Use

The information we learn from customers helps us personalize and continually improve your shopping experience at Alter Systems. Here are the types of information we gather.

Information You Give Us: We receive and store any information you enter on our Web site or give us in any other way. You can choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, customizing future shopping for you, improving our stores, and communicating with you.

Automatic Information: We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many Web sites, we use "cookies," and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses Alter Systems. A number of companies offer utilities designed to help you visit Web sites anonymously. Although we will not be able to provide you with a personalized experience at Alter Systems if we cannot recognize you, we want you to be aware that these tools exist.

E-mail Communications: To help us make e-mails more useful and interesting, we often receive a confirmation when you open e-mail from Alter Systems if your computer supports such capabilities. We also compare our customer list to lists received from other companies, in an effort to avoid sending unnecessary messages to our customers. If you do not want to receive e-mail or other mail from us, please adjust your account to reflect this by selecting unsubscribed in the newsletters menu.

Information from Other Sources: For reasons such as improving personalization of our service (for example, providing better product recommendations or special offers that we think will interest you), we might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information. We also sometimes receive updated delivery and address information from our shippers or other sources so that we can correct our records and deliver your next purchase or communication more easily.

Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser to enable our systems to recognize your browser and to provide features such as automatic login and permanent shopping carts for storage of items in your Shopping Cart between visits.
The "help" portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. However, cookies allow you to take full advantage of some of Alter Systems's coolest features, and we recommend that you leave them turned on.

Information about our customers is an important part of our business, and we are not in the business of selling it to others. We share customer information only with the subsidiaries Alter Systems controls and as described below.

We work closely with our affiliated businesses. In some cases, these businesses operate stores at Alter Systems or sell offerings to you at Alter Systems. In other cases, we operate stores, provide services, or sell product lines jointly with these businesses. You can tell when another business is involved in your transactions, and we share customer information related to those transactions with that business.

We employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and e-mail, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments, and providing customer service. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes.

Sometimes we send offers to selected groups of Alter Systems customers on behalf of other businesses. When we do this, we do not give that business your name and address. If you do not want to receive such offers, please adjust your account newsletter preference as that is how we will send out our promotions.

As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy stores or assets. In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets. Also, in the unlikely event that Alter Systems, or substantially all of its assets are acquired, customer information will of course be one of the transferred assets.

We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Alter Systems, our users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Other than as set out above, you will receive notice when information about you might go to third parties, and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information.

Your security is our primary concern. To ensure safe shopping, we use 128 bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption security, which is the highest level of security available today for secure e-commerce transactions. All pages containing your personal information, including credit card numbers, name, and address are encrypted while in transit. That means it cannot be read as the information travels over the Internet. SSL encryption makes shopping on the Internet the safest way to use your credit card. It is much safer than making a purchase in a store or charging your dinner in a restaurant. It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when finished using a shared computer.

Alter Systems gives you access to the following information about you for the limited purpose of viewing and, in certain cases, updating that information. This list may change as our Web site evolves.

As discussed above, you can always choose not to provide information, even though it might be needed to make a purchase or to take advantage of such Alter Systems features as Automatic login, and permanent shopping carts. You can add or update certain information on pages such as those listed in the "My Account" pages. When you update information, we usually keep a copy of the prior version for our records.If you do not want to receive e-mail or other mail from us, please adjust your account to reflect this in the newsletter menu.

Alter Systems does not sell products for purchase by children.

If you choose to visit Alter Systems, your visit and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Notice and our Conditions of Use, including limitations on damages, arbitration of disputes, and application of the law of California, United States of America. If you have any concern about privacy at Alter Systems, please send us a thorough description to cs@altersystems.com, and we will try to resolve it. Our business changes constantly. This Notice and the Conditions of Use will change also, and use of information that we gather now is subject to the Privacy Notice in effect at the time of use. We may e-mail periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, unless you have instructed us not to, but you should check our Web site frequently to see recent changes.

You provide most such information when you search, buy, bid, post, participate in a contest or questionnaire, or communicate with customer service. For example, you provide information when you search for a product; make an order; provide information in Your Account (and you might have more than one if you have used more than one e-mail address when shopping with us); communicate with us by phone, e-mail, or otherwise; complete a questionnaire or a contest entry form; by providing employer, school, or other such information; participate in Discussion Boards; provide and rate Reviews. As a result of those actions, you might supply us with such information as your name, address, and phone number; people to whom purchases have been shipped, including address and phone number; other people; content of reviews and e-mails to us; and financial information, including Social Security and driver's license numbers.

Examples of the information we collect and analyze include the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; login; e-mail address; password; computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform; purchase history; the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through, and from our Web site, including date and time; cookie number; and products you viewed or searched for.