Secure Ordering

The security of the information regarding your order is very important to us. We use the 128-bit Secure Socket Layer protocol combined with credit card number incription, to protect the security of your online order information. SSL technology encrypts your order information to protect it from being decoded by anyone other than Surf to Summit.

Once you reach the buy page your computer will begin communicating with our server in secure mode. You can tell that you are in secure mode by the following:

• The "http" in the web address will be replaced by "https"
• Depending on the browser, you will see either a padlock (Microsoft Internet Explorer, AOL, Netscape Communicator) or a solid key (Netscape Navigator) in the lower section for the browser window.

Only browsers that use the 128-bit Secure Socket Layer protocol are able to order through the Surf to Summit website. If your browser does not support SSL, you can get an upgrade at Microsoft's or Netscape's home page.

Registration
In order to place an order on this Web site, you must first complete the registration form [and/or create a user name and password].  During registration you are required to give contact information (such as name and email address). We use this information to contact you about the services and products on our site in which you have expressed interest.

You have the option to provide demographic information (such as income level and gender) to us; we encourage you to submit this information so we can provide you a more personalized experience on our site.

If you request our newsletter during registration, you will receive an email asking to verify your request.

Surf to Summit is a division of Surf to Summit, Inc., the sole owner of the information collected on SurfToSummit.com. Surf to Summit collects personally identifiable information from our users at several different points on our Web site.

Orders
If you purchase a product or service from us, we request certain personally identifiable information from you on our order form. You must provide contact information (such as name, email, and shipping address) and financial information (such as credit card number, expiration date). We do not accept orders from persons less than 16 years of age.

We use this information for billing purposes and to fill your orders.  If we have trouble processing an order, we will use this information to contact you.

Upon placing an order you will receive an email confirming your order and inviting you to receive our newsletter.

Surveys or Contests
From time-to-time, we may provide you the opportunity to participate in contests or surveys on our site.  If you participate, we will request certain personally identifiable information from you. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information.  The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code). 

We add this information to our existing user database, to better target our advertising and to provide pertinent offers in which we think you would be interested. To enrich our Profiles of individual customers, we tie this information to the personally identifiable information they have provided to us.

We may use a third party service provider to conduct these surveys or contests; that company will be prohibited from using our users' personally identifiable information for any other purpose. We will not share the personally identifiable information you provide through a contest or survey with other third parties unless we give you prior notice and choice.

Tell-A-Friend
If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend's name and email address.  We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site.  Surf to Summit does not store this information.

Uses of Information

Newsletters
If you wish to subscribe to our newsletter(s), we will use your name and email address to send the newsletter to you.  Out of respect for your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe.  Please see the "Choice and Opt-out" section.

Customer Service
Based upon the personally identifiable information you provide us, we will send you a welcoming email to verify your username and password.  We will also communicate with you in response to your inquiries, to provide the services you request, and to manage your account. We will communicate with you by email or telephone, in accordance with your wishes.

Profile
We store information that we collect through cookies, log files, clear gifs, [and/or third party sources] to create a "profile" of your preferences.  We tie your personally identifiable information, and your purchasing history, to information in the profile, in order to provide tailored promotions and marketing offers and to improve the content of the site for you. We share your profile together with your personally identifiable information with third parties.

Supplementation of Information
In order to provide certain services to you, we may on occasion supplement the personal information you submitted to us with information from third party sources.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

Personally identifiable information:
We Share Personally Identifiable Information with Third Parties

Agents
We use an outside shipping company to fulfill orders, and a credit card processing company to bill you for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any other purposes.

Service Providers
We use other third parties to provide delivery of newsletters.  When you sign up to receive our newsletter, we will share your email address and name as necessary for the third party to provide that service. These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose.

Other Third Parties
From time to time, we share our mailing list with carefully selected providers of goods and services that may be of interest. If you prefer not to receive mail from other companies, or if you do not wish to receive future issues of our catalogs, please send us your mailing label to Surf to Summit, 132 Robin Hill Rd, Santa Barbara, CA 93117, or call (866) 523-8375.

Legal Disclaimer
We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our company.

Choice/Opt-out
We provide you the opportunity to 'opt-out' of having your personally identifiable information used for certain purposes, when we ask for this information.  For example, if you purchase a product/service but do not wish to receive any additional marketing material from us, you can indicate your preference on our order form.

If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by emailing us at newsletter-subscriptions@SurfToSummit.com. We offer an opportunity to opt-out of certain communications on our 'My Account' pages, or you may contact us at (866) 523-8375 or Surf to Summit, Newsletter Subscriptions, 132 Robin Hill Rd, Santa Barbara, CA 93117 to opt-out.

You will be notified when your personal information is collected by any third party that is not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not to share your information with that party.

We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users' movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We do not link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information.

We use a third-party tracking service, Overture, that uses cookies to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors to our site in the aggregate. This information is used to measure the success of our advertising.

We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. A session ID cookie expires when you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser's "help" file.

We set a persistent cookie to link your shopping cart to you. Persistent cookies also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site.

If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but you will not be able to place or review orders on the Site. Please contact us at (866) 523-8375 to place an order.

Some of our business partners (e.g., advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over these cookies. See "Third Party Advertisers."

This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by SurfToSummit.com only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers. [See the "Third Party Advertisers" section.]

Clear Gifs (Web Beacons/Web Bugs)
Our third party advertising partner, Overture, employs a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs), that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users.  In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user's computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We tie the information gathered by clear gifs to our customers' personally identifiable information.

To learn more about our advertising company's use of clear gifs, please go to Overture.com.

We use clear gifs in our HTML-based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by recipients.  This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.  If you would like to opt-out of these emails, please see "Choice and Opt-out."

We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information. 

This privacy statement applies only to information collected by this Web site.

Access to Personally Identifiable Information
If your personally identifiable information changes, you may correct or update it by making the change on our 'My Account' pages or by emailing our Customer Support at info@SurfToSummit.com or by contacting us at (866) 523-8375 or Surf to Summit, Privacy Department, 132 Robin Hill Rd, Santa Barbara, CA 93117

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Business Transitions
In the event Surf to Summit goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personally identifiable information will likely be among the assets transferred. You will be notified via email of any such change in ownership or control of your personal information.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently.  If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.