LINKS TO THIS SITE FROM OTHER SITES: If you linked to this website from any other website that has a different website URL address than this website, Distinctions is not the operator of that site and is not responsible for its content. To identify the owner of a website we suggest you go to Network Solutions WHOIS and enter the name of the website including its suffix .com/.net/.org. Direct any inquiries about such a site or its content to the contact indicated there.

Privacy Policy

Overview

Welcome to the Distinctions website operated by Distinctions, a California corporation (the "Site").  For purposes of this Privacy Policy (the "Policy"), the terms "we," "us," "our" and "Distinctions" refer to Distinctions and all other affiliates of Distinctions.  "You" refers to you, as a user of this Site.  Explained in this section is our policy regarding any personal information you might supply to us when you visit our Site.  Our Policy was developed as an extension of our commitment to combine the highest-quality products and services with the highest level of integrity in dealing with our visitors and users.  This Policy is designed to assist you in understanding how we collect, use and safeguard the personal information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when using our Site and our products and services. This Policy will be continuously assessed against new technologies, business practices and our users' needs.

Questions regarding this Policy should be directed to info@permissioninteractive.com AND PUTTING THE WORDS 'QUESTION DistinctionsPlus.com' IN THE SUBJECT LINE or we may also be contacted directly at the following address:

DistinctionsPlus.com
Attn:  Webmaster
Distinctions
6070 Mission Gorge Road
Suite 1
San Diego, CA 92120

This Policy will explain the following regarding use of our Site:

1. What information do we collect from you?
2. Where do we collect information from you and how do we use it?
3. Who is collecting your information?
4. With whom do we share your information?
5. How may you update, correct or delete your Personally Identifiable Information?
6. What are your choices regarding collection, use and distribution of your information?
7. What security precautions are in place to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of your information?
8. "Cookies."
9. You should carefully review privacy policies of any third party sites accessible from our Site.
10. Contacting us about privacy questions or concerns.
11. Privacy Policy changes.

1.         What information does Distinctions collect from you?

In order to better provide you with numerous products and services, our Site collects two types of information about its visitors:  Personally Identifiable Information and Non-Personally Identifiable Information.  Our primary goal in collecting information from you is to provide you with a smooth, efficient and customized experience while using our Site.

Personally Identifiable Information:  This refers to information that lets us know the specifics of who you are.  Personal information is requested when you register with us, order a product or service, fill out surveys and correspond with us.  This information might include your name, mailing address, telephone number, email address and other identification and contact information.  If you choose to purchase products or services over the Site, you may need to give personal information and authorization to obtain information.  For example, you may need to provide the following information:

                        Name
                        Mailing address
                        E-mail address
                        Credit card number and expiration date
                        Home and/or business phone number
                        Other personal information (e.g., gender and age, mother's maiden name)

We may also collect certain other financial information; whenever we do so, we will attempt to provide a link to this Policy so that you can confirm how this information will be used.  With this information, we can submit your service and product orders to the appropriate merchants for processing and better provide you with services.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information:  This refers to information that does not by itself identify a specific individual.  We gather certain information about you based upon where you shop on our Site in several ways.  This information is compiled and analyzed on both a personal and an aggregated basis.  This information may include the Web site's Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") that you just came from, which URL you next go to, what browser you are using, and your Internet Protocol ("IP") address.  A URL is the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web.  An IP address is an identifier for a computer or device on a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol ("TCP/IP") network, such as the World Wide Web.  Networks use the TCP/IP protocol to route information based on the IP address of the destination.  In other words, an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web, allowing Web servers to locate and identify your computer.  Computers require IP addresses in order for users to communicate on the Internet, browse and shop. 

2.         Where do we collect information from you and how do we use it? 

Our primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide our visitors with a superior customized online experience.  Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing customer service and making available other products and services to our visitors and users.  Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our Site, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional corporate standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of our users' personal information.  

We may perform statistical analyses of aggregate customer behavior.  This allows us to measure relative customer interest in the various areas of our Site for product development purposes.  Any information we collect is used for our own internal purposes to improve the content of our Site, to enhance users' experiences when visiting our Site, to customize the content and/or layout of our pages, and to provide the services required by an individual customer.  Limited demographic data may also be collected at our Site from a third party advertising server, who provides us with the zip code and area code associated with a visitor's server, along with pages viewed on our Site.  We may receive summary, but not individual, reports from a third party ad server, which will tell us how many ads were presented and clicked upon. 

We gather information in the following ways:

Shopping:  We collect IP addresses for the purposes of system administration, to gather broad demographic information, to enable ads to be served on our Site, to report Non-Personally Identifiable Information to our advertisers and to monitor the level of activity on our Site.  We collect information from visitors to our Site regarding the referring URL, your IP address, which browser you used to come to the Site, the country, state and telephone area code where your server is located, the pages of our Site that you viewed during your visit and any search terms entered on our Site. 

Ordering:  When you order from us, we collect personally identifiable information from you.  If you order one of the products or services appearing on our Site, we will, collect and maintain your name, email address, mailing address, telephone number, product selections, credit card number, order number, referring URL, and IP address.  We collect this, and other information, as disclosed in this Policy, in order to submit your order to the appropriate merchant to fill, to communicate with you about your order and to send you promotional materials.  Before clicking on Submit Order, review your order carefully and make any changes and additions to the information it contains.You will receive an email confirming your order. Most emails are delivered within 24 hours but some make take longer due to delays on the Internet or with your internet service provider. Effective December 19, 2001:  Some of our product suppliers require that we forward your email address to them for the purpose of communicating directly with you regarding your order for their products. With these specific suppliers we provide your email address in addition to all other information to enable them to ship and bill your order.

Online Surveys and Polling:  In order to improve our services to you, we ask some of our customers to voluntarily complete surveys, which may be collected by an independent third party.  Individual survey answers are confidential, although Non-Personally Identifiable Information is collected and disclosed to third parties.  If you do not wish to participate in a survey, simply decline to participate when asked. 

Newsletters & Promotional Emails:  We may offer free electronic newsletters, and promotional emails as a service to our prior customers.  We may send you newsletters and emails periodically listing current specials and deals.  We do not send emails to you unless you subscribed with us.  If you signed up to receive email notification of contests, special offers and discounts coming in the months ahead you may unsubscribe at any time by sending an email to "info@permissioninteractive.com" and putting the word "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line.

Cookies:  We currently use cookies in the operation of our Site to limit the number of times we show you a pop-up window.  If we did not use them you would be shown a new pop-up window each time you accessed the same page.  To find out what cookies are and how they can be used, click here.
 

Contact Information and Third Party Data:  If you contact us by telephone, email or letter, we may keep a record of your contact information, correspondence or comments.  If you report a problem with our Site, we may collect such information in a file specific to you.  If you contact us through our feedback area or by calling one of our customer service representatives, we ask for your name and email address in order to send you a reply.  If other users or third parties send us correspondence about your activities or purchases on our Site, we may keep the information in a file specific to you.

Advertising:  We may display advertisements.  By knowing a little about you, we will be able to deliver more relevant advertisements and content to you in the form of targeted banners and promotions.  For example, advertisers may give us an advertisement and tell us the type of audience they want to reach.  We may take the advertisement and include it in an email to prior customers meeting that criteria.  We may, in the future, also have a third party advertising server display ads linked to certain search terms that you have entered, or to certain pages that you are viewing.  In this process, third parties will never have access to individual account information; only we have access to individual accounts.  Additionally, we may share aggregated data with advertisers. 

We also track customers' traffic patterns throughout their online sessions, including which pages a customer views while using our Site.  This information is ultimately stored in the form of store categories, and, in some cases, specific URLs.  We use your IP address to diagnose problems with our servers and software and to administer our Site.

We may share aggregated statistics about pages viewed on our Site and sales and other shopping information with third parties.

Our Site is not intended for the use of children.  We do not knowingly market to, or solicit data, from children.

3.         Who is collecting your information?

We may, in the future, use a third party ad server to serve ads on our Site.  They may place their own "cookie" on your computer to help those ads to run.  However, we will not provide them with any of your Personally Identifiable Information.  For more information about the information they may collect, please see the section "Cookies" below.

We may also in the future use a third party surveyor to run optional surveys for our Site.  That surveyor would collect Non-Personally Identifiable Information for the sole purpose of providing reports to us about our shoppers' interests and opinions.

Except as otherwise expressly discussed in this Privacy Policy, only we collect your information.  This document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you.  We encourage you to ask questions and to be very cautious before you disclose your personal information to others.

4.         With whom do we share your information?

The information collected by our Site is used only for the limited purposes of submitting orders to the appropriate merchants, keeping you informed about your order status, for statistical purposes for improving our Site and to notify you of products or special offers that may be of interest to you.  We will disclose your Personally Identifiable Information to third parties to charge your credit card, fill your order, deliver your order and deliver promotional emails to you from us.  For example, we must release your credit card number to confirm payment; and release your mailing address information to the delivery service to deliver products that you ordered.

We may sell, trade or rent your personal information to others.  However that you may "opt-out" by sending an email to info@permissioninteractive.com which will result in our removing your personal information from the data and information we sell, trade or rent.  We may also provide Non-Personally Identifiable Information about our customers' sales, traffic patterns and related Site information to third party advertisers, but these statistics do not include any Personally Identifiable Information.  Moreover, we may release account information when we believe that such release is reasonably necessary to enforce or apply our Web Site Terms of Use Agreement or to protect the rights, property and safety of our users, others and ourselves.

Except as otherwise stated in this Policy, at present we do not disclose our customers' Personally Identifiable Information to other merchants.  In the future, with your permission, we may provide some customer information to companies with products or services that may be of interest to you.  This would be for marketing purposes only and no credit card number information would be given.  Before agreeing to release your information, you should first confirm that our partner's privacy policy is acceptable to you because once your data is released, we would have no further control over it.

From time to time, we may be required by law enforcement or judicial authorities to provide Personally Identifiable Information to the appropriate governmental authorities.  We will disclose Personally Identifiable Information upon receipt of a court order or subpoena or to cooperate with a law enforcement investigation.  We fully cooperate with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who use our services for illegal activities.  We reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we in good faith believe to be unlawful.

5.         How can you update or correct your Personally Identifiable Information?

During the online ordering process you can review, change or delete the information that you initially have entered before your order is submitted.  Note that we may retain changed or deleted information for archival or other purposes.

6.         What are your choices regarding collection, use and distribution of your information?

We may from time to time send you email or other communications regarding current promotions, specials and new additions to our Site.  You may "opt-out," or unsubscribe from our newsletters by following the unsubscribe instructions in any email you receive from us or by sending an email to info@permissioninteractive.com.  After doing so, our users will not receive future communications or mailings.

7.         What security precautions are in place to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of your information?

We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from you.

Cryptography scrambles messages exchanged between your browser and our online ordering server.  Encryption happens as follows: when you go to the sign-on page for online ordering, your browser establishes a secure session with our server.  The secure session is established using a protocol called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption.  This protocol requires the exchange of what are called public and private keys.  Keys are random numbers chosen for that session and are only known between your browser and our server.  After the keys are exchanged, your browser will use the numbers to scramble (encrypt) the messages sent between your browser and our server.  Both sides require the keys because they need to descramble (decrypt) the messages when they are received.  The SSL protocol not only ensures privacy but also ensures that no other browser can "impersonate" your browser, nor alter any information sent.  You can tell whether your browser is in secure mode by looking for the secured lock symbol at the bottom of your browser window.

The numbers used as encryption keys are analogous to combination locks.  The strength of encryption is based on the number of possible combinations that a lock can have.

As the number of possible combinations grows, it becomes less likely that anyone would be able to guess the combination in order to decrypt the message.  Today's browsers offer 40-bit encryption or 128-bit encryption.  Both result in a large number of possible combinations, 240 and 2128, respectively.  Our servers are compatible with both, however we recommend the use of 128-bit capable browsers.  Click here to determine the level of encryption that your browser supports.

            Netscape Users go here: 
            http://home.netscape.com/download/index.html?cp=djudepart

            Microsoft Internet Explorer Users go here:
            http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/iebuild/msnie5/EN/msn.asp

E-mail that you may send without going to the sign-on page for online ordering may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information.  For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as Social Security or account numbers to us through an unsecured e-mail.

In order to most efficiently serve you, credit card transactions and order fulfillment are handled by established third party banking institutions, process agents and distribution institutions.  They receive the information they need to verify and authorize your credit card transactions and to process and ship your order.  Please keep in mind that though we offer secured-server transactions that encrypt your information in transit from you to us to thwart someone from intercepting it and misusing it, we send your information on to third parties to process your order through email and other means which may not be secure.  Accordingly, we cannot guarantee that someone will not intercept and misuse such information in transit from us to such third parties.

We also encourage our partners and service providers to adopt and follow stringent consumer privacy policies.  However, because we have no control over our partners and third party service providers, we cannot be liable for any action or inaction taken by such third parties.

8.   "Cookies."

Like many other commercial sites, our site utilizes a standard technology called a "cookie".  A cookie is a small data text file, which a Web site stores on your computer's hard drive (if your Web browser permits) that can later be retrieved to do useful work.  Our Cookies are designed to help a Web site recognize a user's browser and only allow pop-up windows to pop-up one time during a user session.  Without the cookie the pop-up window would appear each time a specific page is accessed.  A cookie cannot be read by a Web site other than the one that set the cookie.  No other company will have access to our cookies.  Cookies can securely identify which parts of a site have been visited.  A cookie cannot retrieve any other data from your hard drive, pass on a computer virus, or capture your email address.

9.         You should carefully review privacy policies of any third party sites accessible from our Site.

Other sites accessible through our Site have their own privacy policies and data collection, use and disclosure practices.  Please consult each site's privacy policy.  We are not responsible for the policies or practices of third parties.  Please be aware that our Site may contain links to other sites on the Internet that are owned and operated by third parties.  The information practices of those Web sites linked to our Site are not covered by this Privacy Policy.  These other sites may send their own cookies to users, collect data or solicit personal information.  Additionally, other companies which place advertising on our Site may collect information about you when you view or click on their advertising through the use of cookies.  We cannot control this collection of information.  You should contact these advertisers directly if you have any questions about their use of the information that they collect. 

10.       Contacting us about privacy questions or concerns.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of our Site, or your dealings with our Site, please contact us by sending a letter to:  Webmaster, Distinctions, 6070 Mission Gorge Road, Suite 1, San Diego, CA 92120, or by sending an email to info@permissioninteractive.com.

11.       Privacy Policy changes.

This Privacy Policy was implemented on October 17, 2000.  If we make changes to any terms or conditions of the Privacy Policy, the changes will be posted in this document so that you will always know what information we gather, how we might use that information and to whom we will disclose it.  Any change, modification, addition or removal of portions of this Policy will be announced on our Site within a reasonable period of time before it is implemented.  Please be sure to check this page before proceeding to use our Site.